My agent Jessica was in town for a few days last week. The night she arrived I did a reading at Signal Return, a letterpress shop in Detroit’s Eastern Market. I was reading with Deonte Oyesande, a local slam poet, and we had a group of about three dozen people in attendance, including a class of sophomores from a Detroit-area high school. I even made a flag for the event – the first produce of my new sewing hobby; the photo above is of the audience designing their own flags for the interactive portion of the night.
I write a lot here about cycles, transitions, crossings over thresholds. I forget sometimes that the befores and afters aren’t always clear and separate. Just because I’m in a new phase doesn’t mean the previous stops echoing. Just because I’ve found a store of energy doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I’m tired, sleepy. I see an image of myself constantly preparing to travel; I forget sometimes that, often, the preparation is the trip.
