Pop Quiz
by Marie Countryman
 
1.   What is your name?         Marie Countryman
2.   How old are you?         46 this past February.
3.   Where do you live?         Montpelier, Vermont
4.   What do you do for a living?         Being classified slightly mad, extremely eccentric, and medically ill, i am on disability. I consider my vocation to be writing.
5.   Do you drive?         Would if i had a car. (donations?)
6.   What do you do for joy?         DANCE!!!! GO TO SHOWS AND DANCE!!! (I still miss the GD tours)write, paint, talktalktalktalk with friends of all ages, walk, workout, drink coffee with friends while talkingtalkingtalking, travel to meet my e-friends from east to west coast, walk in the snow, skinny dip in the boulder strewn rivers of vermont, make paper and notebooks, which I then fill with secret joyful writings of my soul, write, play with my katz.
7.   What is your pet peeve?   And how much does it weigh?  Does it sleep by the door?  Is it housebroken?          I have two pets. One weighs about 2 pounds, the other 25. Both are katz. They sleep on me. Both are litter trained, but I wish they'd learn how to use the toilet. My other pet peeve is dishonesty in all forms, and no, I don't think it sleeps on my door sill or could ever be house broken.
8.   Do you write, paint or play?  All at the same time?  (While juggling a dozen eggs and riding a unicycle?)          Everything but the unicycle and the eggs. I sing really bad harmony at the top of my lungs while writing at times. I paint my furniture, myself and occasionally the paint makes it onto the canvas. I have a plan to paint me then roll around on a huge canvas. (donations?)
9.   Who is the most impressive character you've ever met?          Ha. Well, there have been several. Carolyn Adams Garcia (Mountain Girl), David Gans, John Perry Barlow, Q.R. Hand(poet of San Francisco and jazz saxophonist), Steve Silberman, Owsley, yes, Owsley, David Amram, John Tytell, David Bowers (Jan Kerouac's half brother) John Cassady (Neal's son), Jack Shea of Scotland, who took me on the road with him and with whom I met many of the above. Ann Charters, who taught the beats in my university.
And a Marxist junky now doing time for armed robbery with a water pistol.
10.   Have you ever read, acted, performed, thrown up, etc. in public?          All of the above. I have read many places (poetry) from Vermont to San Francisco; I have also puked all over the U.S., and have often had to perform as myself when I was not up to being myself. Does that count?
11.  What piece of literature or art moved your soul to ecstatic waves of bliss?          Art: the Renaissance painters, the Flemish painters, for their incredible discoveries of perspective and light and shadow, but my main man is Van Gogh, tormented and beautiful soul that he was, he speaks the most to my soul.
I like to lie down on the floor in museums when possible and just drink it all in.

Literature: Melville's "Moby Dick", Emerson's "Divinity School Address, Jack Kerouac's "Visions of Cody", most everything by Whitman, the Metaphysical Poets, John Donne specifically, Shakespeare - "King Lear" in particular.

Bob Dylan. Need I say more?

12.  What was the first thing you ever encountered that made you realise that art is important?          Junior high school. Where I realized that all the cliques in the world could not compare with a connection to a power larger than me. This is when I discovered Bob Dylan, the GD, LSD, Mary Jane, the beats. I was a precocious fat kid with glasses. They made me feel normal. Thank all the goddesses in the universe for them.
13.  Would you consider yourself an artist?  A good one?  Why or why not?          I consider myself an artist and artisan. Sometimes I blow like the muses, and sometimes I just blow. I write (I'm told I'm a poet, have a hard time believing that); I paint, design jewelry, make notebooks and papers. People pay for my work, or put up web pages for me. Must mean i'm doing something right. I'm not the most objective critic of my own work.
14.  What are your favorite things that have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with anything else?         FRIENDS, and everything in my life has something to do with something else, if only to myself. Sorry. No disconnect switch to the universe.
15.  What are your favorite things that have ABSOLUTELY everything to do with everything else?          FRIENDS and everything I love, and, again everything in my life has something to do with something else. I can't disconnect myself from the universe.
16.  What's the meaning of life?          To learn, to be kind, to love, to share whatever I have with whoever needs it. Love.
17.  Why?          Because I am not materialistic. And am not a member of any organized religion. I like to live my values rather than spout them on Sundays. Because poverty and disability have taught me what really matters in life. I trust in the universe, and so far I have not been disappointed.
18.  True or false: the Three Stooges represent the apex of American cultural achievement.         False. Brutal, harsh and more slap than humor. I am not proud of much of America, but I wouldn't reduce it to that level.
19.  True or False: Shemp was funnier than the original Curly.         Neither.
20.  Who's da man?          Too many to list. In the positive sense. The D.A.R.E. cop in the negative sense.