Quote for the Day: October 12th, 2021

*Lie With Me: A Novel* by Philippe Besson and Molly Ringwald (Translator)

Later I will write about this longing, the intolerable deprivation of the other. I will write about the sadness that eats away at you, making you crazy. It will become the template for my books, in spite of myself. I wonder sometimes if I have ever written of anything else. It’s as if I never recovered from it: the inaccessible other, occupying all my thoughts.
Philippe Besson and Molly Ringwald (Translator), Lie With Me: A Novel

There’s nothing in the entire world more painful than unrequited love, or love given then taken inexplicably away. It’s maddening, truly. You never forget it, and for the rest of your life the hundred thousand scenarios called forth from the interrogative haunt you like a bad dream you see every time you think of the one you lost.

The only real cure for this kind of heartache is love, and it needn’t necessarily come from a romantic relationship. It turns out you can give yourself the love you deserve. You just have to be willing to put it in the work.

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, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: October 11th, 2021

Woodstock by Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm *
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free 

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it's the time of man
I don't know who I am
But you know life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden

I also remember being entranced by the hippie woman with the guitar whose voice was at once a hymn, a hallowed thing, and a harbinger.

I can already hear the dissenting murmurs. Is “Woodstock” technically poetry? Nope. Sure isn’t. Do I care? Also no. And to be perfectly honest, if Joni Mitchell’s song lyrics don’t count as poetry, then almost nothing does. I first fell in love with Joni Mitchell in high school. The class was Introduction to Agricultural Science or something like that and Mr. Evans was our teacher. We spent a short period of time on conservation and climate science, but I distinctly remember him playing “Big Yellow Taxi” for us. I also remember being entranced by the hippie woman with the guitar whose voice was at once a hymn, a hallowed thing, and a harbinger.

I decided then and there that if the best tracks from Blue couldn’t make a believer out of her, she’d just have to remain an apostate while I belted it out in the choir.

I am not going to lie. Joni Mitchell is an acquired taste. Not everyone likes her music. My mom cringes every time I play “Urge for Going” or “Blue”. I even tried to convert her with “River” but that also proved ineffective. I decided then and there that if the best tracks from Blue couldn’t make a believer out of her, she’d just have to remain an apostate while I belted it out in the choir. The truth is, even I had to listen to her for a number of years before I really understood her particular mystique, and I owe most of that to repeat listens of “Woodstock”.

Really, if you’ve never listened to Joni Mitchell, do yourself a favor and dive right in anywhere. Now is as good a time as any because on November 12th she’s releasing Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968-1971), which you can preorder wherever you get your music, but preferably from your local record store, if you’re lucky enough to have one.

Quote for the Day: October 11th, 2021

I discover that absence has a consistency, like the dark water of a river, like oil, some kind of sticky dirty liquid that you can struggle and perhaps drown in. It has a thickness like night, an indefinite space with no landmarks, nothing to bang against, where you search for a light, some small glimmer, something to hang on to and guide you. But absence is, first and foremost, silence. A vast, enveloping silence that weighs you down and puts you in a state where any unforeseeable, unidentifiable sounds can make you jump.
Philippe Besson and Molly Ringwald (Translator), Lie With Me: A Novel

Lie With Me was one of the best books I read in 2019. It first came to my attention months before it was released in English, lauded as the next Call Me by Your Name. Side note: Can we stop doing this? By this, I mean using one work of LGBT art as the reference for its successors ad nauseam until something else captures the attention of the mainstream crowd. Okay? Thank you! Anyway, I was immediately attracted to the gorgeous black-and-white cover and when I saw that it was translated from the French by Molly Ringwald (yes, that one!), I knew I had to get my hands on it.

Even in 2021, even in progressive areas of the world, the simple fact of existing as an LGBT person can invite stigma, ostracism, and violence.

Luckily, it did not disappoint. No spoilers, but Besson’s novel is not an easy read. Because of the world LGBT people are forced to inhabit, so much of our lives are lived under a veil of secrecy, which engenders both shame and repression, neither of which are healthy. If not for love, we would all perish. Even in 2021, even in progressive areas of the world, the simple fact of existing as an LGBT person can invite stigma, ostracism, and violence. My hope is that one day everyone will wake up and realize that love is valid and should be celebrated in whatever configuration it expresses itself.

Poem for the Day: October 10th, 2021

My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare by Kaveh Akbar

It’s common to live properly, to pretend
you don’t feel heat or grief: wave nightly

at Miss Fugue and Mister Goggles before diving
into your nightcap, before reading yourself

a bedtime story or watching your beloved sink
to the bottom of a lake and noting his absence

in your log. The next day you drop his clothes off
at Goodwill like a sack of mail from a warplane

then hobble back to your hovel like a knight moving
only in Ls. It is comfortable to be alive this way,

especially now, but it makes you so vulnerable to shock — 
you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove

in your yard, whole hand still inside. Or you arrive home
after a long day to discover your children have grown

suddenly hideous and unlovable. What I’m trying
to say is I think it’s okay to accelerate around

corners, to grunt back at the mailman and swallow all
your laundry quarters. So much of everything is dumb

baffle: water puts out fire, my diseases can become
your diseases, and two hounds will fight over a feather

because feathers are strange. All I want is to finally
take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled

horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug
on them but secretly I will want that very much.

Quote for the Day: October 10th, 2021

*Call Me by Your Name: A Novel* by André Aciman

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!
André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

I know that if I allowed myself the space and energy to honor all of my feelings, I’d never get anything else done.

