susanstinson

I am so tired that I can't see straight.

Ten hour work day. Not used to that.

This weekend, I'm going to see two writers whose work I love in the way you love books that make your chest start bloom with extravagant, dangerous day lilies where you didn't even know there was dirt. Or maybe like blood was dirt, and the books pump an earth through your whole body. I love these books. The Giant's House. Observatory Mansions. Alva & Irva. Niagara Falls All Over Again.

And, next week I'm reading on Wednesday at 7 at Pride & Joy with Janet Aalfs, my old friend who is now Northampton's Poet Laureate -- I love that so much. Then I'm reading again on Sunday at SisterSpit. I haven't given a reading since Jiggle-O back in May, and now I have two in the same week that my work hours are increasing. And all. Travelling -- by bus, which is what the new novel is about -- this weekend. Taking on other new responsibilities. I'm kind of overwhelmed. I'm reading from the novel (and a little from the novel after that!) on Wednesday, and poetry on Sunday, almost all new work that I've never read before.

I love to read -- it pumps so much life into me, to feel the response of people. And, I'm feeling it again, all of the strange, gorgeous edges of public/private, inside/outside, creation/presentation, word/world, mystery/clarity that come from writing so hard and long in relative solitude (always, always, with alert, tender, sharp-eyed help), and then coming (mm, sort of fighting tooth and nail to get back to) to a moment to be showing the work, speaking it, offering it, a lot, the surprising risks of that, when I thought most of the risks had already been taking in the writing. The way a new book being published opens me -- has to! -- to new kinds of courage.