Ledbelly's version of "The Pines"

Well, I went looking for the liberty bell on my last day in Philly, sort of casually, Independence Hall was behind a barricade manned by a security guard talking on his cell phone so I couldn’t ask him where the bell was. Not in the Hall I think, but somewhere close by. Next time I visit.

I was worried, then, walking down Fifth Street toting a box of eighty fresh-printed, hand-stapled zines, that my urge to publish is too strong, maybe stronger than my creative drive even, which hardly makes sense. I was feeling like a real dork for going to a lot of trouble (well not *that* much, and I did enjoy my time at the local print shop where they figured out pretty quick how to be friendly with this crazy white girl eating a raw green pepper “It smells like a farm in here, and I was wondering what you were eating” and folding and stapling eighty booklets with at least: scraps from the Metro, an obituary from Alabama and a photocopy of a piece of kale) to print my ideas and share them with friends and strangers. I should be funnier or something if I want to print thoughts up. Maybe I should just have more dinner parties, but I really like print media and the physical process of making these things with scissors and the notes I write on the backs of receipts. I’m coming to terms with the dorkiness of it.

The latest back of the envelope note to self brings me to a petit diatribe about the way Westerners eat. It’s really about the tools-- knife and fork vs. chopsticks. I’m imagining ancient Europeans hacking away at whole pieces of meat with knives, stabbing and slicing and then deciding to develop a tool especially for stabbing so that they would only need one knife. Meanwhile, all over Asia, people are leaving the cutting and hacking to whoever prepares the food, so that all the eater is left to do is to pick it up with the wonderfully minimalist and easy to find/make chopsticks. They can drink the soup straight from the bowl and their slim chopsticks are all they need. Of course then, to complicate the eating process so that we can recognize signs of status in people’s eating habits, the Asians simple eating had to be made fantastically complicated with an artistic/social ritual. The Westerners just made more forks.

We are in the last days of the Philly Fringe Fest-- TWO WEEKS of theater and music and general weirdness. It kicks off with a toilet bowl race (toilets mounted on tricycles by some mechanical pair who make it their business to do this every year) which kicks off with a step-dance and parade by some really impressive local middle schoolers (last year decked out in pink camo). So I had two hits and a miss for $45 this year. We Referee was a hit. And I saw Non-sequiters: a Cabaret last night. Fabulous and decadently theatrical show-- gay theater made for straight people, too. I laughed, I cried (really) and I failed to fight the urge to give a standing ovation after the first song. And in between, I saw a sign that standing ovations have not been so hopelessly cheapened as to be mandatory, even when the art is supposed to be about the people dying in the twin towers. Love Unpunished was really shitty “critically acclaimed” “art.” I picked it, purely based on the sort of nebulous brochure (which didn’t even warn me that the thing was about Sept. 11th) which had a cool looking picture and was in a place that I like. Turned out to be something trying to sit at the intersection of dance and theater and failing to do both. Anything that boring can not POSSIBLY get at human emotion. And, when it was all said and done (Frank and I barely made it to the end, only staying because “it can’t be much longer” the applause was as lackluster as the show. Hooray audience! (And then we got a fantastic dinner at the White Dog Cafe which is a place worth eating at for a nice dinner, and which was featured in the Edens Lost and Found program on PBS whose website is worth checking out. Edenslostandfound.org. I think.)

After all the fringe festing, the fringiest theatrical experience for me came on the Broad St. line, northbound to Temple where I realized that an actress from Non-sequiters was in my car, sitting next to someone from the airport steakshop where I worked register for a few days. All I had to say to her was “That was fantastic,” but I got talking to him about a lost-acting crazy who I wanted to make sure got off where he was going, Girard. And Ray, if that’s not the name of the short-order guy it fits him, said he was just juiced up and that’s why he seemed lost and I said no, he’s from Europe his English isn’t too good, and Ray said that he was probably just putting that accent on to talk to me. He said, “You find guys around here all the time saying they from Jamaica with that Jamaican accent-- half of them is Philly born and raised.” I raised my eyebrows because I had been hustled a little by just such a Jamaican, didn’t let it happen to me twice. That’s when Ray gave us the take-home message for today’s blog, and for my time in Philly and the time I’m about to spend back in Guatemala. He said, “The streets is your best teacher. I realized that it don’t matter how smart a person can be.” Weighty pause. “If you don’t got street smarts, you in trouble.” Let’s all figure out how to be smart, but capable of dropping the suspicion, like the good Ray.

Turns out I am going to miss Philadelphia. I cried just a little, as the R7 crossed the Sckulkill on its way to New Jersey and points north. On to the fresh challenges of Hanover.

Ps. Accoring to the Philly historical markers, someone named Maezel invented an automatic chess player who played against Ben Franklin and Napolean. That was a long time ago! I’m going to google that when I get to the internet!