From the 19th Floor
4/05/2007
Hola, mi gente. I'm pondering the far west side of Chi from my office window on the 19th floor of this UIC building which looks like Lucifer's Waffle. Preparing for class. Thinking about you.

Last night, I did a phoner with a class in Cali, down in the Imperial Valley. It was a nice chat with them. Smart open hearts. Critical, too--which shows they have brains and aren't just going to roll over for some allegedly famous guy. I really enjoyed it. Next week I go to Kentucky, the former US Border, to do a reading for my brotha Frank X. Walker. Kentucky is one of the few states I have never visited, can you believe it? I've been everywhere around it, but have never been there, except for dirve-time radio and NPR shows. My voice has been in Kentucky, but my body hasn't made it yet. (Yeah, I said it was the border! That's where our first big border wars were happening. What a difference two centuries and some change makes.)

So, you who follow the twists and turns of the La Vista blog probably recall that a man told me in Houston that he saw a small indigenous woman standing on stage with me, to my left. The appearance, yet again, of the great female presence. Well, in Virginia, a woman told me she saw the Indian woman's face hiding among the folds of the state flag on the stage! She's back!

What would Lee Smith or Howard Norman think, if they knew some kind of Hummingbird's Ghost was watching us read?

I haven't ever seen this phenomenon, so I can't say if it's true or not. My atheist/rational pals are saying "Oh come on!" My Baptist pals are saying: "Satan!" My Jesuit pals anre saying: "Hmm, interesting. Perhaps we can include her in an indigenous Catholic theology!" (I remember meeting an atheist guy in Colorado, a pilot for a major airline, who sadly said, when he'd read Hummingbird, "Please don't make me believe.")

You know that Bob Dylan song where he sings "My heart's in the Highlands..."? That's me. My heart's not in this concrete tower. It's somewhere else, much more fair. Watered and greening. This is why the school, in its generosity, has approved my sabbatical. I'll be gone, daddy, gone until January. I will write books! Many books! House of Broken Angels is done and at the publisher's and the agents' offices. The book of poems is ready to be edited. I'm talking to somebody about reissuing my first books of poetry (after I got an email from a blog reader lamenting that those books are out of print). Hummingbird II is about to start. And that good ol' Wastelander stuff is waiting. Plus...uh...I think I'd like to do a book on writing--all the stuff I talk about when I get workshoppers out there in the Highlands.

Wow.

Back to work--the semester is not yet over, amigos! (By the way, have the "meditations" been of any help?) Keep writing, and if you can't write, keep talking, and if you have no one to talk to, send me an email.

I'm oooooooooooooooooooooout: L


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