Loose Leaf Notes

It was a final Farewell Memorial for Elliot, the poet and one of the founding members of the Floyd Writer’s Circle who passed away in November two years ago. The tribute was expressed through spontaneous performance art involving his T-shirt collection.
I was having a conversation with my friend Kathleen’s fiancé, Wayne, about The Epic of Gilgamesh and a toasted bacon and sautéed onion sandwich that we both like from the Blue Ridge Restaurant. Kathleen, a historical society archivist who had just addressed the crowd at the Village Green ribbon cutting ceremony, joined us. I reminded her that it was the second anniversary Elliot’s death. Elliot, Kathleen, Mara, and I were all founding members of the Floyd Writer’s Circle and regular Scrabble partners.
Elliot walked stooped over with a cane. With long hair and a full burly beard, he looked somewhat like the Harry Potter character, Hagrid; or maybe Bette Midler, who Elliot named when I asked him once who might play him in the movie of his life. He liked to wear a beret and a daisy behind his ear. He also wore and collected T-shirts, mostly whimsical and comical ones, or those related to his love of contra dancing.
Elliot didn’t have many ties with what little blood family he had. Kathleen, also a contra dancer, worked with a small group of friends to close down Elliot’s house after he died and ended up being the distributor of many of his belongings. She happened to have a large black garbage bag full of his T-shirts in her car.
“I’m ready to let them go, but first I have to photograph them. Do you want to do that with me now?” she asked.
It seemed fitting to spread the shirts out on the grass in front of the historic Jacksonville Cemetery. Elliot, who had a sense of humor but was also somewhat of a Scrooge, would have appreciated the drama and the aged grey tombstones. It was also the closest empty space we could find near the Grand Opening we were attending.

We snapped pictures of the lined up T-shirts from all angles, admiring their colors against the green grass. Turquoise, hot pink, green, and yellow ones gave a bold accent to the whites they were outnumbered by. Some I remembered from when Elliot wore them. Each told a piece of a story from Elliot’s life and gave us, his fellow writers, plenty of catchphrases to read and to ponder.
Kathleen was excited that she had just found a home for Elliot’s old cameras, another one of his collections. I reminded her that I still had a large box of his collector’s ink pens. After packing up the T-shirts together, she headed over to meet up Wayne at The Blue Ridge Restaurant. I agreed to take the T-shirts to the Café Del Sol Spoken Word that evening where some of us would be reading a few of Elliot’s poems and to give them away. As I lugged the heavy pack to my car, I felt like a strange kind of Santa and imagined passing out T-shirts to the poets, writers, and lovers at the café that night. What would Elliot think, I wondered? I laughed at thought of him with a snow white beard.
Post Notes: Read about the memorial Spoken Word held for Elliot two years ago HERE. And Scrabble with Elliot HERE. The closest I have of a posted photo of Elliot is HERE.

NEW: My photographs, a poem, and a quote are being featured today on Sheila Cason’s blog, Beauty, “a blog about beautiful things on weblogs.” Check it out HERE.