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conferred for a moment, then gladly donated the use of any
space or facility in their building, including the church itself
with its cathedral-like interior. They did this without actually
knowing what they were committing themselves and their church to,
and Emmett and the ohers made a point of not telling them more of
their plans than they thought was wise.
Later in the day, they telephoned around and arranged for the
people they felt could organize a meaningful ALF event, to meet
that night in the basement of Glide Church. By g P.M. everyone
who had been asked to come had arrived and the planning session
got started. There were poets Richard Brautigan and Lenore
Kandel; Quaker Fish who acted as brilliant soft-pedaling liason
with the Glide officialdom; Claude and Chester and the
Communication Company; Coyote and his full-out blond Louisiana
old lady, Sam, who had a distinct and widely known penchant for
undressing any time socially; the Hun and his woman, Judith, a
fine dancer and body psychologist extraordinaire; Butcher Brooks
and Flame; Emmett and Natural Suzanne; Slim Minnaux and NanaNina,
and soft, warm, beautiful, lonely Fyllis, who was jinxed with
always being in love with someone else's man, more Diggers, more
ALF members and a dark-haired, powerful-looking man of medium
height who arrived with his wife, Lenore, and stood by himself
during the entire meeting, periodically staring at Emmett with
his intense, black eyes. The man's name was Tumble and he was
thirty-three years old. At first, Emmett became confused by the
attention Tumble was giving him, but quickly dismissed the looks
to ccrncentrate on the discussion at hand.
The talk began with everyone asking each other what sort of
improbabilities they would like to see happen in the different
rooms, and it didn't take long for the suggestions to become
bizarre. After a while, the separate offices and rooms of the
Glide Church building, the interior of the house of worship
itself, and the outside area and adjacent parking lot were marked
off and designated to different groups of persons at the meeting.
These individuals were to use the space or spaces they were
assigned, and their various talents to design and create an
assortment of permissive settings or scenes in which they
themselves and others would be able to act out their own
fantasies. They named the event "The Invisible Circus"
and decided that in order for it to be effective it had to run
for an entire weekend or a full three-day period. They also
resolved to limit publicity to word of mouth with the exception
of one thou [end page 281]
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