" Most of life is a vapor of unconscious associations, never bright to light."
An eccentric artist decides to drive cross country to celebrate a payche" Most of life is a vapor of unconscious associations, never bright to light."
An eccentric artist decides to drive cross country to celebrate a paycheck from a whiskey company that used one of her poems. She leaves her husband and child behind. Just outside of town, about 30 minutes, she runs into a young man at a pit stop. She runs into him three more times, decides it is a sign, and stops for the night. She then decides to stay in the room rather than drive. She pretends that she is still driving to her family. She ends up spending the $20,000 on the motel room in which she is staying. Giving it to the wife of the young man she stopped for. She has a pseudo-affair with him, but they do not consummate the relationship. He works off his sexual desire through hip-hop dancing.
A new Miranda July book should prepare the reader for a wild and weird ride. I like her fiction because it is so unusual and strange. It makes one think differently about perspective, even if it is a story where nothing really happens. She is manifesting a mid-life crisis, and it does generate a major change. She needed to make something happen in her stagnated life.
Favorite Passages: “Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era, whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it. A latent bias, internalized by both of us, suddenly leapt forth in parenthood. It was now obvious that Harris was openly rewarded for each thing he did while I was quietly shamed for the same things. There was no way to fight back against this, no one to point a finger at, because it came from everywhere. Even walking around my own house I felt haunted, fluish with guilt about every single thing I did or didn’t do. Harris couldn’t see the haunting and this was the worst part: to be living with someone who fundamentally didn’t believe me and was really, really sick of having to pretend to empathize—or else be the bad guy! In his own home! How infuriating for him. And how infuriating to be the wife and not other women who could enjoy how terrific he was. How painful for both of us, especially given that we were modern, creative types used to living in our dreams of the future. But a baby exists only in the present, the historical, geographic economic present. With a baby one could no longer be cute and coy about capitalism—money was time, time was everything. We could have skipped lightly across all this by not becoming parents; it never really had to come to a head. On the other hand, sometimes it’s good when things come to a head. And then eventually, one day: pop.�
“For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces—each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.�
Most of life is a vapor of unconscious associations, never bright to light.
“Although maybe midlife crises were just poorly marketed, maybe each one was profound and unique and it was only a few silly men in red convertibles who gave them a bad name. I imagined greeting such a man solemnly: I see you have reached a time of great questioning. God be with you, seeker.�
“How crazy and vain did you have to be to kill yourself when you found out that your main thrill, the thing that really got you going, was gone forever? Maybe not so crazy. If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone.�
“Because in truth it was like a bad dream, a nightmare. Life didn’t just get better and better. You could actually miss out on something and that was that. That was your chance and now it was over. I wondered if I would continue with my work and then I realized that my work was all I had now. I had gotten it completely wrong—I thought I was laboring toward a prize, but the prize was right there, I already had it, and work was something I could do afterward, after I was no longer young enough to be beautiful and could no longer be wanted by someone beautiful.� ...more
An analysis of the Palestinian crisis through literary criticism. Certain points reflect on the lack of humanity, to fellow human beings. A literary eAn analysis of the Palestinian crisis through literary criticism. Certain points reflect on the lack of humanity, to fellow human beings. A literary epiphany in fiction is a revelation but in real life, creates a fissure in one's beliefs, which is much harder to change. What would it take to change one's perspective, recognizing the stranger as a mirror to one's self. There remains a refusal to look. The end of this lecture is chilling as it is published just as the retribution of the October 7 attacks begin. She sees the initial horror, but has not idea of how bad it would become. This book along with a A Day In the Life of Abed Salam demonstrate the lack of humanity for the Palestinian people. One has to wonder what comes next.
Favorite Passages:
Of course, the word recognition has another, very formal connotation in political discourse as a diplomatic or governmental action; states will recognize the sovereignty of another state or political entity, a political or legal claim, or a right to life, a right to have rights. Cultural recognition of difference can form the basis of just societies, but recognition that remains solely that--a form of acknowledgment without economic and political redistribution-is an act of language that leaves out the plot of history, where a word tries to stand in for material reparations through the smoke and mirrors of discourse and ceremony.
