From Kent Johnson

What a sweetie -- we miss him already.

***

Ken and Everyone,

Just up here after getting back last night. I wanted to send a big and sincere thank you to all of you for the hospitality and warmth you extended my way on Saturday (and into the dawn on Sunday!). I really do want to move to Chapel Hill now. Let me know, Ken, beautiful man, when one of those farmhouses in the Blue Heron shangrila comes available. I have a printing press, a gun, twenty cats, and a copper distillery handed down to me from grampa.

Patrick, thanks to you, too, for your brilliance at the reading, which more than made up for what was lacking in my own, somewhat unremarkable, presentation. You are an incredible poet and person.

Tony, you, on the other hand, are very boring and rather dumb. I was really disappointed. It is astonishing to me that you are about to marry the likes of Leigh.

Sorry about that. A little sudden aggression from the smelly hole of my chronic insecurity. I just don't like it, I guess, when someone who is 19 is smarter than I am at 69. (Patrick is in his early thirties and has a kid, so he's cool.)

But now I have to stop mentioning names, for I met so many wonderful people and I know I will forget someone, or more, if I continue into the tremendouly delicious dinner, the quaint terrorist bookstore, and the surreal Maoist party. Better to limit myself to the names of those who made it to the bar on Main Street before the event, those who knew me when I was still more or less sober.

I thought I'd also let you all know that in Chicago a bunch of people wanted to know what I thought of Chapel Hill. "What is all this stuff we are hearing about the scene in Chapel Hill and Carburator?" the brilliant profs and grad students from U of Chicago, Northwestern, and Columbia asked me, "Is it true that they are all a bunch of incredible drunks and that most of them live in the woods?"  I threw back the last of my Bud, looked them straight in the eyes, and said, "Well, my fellow Illinoians, that would be something of an understatement."

love to all. And my big thanks, again.

Kent