teenage anger, road rage, and how i spent my bornday

warning, products are habit forming – foto by smith

There’s a LOT of rage around here – I was given the middle finger twice today while driving back from picking up our new used car: I was going the speed limit so Lady could follow me in our not-even-almost-new 1994 red Honda Civic we just bought, and people got angry because I wasn’t breaking the speed limit. One SUV screeched around me, pulled in front, slammed on his brakes, and kept turning his blinking lights on and off as he repeatedly sped up and slowed down to teach me a lesson. When I turned off on the same road he did, he got scared and raced away.

We picked up our used car and drove the car’s owner and his 18 year old son over to transfer the title. The father is a gentle, well-intentioned man while the son is an 18 year old loud fast talker who was angrily tirading against insurance companies and every time his father tried to say something the son would cut him off after a couple words saying “Ya, I know that already, I understand, BUT…” and talk right over him. When we finally got back to their house the son exploded at the father saying “You’re always telling me to shut up,” and stormed off. Just before he slammed their door he yelled at his father “YOU’RE STUPID.” he’s the one who went with us on our initial test drive and his loud angry aggressive never-ending voice irritated me so much I wanted to de-tongue him and toss him from the car, leave him along side the highway with the rest of the trash.

It’s depressing but necessary to have a car again. Spent the last three years without one, and from 1992 through 2002 I also had no car – got around by bicycle and public transportation. But with Lady going to be working (we cannot live in the U.S. on my social security), we can’t get around the Cleveland public transport system without adding hours each way. Took three busses and 4 hours just to visit her Grandmother last year in a nearby suburb. If it’d taken Little Red Ridinghood that long to get to grandma’s house, the big bad wolf would have gotten bored and gone back to his lair.

On the good foot, photographer Charlotte Mann is putting out a book of Cleveland poets and is shooting us today for inclusion. We’ll each have a poem and our foto in. It’ll be published in August and the fotos will be displayed in an art show at Brandt Gallery. We’re slipping back into Cleveland’s creative wave. Of the hundreds of places I’ve lived and visited my 63 years, Cleveland has the edgiest, grittiest art/poetry scene. We went to a book reading two nights ago and there were shouts of joy when they saw we were back. You want to be liked, leave town for 3 years and then return – gives them time to forget your defects.

After the foto shoot, I went over and got a small bit of birthday stone for later, then our friends/landlords/hosts (Chiplis and Cynthia) took us out to the Thai Palace for an excellent birthday dinner. Came back to his studio after and played some great Jimi Hendrix on his jukebox while the four of us played pinball on his old machine. Chiplis has 25,000 45 rpm records in his collection. He started his collection when I gave him my old jukebox in the late 1980s, and then in 2002 when I was out of work, I sold him my 1,500 record collection. My Cleveland connections among the artists and poets is a long and interwoven affair.

And that was how I spent my 63rd birthday.

Lady driving our new used Honda Civic home – foto by smith

Lady’s first driving of new used car – foto by smith

Chiplis playing pinball in his art studio – foto by smith

detail of Chiplis’s art studio – foto by smith

detail of Chiplis’s art studio – foto by smith

church on our corner where The Deer Hunter was filmed – foto by smith