It was my first night on Mill since I came back to Arizona and things went pretty well. Vexations Volume 5: Drum Circle is now in print (but not on the web yet) so I hit the Ave to get some of the physical booklets passed out to people who might want them.
Kazz and I first crashed the party that is Mill about 8p.m. and discovered a wispy dearth of everything Mill related: the preachers hadn’t appeared, the street rats were sparse, and pretty much even the crowds were wan and insubstantial. So, instead of waiting around like a pair of loons honking on a street corner, we ambled about looking for some dinner.
Up and down the drag we took ourselves. There are a number of different eating establishments on the Ave, and so we headed for Quiznos; however, we quickly discovered that they’d closed up for the night (at 8p.m. – our arrival time.) So we veered away from that edge of Mill (that’s a little ways from Monti’s, by the by) and winged our way back towards Centerpointe and ended up in UNO’s Pizzeria. Where I offered a book to our waitress, it’s Volume Five, which puts her ahead of everyone else, but if she likes it, hopefully she’ll come back.
After dinner things picked up a little.
Some street preachers appeared, at least one whom I recall from last year, and friendly rats started to gather about the drum circle area.
Kazz got himself an argument with one of the more vocal preachers—whose name escapes me to this day—and I let them have at it. I’ve long ago given up really discussing Christianity with this person in particular because his discussions have no substance. He’s worthwhile as a person to spend time with, but we have cross-purposes on the Ave, I suppose, so we only speak in passing.
Also among the group was Emanuel, a tall black man with a deep voice which I recall being one of the more fervent and powerful debaters. I rather liked listening to him discussing things with passersby. He appears to have had a crisis of faith and given up the Born Again attitude for a book on Atheism. I even gave him a Vexations volume—I am a little timid about offering them to the street preachers because I am not kind to them in the novels, primarily because they’re a nuisance on the Ave and I have some opinions about their presence. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not too happy about how abrasive they are, but I figure that there’s no need to strain our relationship by biting off their nose to spite their face.
As for other important people, at drum circle proper I ran across Amish—with his guitar and calm demeanor—and even Osiris! He’s outdone himself and bought a cane exactly like mine (the City Stick crafted by Cold Steel.)
Finally, Kazz and I dropped by the Graffiti Shop and chatted a little with Lawrence—the most awesome man in the entire Universe—I signed a book for him and passed it over. He even mentioned that he knew some amateur filmmakers from a nearby university who are thinking of making a film about a blind girl who has a psychometric ability: when she goes about her day and touches objects sometimes they
stay with her, and when she sleeps she sees/experiences the lifeline of that object in her dreams. I think that I would be extremely happy to help script a story involving that. (Vex herself can use psychometry and did so in The Legend of Sleepy Phoenix.)
That’s all that I can report for today, it’s been a good weekend, Mill looks good.
