Four years ago today, I did this reading on South Street. About three blocks away from 1028. I turn dates into numbers, like if you were born on April 17th, like I was, then your birthday number would be 417. If you were born on August 31st, then your birthday number is 831. If you were born on May 3rd, it’s 503. So 1028 is October 28th. That ended up a few years later being the day my dad died, which is not really relevant to this story.

I have to leave soon for a storytelling gig, so I’ll have to save this. You should begin by listening to the reading. You do that while I go to my gig. You need anything from the store? OK, sit tight, I’ll be back in like three hours. Don’t go through my notebooks. Actually you can.

I’m back. A small, quick story: One of the group leaders accidentally gave me the tip they apparently had intended to leave at breakfast tomorrow. And usually I receive a twenty from them, so hopefully that means there’s a waitress somewhere in the city who will get a twenty tomorrow morning instead of a ten, and it will be dropped on her table in an envelope with a single word scrawled on it in ballpoint: Ghost. If you hear about that let me know, I think that would be a cool coincidence.

So I listened to the reading from 3/22/2018 earlier this evening. I hadn’t listened to it in a while. Today I was working on my website and, while embedding this video on my writing page, I noticed the date was March 22nd. So I thought let me listen to it and see what was up on this day in 2018. The reading was at Wooden Shoe Books, which is about five three blocks away from the mosaicked mural on the east side of 1028 that reads Philadelphia Is The Center Of The Art World.

Time out, think about the fact that I have in my possession an envelope with ‘Wed. Breakfast Philly‘ written on it. If you were going through my apron pockets and you found that, wouldn’t you think I’d been somehow involved in a breakfast situation on a Wednesday morning here in the city? And if you asked me about it and I told you there had been no Wednesday breakfast situation involving myself, and especially if I furthermore told you that it’s only Tuesday night right now so I can prove it? You’d not fully believe me. You’d think back to Wednesday of last week and try to remember what time you had seen me. You would know something was up. And nothing would be up. Information works like that sometimes. Sometimes you don’t know everything. Sometimes you’re wrong.

I said time out, but it wasn’t out of nowhere. The reason I thought of that is because this story is about murals. I’ve made an outline of another story about murals, years ago. I was sitting on Race Street Pier about to go over to the story slam at the new Fringe place. I outlined it in case they picked my name out of the hat to tell a story that night, so it would be fresh in my mind. They didn’t, and to this day I haven’t told the story. I kind of forgot about it. And then I ran across the scrawled outline when I was throwing away notebooks a few weeks ago.

It was a painting of a rabbit on the side of an elementary school. I’ve never visited that school, but I worked at the high school next door. I don’t remember ever noticing the rabbit mural. I think I threw away that outline but I definitely remember the story, just not how to tell it. It’s hard for me to tell because I’ve never understood it. I’ve never understood how it happened. And the way I remember it, it’s not something I ever would have told. So I must have put some bullshit version in that outline, which is probably why I threw it away. Good thing they didn’t call out my name.

Here is a small poem about rabbits to help us understand more of the reasons why we’re talking about rabbits. I wrote this poem in September 2021 while walking north on 35th Street.

Even if you are not alone
in them, waiting
for your ride home, there
are expanses of uniform grasses

between highways and churches
in new construction, where
one or two
rabbits are pausing.

A few things: Try reading the 1st and then Last lines of this poem, followed by the 2nd and then Penultimate, and then the 3rd line and the 3rd-from-last line, and then the 4th line and finally the 4th-from-last line. Then read it back in order again. Also, for your ride home, there and in new construction, where. And also, where two or more are gathered in my name + churches. I don’t know exactly what is up with the expanses of uniform grasses, except that it has to do with the new construction. That’s why it’s uniform, but my only remaining question is, there must be more to the word uniform.

So, I had no actual involvement with the rabbit mural. In fact, that’s the whole story. Once upon a time, there was a rabbit mural that I didn’t know about. The end. But later on, after the endpoint of that story, I did look it up and see a picture of it in Google images and that’s when I find out it was a rabbit. Not even a bunny, like, it wasn’t fluffy, it was this sleek and pensive rabbit sitting up tall and looking at the sunset. I got curious. The article on Google didn’t say much about the artist. I found him on Instagram, he’s got more stuff with rabbits and a bunch of other non-rabbit-related art as well. The elementary school mural fits with the rest of his style. I don’t know what else to tell you.

The rest of the story is that once upon a time I had a romantic partner who was convinced I was having an affair with this mural artist who I never heard of who made this rabbit painting I’ve still never seen in person. It’s not a very good story. But this isn’t a storybook, it’s a blog. So it never ends, it just goes on and on.

Wednesday morning, I’ll have breakfast in Philly, for instance, fulfilling the prophecy of the envelope. I might even spend that very ten. Probably on South Street, in fact, but that’s only a coincidence, unrelated to either the reading at Wooden Shoe or the mural on the side of 1028.

When I’m out on South Street Wednesday morning, some blocks from literally everything I’ve mentioned, while east-facing things are glittering in the sun, at home in my desk drawer will be an envelope labeled for Wednesday morning, already torn open. There won’t be any connection.

So you can see why it’s so hard to tell stories, with all these facts lying everywhere.

(featured image: mosaic by Isaiah Zagar, photo my own)