Wherein the Poet is told: Go to Burning Man, and responds, "Why?"

I understand Chicken Noodle Soup as the first food group in my mouth after 3 days of a flu which had me sleep and sweat. It feels safe and oddly sexy. But why it hit me: Now is the time to me to write the following, well, I'm not sure.

Thanksgiving I attended a sprawling meal served to many guests, delightful and all younger than I am. The food was fabulous, my hostess truly kind and generous. As the table was cleared, guests rambled and I got the opportunity to meet new people, an event always of anthropological interest.

Of greater anthropological interest to them is me, but I'm not going to cast myself in that light (negative) again. Let's talk about one couple. I met the husband and wife separately.

Nice people. Part of some Brooklyn couples-with-kids scene. With the husband I talked tech. He worked with a company that creates cell phone applications. Don't know if he knew I was a poet or assumed it was so because of our hostess, a poet, but he showed me one app--a mini-anthology, but not before talking with great enthusiasm about music and ring tones (I think music was his background).

I wasn't unaware that the poetry was the usual past-copyright--Tennyson and Longfellow and Donne--and so the tradition continues--but it looked nifty enough. I met up with his wife by the sink as I was helping stack dishes. She had been to Burning Man recently and planned on going back.

A weekend at Burning Man was her passion, and I questioned her, intrigued. I'm not a big crowd person, but it was Burning Man, man. I can't remember if she said Yes or No to drugs, but she dealt with the crowd, and beautiful desert and resultant exhiliration induced a sense of creativity.

Awesome.

Then she said: "You should go." "Why?" "To become creative." (Hadn't I mentioned my book?) And I responded: "I don't need much help with that."

I didn't allow her her moment. I've made this mistake before: It's the Sarah has to be right mistake--combined with integrity. What I currently do to lead out poems does involve other people but is so low key and sacred I keep mum. A storm on her face, she went to another level of the apt., one above me, I should say.

Campbell's Soup in. Suggestions from people who don't know me, or really care to get to know me, out. Back to health.