Rather than recognizing the stranger as familiar, and bringing a story to its close, Said asks us to recognize the familiar as stranger. He gestures at a way to dismantle the consoling fictions of fixed identity, which make it easier to herd into groups. This might be easier said than done, but it's provocative--it points out how many narratives of self, when applied to a nation-state, might one day harden into self-centered intolerance. Narrative shape can comfort and guide our efforts, but we must eventually be ready to shape-shift to be decentered, when the light of an other appears on the horizon in the project of human freedom, which remains undone.
What in fiction is enjoyable and beautiful is often terrifying in real life. In real life, shifts in collective understanding are necessary for major changes to occur, but on the human, individual scale, they are humbling and existentially disturbing. Such shifts also do not usually come without a fight: not everyone can be unpersuaded of their worldview through argument and appeal, or through narrative... emotion and understanding are not the same as action, but you might say that understanding is necessary for someone to act....more
A woman reminisces about her childhood and remembers when she stayed with her uncle and his family for two years. Her uncle was a very wealthy executiA woman reminisces about her childhood and remembers when she stayed with her uncle and his family for two years. Her uncle was a very wealthy executive. Her cousin is sickly and travels to and fro on a hippopotamus. Thus begins this surreal and endearing chapter in her life. Her cousin collects matchboxes, and with each unique book (collected by the driver who delivers soft drinks), she imagines the story behind the pictures on the matchbook.
Endearing story, but it is interesting that the popular book The Memory Police is unique. However, all her books talk about memory and has this wistful appeal to it. ...more
" What they're really saying is that the LGBTQIA+ community shouldn't be given equal rights or even be acknowledged. They can't just leave queer peopl" What they're really saying is that the LGBTQIA+ community shouldn't be given equal rights or even be acknowledged. They can't just leave queer people alone. No, they want to take away their rights and "other" them. Alt-right conspiracy theorists fixate on the idea that teachers and librarians are all in a plot to turn their children gay. It's ludicrous, and I wish they would take off the tin-foil hats before our country no longer has any educators or librarians. But perhaps that is the idea."
This is a book that shouldn't have to be written. Who would think we would have a society where libraries and libraries are viciously attacked? Your local neighborhood librarian exists to help children learn to read and embrace the magic of reading. Who helps seniors learn technology skills. Who helps people find jobs and assistance. And yet, they are attacked with claims of harming children. It is entirely unfathomable. And yet, here we are. It's infuriating that someone can be a billionaire on the bodies of murdered children, yet librarians are attacked to the point that they become radioactive to associate with.
Amanda Jones has had to face this firsthand. A school librarian, she provided public comment against book banning at her local library board meeting. One of many speaking that night, she would find herself singled out and eviscerated online the next day. She was called a groomer and a pedophile who exposed pornography to children. She was devastated as people she knew well in the community and even coworkers would turn against her. She would fight back in court, but after many tense exchanges, she was viewed as an s a public official, making it fair game for people to say anything they wanted against her.
This movement attempts to silence anyone who provides diverse materials for the public and children. Books are a mirror and a window; patrons should be able to see themselves reflected in the collection and learn about people different from themselves. People attacking librarians nationwide often do not even have library cards or live in the community. It is shocking that it has gotten to this point.
Amanda Jones hasn't stopped fighting and attempting to foil the efforts of those who would ban books and scare librarians out of the profession. Furthermore, this book is essential for capturing this moment. Librarians and librarians attacked viciously with little recourse for their defense.
Favorite Passages:
So many of my school librarian friends have essentially gone into hiding after being targeted. Educators who were once the face of the most popular sessions at librarian conferences have disappeared for their own safety or the security of their families. I miss seeing their faces and learning from them. Some have even completely left social media, so librarians I messaged and kept up with through those avenues are gone from my life. I think of them often and wonder if they are okay. I do not fault them and under-stand completely. Their safety and mental health should be their focus, and they need to do what they need to do. A few of us have even formed our own support group online on a private Facebook group to help offer moral support and suggestions for coping through the stress of it all. What kind of world are we living in that has some of our most devoted community servants living so terrified?
