Tuesday, July 19, 2011

june 30-31

Last week I accompanied a friend of mine to a poetry reading. It was the first poetry reading I had ever attended and it definitely aligned with the expectations I had had going in: one female performer took her shirt off mid-poem; another (who was wearing a skirt over jeans) introduced her poem as a "micro-lyric essay"; one guy shouted an angry rant about insomnia. Everyone in the audience (men and women) looked like they were going as Sufjan Stevens for Halloween.

Earlier, on our way into the reading, my friend had recognized this blond guy with a rattail who was smoking a cigarette by the door. We had stopped to chat with him and I learned he was a "gardener" from Philadelphia. He was the kind of guy who says things like "Facebook is going to be our generation's downfall" and who wears hiking boots and shorts in spite of their perceived aesthetic rather than because of it.

I asked him if he was going to be one of the participating poets and he explained that, though he did write poems, he would not be reading any that night. I said that that was too bad and he then presented two fliers for a poetry festival he was going to be reading at later this summer on Governors Island. "You guys should come," he said, and my friend and I nodded in the most disingenuous way humans can nod.

After a few seconds of scanning the flier though, my friend blurted out, "Hey wait, did this... already happen?" and she pointed to the top of the flier where "JUNE 30-31" was written in huge, bold letters. I mumbled, "But June 31 isn't...." (I was too bashful to outright suggest there had been a typo.)

Our green-thumbed, rat-tailed friend did not look fazed in the slightest. "Oh, yeah, weird," he shrugged. "It's supposed to say July 30-31. I should let them know... I've been putting these up everywhere."

He smiled goofily, tossed his cigarette on the sidewalk and stepped on it, and then turned toward the door. "Let's head inside," he said. Something about the way he tilted his head and bent his knees as he walked through the door made me feel utterly silly for ever taking anything that happens in my life too seriously.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great post!