hermit’s anonymous

Been a long nine days.

Spent three days cleaning out our second bedroom so the Nepali poet Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma could stay with us for 10 days. The room was where we’d put anything that didn’t go anywhere when we moved in – like 60 big boxes containing 4,552 VHS videos of movies from 1894 through 2006 – so it was a serious mess.

Then Yuyu arrived Wednesday and we had his featured readings Wednes and Thurs night.

Friday we took him to artist Chiplis’ found neon studio, then over to musician Peter Ball’s so he could record his poetry, then to two art openings that night.

Saturday one of his fans (a Maoist Zen Buddhist) took him around town. Saturday night we went to a potluck party at an artist/poets, and then his Maoist took him out to a concert.

Yesterday we gave a potluck party for him. Had at least 30 poets and artists and a few civilians here, which was interesting since we have seating for nine. It was a marvelous gathering with one great poet after another popping up performing their work in a 45 minute round robin of unscheduled poetry.

Today take him to a laundromat, then drop him off at Peter’s so they can finish their music/poetry jam session. Thursday we’ll take him out to Lady’s folks for Thanksgiving.

Wednesday isn’t covered yet, but I think I’m just going to ignore everyone because I’m not a people person; normally 1 or 2 people a month is more than enough for me and so far this week there’s been at least 100.

Lady’s talking of turning our second bedroom into a poet’s residency, having traveling poets come through and stay a week at a time. A great concept for networking, but it obviously entails being with more people which in my book is pre-paid Purgatory time, by which I mean each social gathering is suffering for me so I figure all my social suffering during life on this Earth counts as time already suffered so that same amount of time will be deducted from my time in Purgatory.

Of course this doesn’t do me much good because both Hell and Purgatory are here and now in this life on Earth, and I don’t really believe in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or this Earth.

The bottom line – we gave temporary sanctuary to a traveling poet from Nepal who sold enough of his books (he has eight) to cover this leg of his journey, we had our first party in our new digs, we’ve shown the cream of the poetic crop here in Cleveland our artistic and poetic chops (though most were already aware), and we set up an infrastructure for traveling to Nepal as performing poets as soon as we can afford the air fare.

If this keeps up, I’m going to have to join Hermits Anonymous.