Throughout this whole ordeal, I have felt that there was an attempt to silence me. Whether that was because they just didn't want to deal with the issue, because of their own fears or anger at me personally, I will never know unless I ask, and I'm not going to ask. There was a movement to silence me through the posts of these two men and then an attempt to silence me from people I thought were friends. There is a massive amount of political pressure in our community from the far-right and our citizens and leaders let their fear of becoming targets, and their cowardice, affect their decisions. It takes bravery to speak out. I guess it is a courage many do not have.
Last fall, I was invited to speak to a group that included many trans women. As I was listing my woes of being called names online, I had a huge epiphany. Here I was crying to these women over something that at most will cause me turmoil for a few years. Meanwhile, they will face harassment forever. How horrible of a thought—that what I'm feeling for a few months or years is someone's entire life? Because I have diarrhea of the mouth, and sometimes just let my newfound thoughts ooze out of my mouth with no thought, I said this out loud. They clapped and snapped for me. That's when I realized that we all face difficult situations each in our own way. Some situations are worse than others and some last longer than others. Our pain is our own and it sucks. It doesn't mean I'm belit-tling my experience or saying it's not painful. It's just different. I've faced this hate because of what I said (and didn't actually say), but they face it because of who they are. Nobody should ever be made to feel less than for who they are. This constant barrage of hate toward the LGBTQIA+ commu-nity is not normal behavior. Homophobic and racist people try to justify their hate, but it boils down to their fear of anyone who looks and thinks differently from them. What used to be whispered is now a very outward display of hate. Or maybe I just noticed it for the first time? I guess that makes me woke. Woke. Ha. That's another word that's thrown around a lot. I'd rather be accused of being woke than be accused of being a hateful bigot. The kids in my town are paying attention. I want them to know that not everyone in our town hates the LGBTQIA+ community. I want them to see that there are adults in the world who truly want to protect children and not just mock and malign people. Not everyone is actively racist. I must think of the children in our community and set a good example.
What they're really saying is that the LGBTQIA+ community shouldn't be given equal rights or even be acknowledged. They can't just leave queer people alone. No, they want to take away their rights and "other" them. Alt-right conspiracy theorists fixate on the idea that teachers and librarians are all in a plot to turn their children gay. It's ludicrous, and I wish they would take off the tin-foil hats before our country no longer has any educators or librarians. But perhaps that is the idea.
Books and librarians are not harming children. Books provide comfort and libraries provide safe spaces. If anyone says otherwise, I’d ask them when they’d last visited a library or spoke to a librarian. ...more
Anger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless."
It is a scathing indictment of marriage and what some need to endure endlessly. A young womAnger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless."
It is a scathing indictment of marriage and what some need to endure endlessly. A young woman becomes infatuated with a young artist, and they soon move in together and marry. This is where the trouble begins. Narcissistic, selfish, jealous, and financially unstable, she endures all of this simply to have a family.
Probably one of the most infuriating books I have encountered in a long time. Endlessly yelling dump himeosnt change the narrative. This is the signal for the whole man's disposal service, yes, the entire man.
