"We Were the Young Americans." - D. Bowie

I stood on the sidelines, the observer. Yesterday was the annual Gay Pride Parade - first down Halsted, then down Broadway, and I was there to witness (and photograph) the Lovely Carla and the Lovely Robin carrying the banner for the Hooper Freaks (lovely hula hoopers) one of about 250 unique groups participating in this big, sloppy, over-stuffed extravaganza, dedicated to an unbridled celebration of being "happy and gay." And anyway, who isn't? Happy and Gay I mean? Yesterday I felt like a Tom Joad in (metaphorical) red hot-pants, and pink go-go boots. "If you're kinky and cool - I am there. If you're shapely and demure - I am there. If you're scuzzy, sleazy, sweating and doing the rumba - I am there." ETC. What a great explosion of human splendor! I thought to myself, this must be the Conservative Evangelical's worst nightmare - and it was really absolutely, life-affirming, and beautiful, and rollicking, and strange and yes...fabulous!

Edgar Allen Poe used to smoke opium and he wrote a little book called "Eureka," and in it, he posited that we are all little pieces of god. That it is the sum of humanity, the sum of the material and the immaterial that makes up some abstract, god-like, energy. Yesterday, I saw some little pieces of god - dressed in drag, on fat motorcycles, in leather and chains, in bikinis, in speedos, in ball gowns, in skivvies - bounteous, beautiful, ridiculous, outrageous. So, anyway, I'm thinking my abstract, god-like, universal energy was kind of giddy yesterday, giddy and loud and proud and pretty in a pink tutu too!