Beats spending $1000 on a website

I'm going to write a book about Phyllis Wheatley called, "Phyllis Wheatley on a Hill" in which a 24 year-old white male from Minnesota living in New York begins having weird dreams about Phyllis Wheatley right after moving to Spanish Harlem. Phyllis Wheatley, for those who don't know, was a slave from Gambia that was taught English by her slave master's daughter and began to write her own poetry in the style of John Milton and Alexander Pope. Some people, mostly white, see Wheatley as the first African-American poet because she was black and wrote poetry. Other people, such as black people that take pride in the African-American cannon and don't think a slave that was simply parroting the words of her oppresors should be considered the beginning of what would become a very distinct black narrative voice, think otherwise. My book won't really discuss this stuff. It's just going to be about the 24 year old guy and maybe mention once in a while that he has dreams about Phyllis Wheatley. Sort of the way Phyllis Wheatley never talks about her experiences as a slave, but only mentions the fact that she was a slave, usually to accentuate some other point, like national patriotism or her Christian faith.

Today was a very poetic and sentimental day. Spent 10 minutes dismantling an edible bouquet that was sent to me at work in error. It had already been sitting there for 2 hours before I got to it, and since the tag said to refrigerate at least 4 hours after receiving, I decided to just keep it. My name was on the tag, so maybe it wasn't sent in accident. I kept it. Under my desk. For 4 more hours. And then, when I thought everyone was gone, I brought it to the kitchen and tore it apart. It's going to be in my book and may already be in a book, since it was such a sentimental and poetic moment. It looked so beautiful before I started taking it apart. Daisy-shaped pineapple slices dipped half in chocolate. Chocolate covered strawberries. Grapes. Cantaloupe. All the fruit were on these little spears stuck in styrofoam at the bottom of a basket masked by lettuce, so that it looked like a bouquet and not just a bunch of fruit on spears. By the time I even got a chance to look at it, 2 hours after it should have been refrigerated, the chocolate was beginning to melt and were sweating the moisture of the surrounding fruit. Dew.

I slid all the fruit off of the spears and placed them into a bag to keep for later. The end result was a basket not of fake flowers but of cold, sad looking spikes. If I ever have a bad break up with someone and go completely psychotic, I'm going to send them an edible bouquet without the fruit, just the spikes. I wonder if they'd charge extra for that.

The blue bag of fruit looked like a morgue bag and weighed about 8 pounds. A dead baby. That was chopped up into little daisy shaped pieces and dipped in chocolate.

Spent the weekend practicing with people. I think it was one of the most fun weekends I've had in quite a while. Sang and played with Mimi LaValley on Saturday at her space in Queens. I played a tiny little Casio (or something like it) keyboard on her songs while she played drums. It was like the Carpenters, only we're not related and she wrote the songs. I don't think Karen Carpenter wrote the songs, right? Sunday I sang with Rachel Epp in Central Park. Some German guy on a bicycle said she had a great voice. I agree. We wrote this song together, with a melody very similar to Amazing Grace.

Central Park, All the white people
Sunday morning run
Under a tree with the rotten apples
Searching for a gun

The sun is bright, the day is light
Until the night has come

Central Park, All the white people
Sunday morning run

The grass is wet but it's better than dirt
Singing songs for fun
We hear there's a law, you can take off your shirt
Especially if you're a nun

The sun is bright, the day is light
Until the night has come

The grass is wet but it's better than dirt
Singing songs for fun

After I ditched Rachel, I practiced with Brant for about 2 hours. We're playing a show at the Rodeo Bar on Tuesday, August 19th for 3 hours, so this was good practice. Learned new songs. Redid the old ones. Then went to Cilantro and had two margaritas with him and Deana. Told them about Phyllis Wheatley.