The gadabout letters

It sounds like you made many right choices today, Grasshopper. And congratulations are in order for the promo/raise situation whereas your money belt will feel a bit fatter in the months and years to come. Sounds well timed in light of what the recent grapevine is on S.E. Headquarters.

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Thu 5/5/2005 1:41 AM

To Clara,
This is about as sick as it gets, as far as new sites go, and as much with which I'm concerned at this six-pack Bridgeport IPA 1:25 am Thursday morn. I was over at the new place, fixing up the bookshelves, hanging some paintings, and listening to KBCO when, to my pleasant surprise I gaint a surmise of the disc jockey announcing a joint summer tour of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and special guest The Black Crowes coming to Red Rocks August 30-31. I would have hollered out in ecstatic joy and (fittingly, of course) jubilance, but the wild haired madman down on Colfax probably would have left the hookers be, cease his harassment suit on them, and come after me. So I decided to pass on the good word, the tour is reaching far and wide with noted dates in Chicago, the ATL, and if you're just lucky enough to be a fine-hearted Tennesseean, somewhere's yonder… http://www.blackcrowes.com/
(I bet if your boyfriend writes a missive such as this, it would be his joyous occasion to spend a timely birthday celebration in the warm, loving arms of such a Red Rocks night.)
Love, LT

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Mon 5/2/2005 3:42 PM

DON CARLOS,

Jordan Fairway and I were just discussing the dynamics of Portland nightlife. And my presentation has been pushed back to May 24th, Im going to Tulum, Mexico on Friday, and think I might need a few pints this evening.

LT

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Mon 4/25/2005 5:55 PM

Clara,

Yeah, she was really fun and cool for about that amount of time: one

hit the fan, as they say.

before that though, i just thought she was this really cool girl. i

didnt question her substance abuse (because i didnt know it was abuse

yet), I didnt know about her mood swings and bipolar situation because

all i'd seen was one good mood (of course!), etc. I didnt know how

manipulative and overwhelmingly disrespectful she is of everyone and

everthing around her, because i didnt know how much she dislikes

herself. I didnt know any of these things because I didnt know her.

mostly, though, its good that i went through that because in life, one

has to experience how absolutely weak and shitty some people are in

order to fully appreciate how absolutely strong and beautiful others can be, like you.

sorry it made your chest pound. better you get that from some Morning

Thunder.

LT

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To the Shakori Ramblers,

I just got word that one of my poems ("A Painted St. Jude" written about traveling with a little st jude picture mom gave me one time a few years ago) and a short story ("The Two Bedroom Apartment") were chosen for an anthology by Ghost Road Press called Open Windows coming out in July. www.ghostroadpress.com
Okey doke.
I can bring a specified # of BCFTB to the 10K, or better yet, you can order them (slated June 5^th) straight from www.ghostroadpress.com
This other one, Open Windows 2005, can be ordered there as well I would imaging starting in July. (They told me today that’s when its coming out.)
Also, did you order tix for the 10K? benny said he's got his on the way. I just want to secure my spot if everyone else has already done so. I don’t want to go hopping race track chain link fences unless its purely required and strictly unavoidable.

I do believe summer has nearly arrived.

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Sunday

The only way we found the truck out there in long-term parking was to use the panic button on the remote keychain. I worried for a minute. The snow was coming down, the parking lot was covered with about a foot of powder by now, and it is very difficult to locate even your own vehicle when all you see are thousands of giant snow balls lined up in many, many, many rows. It was near dark as well, making me even more nervous. But, only after walking two or three rows in the general vicinity, me carrying the bags, and Clara pushing the panic button, we heard the sweet sound of safety, honking horn, flashing hazards and all. Then I got to dig it out.

Portland 14 April 2005

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Letter to Stephanie Holiday,

On city living... Half the time I really want to leave Portland, travel, move back to some small town. The other half I really like it here, and think that moving away is simply a symptom of the ever present 'Greener Pastures' sydrom...

Portland 14 April 2005

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ETA is October 1

Hi there amiga.

Also, she has a monsterous 120 lb boy mutt named Tyler, so I was thinking you might have some ideas of apartments she could look into (or areas around) that are handy and safe for her to have a dog, be able to take him for a walk whenever, etc.

When we get there, we'll be needing you to pencil in some hangout time for us into your busy head-of-the-family schedule !

See you guys soon,

LT

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Wish I was still on a plane

1. Irene asks Jim if his ass is numb from riding on the motorcycle for so long, Jim replies: "Oh, no, my ass has taken a pounding over the years." And then the face that he makes as he realizes what he's saying is fkn priceless.

2. The pills he takes give him really bad cotton mouth, and the scene where he does the old Fire Marshall Bill face in front of everyone and gags trying to get some spit in his mouth, and then realizes that everyone is watching him.

3. The scene in the police station when he gets water from the jug to take the pills and coughs a little and chokes and keeps spitting up the water as he walks away.

