They kept showing up, for days, dead on the windowsill, and for days I did nothing about the ladybugs except to ask if their entering the house unnoticed and dying before I saw them was symbolic. Thinking was so easy. They symbolized birth and death, change and rebirth. It was also possible the tiny beetles embodies an inborn need to show themselves, to turn up in every and any place, even as the dried out remains of the once-lively. Or they stood for the burden of being one thing relieved by becoming another, which all the world’s children suffer.
This went on and on, and could’ve gone on forever, so I finally opened the window and blew them into the wide open because everything and everyone should get a chance to be mourned, and they got theirs, but first they had to die, which is life, not symbolism.
Today’s quote by Margaret Atwood has been stuck in my brain ever since I first came across it. If memory serves me correctly, I believe it was in a new introduction by Atwood to her novel The Handmaid’s Tale, which if you haven’t already read, there’s no better time than the present.
The written word is our receptacle for memory. Without documentation, we have no history, no blueprint for the future, and no constancy to purpose in terms of our collective attempt at living what many philosophers have called the good life. Every time we write, we are holding in our psyches the implied future reader Atwood references. Even if we never write with the intention of publishing our work in mind, there is still a knowing behind committing your thoughts to paper, a compact between yourself and those who may stumble across your words in the future.
Without documentation, we have no history, no blueprint for the future, and no constancy to purpose in terms of our collective attempt at living what many philosophers have called the good life.
When I was a library worker, we got book donations all the time, oftentimes daily. Most of the books were, forgive me, ready for the rubbish bin, but every now and again a folded scrap of paper would fall out with someone’s gnarled script on it and I’d have a new treasure. Most of them I didn’t keep because they were things like checklists or grocery lists or other ephemeral scraps, but there’s one I still have in my possession: a decades-old scrap of notebook paper with a poem on it. It is one of my most treasured possessions.
I was the implied future reader. And this is how we are connected, invisibly and irrevocably.
Perhaps one day I’ll share it on here. The point is I have carried that poem in my heart for years and I don’t even know the author. Only a first name and a date are listed but I think about the writer often. In the poem, they are beseeching God for answers because they’ve lost something (or someone, more likely) dear to them. This person may be long gone by now, passed into eternity, but I still pray for them. I wonder how their life turned out. I was the implied future reader. And this is how we are connected, invisibly and irrevocably.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Glass house tinkling Bring down a mountain of rocks Flesh out of new skin
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart: Poems by Alice Walker
——
Nothing will penetrate your sorrow. Or your loneliness. This I know. And yet here I am singing a song about doors at the bottom of dark wells stuffed already with rats and corpses.
Here I am telling you that in reality and as improbable as it may seem: There is no (doorless) bottom to this life.
War is nothing but a militia of sharp teeth: wolves lapping up blood
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
So many want to be blessed. I only want to kneel in a quiet room. To love what we have or not exist at all. Nothing to help me sleep. Only a scrap of paper slipped into my hand: Your body an ocean, a song without end. Votive candles flickering in the dark that made us larger than life: hip-thrust, back-arch, mouth-grip, you on top till we collapsed in the coiled springs that came to rest. A chair where you once sat. A bowl of fruit neither one of us would touch.
Bonus Graphic
The most resonant part of Vespers for me is the line, “Only a scrap of paper slipped / into my hand: Your body an ocean, a song without end.” So enthralled was I by that particular imagery that I made this little ditty, which I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy (Note: The image is a royalty-free stock image—I have simply added the words to the note in the center):
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
Is there anything that burns as bright in embryo or scars as deep in the aftermath as first love?
Is there anything that burns as bright in embryo or scars as deep in the aftermath as first love? I think Bella Mayo, the author of My Greenhouse, would be inclined to answer no. And I would be inclined to agree with her.
As we grow up we become jaded, conveniently forgetting the potency and primacy of the feelings we had when we were young and in love. I don’t believe there’s ever a time a person is more alive than when everything is blossoming for the first time—the first time you feel someone else’s lips on yours as well as the first time someone takes your heart and shreds it like so much dirty confetti.
My Greenhouse leaves no stone unturned and no leaf unfurled, showing that healing after heartbreak is indeed possible—even if you have to dig everything up and plant it somewhere else.
Mayo catalogs all of these feelings and presents them as a blueprint for moving on when the one you thought would never leave decides they can’t stay. My Greenhouse leaves no stone unturned and no leaf unfurled, showing that healing after heartbreak is indeed possible—even if you have to dig everything up and plant it somewhere else.
My Greenhouse: Poetry is due to be released on September 21st by Andrews McMeel Publishing and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
If everything is nothing, you waltz alone my friend, you are the dance
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
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