Newport 64'

bob dylan & joan baez

Summer

A year ago:

Today on the bus, I saw a man reading notes written on white paper napkins. He had several neatly folded and would take them out to read then put back in his leather wallet. As I watched him I thought to myself, Ahh he is reading love notes. I thought this because last night I had been reading a love note. I know that death is the experience of love lost and last night I had been dead. This morning I was dead on the bus, watching a black man read from frail napkins. It came to me in the middle of downtown, that although my love note had been on yellow paper from a legal pad– this man was not in love. My unconventional did not allow another. This man probably thought himself a lyricist. He probably had no home or maybe he lived with his auntie on S. Main. I was on the bus looking for someone similar to how I felt. The only witness, a boy with a skateboard and a dingy white shirt he used to cover his nose because my death stunk so bad. Later, in Spanish, we read about Pablo Neruda’s 20 Poemas de Amor. He said he wanted them to be about sadness; he wanted them to be about love.