Portland 12 April 2005

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Mon 4/11/2005 11:16 AM

Jordan Fairway,

I don’t know. We got in (ATA was only airlines that did the flight, so im not sure if that is good or bad..) but DIA had about five other people in it when we finally got off the plane after waiting for snow plows, etc.
I wouldn’t mind getting on the lift right about now.

I missed the game, but saw they won at about 2 am Sunday morning from a bar in Cleveland, OH.

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A Letter

Portland 14 March 2005

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The Stalker

Leeverson Residence

Belly Up, CA 00231

March 27, 2005

Dear Mr. Leeverson,
This is just a note to inform you that there will most likely be paperwork intended for your daughter, Roda, coming to this address. I used this address as Roda's permanent address because I don’t know her current address in Court Hollis, CO. The paperwork I refer to will be coming from the Portland City and County Court pertaining to a restraining order being filed against Roda as of Monday, March 28, 2005.
Thank you for seeing that these papers do not become misplaced, and that Roda receives them as soon as possible.
I apologize for any inconvenience to you, but someone needs to see that Roda stop harassing others and causing stress and anger in other people's lives. The situation will now be left in the hands of the Portland Police and the Portland City and County Court.
Sincerely,

Leonard Treadway

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Whores in the Park
Yeah, she was big and presumptuous, sitting there in the car parked next to your truck. After we finished running, when you were still out there in the grass doing calisthenics or something and I was in the xterra listening to the radio, I looked over and she was staring at me with this big nasty head of hair, a brick of make-up, big gold shades, earrings, jewelry of all kinds dangling everywhere and being obnoxious and whorish. She did something with her fingers and her mouth as she was maybe waiting for us to leave, and at that moment I saw these Jackie Joyner fingernails with more chrome and décor. 'Horrendous' is the only way to describe it.
At first, I just thought she was kind of a gaudy dresser, etc. Then we backed up and I saw the head-bob pumping away.
That was nearly worse than running over those innocent raccoons in the VW Rabbit ten years ago as they darted across Bode Road near the Church of the Holy Spirit in the dark.

21 February 2005

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Heroes, Influences, and Then There's Hunter

An installment of The Vagabond Notebook, editorials by Leonard Treadway; and The Gadabout Letters being generated by the new media application The Graphagromaniac Blog. This missive was written on 02.21.05 Portland

I was walking across campus in the cold sun to work this morning when I got a text message from my brother in Chicago, it said this: "HST commits suicide. MSN headlines this morning. Haven't yet read the article." As seriously few things are capable of doing, the message stopped me-as they say-dead in my tracks. I realized, after what was, most likely, a full two minute stare down, that I'd been standing there on the sidewalk perfectly still, holding the small LCD of my mobile phone in front of my face, and that people all around me were walking right past, dodging the mannequin without pause.

I told my good friend Bob Bartusiak many years ago, at the birth of our gadabout obsession with the free-wheeling live music scene creeping up all over America, just after a few good Allman Brothers shows somewhere in the Midwest US, that it's weird to think that all these heroes and influences we have right now-whom we have come to know somewhat, and refer to by their first names like friends or loved ones-are going to die in our lifetimes. It is not an 'if', I said to him, but a 'when', and every one of them is eventually going to go. Countless days are ahead of us, I continued, of waking up to the early morning media headlines, feeling stunned, shake off the misty eyes and goose bumps, get stuck ruminating for days or weeks to come, and later figuring out the magnitude of what these people have done, the effects they've had on our cultural thought processes, if we haven't already been mindful enough to do just that.

The big one, of course, came in August of 1995 when my girlfriend at the time woke me up in a state of minor panic as I slept in my room in my parent's home after college. "Jerry's dead." was all she said, and went running back out of the bedroom, down to the living room, where the sad details were being broadcast, louder than what was necessary, across an FM frequency I've long forgotten. I'd heard what she said to me a minute before, but the radio disc jockey somehow made it more real, and the effect was a powerful roundhouse kick square to the unsuspecting abdomen. I had to sit down. I felt sick all day. My legs were weak and I cried a little bit at a Grant Park vigil later that night. Lots of people were crying and lighting little candles. Then the cops came through on horse back, broke up the instantaneous commemoratory pow wow, and pushed all the hippies into the Chicago streets. It's a conditioned societal response, I think, to oppose being moved en mass by uniformed and mounted law enforcement, but no one argued, no one smarted off, we just left.

I remember in the late summer of 1997, two days after my birthday, when the pager I carried around at the time, which emitted textual CNN updates on the hour, alerted me of the violent, accidental paparazzi death of Dianna, Princess of Whales. I was driving the old pickup (new at the time) to see a different girl, drink some wine probably, pick up my friend Milton, smoke cigarettes at the park. That was what we did: hang out, talk about being big artists, and talk about living in the woods. I didn't know much about Dianna, other than the fact that she traveled a lot and spent her time in philanthropy projects and seeing that sick children were ultimately looked after and well taken care of. I liked her, I thought. I think she used what she had to do some good in this mad world, I told my friends at the time. Then we went back to our wine and smokes, and talking probably about Bob Dylan.