Favorite Passages:
“Anger is one of the last privileges of the truly helpless. �
“I laundered vomit-soaked sheets until the dryer broke and then took two wet loads to the laundromat, which as usual was full of heroic women.�
“I thought about all the wives who had lived before birth control, before legal abortion, before the recognition of marital rape and domestic abuse, before women could buy a house or open a bank account or vote or drive or leave the house. I wanted to apologize to all the forgotten and unseen women who had allowed me to exist, all the women I’d sworn not to emulate because I’d wanted to be human—I wanted to be like a man, capable and beloved for my service to the world.�
“But I also knew that the most intimate relationship is not mutual. It is one-way: the mother’s relationship to the child. The best part of my life had been this animal intimacy, the secretion of my milk into this body, the teaching how to lift food to the mouth, how to speak, how to show love according to the feeling of love, how to put on a shoe, how to pick up a spoon, how to wipe one’s own tears, how to piss and shit and be clean. Nothing, nothing in the world like that. That absolute authority of which the baby must be convinced in order to feel safe, separate from the mother’s body. The honor the mother must give the baby, when the baby is ready to know that her absolute authority was never real. The careful timing of the revelation that, baby, you are alone, as alone as anything can be. How lucky you were, baby, to have been a baby with its mother. Now you are ready to start living life in the imagination, to start imagining your way back to every good feeling you don’t quite remember from the days of milk.�
“I hadn’t experienced uncontaminated time—time unoccupied by vigilance to the child’s health, feeding, elimination, education, safety, entertainment, development, socialization, and mood, and the care of the house, including food shopping, meal planning, cleaning, cooking, tossing old food, scrubbing bathrooms, making doctors� appointments, labeling toys for show-and-tell, planning play dates, maintaining contact with grandparents, planning holidays, paying bills, dealing with two tax audits and an identity theft (all John’s), and usually most of these things at once—outside an airplane in years. This meant absurdly little of the sort of time needed to write books. My time, which is to say the time that was mine, for me alone, had disappeared. And at once I understood why I hadn’t felt like myself in years. My own time—my own life—had disappeared, been overtaken. Which might have been the reason I was so angry, I thought.�
“I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing.�
“John and I both caught the child’s cold. John stayed in bed for two days; I took the new kitten to the vet and bought groceries and did dishes and laundry and planned all the meals and took the child to school and so on. I took one nap but otherwise kept everything up. And that is a mother’s cold.�
“So at his worst, my husband was an arrogant, insecure, workaholic, narcissistic bully with middlebrow taste, who maintained power over me by making major decisions without my input or consent. It could still be worse, I thought.�
“Calling a woman crazy is a man’s last resort when he’s failed to control her.�
“That’s the problem with women like us, Marni said. We don’t die. When I tell people I look forward to dying, they don’t get it. I’m just fucking tired. I’m not going to kill myself, but I’m ready to rest. When I went on vacation I went snorkeling and couldn’t move. The current was too strong. But it was just beautiful underwater. I thought, Well, if this is it, it’s not bad. Then the stupid boat guide saved me and gave me a hundred bucks.�...more
" Nothing so pure deserves the hell of immortality."
Toward Eternity is a fascinating study of human nature. It becomes a question of what makes us hum" Nothing so pure deserves the hell of immortality."
Toward Eternity is a fascinating study of human nature. It becomes a question of what makes us human, even if we are reincarnated as something else. What is the true self?
A new experience allows people to be reincarnated using nanobots. Their personalities and attributes carry over, but are they truly the same person? What are the ramifications of this new technology? Patient Zero shows promise but seems different from the person who was created. A new version of a different patient forgets the notes for her instrument, and does she see doppelgangers? The story gets more complex as it progresses as inevitable; this experiment goes from something to help individuals to something that will help governments and, inevitably, the military. The story turns full circle, and it is quite a journey.
A story that goes from poetry to horror and back to poetry. It spans the scope of human existence. It draws on many science fiction authors such as Phillip K Dick, Asimov, Clark, and others. I picked this up since he is Bora Chung's translator. I read Your Utopia earlier this year and loved it. It was both parts dark and imaginative. It's a journey, and everyone should read it while considering the accelerating developments of artificial intelligence. Can the beauty of humanity be copied?
Favorite Passages:
“It’s also the sound of the names themselves; like a different language, they are, and yet they’re not. Which is what every word, every language sounds like. They almost mean something, and they do, and yet they don’t.
