The Saving Grace of Good Friends Yet Again, and Great Ideas From Total Strangers - On the Road #24

Image by Bessi from Pixabay

Hey y'all,

I’ve been hanging out with good friends in Bellingham and as nice as it is, not eventful, exciting, or eccentric enough to write about.

Isn't it odd how that works?

I also my first official event in the lower forty-eight Wednesday night at Village Books in Bellingham, and it was my biggest audience yet.

But I must say, I'm fast losing patience with the brick and mortar bookstores. So far, it's a lot of effort with very little reward. This was a gig set up by one of my best friends while I was careening around the Interior.

Just the kind of thing that keeps me motivated, you know? But being fortified with the support of Susan and Markis, I was going to feel like a rock star even if I fell flat on my face.

Village Books is an awesome venue, the best I've come across for doing my thing because they have a corner space with podium and folding chairs with funky brick columns and whatnot. 

It has a very underground vibe to it. 

They have readings every night, which brings with it a built in audience. I think that there were plenty of people who just come to the readings because it's free entertainment. 

As the storytelling progressed, I had people showing up consistently, which felt gratifying.

Especially since they listened and didn't walk out...but I don't know, maybe I offended many with the concept of God and the Devil playing backgammon in Purgatory every Friday night. 

Susan was the only one who laughed at all, and she even laughed in the right spots, but nobody joined in.

Except for her, I felt like I was surrounded by Puritans. Giving me the stare with their mouths clamped shut. Susan said the energy felt tense out there when I went into "Divorce of Vice and Virtue."

You would think Bellingham wouldn't be so uptight, but apparently not.  

When I announced that the books were $9.95 and I'd be happy to sign copies, there was a mass exodus.

But two ladies, who had come in separately and on time, stayed behind. 

Thank God I've had the experiences I've had - everything from selling spaghetti dinner tickets in my Catholic schoolgirl uniform (when I was a kid, that would be appalling now), to tending bar, to being a hiking guide for the illustrious Gastineau Guiding.  

This event was the equivalent of the busload tourists who did NOT like me, and I did a couple of things any guide with a lick of sense would do.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

First, I focused only on the friendly faces in the audience. Then plowed ahead and let if roll off me like water off a duck's back.   

I mean why torture myself? Besides my reward was quality, not quantity.

The two women who stayed behind and chatted with me and my friends both bought books, and it's always a reward to sell to total strangers because they got it because they liked what I did. 

One of them, a introverted, young woman named Laura - one of those types who really takes in the world around them without giving anything away -  gave me a great suggestion which I think might save my ass. 

Because two books an event really sucks and I have 700 more books to move.

While chatting, I mentioned the complimentary tarot card reading I offered for those who bought books at certain fairs and festivals and  she asked me if I really read tarot cards. 

I said yeah, I make no pretensions to being a psychic, it was just a gimmick I did to sell the book. 

Then she said she read tarot cards too, and traveled around the east coast doing readings at flea markets.

Flea markets? The light bulb went on in my head.

“Are the booths expensive?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “They're really cheap.” 

Doing my research on the Internet, there are flea markets everywhere! 

And the rent is cheap....

I'll be at my first one in Seattle manana. Wish me luck! 

Peace,

Montgomery

This letter was from a DIY booktour/roadtrip I did in 2005-2006. I had forgotten about this event, and how that went until I re-read this. Wow. Memories!

From 2005 - On the Book Tour in Alaska: Suckers for Cutsie Poo and Unexpected Good Dates

Before I get too carried away, let me just say one thing...next time in Anchorage, check out El Tango on Tudor behind the Holiday gas station.  If you've gone to Hooters you have definitely gone too far!  El Tango has a fantastic menu of latin cuisine - Columbia, Argentina, and Puerto Rico - a very friendly staff and a small dance floor.  It's only been there for a year, the location sucks, but if you like your ambience refreshing, then this is the place for you.  

Last night at Cook Inlet, I was one of a cluster fuck of writers.  Needless to say, we were overcrowded at one small table, so we got another one and two of us sat there.  I figured stake out the front door and get more attention, but everybody still herded around the schoolteacher at the other table, with a mountain of her "Recess at 20 Below," full of pictures of her students having FUN in her class and adorable narrative about school life in Delta Junction.  It was very cutsie poo.

Meanwhile, I misread a possible fan, Sheila, and told her the first chapter of Ella Bandita, complete with the dirty old sorcerer, the cold-blooded daddy, and the eaten heart.  Sheila then let me know that she was a fan of Walt Disney version of fairy tales and that she used to have a friend who would have been into my writing because she wrote a lot like me.

"But she's dead now," Sheila said.

So nice of her to tell me that.

Do I sound bitter?  Really, I'm not.

At this point in my road trip, I have had enough successes to not sweat the flops.  Besides, last night was a quality, if not a quantity, experience.  I ended up with a date.  A good one, too.  With the nice guy.

Go figure, that never happens to me.  I usually gravitate to the those-I-cannot-or-should-not-even-consider-wanting-to-have types.  This one has a steady job, no addictions ( at least, not obvious ones ), courtly manners, good body, and blue eyes that are awful purty to look into.

