Yesterday I went to a poetry thing and actually read some poems. (They were from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.)Some good poems (including one about having German heritage, and a satirical one about T.S. Eliot's Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock ) were also read. And a guy did a spoken word poem he'd written in Harrisburg, PA which was really good.
I remember that I used to listen to the Cats poems a lot in highschool. I listened to a lot of musicals. I used to go into art class and sing them and annoy people. Especially this one from West Side Story. "I am pretty, Oh so pretty..."B ut there was a friend I had who didn't seem to mind being annoyed ;-)
His name was Umar, and he was one of the first people I met. We lived in the same townhouse complex. In retrospect, I thought I was maybe meant to meet him, too. Before I'd left Vashon and moved to Virginia, I'd been told (by a certain source) "there will be one you will know immediately who will bring much laughter to ye, and this is a promise." And thats exactly what happened on many of those days in art class. He had a gift for making people laugh.
On the first day of art class, I sat across from him and drew his portrait by looking upside down into the mirror. First, the chin, next the nose, etc...it was pretty good, I must say. He drew one of me but he wasn't impressed with it. I looked like a "cave woman" or something, I think he said. But he looked at mine and said "its like I'm looking in the mirror!" Actually mine was not technically that great but for some reason it did end up looking a lot like him.
I think he was one for whom I felt agape...but there is not much of a language for that in highschool. I had not thought about him in quite a while but when I went home to Virginia, I found that old picture I'd drawn of him. I looked at it for a long while, and then I threw it out. But...perhaps I should've kept it.
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