I’m no linguist or literary scholar, but as a scientist, I know something about naming things. I know how misleading naming can be, I know how it can lead to failure, and I know how absolutely necessary it is. Language contains our knowledge and at the same time fails to contain it. All it really contains is our performance of control. And yet, we persist. We write in our lab reports, we assign numbers and agree on degrees of significance, we describe our attitudes toward something by giving it a name. Awe, disgust, fear, they’re all in there. They’re all in the names we give things. Sometimes, I think that’s all scientists do: give names to things. Things we can see, things we can only deduce, things we wish existed. Are scientists the poets of the natural world? Or are poets scientists of the imagined world? Names as long as poems, names as long as scientific papers, both written in that stuff of names that we call language. We both name, we pass on these names, then we die. My breath caught in my throat.�
Nothing so pure deserves the hell of immortality.
“I see him as he is. I also see him as he was, him in all the ages that I knew him, from young man to old. He will always be young to me. His is the face that I am more familiar with than my own. Age cannot mar it, disease cannot ruin it. A face that is the very landscape of my happiness, my joy. I love even his frailness, what the years have made of him, and this love astonishes me. So close to the end, I thought I would be prepared for it. I thought our love would have faded. It is all there still, in his face. There is no radical nanotherapy that can replace that love.�
“Music is as eternal as the universe, it is part of its very fabric, and a musician is only picking at a small corner of the universe, a tiny dot in it, when they turn air and time into sound. A musician’s task is not to create sound from nothingness; a true musician understands that music is the primordial state of the universe, the very first world, and silence is a cloak imposed upon this state, and a musician’s job is to create a tear in that cloak to let out the music underneath. We do not create music, we draw it out from underneath the silence. I draw it out from my cello, my tear in the cloak.�
“Once they have our memories, our language, our music, they can do whatever they want with us. They don’t need us anymore.�
“Twenty minutes passed as my thoughts and new emotions coalesced into a manageable equilibrium. This new body was like a drug. It enhanced some kinds of thought and dulled others. I could not do calculations like I used to, but I kept feeling new, subtle textures to my thoughts that shifted my thinking into strange directions and associations. Later on, I recognized these textures as emotions. It was the longest twenty minutes I had ever lived, half a lifetime in 1,200 seconds.�...more
"And who knows, maybe at one time he was a great horse. Maybe at one time he was a cutting horse as good as Smart Little Lena or as fast as Dash for C"And who knows, maybe at one time he was a great horse. Maybe at one time he was a cutting horse as good as Smart Little Lena or as fast as Dash for Cash. You just don't know who somebody is. So to me, if all you ever did in your whole life was walk thirty miles to save an old horse, well, shit, that's something, ain't it?"
Al Ward lives in an old abandoned mining camp. He lives on instant coffee and Campbell soup, seemingly counting out his last days. One day, a horse wanders into his camp. It turns out that the horse is blind. Al wonders if he is hallucinating the horse, but eventually, he has to decide how to save it. Meanwhile, he reminisces on his life. He is a creative songwriter and guitar player for various country casino bands across Northern Nevada.
I always love Willy Vlaugtin. He captures a bit of Nevada history that's beneath the margins. As coins get replaced by housing and communities gentrify, he remembers the gritty Nevada—the one people would like to forget but is part of the heart and soul of the state.
Favorite Passages:
There's a guy, I can't remember who, but he said that when you write a good tune and you know it's good, and you haven't played it for anyone, it's like holding hope in your pocket. And the hope has a heart that's beating and it rushes through you and all around you. For a moment you're proud of yourself because you have this little bit of gold that no one's heard and you're the only guy in the world that knows it or feels it or knows how good the tune is. That's the best feeling."
She told me that all the sad and ruined people were living on one side of the street. And they were all okay there, they were all free from themselves, free from their pain and heartache.
You just have to wake up and then you can disappear to see it. You’ll be safe there. I swear you will be. Because it’s the only way for people like us. People not tough enough to live in this world. Wake up Al please if you wake up I’ll forgive you. If you wake up I’ll love you again please Al wake up for the horse. Because the horse has never been given a chance. The horse has always been pushed around and pushed aside his whole life he’s been nothing but an afterthought.
We’ll escape. Some people get to escape, and we’ll be those people.
