OUR AMAZING TOUR

Because of not being able to blog on a regular basis because of Maggie's computer being down I'm not going to be blogging about the trip, JUST BECAUSE I don't like doing a half assed job. And I really feel like I've done a half assed job so far, NOT covering 90 percent of a visit.

But I will say that we're having a GREAT time, and being met with incredible generosity!

THANKS TO EVERYONE WE MEET ALONG THE WAY,
CAConrad

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

MARCH 6th, 2009, Lawrence, Kansas. Anne Boyer took us to the Bloch Museum where a BLACK ROTHKO is hanging, WOW, it was such a dream, something I had only seen in a book before. BUT, MY, FAVORITE! FAVORITE! piece is the Louise Nevelson piece! (did I spell her name right?) Then we had food at a famous barbeque joint in Kansas City, which to me smelled like a crematorium, oy, made me sick.

6 Gallery for our reading. What a huge crowd, I don't even know how many people, but so many people that they we're sitting on the floor all the way back to the door. We sold a lot of books, made a lot of great new friends.

In the bathroom in 6 Gallery, next to the toilet there's a little table. In the drawer is my FAVORITE postcard photograph of DIVINE in a leopard print, big, CRAZY, DELICIOUS grin, black and white. Under the postcard is a tiny pink box of condoms called CHERRY SEX LIFE which promise flavor for your pleasure I LIKE THIS TOWN!

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

MARCH 5th, 2009. We're at Anne Boyer's apartment in Lawrence Kansas with her amazing daughter Hazel. Anne is on the porch cutting Magdalena's hair right now. It's a warm, sunny day and birds are ALL OVER the eaves and branches singing their most luxurious possible anthems! Magdalena's bits of hair fall to the ground and the birds eye the soft tufts, planning new nests in their vivacious bird brains. When I was a boy my grandmother cut my hair outside once. She put her Jolly Green Giant kitchen towel around my neck and shoulders. A robin hopped closer and closer to us, then snatched a blond curl from the grass and flew to the nest so the baby birds could sneeze and shit in plush comfort AND I WAS SO FUCKING PROUD and it was one of the happiest days of my young bird brain life.

Anne Boyer was one of my favorite poets, but now she's one of my favorite people on earth! I LOVE Anne. There's so much to say, but don't want to say too much, you know? I mean I don't want to say anything that will embarrass Anne, SHIT, I SHOULD HAVE ASKED, HEY ANNE, CAN I BLOG ABOUT THAT? Down the road from her home there's a house, very large house, like a mini mansion, and in ENORMOUS black letters on the front of the house are the words RED RIGHT RETURNING. What the FUCK does that mean? It MUST mean something very VERY important to put it on the side of your house. And, it wasn't on paper, and it wasn't on plastic, it was ON THE HOUSE as a permanent message. Red right returning, red right returning, red right returning, I just don't know what the fuck it means, WHAT THE FUCK does that mean? I asked if we could stop of the way back so I could knock on the door as ask, and everyone said SURE WHY NOT, but then we forgot.

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN

Hi, we're in Minneapolis at the moment, and we've been having a FANTASTIC TIME!

Magdalena's computer isn't working well, and isn't getting internet connections at all, so I'm borrowing a computer to leave this note on the blog.

We'll blog more later, and thanks for tuning in.
CAConrad

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

March 4th, 2009. Magdalena and I discovered we were at the same concert at Six Flags Great Adventure many years ago. It was a MONKEYS concert, and Magdalena was there with her father, I was there with some friends, getting high, eating cotton candy and finding out FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME that the mother of one of the MONKEYS invented WHITE OUT, better known then as LIQUID PAPER. And that's why THAT particular MONKEY did not, or would not go on tour. He was too good to be singing I'M A BELIEVER at that point I suppose with his mother's fancy LIQUID PAPER money, WHOOPY FUCKING DOO! But Magdalena was there, and I was there, and I think about friends and lovers all the time in the missed cross hairs of time. There we both were at the MONKEYS concert though, YEARS before we were friends or even knew one another. How close were we to one another? Did we make eye contact? I'm always seeing people in the world and thinking, "WILL I EVER KNOW THAT PERSON?" Was I thinking that back then when seeing Magdalena with her father? I remember eating cotton candy and jerking off my boyfriend on the last car of the roller coaster. He wanted a blowjob, but it was too much to negotiate as it turned out. But Magdalena, did I see her then? Once when sleeping in my old boyfriend Marwan's bed next to him I dreamt that when we were little boys we were eating in a diner with our families at different tables. I walked over to where he was sitting, his five year old hands drinking from a large glass of milk, and I said, pointing right at his face, "I'm going to know you one day, and Love you." The best part of the dream is that none of the adults noticed, and said nothing, and saw nothing, and Marwan looked at me with his milk moustache and nodded, and smiled. When we woke and he was cooking us breakfast I told him my dream and it was one of the few times I ever saw him cry.

