Des Moines, Zanzibars, Poetry, Chess

I started writing poetry after moving to Des Moines...

I did man-on-the-street interviews of rock bands in Boston for a couple of years and wrote some reviews of their CDs and shows as part of Yoursound.com (an MP3.com-style music portal -- I'll save that for another story) but after me, wifey and the kids got lost and ended up in Des Moines, I wanted to write about the move across the country. Moving from Boston was not from mundane or compelling circumstances like a new job or Boston debt collectors or a witness protection program. No, it was a simple decision and an opportunity to get out of the city: I'm from Iowa; we visited my sister in Des Moines on her birthday; we loved it; two months later we closed our eyes and landed our boats on the Plymouth Rock of Des Moines. Still exploring.

If you've never driven 1100 miles across the country from the East Coast to your midland Mecca, do so. Take frequent stops, drink plenty of water, eat the pancakes, and enjoy the changes in the landscape. Mountains, forests, amber waves of grain, thieves (another story), state troopers with radar (i think that part is a conspiracy). Just the differences in the word for "pancakes" from Worcestor to Fort Wayne was enough to get me started. ok, "pan" and "cake" i get, but WHAT is a Flapjack?! And the "thieves" part? it's a story too crazy to ignore so i'll put up another post about it later.

We camped at my sister and hubbie's house for about 9 months while we got jobs and found a tract of land with a home and back-forty to call our own.

In the meantime, so many demanding Des Moines questions arose, like ... wherefore art thou, yonder brickyards? ... and what of these shuttered coalmines - uh, our house sits on top of one ... and all those squinnies (the little bastards!), aside from the varmints, i want to smack the guy who came up with that rodent term ... but it was that Minnesota guy, Garrison Keillor, who put the voices into my head: "if you write it, somebody might read it -- but not likely."

Well, I couldn't muster motivation as a travel-chronicler and word tailor though I still listened to Garrison every morning before driving off to work for the devil (another story). A defining moment came when he read "Peaches" by Li Young Lee on his Writers Almanac radio show.

It was succinct and compelling and SENSUAL !! I could taste each drop of poetic juice hanging from the branches of every word and it built a synapse between aesthetics and intellect and imagination -- it walked me through the orchard and I looked for tender peaches of my own to pluck.

inspired, I wrote a poem for wifey for our anniversary.

Then I bought a beret. Cool people wear them. I wanted to spew words to listeners -- like Garrison did, but from circular tables wrapped in red-and-white checkered tableclothes in a coffeeshop with other beret-wearers, posers with zippos and pre-public-smoking-ban Gauloises, and funny moustaches and all that poofy jabber of politics, music, Che, Nietzsche, and whether Gropius ever designed a Bauhaus outhouse, duh. The world is your oyster and words can get shucked dockside after a north atlantic haul or in a coffeeshop after work over Beat and jazz, who cares? Free coffee for everyone, it's on the house!

ok ... none of that bistro stuff ever happened.

I wrote some poetry (I'm a darned-good speler) and even tried reading at Borders once and they forgot that I was scheduled so I read my stuff in front of vacant chairs in their cafe, no microphone. Actually one person was there and I thought I had actually made a connection with him, he asked me a question, "where are you from, anyway?" and I took the deeper meaning as "... which planet?"

After that I wrote a lot of poetry about rejection and dying and amputations by manure-spreaders. Gone was the glamour, no scribble-worn notebooks on pretty pretty tablecloths with tiny cups of mudlike turkish coffee.

then one day ...

On a Sunday afternoon, exploring the Southeast side we got lost again and landed in Ewing Park during a Bike Criterium -- imagine Monty-Python-jumps-hurdles-with-bicycles and you come close to this mixed-media athletic event. Ride the piss out of your bike on a grassy hill, come to a hurdle, jump off the bike with really funny, stiff ballet-style black shoes, hop, tippy-toe, skip, skip to get the timing right then hurl yourself with titantium-framed bike on your shoulder over the hurdle, puff, puff, next hill ...

Exhausted from this observation, we checked out the coffee-truck which was not a typical stainless-steel canteen-style dispensery but a rather slick, renovated VW van from '68 with side-panel and striped awning and a dude hanging over the counter with a white apron and john deere cap selling COFFEE!! YAY!

ok ... no john deere, but the van was awesome.

It was Kim from Zanzibar's, serious biker and coffee-afficionado and I dropped a subtle hint, "so do you have poetry readings or open mics or what?", and he said "yeah, stop by", and I said, "ok", and I did that and they said, "you can do this on a regular basis", so I did. I've had some of the best Iowa poets reading at Zanzibar's, for 5+ years now, including two Iowa poet laureates.

Zanzibars is an awesome place with a neat collection of human talent running the show. Julie McGuire is the owner and a great businesswoman. Not only that, she's a relentless supporter of the arts and prominent in her local community. She hosts a new artist's work every five weeks on her walls and rumor has it that she has a 3-year waiting list. Plus, the coffee is delightful thanks to roaster, Janean Schaefer Denhart. I used to be a cream-and-sugar-coffee-weenie and never considered a palette could possibly differentiate brewed complexities but that all changed while trying to mix it up a bit at Z's for a straight-no-chaser cup. Janean's inspiration is evident in all the blends she roasts onsite so I buy quantity discount cards, ten cups for the price of nine. Zanzibars brought me out of the closet.

Let me tell you one more thing about Zanzibars. I'm a regular there who proudly overstays his welcome (of course you're ALWAYS welcome at Z's). I spend my saturday mornings from opening at 6:30am to sometimes 1:00 in the afternoon playing chess. I feel a bit like an opium addict talking about his destructive habit, you know, like the feeling of brutal obsession you get watching the scene from the Deerhunter where Christopher Walken's luck runs out in the Russian Roulette gambling hovels of an overcrowded Saigon.

yeah, we don't do that, we just stick to coffee.

The gaming lasts for hours and we see the day evolve in front of us with an abundance of coffeecups and chess pieces and the diversity of the people that change the atmosphere from one moment to the next. Life should always be different and the infinity of chess play is never a broken promise to that. As part of that milieu we've had the distinct opportunity to share our chess time at Zanzibars with out-of-towners, namely Hank Anzis and members of the Marshalltown Chess Club.

Hank is the tournament master for US Chess Federation blitz games in Marshalltown, several adult tournaments throughout the year, as well as youth events in schools in Marshalltown, Des Moines and elsewhere. I've spent many evenings in Marshalltown during Blitz play and their April 2nd trip to Zanzibars gave me the opportunity to finally return the favor of hospitality to Hank and his crew.

It is these magnetic encounters at Zanzibars with such people that make chess, Des Moines, and the richness of humanity in an everday life an everlasting joy.

More on all that later...

-InnocentBystander, May 23, 2011

If you want to know more about the similarities between chess players, gamblers, and drug addicts, read anthropologist Robert Desjarlais' new book, "Counterplay, An Anthropologist at the Chessboard". You can find a review of the book and interview of Dr. Desjarlais in this month's Chess Life magazine.

I'm including a link to Hank's blog HERE to let it speak directly about the April 2nd event. And i'm also including one of the chess games played that day at Zanzibar's along with Hank's annotations ... both of these are listed under his April 3rd post.