At least you saved a horse, Al. That's something. If you were dead, if you weren't alive, you wouldn't have saved him. He'd still be there freezing his ass off, trying not to get attacked by coyotes. And who knows, maybe at one time he was a great horse. Maybe at one time he was a cutting horse as good as Smart Little Lena or as fast as Dash for Cash. You just don't know who somebody is. So to me, if all you ever did in your whole life was walk thirty miles to save an old horse, well, shit, that's something, ain't it? That says something. Most people wouldn't cross the street to do something decent, and you walked thirty miles in the snow, and you're a drunk, lazy musician." ,
It’s a dark world if you open your eyes at all.....more
Nations at war often don't feature the impacted civilians and are unaware of what is happening. IT's frightening and alienating. The young man documenNations at war often don't feature the impacted civilians and are unaware of what is happening. IT's frightening and alienating. The young man documents his life through letters to his boyfriend, Boris. When his mother tries to get a lover, who is one of the soldiers occupying their area, he tricks him, ties him up, and lets him starve to death to be devoured by animals. A metaphor for the life of the refugee, freed from that trap.
It is a sprawling and poetic story about war and its impacts. We don't see it as the reader, but we know it is there. We are just as clueless as refugees.
Favorite Passage: I always reminded myself that he was profoundly nostalgic, deep down, because he was missing something he’d never had, and that’s the worst nostalgia you can have. ...more
" I offer my scratched golds to the blueprint of possible. dear reader whenever you are reading this is the future to me, which means tomorrow is stil" I offer my scratched golds to the blueprint of possible. dear reader whenever you are reading this is the future to me, which means tomorrow is still coming, which means today still lives, which means there is still time for beautiful, urgent change, which means there is still time to make more alive which means there is still poetry."
Can a book of poetry save you? Can it solve the problems of the world? Smith says no. The beginning of his new book of poetry faces the futility of making change head-on. Poetry cannot stop this from happening. Worse, it gets used by the very people who are making things terrible. He has to swallow pride from those who would harm him in a different context. The first half of this book is filled with despair and frustration. Midway through the poems, he changes focus. It is at that point he shows his true power as a poet. The poems are filled with hope, promise, and resilience. One would wonder if this is what the title of the book refers to.
Favorite Passages:
We wanted to stop being killed and they thanked me for my beauty
happy to vote Happy to be able to protest the killing We couldn't end, happy for healthcare That killed us slower, happy the gays could marry In the country where trans women vanished Like snow in warm winters Happy our wars were only of the mind only elsewhere.
…we made them late for work, traffic such a gentle revenge for how they clog heaven, a small inconvenience in return for the harvesting of cousins�
Capitalism is the worst bird, able to make a tool out of its destruction.
I hate it here. It’s June so it’s perfect. They do it every pride month, take stonewall and hide the brick. They’re doing it again. Money making uprising a strategy, a mask. Money making your dead face a shield, an invitation to spend your grief. Money figuring out how to stay safe. Money playing the money game. Money making you forget it’s about money. This all started over twenty bucks.
Sometimes we laugh when we are in danger. Every man I knew who was evil had someone who loved him who called him good.
I offer my scratched golds to the blueprint of possible. dear reader whenever you are reading this is the future to me, which means tomorrow is still coming, which means today still lives, which means there is still time for beautiful, urgent change, which means there is still time to make more alive which means there is still poetry.
Somewhere my children can write poems about being without protest, their songs full of stars. ...more
"I thought about metal then, and the landscape of my childhood, how it was saturated with coins. Roman coins, gold Abbasid coins, ancient Judean coins"I thought about metal then, and the landscape of my childhood, how it was saturated with coins. Roman coins, gold Abbasid coins, ancient Judean coins. There were shekels, mils, and drachmas. Emperors, gods, and queens. They didn't decompose. They just stayed there, in the ground. And the coin in my body, it was going to stay there, until I died, and long after."
