Kind Hearted Women

In 1994 my friend Mary and I went to see Michelle Shocked at a great show at the Showbox. At the time she was touring for two years with Fiachna O'Braonain and Peter O'Toole of Hothouse Flowers and was promoting her album Kind Hearted Woman after her break with her label and was out on her own trying to sell her music. The cover had a chalk drawing of a smiling cat with a heart on its chest.


It was one of those shows where someone is on stage introducing a song and is doot-doot-doodling little notes on her guitar while telling a little story or explanation and before you know it they've said something that somehow ends up lasting with you forever. Michelle was explaining the name of her album and the meaning of the image on it. The liner notes on the album speak a little bit about the content of her stage-story, which was far more in-depth and meaningful:

"About the smiling cat: Back in the days when hobos used to ride the rails they had a vocabulary of symbols that let each other know what to expect when they came to a strange town. For example, ? [circle with crooked arrow through it ] meant a 'squat' or abandoned building. A cat with a smile and a heart chalked on a fencepost or pavement meant in that house lived a kind hearted woman who might offer a warm meal, an odd job, a place to sleep for the night. You get the idea."

Her stage-story went on about other symbols that were used and I was utterly fascinated with this concept. Coming from a graphic design background I guess it's not so surprising. But I love the idea of how much can be communicated in this underground language, and how much it was used to help each other out. And that there's a special one... for kind hearted women. By the way, what happened to hobos? I LOVE the word 'hobo.' Hobo. Hobo. Do we just call them MethHeads now? We need to bring back Hobo.

I am not superstitious but I do live my daily life looking for signs. Everything is a sign to me. I read everything as a communication from a different consciousness that I wish I could speak. This is one of my more super extreme (and obvious) sign examples, but almost exactly 10 years ago in August of 1999 I set out to ride my bicycle by myself across Sweden from Gothenborg to Stockholm along the Göta Canal. It's actually not as far as it sounds. Unless you realize your arm is paralyzed by carpal tunnel half way there.

I had taken a three-month-leave from my job where I was completely losing my mind, only to have work strike me down in my precious prime six thousand miles away: all of my gabillion hours on the computer had caught up with me and riding the bike put some carpal nightmare into overdrive up my arm. I couldn't hold a pen to write or even hook my bra strap together behind my back by the time I got to Mariestad, a tiny city of on the edge of Lake Vänern. I decided to go to the doctor the next day.

I walked around town that night and realllllllly felt sorry for myself and sad. Poor, poor Jenny. All the way out here and work still plaguing me like Mike Meyers (the one from Halloween, not Austin Powers.) I was full of indecision: do I turn back and make my arm stop tingling, or do I complete my goal and keep going, possibly finishing with some sort of nerve disorder?

The sun was setting and the sky was the most beautiful rose pink I have ever seen. The sidewalks were bustling with tourists and families buying ice cream, everyone laughing and chatting in that beautiful language, a couple of delightfully excited children squealed by me full of glee. I looked up and saw the main church and its steeple covered in construction scaffolding with dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of birds quietly perched asleep on every bar or plank they could find up there, all of it silhouetted in dark grey like a paper cut out. I was elated. My heart soared and I looked at the tower knowing, just knowing it was a sign. I said to myself, "Ok. This tower, this moment, is somehow going to let me know what to do."

And as if God himself snapped his fingers and yelled, "Fly!" one second after my thought, 400 birds took off at once, squawking and flapping wings -- it was like The Birds. It was one of those moments that lasted five seconds but seemed like a lifetime in slowmotion. I remember it felt as if way too much time passed for my brain to compute that part of the thunderous, rain-like noise was, in fact, 400 birds releasing poop-bombs upon flight, and I, for some reason (oh there's a reason, yes, it's called a sign) was the only one on that sidewalk completely covered in bird crap after the flapping mayhem subsided, with a bunch of clean Swedes staring at me.

(Despite the unfavorableness of this Sign, I did end up biking one more day to Lake Vättern in the middle of the country, even after the doctor answered my barrage of questions with, "Ok. How many times do I say this? It's a called a repetitive motion disorder, Yenny. Yes, you need to stop repeating whatever motion it is that is hurting you." Finally heeding the Sign and having reached the second lake, I then put my bike on a train and headed back.)

So when word got around that this stupid lump was nuzzling with me, Mary, my awesome dear Seattle friend who broke my heart to pieces when she moved down to Portland years ago, sent me a card asap with a great Mary letter -- and also this peculiar circular paper folded up in a half-moon shape stuck in the envelope with no explanation.

It was this terrific drawing her 5-year-old son made of a dinosaur and then carefully cut out red construction paper and superimposed on top of the reptile one of those "No" symbols of a circle with a line through it. Oh yeah. This was fantastic. This had all the makings of really powerful symbolism. I was living down the street at the time in my own place and I taped this to the front door. I felt the house immediately transformed. Like, no way is more bad luck coming this way ...or some sort of vibe of protection... I dunno, protection from this cancer somehow. My Hobo Symbol. It made it through my move back to my real house and is up on the door here now, continuing its job.

Erin Keeley, yet another fabulously talented and hilarious and beautiful friend of mine, came to my rescue to help me move. (You know, I have breast cancer and yet somehow stupidly forget to ask for help from time to time... oops.) We were talking about my crazy year and all that's been going on and during one of our trips to pack the car she asked about Dino on the Door.

After my explanation of Mary and the card and my feelings about how it makes me feel, she looks at it and says, "Yeah right. I mean the last thing you need right now is a bunch of dinosaurs." I absolutely adore how my friends just get it.