Earlier that year, in April, Allen Ginsberg died of heart failure due to terminal liver cancer. I didn't know his work at the time, and, in fact, had just barely cracked the cosmic literary floodgates more commonly referred to as The Duluoz Legend by Jack Kerouac, however, Allen's quiet passing in his Lower East Side NYC apartment was certainly a main event. "He had cancer for a while," someone told me sometime later. It was about then when I started thinking that smoking wasn't such a good idea. HST smoked. Kerouac smoked. Ginsy smoked his whole life. I kind of doubt Dianna smoked, but maybe she had a few drags behind closed doors when the stresses of global compassion and living in royalty just got to be too much.

Maybe the stresses of living like an ardent, valiant American poet, holed up on the Owl Farm compound, and shooting double-aught buck at Titleist ProV1Xs got to be too much for Dr. Thompson. Maybe he thought his proverbial time was up. Maybe he'd just been diagnosed with cancer, or some other potentially fatal dilemma and didn't quite know how to deal with it in a subjectively realistic realm. Maybe, if he wrote a note before he shot himself like Hemingway we'll know, but maybe not. I don't really have to know. But, strangely, even though I'd never once seen the man in the flesh, I'll miss him. I already do.

I don't smoke any longer, but if I did, while running amuck in this crazy world, I'd use one of those long funny antique cigarette holders once in a while, laugh at myself, and think about Hunter.

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Mon 2/14/2005 7:09 PM

Hello Neenah Coldstone.
Apparently I am cursed with some type of veritably conscience literary outcast. In short, I just had a really quick something to say to you.
I occured to me (somewhat slowly) that what you told me you thought I was capable of some time ago actually kind of bothers me. What I am refering to is you telling me you thought I might "stalk" you. The reason it bothers (or should I say "bothered"--past tense) me was this:
obviously you did not know me well enough to make such an accusation. the fact that you indeed made this accusation is proof of that. people who know me would laugh at this, they'd be laughing at you for saying this. If you dont know someone, Neenah Coldstone, dont make such misleading accusations. I think I learned and started to put into practice this concept in grade school, or perhaps from my parents, before I even got that far.
Maybe you feel kind of foolish for thinking i'd NOT be able to let you go. maybe you based that half-assed attempt at rationalization on some rediculous event from your past. (I am very aware of how common that is with people.) I dont really know how it went or how you feel. I just kind of realized how absurd you were being when you told me this in the law building the other day. if i'd known this earlier, trust me, i never would have contacted you after you contacted me with your broken arm news.
The one other thing I wanted to get out of the way is this: I feel now that I was obviously led on. You are fully aware of this, afterall, you were the one doing the leading. Do not put someone in a position like that, child, its rude, for starters, but more seriously, it's twisted and manipulative. I am sure you are aware of this as well.
You are far from what I thought you were when I first started to get to know you. I am happy the way things turned out. It is important for me to clarify things with people these days, and I just wanted to get this off my mind (because every now and then it kind of comes up and i wonder what happened in yours).
Somehow, without knowing much about me, you had the nerve and the audacity to conclude such a narrow and generic claus. Think about the little that you do know about me for a second. You'll probably laugh at yourself for thinking what you did.

Enjoy your schooling.

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none 08 January 2005

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Old Glory rock and roll/A Letter to the Ramblers
Happy holidays, fellows. I was flipping through this Old Glory rock and roll magazine today, laying in quilted bed on the second floor of my moms house in suburban chicago. new snow on the ground (due to it being just after christmas and all), and the rare blue winter midwest sky, sun shining in through the fridged glass. in the catalog i came across this very plain, old-looking tshirt with a black and white portrait of jim morrison and a line of text pronouncing the years that mark either terminus of his life. its about $16 US. i think i'll order it. the image will be less warn than the one of bearded young Ginsberg on the blue homemade tshirt laying on my temporary bedroom floor right now, and a replacement is much needed for the homemade iron-on dylan one i was wearing all those years ago, drinking cold bottled beer in the stiffling parking lot at the resort in steamboat springs, Oregon, where a kinship was induced, unknowingly, that effortlessly proved itself transcendent of the normal monotony, and lay-man's ups and downs of youthful friendship. somewhere in the foothills of north carolina, some years later, the shakori circle was made complete.
so, without further adeau, i have just this much more to report: we need to make a trip somewhere this spring, take a slew of new photos, strum a few guitars, bang on drums, lay around in the troubadoric afternoon sun, and perhaps even let a line of two of verse shoot through the hot neurotransmitters of the mind. with that seed planted, i'll leave you with this new pome from the upcoming Portland collection. it was written the other day in chicago, but is universally necessary for the next book. (See Big City Freight Train Blues.

03 January 2005

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