Arguably the most powerful moment in either the novel or its film adaptation, this exchange between Elio and his father provides CMBYN with its emotional and philosophical core. It also begs the question: is it possible to live authentically without eventually becoming jaded? How do we honor our feelings without suppressing them and still carry on with the daily grind of life? I know that if I allowed myself the space and energy to honor all of my feelings, I’d never get anything else done.

Life, after all, is not just one singular experience or expression of selfhood. It is so many different things, sometimes all at once.

These are naturally questions without easy answers. Perhaps there is no answer. Life, after all, is not just one singular experience or expression of selfhood. It is so many different things, sometimes all at once. The truth, it seems, must lie somewhere in the middle. What do you think?

Super Bonus: Timmy Edit Because I Feel Like It

God, what a stylish man….anyway, see you next time!

Poem for the Day: October 9th, 2021

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized.

I love the imagery in this poem. It gives me chills every time I read it, and I can hear Maya Angelou’s voice in my head when I do. Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized. Inside also is a reclamation, a refusal to be shaped or cowed by the words and deeds of others. After reading “Still I Rise”, the only appropriate response is amen. Amen amen amen.

Maya Angelou Reciting “Still I Rise”

Quote for the Day: October 9th, 2021

Is it better to speak or die?
Call Me by Your Name: A Novel by André Aciman

Note: Even though I took today’s quote from Aciman’s novel, most of my commentary references the film adaptation of the same name. But you know how things go here at The Voracious Bibliophile—we start off on one path together and end up taking another road entirely. Enjoy!

This is, in my opinion, one of the best quotes from CMBYN. I can’t remember exactly how the scene plays out in the novel (time for a re-read), but in the film, Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is being counseled and comforted by his parents, Samuel and Annella (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar, respectively), about his love troubles. Now, Elio never really comes out and says exactly what (who) is troubling him, but they are not fools. That aside, anyone living in the same house with Elio and Oliver (Armie Hammer), their gorgeous summer house guest, would have to be completely oblivious not to notice the mutual sexual attraction that practically crackles every time they’re in the same room together.

I mean, is there any delicate way to tell your parents not only that you like boys but that you’re both enjoying and being tortured by a once-in-a-lifetime summer love affair with their houseguest?

This scene in particular is as heartwarming as it is awkward. I mean, is there any delicate way to tell your parents not only that you like boys but that you’re both enjoying and being tortured by a once-in-a-lifetime summer love affair with their houseguest? Now, don’t misread me. The Perlmans are highly-educated and cosmopolitan. They have same-sex couple friends and wouldn’t think twice about their son becoming involved with another man. No, their concern stems from that basic parental instinct that kicks in when you know your child is in pain. Annella caresses her son’s hair while he lies in his father’s lap, and she reads from the book containing the line which provides us with today’s quote.

In that moment, you become part of the scene, and a feeling of exposure, of becoming emotionally naked, surrounds you and fills you up. Returning to reality feels not unlike leaving Eden, filled with a beautiful and terrible knowledge.

Anyone who can watch this scene and not ache with longing must have their soul stripped of all feeling. The world around you disappears and the wall that separates the performers from the spectators crumbles. In that moment, you become part of the scene, and a feeling of exposure, of becoming emotionally naked, surrounds you and fills you up. Returning to reality feels not unlike leaving Eden, filled with a beautiful and terrible knowledge.

Bonus: I found a YouTube clip of the scene where this line is spoken, and it’s just as powerful after repeat viewings.

Double Bonus: The entire soundtrack to CMBYN is sublime, but Sufjan Stevens’s “Mystery of Love” is on another plane entirely. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song as well as the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Almost to 4K!!!

It’s hard to believe this blog is at almost 4,000 views. I started The Voracious Bibliophile in June of 2021 and while that was only four short months ago, I can’t remember what my life was like before I had this platform to share my thoughts and artistry with the world. A very sincere thank you to everyone who has given this blog a chance so far and here’s to many more posts together!

Poem for the Day: October 8th, 2021

First Thought by Lorna Dee Cervantes

best thought, you had taught
me — a river runs through it,
the foot of the soul standing
stubbornly in the freeze, all
the shards of ice crumpling up
the banks, what survives
in the ignorance. Play it away.
Be ceremony. Be a lit candle
to what blows you. Outside,
the sun gives a favorite present,
mountain nests in ironic meadows,
otter takes off her shoes, the small
hands of her feet reaching, reaching; still,
far away people are dying. Crisp
one dollar bills fold another life.
You taught me to care in the moment,
carve day into light, or something,
moving in the west that doesn't destroy
us. Look again, in the coming summer,
the cruelest month alive still eats up
the hours. Regret is an uneven hand,
a rough palm at the cheek — tender
and calloused. I drink another glass
of water, turn on the tap
for what grows, for you,
for what lasts, for the last
and the first found thought of you.

Quote for the Day: October 8th, 2021

We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.
André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

Call me basic if you want to, but I love CMBYN (both the book and the film adaptation). It is full of passion, angst, remembrance, and regret—all the hallmarks of a devastating love story. You can’t really pigeonhole Aciman’s novel, though; it is just as much a philosophical treatise as it is a story of love and heartache.

Forewarning: I’m cheating because for the next several days I’ll have multiple quotes from the same book/work. Quotes are like potato chips—it’s hard to just pick one.

Tag: The Voracious Bibliophile