It is a brilliant first novel documenting the breakdown and epiphany of a young, wealthy Palestinian woman living in New York. Not needing to work, she takes a job as a teacher, but she is ill-suited and unprepared and also doesn't care. She desperately needs to be clean and has an elaborate ritual using CVS products. She is obsessed with the feeling that she has an inside of herself that she cannot rid herself of, seemingly a metaphor for the persistence of the Palestinian people's pain.
There are aspects of the book that reminded me of other books where a woman has a breakdown. In Clarice Lispector's The Passion, According to GH, a woman accidentally smashes a cockroach in half, causing her breakdown where nothing much happens. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a teacher has a breakdown and decides to give her students her prime, but it is anything but.
Favorite Passages:
Why is it that the rich are uptight but the poor are themselves?
He had just be-come a French citizen, he said, and his friends wanted to go to the Pride parade in Tel Aviv, but he was still hesitant. I told him I was Palestinian and had just become a citizen of Armenia. Some-times, maybe even most of the time, telling a stranger that you're Palestinian is a handicap, it makes people withdraw from you, it makes them unsure or suspicious. But other times it's like show-ing a hand of four aces. You get a pat on the back, you get Yasser Arafat's V sign, you get free stuff. And that day, when I told him, Mubarak sold me a size 35 Birkin in crocodile skin, the color of ganache. Happy Pride, Vive la Palestine, Eid Mubarak.
I walked back to the hotel, and I wondered if it was true, what I had told him, that I didn't need to pretend. Maybe pretense Was all there was. Fashion is pretense, education is pretense, personality, too, is a form of internalized pretense. I wondered what my true essence would be, if I were solitary, in nature, untamed and unconditioned.
I read the poem again, it said something about me, about what kind of person I was, what kind of teacher I wanted to be for my students. That poem, with all its references to art, was meant to be a vacation from their burdens. There was a moment, before, when I was carefree, when I offered my students lightness. As Frank O'Hara wrote, It seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience.
Aisha belonged to that rare breed of people, kind and gentle people, I think they are born that way. They're more visible in cer., tain professions, in education, or in health care, like the nurses who draw blood. These people often work indoors, they work long, intensive hours, sometimes night shifts. There aren't many of them these days, because our culture socializes us against kindness. I know this because you rarely come across them in the street.
Rich Palestinians, she told me, rolling her eyes, in New York of all places, the world capital of support for Israel. I agreed with her, I said, The more contradictions in your life, the more complex your identity, the harder your soul, the more difficult it is to love and be loved. I don't want to be with similar people, I continued, if you rub many knotted strings together, they don't solve into a beautiful braid, they just become a big ugly mess.
I was unfamiliar witn. I come from a land that is a graveyard. For millennia, all kinds of people were born there, they died there, or were killed, and some were even resurrected or reborn. It was bloody, haunted, and doomed, but it belonged to mankind. Nature in America Was uncivilized and untamed. I didn't know how to read it. If a deer was some kind of warning sign, I wouldn't have known.
I loved my friend's house but I knew that it was haunted. Even at a young age, I knew that there was a family out there in the world that was still holding on to the key. No, I didn't know this intuitively. Each time my morn picked me up from the house she made a remark about it. Of course, the door had long been changed, it was a modern glass door with a keyhole fitting a small aluminum key, which my friend kept on a friendship bracelet. I remember that above the door they had garlic cloves hanging. My friend told me that it was there to ward off vampires, but I think, in truth, that it was to keep the spirit of the original inhabitants away.
Of course, nothing had happened, it had barely been a few weeks. I dug it out, the will was pretty much intact. The Birkin was soiled, I had ruined it, but the hardware was still shiny. I thought about metal then, and the landscape of my childhood, how it was saturated with coins. Roman coins, gold Abbasid coins, ancient Judean coins. There were shekels, mils, and drachmas. Emperors, gods, and queens. They didn't decompose. They just stayed there, in the ground. And the coin in my body, it was going to stay there, until I died, and long after. ...more
James Patterson's attempt to give back to librarians and booksellers everyone who stocks every permutation of his books in multiple copies. I thought James Patterson's attempt to give back to librarians and booksellers everyone who stocks every permutation of his books in multiple copies. I thought so many of these stories fell flat and missed the looming crisis of literature, critical thinking, and book bans. We are whistling in the dark here. ...more
“The thing is, May,� the hum said, “the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any oth“The thing is, May,� the hum said, “the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.�
A near future with climate change, mass surveillance, and a lack of jobs forces one young Mom to alter her face to get ahead. She now can avoid facial recognition, but this seemingly mundane process causes havoc in her life. She pays for a great vacation for her family at the Botanical Gardens. However, even that leads to her face being actually recognized in the worst way.
