 Please
come to Boston/Denver/L.A./Rochester4
A friend in upstate
New York finally told me a secret I'd never heard rumored in up-to-date
Los Angeles: "There's folk music in the cast," she wrote. "Why
don't you quit stagnating and come back here?" She promised that
we'd both make it through the winter somehow, and maybe each write a novel,
to boot, while the snow was falling, and I could be starting a career
as a folksinger in the coffee houses and colleges of New York and New
England.
I came east
a month later, in November, 1974. All the world was gray and brown, and
the first heavy snow had fallen two days before. Sometimes life begins
to sound like a series of bad punchlines. My friend had switched Muses
and taken up with an artist. She never spoke to me again.
And I
feel the winter coming
And
I think it's time to go5
But I stuck
it out. I shovelled snow, cleaned houses, unloaded trucks, and got a position
at a music school janitor again. And I met a lot of friends, the kind
who will not only give you a room and a meal when you need them, But put
up with you when you are down and not letting the world forget about it.
I even gota birthday party.
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