To the Lady Who tried to Stop Me to Ask for Directions During My Evening Jog.
Jonathan Jones The strange imposition a nervous wave to slow me down so oddly intimate never fails to spur me on as though someone had interrupted me mid conversation. It’s as though I should remember your name but can’t, because obviously you’re a stranger, and if I’m running that means I don’t want to talk to you, or anyone really and it was no doubt a simple question which would only have annoyed me even further if only I had stopped, removed my ear phones and caught my breath, said “It’s just over there” or “No, that’s Switzerland you’re thinking of actually.” I think it may even have passed for God once. A moment of routine inconvenience, where the Divine signals a gesture we can’t comprehend. Approaches us as though there were nothing out of the ordinary about a city of destruction or building an ark, or a Good Samaritan just asking for directions and we simply shake our heads and keep running, pretending we don’t even speak the same language. |
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About the Author: Jonathan Jones qualified in 1999 with his M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College and in 2004 with an MRes in Humanities from Keele University. He now teaches writing composition at John Cabot University in Rome. He has been published in East Jasmine Review, The Dr T.J.Eckleburg Review, Dirty Chai, Cordite Poetry Review, The Manifest Station, and The TransNational.