One of the most stressful aspects of this story was the robots (known as hums) constantly trying to sell something. It's a sharp contrast to the hardscrabble life of the main characters to feel the relief of buying whatever they are selling, even if what they are selling is hollow.
I enjoyed the ending with Hum comforting the family. The story was stressful, and this ending was a reminder of what is important. ...more
When I see a bird that has died, I don’t accept the sanguine saying, “It’s the circle of life.� It is good to mourn and wish it weren’t so.
Amy Tan's When I see a bird that has died, I don’t accept the sanguine saying, “It’s the circle of life.� It is good to mourn and wish it weren’t so.
Amy Tan's latest book takes an unusual twist. A non-fiction book about birding, backyard birding at that. As she increasingly becomes fixated and focused on creating the best habitat for her birds, we see her poetic prose come through. We are riveted at which birds like which feeding mechanism. We care deeply about every bird, crestfallen at any injury, which often means certain death—a beginner's guide to bird watching but a master at description. There isn't a feather that falls that escapes her gaze. This was a surprising favorite for me this year.
Favorite Passages:
With both fiction and birds, I think about existence, the span of life, from conception to birth to survival to death to remembrance by others. I reflect on mortality, the strangeness of it, the inevitability. I do that daily, and not with dread, but with awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering, for reviving the bird and my heart. With every novel I finish I think it’s a miracle because three or four predecessors never came to life. With every adult bird I see, I think it’s a miracle it is before me, because 75 percent of young songbirds die before the end of their first year. When I try to find the right image and words that capture an emotion, I must beat down clichés and homilies, which are devoid of fresh thought and honest contemplation. When I see a bird that has died, I don’t accept the sanguine saying, “It’s the circle of life.� It is good to mourn and wish it weren’t so.
I still see in my mind’s eye the goldfinch with its swollen eyes. Did it fly off with the others? Is it sitting alone on the branch? I imagine it making futile forays to this now empty spot it knows by the habit ingrained by a precise number of wingbeats. I see it in my mind sit- ting on a nearby branch, wet, starved, weakening until it falls to the ground, dead. Such heartbreak comes with love and imagination.
Each day I look at the birds and they look at me. Each individual bird is different. Each individual has its personality. What if owners of roaming cats noticed their backyard birds looking at them. What if they saw the same bird looking at them day after day. What would they then feel if they witnessed it suffering as their cat played with it as a live stuffed animal? Maybe the owners would no longer thank their cat for the lovely bouquet of loose feathers. It’s not too late for them to become besotted with birds, to rejoice over their presence and mourn their unnecessary demise.
I understand the antipathy. Invasive birds usurp habitat and resources. But I can’t help but feel discomfort. The rhetoric is often the same as the racist ones I hear about Chinese people. I am still new to birding, and so every bird is a good bird to see, even the ones I see all the time. I am happy they’ve come, that they’ve chosen my yard to visit for a few minutes or the day or every day for many weeks or months. I especially love the birds that are here every day of the year, like the titmouse and chickadee. I hope I never cease to be amazed.
In January, I will start a new journal. I will include much more of what I see in the trees, as well as on the ground where the sparrows and quail live and nest. I will sit outside on a low chair to watch the action on the ground. I will see where the sparrows and quail live and nest. I will see where the quail hide. That will require I remain frozen still, making no sound or twitch. To remain there motionless for an hour or so means I will also be frozen from cold. One must suffer for beauty, happily, for birds....more
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