one ben's take on moving words

Submitted by Benjamin_Cartwright on Sat, 10/24/2009 - 20:06

These are the things I remember, in the order in which they happened, from the Moving Words reading today:

1. The people at Kinko's said I didn't have to pay extra for colored paper. 2. I was happy to see Gabriella and Amanda, because, if nobody I knew was there, I thought I might look like I was waiting for the bus and cause confusion. 3.Mickey had a mic-stand. This made me think "he's always prepared." 4. Amy and Jason are much braver at giving people poems on the street than I am. This made me think "work on your poem-giving skills, Ben; this is effing serious." 5. The concrete stairs by the concrete planter next to the bank make the planter look as if it was always meant to be a little stage. 6. Bus noises, and even people running into other people on Mass. street with their cars seem appropriate at a mass transit reading. 7. I kept thinking "I'm happy I know writers like these," and also "DaMaris' hair looks good." 8. It's better for babies to listen to poems on street corners than those Baby Einstein videos. 9. I like the way a street corner is a porous space for a reading; it's difficult to know when the reading is ending; it's difficult to know which people are listening, which people are pretending to listen, and which people are actually listening while pretending not to listen as they walk by. It's also difficult to know when the actual moment has come for walking across the street and getting a beer, once everything is finished. I thought I was very familiar with this moment. This moment has never felt so strange before. 10. That is the world's smallest amp, but it looks exactly like a larger Marshall amp. It's as if Alice Cooper drew the attention of extra-terrestrials who possessed a shrinking ray, and they shrank his amp, and then Alice Cooper gave the amp to Mark as a reward for saving him from the afformentioned aliens. 11. I forgot to take a picture of Mark, and maybe Kari, because I was fascinated by the little amp. 12. It would be fun to read poems as a form of busking on a regular basis, although Andy's donation jar, even with some bait in it, didn't attract a thin dime.