I just got home from a silly experiment in public performance art. PICA's Time Based Art Festival organized hours of reading out on the streets every day this week. I volunteered to do my part. I showed up. This guy gave me a copy of Grapes of Wrath (there was also My Antonia, Catch-22, On the Road, Moby Dick and others being read in different quadrants of the Pearl District). I was sent out into the streets to read from where the last reader left off.

That there book is some hard readin' for a lady like myself. I done my best, but I don't rightly know if the general folk were much interested in what ol' Steinbeck had to say.

What I noticed most was not that people thought me crazy (though I'm sure some of them did) but that most people didn't notice me. About 75% of them were plugged into their ipods or talking on their cell phone. Listening to some weird lady read out loud from a book was not part of their plan.

Silliness. silliness. Now I will go back to reading to myself. Thank you and goodnight.