That's how I ended up at El Tango.  Besides the food and the Argentinian staff, they had a keyboard player whose keyboard created a symphony with every note, and the staff would get up there and sing.  Since they didn't have the tv screen enabling bad singers to massacre mediocre lyrics, it wasn't really karaoke, but it kind of felt that way.  Since the staff were the main singers, most of the songs were in spanish, so it was very cool.  It also helped that they could...oh, sing.  Hugo, the owner who was from Argentina, played kind of the lating version of a bluegrass washboard - a weegel ( I don't know how to spell it, and the closest he could come to describing it was a plant kind of like a zucchini, that's dried and then hollowed out - if you want to know what the hell I'm talking about, go there and you'll see), while the bartender had maracas.

I love latin folk, they really have the happy to live mentality down pat.  Hugo gave us free drinks, calling us amigos and that we are family.

"When you are in Anchorage, this is your home."  Hugo said.

Nothing is perfect, however...

Hugo is a sucker for Celine Dion, because his daughter, Lilly, belted out "I Will Always Love You," and he sat there looking emotional.

But other than that, it was awesome.

I was coming back on Tuesday, but my good date asked me out again, so...

I'm coming back to Juneau roughly sometime around before I head down to the lower forty eight by November 1st.  Does anybody have a housesitting gig or an extra room?  I rented my place out and I don't know about crashing on my own couch for almost two weeks.  It'll be good to see the Vagabond - my cat, that is.  And of course, all of you.

Tapestry of Life on the Human Highway

Today I'd like to revisit one of my journeys while on the road for my first book tour. As I'm moving through the developments for the major release of my novel, Ella Bandita and the Wanderer, I find myself thinking back to those days on the road where I met well...keeping reading...you'll enjoy it. :) August 9, 2005

Every time I'm on the road, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly friendships are bonded and easily untied - especially as the need arises.  There's something about traveling - being suspended from the day to day life of jobs, rent, bills, social obligations, community service, and established groups - that suspends the usual rules of how people interact with each other.  Boundaries are lifted, discretion is almost an insult when making friends and forming temporary community from town to town.

I met Ann at the Amped Cafe in Homer, the day after I arrived in town.  She's torn between career and more school, and which way to turn.  There was an immediate bond that forged itself when she mentioned living in her truck, with a dog, and a Holly Golightly-style best friend that was halibut fishing with a new fling, who "wore his mullet well," and thus, was currently unavailable. 

What a coincidence!  I'm also living in my truck.  

Ann talked me into doing a reading at the open mike that night to get warmed up for the Concert on the Lawn that first weekend.  The next morning, she met me at 8:30 to help me set up my booth and was in and out every so often, as the need arose.

Hey, she got into the concert for free.  After the week-end, she felt comfortable enough to let me stay in a tent outside the mullet-fisherman's house and I had a place to reorganize my truck and make coffee in the morning.

At the Concert on the Lawn, a volunteer named Lia offered to let me park my truck and sleep in her van with a double bed if I needed a place to stay.  She was widowed from the love of her life two years before, and she had done her fair share of adventuring in her youth.  She was also letting a young man stay on her property that was on a spiritual path of Buddhism and daily meditation, so it was really no big deal.  But she felt the need to assure me that she wasn't coming on to me and that the young man was not her lover. 

When Ann moved on to Seward to look into a possible dream job, I gave Lia a call and after it took her a moment to remember me...

"Oh yes, the Scheherazade..." she said.  (I totally dug that compliment) before giving me directions to her house. 

She got a little reluctant about using her van, but I had a place to park, and a kitchen to make my coffee, and an outhouse to do my business, and my body was scrunched again into my truck's proportions. 

She told me her story, and it turns we have much in common.

"We are all interconnected," she said. 

If she ever comes to Juneau, of course she'll have a place to stay.

Ann's sweet dog was hit by a car on Saturday night and killed, so she left Seward by the time I got there and the Holly Golightly-style best friend met her in Anchorage.  I doubt I'll see her much from here on out, but I have a couple of pieces of mail and her PO box key.  I'm sure we'll keep in touch and all, but I suspect that Ann was my Homer friend.

So here I am in Seward to do table to table storytelling at the Resurrect Art Coffee House.  I'm staying at the hostel and it feels like high luxury accomodation to be able to stretch out in sleep and have a place to put food.

This morning I was looking forward to coffee in the communal kitchen and writing in my journal when a born-again Christian wrecked the peace of my morning today when she had to tell me her life story of giving her life to the Lord and how happy she was that she didn't have to be good enough to get into heaven, because God sent his Son to die on a cross for her.  It's incredible that Christians never stop to think how sadistic and cruel that is... 

I felt my energy being sucked dry...dammit, I knew I should have kept my distance.

When I couldn't take anymore of her being saved speeches, I got up and told her abruptly that I had gotten screwed by the same system that had done so much for her, and would she please stop.  She said, yes of course and we made banal chit chat and wished each other a good day.

I'm only one thread on the tapestry of life, and these intersections are only a moment and some are a part of beautiful patterns and others...are not.  

But then my thread runs on, as does theirs.

As Lia said, we are all connected.