Nath Jones's Blog - Posts Tagged "fear"
Reading on the 26th
Maggie Clemons at the Back of the Yards branch of the Chicago Public Library was kind enough to invite me to participate in a poetry reading.
There are poems in The War is Language, 2000 Deciduous Trees, and maybe one or two in Love & Darts. I forget. I'll have to look.
I did a little open mic event at Transistor a month or so ago, part of their new Echo series. But. Seriously. It's really not my thing to get up and have a bunch of people staring at me, even if it's a fairly informal situation.
So readings are pretty last-frontier though they're a well-proven way to introduce readers to the work.
I don't know. My friend David was all, "Get a bunch of people to go~! Get the word out!!" But I was like, "No." He said, "Why?" I thought it was obvious. "I don't want a bunch of people I know to be there." Which is probably something I need to overcome.
Anyway. The point is, I'm going to do it.
I passed the info along to a friend from Northwestern, Virginia Smith Rice. So. She'll be there too. She is going to read from her new collection When I Wake It Will Be Forever.
Should be fun. If you guys are in the area, come on out and join us.
The facility really is beautiful. This particular branchof the CPL is in a high school. It really offers kids in the neighborhood a safe space.
I don't think the building was built in direct response to that movie about the high schools--what was that? You know, the charter school thing, Waiting for Superman? The Back of the Yards school was planned well before that film came out but the space reminds me of that concept that a good school can bring a neighborhood up.
There are poems in The War is Language, 2000 Deciduous Trees, and maybe one or two in Love & Darts. I forget. I'll have to look.
I did a little open mic event at Transistor a month or so ago, part of their new Echo series. But. Seriously. It's really not my thing to get up and have a bunch of people staring at me, even if it's a fairly informal situation.
So readings are pretty last-frontier though they're a well-proven way to introduce readers to the work.
I don't know. My friend David was all, "Get a bunch of people to go~! Get the word out!!" But I was like, "No." He said, "Why?" I thought it was obvious. "I don't want a bunch of people I know to be there." Which is probably something I need to overcome.
Anyway. The point is, I'm going to do it.
I passed the info along to a friend from Northwestern, Virginia Smith Rice. So. She'll be there too. She is going to read from her new collection When I Wake It Will Be Forever.
Should be fun. If you guys are in the area, come on out and join us.
The facility really is beautiful. This particular branchof the CPL is in a high school. It really offers kids in the neighborhood a safe space.
I don't think the building was built in direct response to that movie about the high schools--what was that? You know, the charter school thing, Waiting for Superman? The Back of the Yards school was planned well before that film came out but the space reminds me of that concept that a good school can bring a neighborhood up.
600 Miles
I got out of the car this morning and stared as two hawks, or kites--I heard my father's voice say buteo--circled over a small body of water behind a chain link fence.
I don't know where I was exactly. Some gas station 93 miles east of Reno. But these birds were there in the morning, in the light air, impressing me the way such moments do, or can.
I drove from Reno, Nevada to Evanston, Wyoming today. It's funny to have this freedom. I saw the headlines--the 200 abducted girls perhaps found, Baltimore in an uproar. And then to be free in the face of that, in spite of that, connected yet unfettered.
So just to drive. Just to be a woman driving 600 miles. No protest. No fight. No politics. No religion. Just exercising the rights we're so privileged to possess.
Believe me I have plenty of fear. One friend talked to me for a solid hour today. I was like a treed cat--because I really do hate driving in the mountains. The car straining up. The triple-trailered trucks barreling down. The cars whipping around and gone. Vehicles at all speeds, curves, ravines, cliffs--mountains.
But so what? Drive.
I had two chats with two women in the past twenty-four hours. Both were desk managers of crappy little roadside hotels. Both were about my age. In Sparks, NV I asked the woman what I-80 was like toward the east. She said, "Toward Sacramento and that?" I said, "Toward Chicago." She kind of thought about it. Then didn't really have an answer, said, "I don't really know."
I didn't say anything. I don't care if she doesn't drive east on I-80.
I can see why she didn't have an answer. Bunch of buteos. Some chain link fence. Utah has an answer to that, of course: rock. But again just a reminder of its inherent grandeur.
And when I got to the little crappy motel room in Evanston, Wyoming--same thing. I asked the woman at the desk which was her favorite of the sites in Wyoming. She had no answer. Seemed odd. Granted there's no official concierge service at the place I'm staying. But still, usually there's some kind of hospitality or at least awareness of one's surroundings enough to toss out a highlight.
Nope.
Now, part of me wants to round this out without doing anything unbecoming of a lady. And I'm not going to assert anything about these other women, insist they explore, demand they use what they've got--this life, this place, the ideals our nation yearns to implement. If these two desk managers don't want to? They're well within their rights never to bother.
But to see those two hawks this morning in the early light. Not sunrise light, that light right after. Just soft brightness. And at about 3:30 this afternoon I took my Buick out onto the salt flats.
I don't know where I was exactly. Some gas station 93 miles east of Reno. But these birds were there in the morning, in the light air, impressing me the way such moments do, or can.
I drove from Reno, Nevada to Evanston, Wyoming today. It's funny to have this freedom. I saw the headlines--the 200 abducted girls perhaps found, Baltimore in an uproar. And then to be free in the face of that, in spite of that, connected yet unfettered.
So just to drive. Just to be a woman driving 600 miles. No protest. No fight. No politics. No religion. Just exercising the rights we're so privileged to possess.
Believe me I have plenty of fear. One friend talked to me for a solid hour today. I was like a treed cat--because I really do hate driving in the mountains. The car straining up. The triple-trailered trucks barreling down. The cars whipping around and gone. Vehicles at all speeds, curves, ravines, cliffs--mountains.
But so what? Drive.
I had two chats with two women in the past twenty-four hours. Both were desk managers of crappy little roadside hotels. Both were about my age. In Sparks, NV I asked the woman what I-80 was like toward the east. She said, "Toward Sacramento and that?" I said, "Toward Chicago." She kind of thought about it. Then didn't really have an answer, said, "I don't really know."
I didn't say anything. I don't care if she doesn't drive east on I-80.
I can see why she didn't have an answer. Bunch of buteos. Some chain link fence. Utah has an answer to that, of course: rock. But again just a reminder of its inherent grandeur.
And when I got to the little crappy motel room in Evanston, Wyoming--same thing. I asked the woman at the desk which was her favorite of the sites in Wyoming. She had no answer. Seemed odd. Granted there's no official concierge service at the place I'm staying. But still, usually there's some kind of hospitality or at least awareness of one's surroundings enough to toss out a highlight.
Nope.
Now, part of me wants to round this out without doing anything unbecoming of a lady. And I'm not going to assert anything about these other women, insist they explore, demand they use what they've got--this life, this place, the ideals our nation yearns to implement. If these two desk managers don't want to? They're well within their rights never to bother.
But to see those two hawks this morning in the early light. Not sunrise light, that light right after. Just soft brightness. And at about 3:30 this afternoon I took my Buick out onto the salt flats.
