Poets & Writing Challengers: We Always Watch Out for Each Other (and Each Other's Cell Phone!) #ROW80

I left my cell phone on a bookstore shelf this weekend. Yes, it was my expensive smart phone whose owner has a tendency to be scatter brained, especially when her brim of passion is pouring over her scalp in excess. It is as if each moment of literary rapture leads to less awareness of the tangible. “Cell phone? What cell phone?”

I left the bookstore to go next door to a bar and drink a beer. I wanted to write, I wanted to attempt to remember each detail. I wanted to write where THEY wrote. I wanted to write where THEY flirted, where they cajoled, where they wove their tales verbally before they committed them to the page.

I sat in a window booth in Vesuvius by myself, reading the newspaper clippings on the wall about the era and people this wonderful neighborhood/dive/historic bar continues to revere.

The Beat Generation: the men and women who gave rise to “Beatniks” – a word spat out and sneered when I was a little girl had become a word I longed after as an adult.

It wasn’t until I wanted to connect with my friend to tell him when I would be back did I even realize my phone was missing.

Panic rose in me but I thought, “I know where it must be…. The Poetry Room!” I wove my way through the cozy, tightly woven bookstore and up the stairs.

I enlisted the help of fellow poets, in particular a young woman who wore a short red woolen jacket who agreed to call my cell phone to see if we could discover it that way.

To condense the story, my phone was delivered back into my hands.

I told my friend, who tends to have a cynical eye toward humankind, “Naturally I got my phone back. We poets watch out for each other. If I had left my phone in the history section, the science fiction section or the religion section would it have been turned in at the counter?”

We have no evidence.

Maybe it would have walked out into the San Francisco night life rather than back into my nervously sweaty palm. Maybe all the shoppers at this famous, independent San Francisco bookstore, City Lights, would have been likely to turn my phone into lost and found rather than take it as their own.

Poets understand each other, protect each other and love each other even if they have never met or read one another’s words.

Just like those who respond to writing challenges know each other. We know what it is to be out there, solo writer facing the world. Instead, here, in ROW80 we love each other simply because of our shared passion for words.

Thank you, so much, for visiting, for commenting, and never pointing your finger at me when I don’t reach my goals… like this weekend… I did tons of collecting of images, writing phrases and sentences and clips but no forward motion on anything of substance.

I know it is productive, anyway. I know YOU know it is productive, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again March 5, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

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© 2012
Julie Jordan Scott

 

 

Comments

[Heather Kelly]

So glad you got your phone back! I feel this way about kidlit writers as well. What a cozy, wonderful community! Good luck with your writing goals this week!! :)

[Ryan King]

"Poets understand each other, protect each other and love each other even if they have never met or read one another’s words." - So true. Glad you got your phone back. Hope you have an even more productive week this week ;)

[Stacy Green]

So glad you got your phone back. That's a miserable feeling, and it's amazing how we've come to depend on our smart phones. ANd loved this post!

[Ruth Nestvold]

Fun story, Julie, thanks for sharing.

Have a great rest of the week!

[Ali Dent]

Your writing is smooth like poetry and I couldn't agree more with your words,
"Just like those who respond to writing challenges know each other. We know what it is to be out there, solo writer facing the world. Instead, here, in ROW80 we love each other simply because of our shared passion for words."
Hope your week finishes well.

[Yolanda Early]

Amazing how one can get caught up in such excitement. I have left keys on benches, purses in libraries, and other things in other places for the same reasons. I'm glad you got your phone back.