Why can't you just fall into my lap?

I am trying to find someone.

Another one of those how-the-dots-connect sort of things. Something I did in Arizona made it possible for me to be in Tennessee at this time. Of course, I was not aware of the HUGE picture; I thought I would just be closer to the Southern states I needed to be near in order to finish some works, but not even close, Gwendolyn.

I am working on something (Robert Olin Butler advices not to define a work initially; it could end up a play or a short story or a novella or even a novel) dealing with Freedom Summer and the Freedom Riders. I thought I needed to be in Mississippi, but I've found something happened in Tennessee that was a crucial turning point and I've also found that the Freedom Rides started in Washington, D.C. and continued through the summer.


Hey, I was just in Washington, D.C. on a summer day and that was because I had to reschedule the Burlesque reading 'cause I got arrested last year and the event had racial overtones and if you remember this time last summer I was dealing with the FBI on the civil rights violations and guess what -- I'm still waiting on the FBI and the Dept of Justice and I find it very frustrating except for the fact that in my research I found out something that the Kennedy administration did that was totally wrong and surely it added to the frustration level of the Freedom Riders and now I have an idea of what they felt.

Again, do you think it's possible that artists are chosen to create certain works? That, like I said before, somehow Life orchestrated events so that I could "know" certain feelings to give my work a certain authenticity?

And that I could be in a place I needed to be at for the right reasons?

I almost didn't make this reading but a miracle happened for me on the day it would have had to.

I now have a sense of the physical surroundings in D.C. in the summer (the original reading was going to be in the Fall) and as I passed the Supreme Court building, an image, a scene waiting to be developed, came to me.

And while in Washington, I was invited to read in Chicago. I've been talking to the librarian who runs the Civil Rights Room at the public library. I asked her if the person who keeps popping up in my research -- a crucial player in the Civil Rights Movement in Tennessee-- was still alive. "Oh, yes," she told me. "She lives in Chicago."

Okay, pick me up from the floor.

I asked the librarian to pass a message on for me. But Life is generous and going to help me out with this one.

On a mad search to find a restroom. Ended up at a Starbucks. Glancing down at the morning paper: An article about the Freedom Riders. The name of someone who might also be able to help me contact her.

And then there's contacting the alumni association at her former college.

I gotta work for this contact. And I will. Though my sometimes-lazy-butt doesn't want to.