Am I supposed to be writing about the tour Dear Sara Diary? The drive across this country, which I LOVE SO COMPLETELY I RISK SOUNDING CORNY OR SLIGHTLY INSANE WHEN SAYING SO, is sublime, especially when next to a good friend. We picked up Aaron in St. Louis, ate some delicious noodles, and drove to Columbia. My friend Marsha Goldberg's house is where we are right now. Marsha went to work and Magdalena and Aaron are still asleep. Our reading was funny last night, I mean, not what I had imagined, but it turned out pretty good in the end. Except Magdalena was stressed out, and said some snippy things to me, which I believe she didn't mean, but it made me angry, and not respond well. But that's bound to happen. I love Magdalena, she's a sister, and I really mean she's a sister, blood sister. Aaron is marvelous and started off the reading for a very tough crowd, but his passages about orgies in the bible got them to pay attention.

FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

March 3rd, 2009, many many years since Jesus hung from the cross, but his crucifixion is celebrated with tremendous gusto along the highways of West Virginia. I'm so confused when I see his torture apparatus ALL OVER THE WORLD! Wooden crosses mean more about the corpses of a couple of beautiful trees to me. I see the crosses every 10 miles and think, WHAT KIND OF TREE WAS THAT WHAT DID IT LOOK LIKE WERE THERE BIRDS WERE THERE ANTS WERE THERE SMALL MAMMALS AND MOTHS WHO KNEW THIS TREE, OF COURSE, OF COURSE, BUT OF COURSE! I stubbed my toe last week and am thinking about celebrating the cement curb where I stubbed my toe, only, I'm afraid it will be difficult to gather the will of the masses around a cement sidewalk curb to worship. Please help me spread the word of the cement curb where I hurt my toe. No, it doesn't hurt any longer, thanks for asking, but when I think about it IT STINGS A LITTLE!

Day 1: Off Like a Herd of Turtles

Hello -- I am actually writing from the morning of Day 2. We have already experienced a minor tragedy on our journey: It seems my laptop has died. Last night when Conrad and I arrived at our hotel about 120 miles from St. Louis, I thought I was going to begin blogging properly. But, alas, my macbook had a blank blue screen. I hope I haven't lost some writing forever. In any case, the blogging will most likely not be as grand as I hoped unless some computer guru comes to save me in MO tonight. I had photos from our drive through Kentucky that I really wanted to post. We also drove through West Virginia and Virginia, neither of which I felt like photographing. West Verginia, in fact, made me feel like I was on the verge of being poisoned by a corporation with all those coal plants and a big fat nuclear power plant spewing stuff into the sky and little houses practically on the highway. It's like they guarantee you breathe in poison in West Virginia. In Bland, Virginia Conrad walked out of the men's bathroom with a ten dollar bill in his hand. He says he "found" it. We had sushi in Louisville. Kentucky is heartbreakingly beautiful and we of course had Cat Power on all the way through. Rolling hills with a few isolated trees upon them. A relief after the "we're all going to hell in a handbasket" feeling of West Virginia, the poisoning power central of our nation. We are off to St. Louis in a few minutes, where we pick up Aaron. Then we are off to Columbia where our first reading takes place at 8pm. Wish us luck and pray for my laptop! Oh and everyone here keeps calling Conrad "Mam" so I have renamed him Gertrude. -- M