Goods

Yesterday I had three toddlers over here. Later at night, I picked through my clothing archives and found that a red suede skirt and brown fringe suede jacket I got at a swap meet for free were too wierd and/or small for me to ever wear. Then I tried on two pairs of shoes I got from Torrid, and even though I paid $5 each pair to have them stretched on 14th Street, they were narrow at the toes. I asked my roommate The Know It All if I should even wear the shoes for an hour and she said no, because if your shoes are not comfortable you cannot be extremely sparkling (to paraphrase her). I also found a men's shirt I got from someplace thinking it was a cute look, but the shoulders sagged past my shoulder line and also there was a little bit of chocolate I'd spilled, mysteriously, on the INSIDE part of the shirt. Maybe I wanted to get to the chocolate so badly that I had put the shirt on inside out. Not sure.

So I had these items, and today I gave them to this regular bum who had a small table besides him, on Avenue A, because the other guys who vend things hadn't arrived yet for the day. I told him to make sure they got it, the regular bum is way too immobilized to sell anything. I think I might give him a wooden cane to see if that helps him stand up one day.

Then I went to the fair at the Children's Workshop school, saw my friend Darryl face painting, and she gave me a drawing and some writing for my Comic Zine. In the drawing is a woman putting a blindfold on a man. The writing is desperate, she wonders if she'll ever leave the LES. I covered up the drawing and read the sharpie diary entry quickly, due to the children in line waiting for their face painting and the child whose face she was painting right then. She started out face painting badly, and by half an hour later was pretty good. I quietly gave her a thumbs up. 

I saw a little girl I babysat yesterday, her hair was messy and she was sitting in a tent. She's good natured. Her mother said Darryl was raving about my last book. I agreed that it is a good book. Babysitting for this wave of people, 10 years after my last babysitting time, will be very different from people who are more priveledged in a way that can make me accidentally scare them even though we're trying our best to get along. We're equal, this new wave and I. We're good. The old crew was goodish but it was confusing, though it helped bail me out of a bad depression and there was love there too, on both sides, sometimes being in a subservient position around people who find out that I am also a sharp tongued writer can lead to betrayal or imagined betrayal. I never set out to betray but writers are ruthless, said Victor Bruce Godsey once. I think I put 3 lines in a poem about my new neighbors and how they had good cheese in their refrigerators, how the new playground was for them. Not much but it put another nail in my employment coffin, probably at a good time. 

At the Children's Workshop I got 4 videos to show little kids, the Black Orchid and a sappy Dolly Parton cd for myself, a kind of art with black cloth and gold bamboo, and some bland rice balls I gave to pigeons in the park. I sat in the part and read the Microcosm Press manifesto while 2 sets of people sat down at a small piano and sang and played. 

On the way back to my apartment, the street vendors were using two large plastic tubs I secretly donated another day, and had all the new things I secretly donated today as part of an extremely neat and organized display. If I could cry softly at little touches, I would have cried. Lets see, so my financial tally for the day is: $11.50 I spent at the Children's Workshop, one piece of art for my zine and gallery show. Good one.