Float My Raft

As of this issue, it's 12 years to the minute since our first column ever. Time's passing -- incidentally generating even numbers of random measures -- is so meaningless, I am moved to wax upon the meaningless.

Meaning is important. It's the raft we float on. A precious thing we make. But the meaningless is important, also. The meaningless is the ocean that floats our raft of meaning.

Because there is so much meaningless, we seek to put it to use. It's what drives people to find an engine that runs on air. You want to be surrounded by treasure without having to dig any up.

Last week, we went to the 2007 North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) conference. "We" means two vendors, an intern, a director, a consultant, a reporter, Anitra "ID-Free" Freeman, and I. Some of us were graciously driven to Portland by staff reporter Cydney Gillis. Anitra and I took turns loudly pronouncing Washington State town names as if they were bird cries, like this: PuuuuuuyALLup! EENumCLAW! Walla WALLa! Totally meaningless fun! [Above left: Cydney stopped in Kalama to take care of the car, while bikers watched with interest.]

Advice: wait until you're halfway to be so annoying. You want to set up what I call a "moral dilemma". Don't let the driver think, "I can kick them out here. It would only take them a fortnight to walk back. I would feel only slight guilt."

So there I was, at the NASNA conference in Portland, with my sweetheart, BBQ chips, old friends, new friends, and... no beer!

Paul Boden, of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, was there also, physically, and existentially. No beer! "Let's go get beer!" "Where?" We asked natives. They said, "Go that way, turn left, go that far, there's a store." Paul, Anitra, and I set off.

We get to the store, which is a Tartan Pantry, a Plaid Cupboard, or something. We pick out the beer. Paul steps up to buy his. He's carded!

Let's clarify this picture. Paul is younger than I am, but has a kind of flinty look to him, reminiscent of David Carradine in Kill Bill, or Richard Widmark post-50. He ain't no spring chicken. I'm beside Paul while he shows his ID, laughing. I lied and said, "Ha, ha, you're older than I am!" I look like Willie Nelson put on weight.


[Above left: Richard Widmark in his Jesus Year playing Noir Tough Guy Tommy Udo, where he pushes an old woman in a wheelchair down stairs. Above right: Paul Boden, or Richard Widmark again?]

So then it was my turn. There was a funky beer on the counter. I said, "Hey! This isn't one of mine!" Anitra claimed it, but said I had to buy it. So I said, "RIGHT. I love you, too." I showed the nice cashier my ID.

The next day I remembered where I'd seen that cashier before. He was behind the counter in the cantina at Mos Eisley. The "no droids allowed in here" bartender, Star Wars IV.

He looked at my ID as though I weren't 58 and it mattered it might be fake. He handed it back. I took out money and he said, "Not so fast, I have to see hers," pointing to Anitra, who is a whole 8 days younger.

"Ha, ha, whip out your ID, baby face," I said to her. But she didn't have her ID with her!

So the cashier/Mos Eisley bartender took her beer away. I said, "OK then, how much for MY beer here." And he took THAT away, too! HEY! NOT FUNNY!

"No, no, no, no, NOOOO," I said, "MY beer! You can sell me MY beer! I have ID! Anitra won't drink MY beer."

But the guy says "I'm not selling you anything."

As we walked away to find a supermarket, we discussed what the deal with the convenience store guy was. Paul pointed to the badges we were all wearing, that showed the words North American Street Newspaper Assn., proof that we belonged to an organization that cares about the homeless.

Maybe the cashier created a meaning from those badges he didn't like.

Breaking News: Public Toilets

Lets deal with the elasticity of light.

Once again we at Adventures in Poetry have had the good fortune to bless a North American Street Newspaper Association conference with our presence. This one was at San Francisco. Fog City, USA.

Actually it didn't really fog while we were there, unless you count the conference. Something was dreadfully wrong. There was no infighting! What was up with that?! How could there have been seventy homeless and formerly homeless progressives in the same auditorium without any infighting?

Were they ill? Was it the flu making its rounds? Or was the food supplied by Food Not Bombs more satiating, owing to the added chicken? Was it something in the smoke, a Cheech and Chong effect? Or had the participants all learned their lesson from previous NASNA conferences that had been derailed by the disputations of the More-Progressive-Than-Thou?

No, they had not, I am here to tell you. Instead, they were distracted by a bigger enemy than each other. They were busy attacking the mainstream press, especially the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here's the deal. The Chronicle has been making an issue of the homeless, especially those who hang out on San Francisco's main drag, Market Street. It's mostly typical Sidranesque stuff, blaming the victim for bleeding on the nice clean sidewalk kind of stuff.

It's a bit more convoluted though. SF has expensive self-cleaning toilets, for instance, similar to the kind Seattle is planning to buy. So before complaining about homeless people urinating and defecating behind dumpsters, it's necessary for them to explain that the self-cleaning toilets around Market Street are mostly broken. But that's blamed on the homeless too. It's all those "homeless AND prostitutes AND drug addicts". That's the phrase used over and over again, as if those three categories were equivalent.

San Francisco's television isn't too enlightened either. One television report of a demonstration on behalf of the homeless briefly showed demonstrators talking followed by a long sequence of archived shots of people breaking laws on the sidewalks, as if only homeless people use sidewalks, as if the demonstrators were supporting criminals, and as if weeks of archived shots were all showing crimes that happened yesterday. It's a crime wave! Run for your lives!

It's too bad we don't have anything as bad as the SF Chronicle here in Seattle. Think of the fun we could have verbally abusing them. Also it would make it that much harder for us to mistake ourselves for mainstream, a fate worse than oblivion.

Sometimes, reading the Weekly, I'm not so sure. Maybe we're mainstream and we don't know it? What if the rest of NASNA found out, in time for next year's conference? What if Perfesser Harris were really Mike Mailway? What if Anitra "too much" Freeman were really Nicole Brodeur? What if I was Jean Godden? No wait, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I meant, what if I were Erik Lacitus? The horror, the horror.

If this were a mainstream column, would there be any difference? Well, for one thing, there'd be a lot fewer questions, and a lot more answers, surely. The mainstream press in this country always has all the answers for everything. How to improve your marriage and still play more golf, Life and the Arts, D2!

This couldn't be Adventures in Poetry. There is no mainstream poetry, contrary to popular misconception. We would be Excursions in Prose. Or Strolls in Speech.

But I think the biggest difference would be the lack of reflection. You have to be able to stop before you can stop and reflect. They don't call it a stream for nothing.