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Guests

Day Five

by Nick Flynn, January 22, 2010 10:44 AM
[Editor's Note: Don't miss Nick Flynn reading from his memoir The Ticking Is the Bomb at Powell's City of Books on Friday, January 29th, at 7:30pm. Click here for details.]

I live in airports. I live on pre-made sandwiches, I hope they are not all made in China. I hope they haven't traveled that far. Every morning I wake up at five, on a friend's couch, someone comes and takes me to the airport. It's all very glamorous. The book tour is really just beginning. I didn't pace myself, I was burnt out by the first day, wayworn the first day. Yet, moved more than I imagined I'd be. So many hands have kept me afloat. I worry that with all the air under me, I am becoming a vapor, I am nailing my shoes to the floor. The fear of reading from one's own memoir is that it could be a purely self-centered activity, yet I heard Brenda Hillman once say (I might be remembering her words imperfectly) that a poem starts with autobiography, then moves into the universal, and if one pushes further, it enters into the deeper mystery. So far, during the readings, it's felt like it's not about me at all.

Tonight I read in Brooklyn, I can walk to BookCourt from my house. Walk!

But first:

And I'd like to end the week with Michael. (Though why is it that the demons he's always fighting look like us?)




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