February 19, 2025
Gleanings
- What caretaking teaches us is that there is no grand or permanent utopia, only tiny, fleeting, and intimate ones
- i am saturated in colour, the rosy or yellow or sky blue buildings, the cup I bring back from the market, filled with pineapple and mango, dusted with chile, the houses tumbling down the hills above Oaxaca, red, pink, emerald green.
- wish i could teach the value of small things to other people. there has to be a crack somewhere so i can get in, so i can show this. just a sliver.
- One of our regular big-order customers comes to pick up six hardbacks, which means the pressure is off for the rest of the day because that sort of sale is more than I might take the whole day. This is less a comment about what a great sale it was, and more a comment on how modest our takings are.
- But words — they’re not hard, not to me. They’re malleable and slippery and musical. They are the material of play — or one of the materials, and one of my most reliable. We dance together. Words dart under the surface and burst through it, carrying an image, a roar, a need.
- So why bring up uncertainty? Because in Victorian Women Writers this week we are finishing up our work on Villette, and more than once in class I have acknowledged my own uncertainty about what exactly is going on in this strange, brooding, gripping novel.
- I’m trying to bring gentleness into my interactions with loved ones and strangers as a kind of resistance to brutality.
- And so, if you find yourself spinning, wondering what more you can do beyond donating to a cause or contacting your government representative, here’s a little primer to get you started…
- What can you say about a famous 1970 novel, that nowadays gets remembered more for its nostalgic fashion than literary merit? That it was brief. That it was stocked with characters from central casting. That it made everyone cry. Including me, many times.
