Strings of Words, Stirring of Thought
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
www.supon.com

Last night I went to a poetry reading at Prospero's bookstore with Kelly. It's one of the best indie bookstores in the city and is located a few blocks walk from my house. Will Leathem, one of the co-owners, read from his newly published poetry collection titled Terra.

The house was packed as he read and exhorted and insinuated with his trace of a Southern accent voice. He looked sharp with a fresh haircut for his blond locks, dreseed in a sport jacket and jeans. He drank alternately from a Boulevard Brewery beer and a bottle of Crown Royal between readings. He elicited affirmations and whoops and yeas and raucous applause from the audience. Tiny children and elders and artists and neighbors gathered around the literary campfire and listened with reverence and enthusiasm. Who reads anymore? Who listens? Who pays for the printed word in our electrified society of cellular ghost voices and cyclopic computer screens and digital distances? We pay, yes everyone of us pays a dear cost in our isolation. Despite our uber-networked society, we forget to sit and sip and eat and talk to each other side by side. Words connect, communicate, form community.

Will read some damn good strings of words that made you think and feel and wonder. To hell with television. Our neighborhood town crier was inspiring a revival. Not preaching gospel. Not espousing political rheteoric. Not seducing the mass of consumers with a hard sell to buy buy buy. He read words written by his own hand, drawn from his own experiences, shaped and preserved by his own sweat and sleepless nights and thin pocketbook to share something born alive.

If that level of homegrown entertainment wasn't enough, the bill included followup sets by acoustic guitarist/singer Bob Walkenhorst of the Rainmakers with another guitarist whom I don't know. Photographer Jon Bidwell displayed work from his latest series on 39th Street artists. Guitarist and singer Richard Minor closed out the wee hours with brand of heartland songs.

Perhaps the best surprise treat of all featured Hungarian caterer George Detsios. George is a heartwarming character that I first met in the late 80s while working for a financial services company. George's Cheese and Sausage shop operated down the block in a tiny storefront on Main Street. My coworkers and I would stroll in once every week or two to savor his homemade dishes. George greeted newcomers in his high-pitched jovial voice and urged them to sit at any table. For first-time visitors, he often brought them to the kitchen area which was visible from the mismatched dining tables and chairs.

"Today we have chicken Hungarian, chicken cinnamon, and Hungarian goulash," he explained.

He lifted the lid off of each pot, dipped in a spoon, and offered a sample to willing tastetesters. It amazed me that I could walk into a restaurant kitchen and taste the fixings directly form the pots and pans. I was reminded of my mom's cooking at home. Charming and hospitable all at once, that George. Then he shooed you back to your seat and began working on your request. The portions were large, the conversation plentiful, the moments timeless. I have too many fond memories of my experiences eating at George's place. My favorite expression was his response to our teasing.

"Stop fiddle farting around," he teased back.

George closed his shop some years ago. I lost track of him as I changed jobs myself, relocated across town and cross country, and ventured on ever-shifting paths. He became a legend in my mind. So how delightful to find him alive and cooking for this poetry reading. Today George cooks for the deli at a local Hy-Vee and charms a different clientele with his stories. He looks a bit thinner and healthier. His eyes beam with a piercing blue, his cheeks glow with a tint of rouge as the blood rises to his face. His voice hasn't changed a bit.

"I know you," he accused with a steady glance at me. I stood in a long line of hungry visitors who wanted a taste of the aromatic dishes just like served at the old shop.

I reminded George of how we had met. He instantly remembered and we reminisced about old days and present adventures. He's a fine, fine man. I can only hope he has a long life ahead of him. George shared a bit of insight and wisdom during our conversation about desire, television and commercialism, and the soul of people today. Without directly quoting him, he suggested that fulfilling our desires through a slow seduction, by discovering what we want for ourselves, brings far more satisfaction than being told what we want through television advertisements.

"It's the difference between orgasm and making love," he said unexpectedly.

I made the instant connection. We mistakenly long for instant gratification and immediate possession of things and people, material wants and emotional states. Seduction means far more than a romantic courtship of the heart, an intimate physical consummation between bodies and minds, lips and hips. Seduction of the desired, both people and things, offers the most personal value and satisfaction when we strive, struggle, and achieve to allow that desire to be fulfilled in our life at a natural pace. Possession––the getting and acquiring and having––becomes an end state that kills the intensity of desire, that drains the fluidity of life, that disrupts the interconnectedness between all who want and need and have so much to share.

Words stir our mind and dreams. Music stirs our heart and emotions. Food stirs our appetite for life itself. Desire stirs time and space, driving us to quicken the former so we can fill the latter. Love stirs people to come together. These stirrings bind us into a long and tangled string.