My Long Weekend
Back at work after another Boston-only long weekend. Yes, Boston creates holidays that only its denizens get to take off. Yesterday was Bunker Hill Day; those poor slobs across the river in Cambridge (sorry Eugene!) didn’t get it off. But I had a chance to spend a full day set to chillax, which got me thinking about my one-year wedding anniversary coming up next month. Thinking about making a weekend trip to Newport or Martha’s Vineyard. But how do you get to Martha’s Vineyard? I’ve lived here my whole life and I have no idea. Do you take a boat? Can you drive over like a bridge? I don’t have to take a helicopter right? Anyone have suggestions?
But as my thoughts turned to the wedding last summer, I realized that last summer, my thoughts were turning to the summer before - 2005 - our time at the 3rd National Asian Pacific Islander American Spoken Word & Poetry Summit.
The what? I’m glad you asked. A heavily abridged and not at all objective version: In 2001, isangmahal arts kollective hosted the first ever Summit in Seattle. Before this, the only other Asian cats I knew who hit stages were based somewhere between New York and DC. It marked the first time that many of these folks shared a space, and the result was this massive cathartic 2 hour-long group hug on Jackson Street to end the weekend.
Fast forward to 2003, The Asian American Artists Collective hosted the second-ever Summit in Chicago. As expected, it was an amazing experience: people fell in love, people fell out of it, there was all kinds of crying every single day, and I Was Born with 2 Tongues gave their final performance. One lingering question was, where is the next Summit going to be in two years? There was a quick conversation at one point between myself and Anida Yoeu Esguerra that went like this:
Anida: Do you think Boston…?
Me: No. No way.
2005. The number. Another summer. Boston Progress Arts Collective welcomes the world to the Bean for the third-ever Summit. Movement Reborn. Again, it’s a smashing success. Again, old and new friends found ways to get each other drunk and make each other cry. Again, stank-ass poets make me sick by refusing to register until the day they arrive. Honestly - and there’s nobody who can dispute this - there has never been anything like that in Boston, before or since. Love was so thick you can see it in the air. Or maybe those were mosquitoes.
So why all these scattershot memories now? Because it’s 2007 and time for the next one. If you’ve never been to one, then be to this one. If you have been, then I don’t need to tell you what it is.
If you stay very still you can still hear our hearts beating.
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dude, i have shivers hearing you describe that.
speaking of numbers… it’s also a day for remembering that 25 years ago, another man did not get to celebrate his wedding anniversary, or anything ever again. and no amount of silence will ever let us hear his heart beating again.
Bunker Hill, Schmunker Hill… nothing like another holiday in the United States to remember a war. HA! (Ok, maybe I’m just jealous.) Anyway, let me be the first to wish you a Happy Anniversary a month ahead of schedule.
Oh yeah… and let’s all remember… Should swap out Bunker Hill for Vincent.
Speaking for weird holidays, we have the Brooklyn-Queens day in New York only kids in Brooklyn and Queens get off and when i used to go to school in Manhattan, I wouldn’t get that day off but I still lived in Brooklyn…No??? anyways, Delia I was mad during that day at the AAC when you showed the movie and I understood the Toisan that his mother spoke but hearing her speak about it was heart sickening. But definitely going to the Summit in my HOMETOWN!