How Not to be Eroded
How Not to be Eroded
LISTENING ︎︎︎ Dragonfly in Amber, Diana Gabaldon; READING ︎︎︎ Boy Parts, Eliza Clark
Jess Bernhart is a writer, curator and arts administrator. Currently managing rotating exhibits and special projects for ATL Airport Art, Bernhart also runs an artist publishing project, Volatile Parts, and an artist residency in Montezuma, GA, Volatile House.
Bernhart co-curates fLoromancy, a (currently hibernating) arts publication. She has published essays, poetry, and arts criticism in Burnaway, ArtsATL, Eyedrum Periodically, Loose Change, ++, and has exhibited visual art in a handful of group shows, mostly in Atlanta. She holds a bachelor’s in philosophy from Haverford College and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. She has three children, a husband, and a dog, and lives in Montezuma, GA.
Bernhart co-curates fLoromancy, a (currently hibernating) arts publication. She has published essays, poetry, and arts criticism in Burnaway, ArtsATL, Eyedrum Periodically, Loose Change, ++, and has exhibited visual art in a handful of group shows, mostly in Atlanta. She holds a bachelor’s in philosophy from Haverford College and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. She has three children, a husband, and a dog, and lives in Montezuma, GA.
I think a lot about solitude because, with three small children, I have so little. Solitude is the fruit on the vine of loneliness; succulent aloneness.
Out west, in hillier places, it is common to see little emergency ramps leading up from roads with long, enduring descents, so that if your brakes fail or your load is too heavy, you can steer yourself onto this little uphill escape route and coast to a stop. There are lots of them in Jordan, where I grew up, a country with radical changes in elevation (including the lowest place on Earth) and many vehicles with bad drivers and shoddy brakes.
I think about building such escape ramps into my own life, which often moves so briskly and relentlessly it’s like wearing roller skates on a slide. Where is, what is, the ramp?
I read “to be lonely is to desire an absent want.” I have no idea what this means.
I am alone in the car. I listen to a time travel romance novel that is 36 hours long, getting lost in it on my 2-hr commute. 4+ hours of solitude and driving past pecan groves, pulling into gas stations and shrinking down into my seat so that the other cars can’t see my breast pump, all vacuums and tubes, attached to me like an alien life force.
I am reading Boy Parts by Eliza Clark. I don’t like it at all - the main character seems to be the author and 40% of the book is consumed with showing me how smart and beautiful she is. It’s a real wank fest. I am also still reading So Much Longing in So Little Space.
Recent ideas:
- book: Birds of Middle Georgia (illustrated) for children
- phone booth listening stations // how to say goodbye
- party with Pasquale at the house