Some Awkward Objects - Read At Open Mike in July

Open Art Studio

At Friday’s King’s Books Poetry reading I read:  Some Awkward Objects 

Some Awkward Objects – Diary In A Jar, Relief Map, Art Tittled “Scenes From A Remodel” 

My video about a jar with a partly reuined diary insdie it featured the University of Washington Tyee from 1968 and books of poems I had from my first year at the U of Washington.

In 1968 I impulsively set the diary on fire, perhaps to recreate the burning of a torn on a junior high school relief map.  The town had a river, a castle on a promontory, trees, and more.  The fire was a solution to its decay on top of the ping pong table in our garage. 

I saw I did not want to do this to the diary, so I put the fire out and saved the pages in a mason jar.  My idea about old papers, old letters, is to save them.  When they dried, some of the entries could be partly read, mostly about 1961 to 1963 in Junior High School.  (My oild paint set was a birthday gift not a Chirstmas present.) 

I had brought the diary out again to write about a May, 1966 trip to Ellensburg with history classmates for the Model United Nations.  The Model United Nations trip by bus with classmates was in 1966, fifty years ago in May. 

During many months at the building I live in, residents have become more portable tenants to prepare for remodel plans, everyone has boxed things up.  As July came near, I found the building’s gathering area cleared of things, only to await redecoration.  Others joined in with me to also seize the day and use the space as an art studio.  However their other plans took priority.  The Fourth of July Art Show that materialized was small.  It included “Ruth and Pat Save the Plants”: which were stills from a video, “Blue House on G Street” 35-millimeter print scanned and printed on a computer, and of course, “Scenes From A Remodel.” 

By the fifth of July, work had begun near the art wall, although the maintainance man said it might not be possible to take that wall out because of the inside wiring.  The manager took the art down and put it on the table. The 4^th of July Art Show was over.  I saved the photos from “Scenes From A Remodel” and put the cardboard box with holes in it into the dumpster on the alley.