You stand as rocks stand to which the sea reaches in transparent waves of longing; they are marred, finally; everything fixed is marred. And the sea triumphs, like all that is false, all that is fluent and womanly. From behind, a lens opens for your body. Why should you turn? It doesn’t matter who the witness is, for whom you are suffering, for whom you are standing still.
Louise Glück. Unknown Author. Public Domain.
Note: Louise Glück was the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her collection of poetry, The Wild Iris (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Alexandra Billings, Actress and Trans Activist, via Instagram
My first encounter with the work of Alexandra Billings was through her role as Davina Rejennae on Amazon’s Transparent. Luminous is too dim a word to describe what she brings to her performances, because it is apparent that she is imbuing each character with the wisdom gleaned from her own lived experience as a trans woman of color.
Today’s quote is taken from a video post Billings made on Instagram a few years ago. Sadly, I didn’t bookmark the exact day but I did write down the quote for posterity because it was too good not to. What exactly, though, does it mean to stand in the center of your own grace? For me, it means that you accept everything that has brought you to the present moment, acknowledging that what you’ve been through has made you into the person you are. It also means that you absolve yourself of blame, and its fugly cousin shame, for what you’ve done to survive. It means that you are cognizant of the fact that you are here because of what you’ve been through, not despite what you’ve been through, and you do not owe the world an explanation or an apology for taking up space.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Lull me into oblivion. My attention span is limited. Infinity, space, time— your voice in my ear, bottom lip on my lobe— turning love into cherries into wine. Creamsicle daylight is wasting away while we wait for the song to finish playing. When you were mine life was always a game sweetly played, vollied to & fro like the king’s severed head; no throne. Fade to black. Next reel, please. Pleas to be real with me remain ignored. Love is not a cat chasing shadows on the floor. I feel you watching me caressing my own crooks in the dark. Elbows, not thieves, though everything of value has been stolen at one time or another. Dear lover, take this rambling lullaby & pitch it into the sea where memory goes to sleep in the steadfast arms of the deep.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
We’ve waited four long years for another Lorde album. With Solar Power, Lorde has traded the bass and bombast that characterized both Pure Heroine and Melodrama for a more languorous sound, one that doesn’t care whether or not you like it as long as she vibes with it.
With Solar Power, Lorde had traded the bass and bombast that characterized both Pure Heroine and Melodrama for a more languorous sound, one that doesn’t care whether or not you like it as long as she vibes with it.
And vibe with it she does. The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber calls Solar Power a “rock nostalgist’s dream,” and I can’t think of a more apt descriptor for Lorde’s junior record. Lorde co-produced the album with Jack Antonoff, who in addition to his work in fun. and Bleachers is also a frequent collaborator of Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift. Some keyboard warriors on Twitter took to their phones first thing this morning to trash the album and Antonoff in particular, but in my opinion they’re way off-base.
For one thing, music doesn’t have to be radio-friendly to be worthy of praise. It may be a little early to call, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Lorde takes home Album of the Year at the Grammy’s next year, which would be a glorious middle finger in the faces of her detractors.
It may be a little early to call, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Lorde takes home Album of the Year at the Grammy’s next year, which would be a glorious middle finger in the faces of her detractors.
Lorde seems to have anticipated the criticism now coming her way, because in the title track she gives us this delicious double entendre: “Can you reach me? No, you can’t,” asserting both her self-prioritization and the fact that she doesn’t need to prove anything to her haters because she’s already beaten them.
All in all, Solar Power is a powerhouse of a record, if a subdued one. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure, but then again I don’t think it’s meant to be. Lorde is just living her life and if you don’t like her, I don’t think she cares—she’ll just keep singing in the sand.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The day I learned my wife was dying
I went to read about volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, fire, bloody war, and murder.
I wanted to discover the most awful, because
I knew her death would be worse than that;
and even crueler would be her absence, not
for a day or a year. It meant not coming back.
That was what I couldn’t imagine. How many
days in Never? How many times would we
hear a car and think, That’s her, or hear
the phone ring and feel suddenly happy,
only to grasp it was basically nobody,
and each burst of knowing would be one
little death, and they will happen all day.
We bother with the ‘old stuff’ because it’s really what’s important to you as a human being, what’s important for your soul. The real value is the art, and it gives us sustenance. It’s something we have to cherish, and we have to make sure it survives.
The cliff’s edge, a salty drink; cerulean & white foam; home, love, & road all have four letters. Home, love, and road all have four letters & I tore me apart: limbs, cells, sinew; all held together by so little, a little blood, oil, & water. Every scrap of paper shredded, every thread unraveled. Living in the empty in-between is easy when you’re unsure of your own tepid existence. How can you tell someone the truth which is that you feel nothing & everything at once?; a whole cosmos made corporeal, flesh theater. Applause, applause! Exeunt all. There was a summer I became obsessed with fragmentation, fading into the woods of autumn where I discovered restoration & took a job selling bundles of violets by the old movie house on the corner of 9th & Vine. All the customers were wine-drunk & in love; not necessarily with each other but with the idea of love itself, the feeling of a mouth & a neck & decades-old spit on celluloid.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I give everything away and it goes away, into the dusty air, onto the face of the water that goes away beyond our seeing. I give everything away that has been given to me: the voices of children under clouds, the men in the parks at the chess tables, the women entering and leaving bakeries. God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird. All things silent in my seeing. All things believable in their leaving. Everything I have I give away and it goes away.
If you drive past horses and don’t say horses you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane but don’t point it out. A rainbow, a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker and don’t shush everyone around you into silence. If you find an unbroken sand dollar in a tide pool. If you see a dorsal fun breaking the water. If you see the moon and don’t say oh my god look at the moon. If you smell smoke and don’t search for fire. If you feel yourself receding, receding, and don’t tell anyone until you’re gone.
The Voracious Bibliophile 