Leap Year

So this is a Leap Year. Always a weird thing. Extra day. I think that it should actually be a holiday, like a special day where we all take a chance and do something that we have wanted to do but didn't get to, either because we're too busy or we were scared or didn't know how to do it or whatever. Like a National Just Do It Day, but, you know, without Nike making any money off of it.

I guess I'm thinking about this because I tried to approach AWP like that. I'm not really the most social of peoples. Don't get me wrong, I can party like it's 1999 at any time--though I don't party quite the same ways that I did in 1999 (straight-edge unite! or, rather, sober folks, uh, grumble about those drunken youngsters). But meeting a lot of new folks, especially a group of people meeting mostly because they are college educated and "experts," who are all academic-ed up, who have patches on their jackets -- understand, it's not that I'm shy, really. It's that I'm grouchy and I generally figure if I ain't gonna like you and you ain't gonna like me why put us through all that, you know? I'll just go my way, you go yours, and we'll leave the talking about the weather to folks who get paid to do it.

But I decided for the AWP that I wasn't going to do that. All 3 nights there were 6 or so different little "mini-parties;" little gatherings by different journals or writing programs that had a bar, some food, and some sort of general reason for gathering people. Ultimate shmoozing and wandering type of thing. I hate that crap. But I made the concious choice of going out to meet folks. And I usually was pretty damn obvious about it. I would sit at a table of folks who were in the middle of a conversation and just say, "Uh, I hate meeting people and all that but we're all here, let's meet each other."

It went pretty well. Met a bunch of folks from Kentucky, of all places, and got to learn a little about their writing community. Mostly, people would laugh and admit that they hated that kind of thing as well and we would have a connection and something to talk about, and off we went.

There was one party thing though where the people just refused to even look at me. Abso-fucking-lutely refused. Like I never entered the room. I wandered for like 5 minutes, trying to catch someone's eye, before I slunk out. I had to go find people I knew to make sure that I was still, you know, visible. I don't remember the name but I promise you this: I'll check my notes and report it back. Whatever it was, we shouldn't support them, 'cuz they was definitely scared of Black folks, and I was actually smiling when I walked in the room. When I walked in. NOT out. Jerks. Actually, I think it wasn't just Black, it was "not rich folks," 'cuz Sully walked into the room with me. He's smarter than me and he walked right out in about 25 seconds, while I spent way too long there getting nothing back. Everyone, listen to Sully more. But don't tell him I said that.

Ok, what I'm trying to say is that let's use this extra day to try out some new things, or to go back to old things left unused. I met a lot of folks at the AWP, including some folks doing really amazing work in Oakland. They were doing translation of poetry with teens in the Bay Area, helping the teens learn English by having them do translations of Spanish poetry (they were moving into things like Chinese I believe, but were limited for the moment to Spanish). I just thought that was a a pretty cool program: helping the youth learn English, helping them with their own writing and poetry, and getting different writers translated into English. Anytime a program can work on like 3 fronts, I think it's gotta be doing a good job.

Hopefully, I'll be able to stay in touch with those folks, and maybe even find ways to hook up some people I know in Philly with them. Which I wouldn't have done if I hadn't tried something new. As a great man once said, "I love it when a plan comes together."

Let that be a lesson to us all:

Tomorrow, celebrate National Just Do It Day (and give no credit to Nike -- though feel free to give me a shoutout if you feel like it).

Woo.