Author: Former Lemurians (Page 25 of 137)

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

By Former Lemurians

On June 29, 2015

In Culture, History, Politics, Religion, War

Surah CIX

The Disbelievers

As Revealed at Mecca

1: Say: O disbelievers!

2: I worship not that which ye worship;

3: Nor worship ye that I worship.

4: And I shall not worship that which ye worship.

5: Nor will ye worship that which I worship

6: Unto you your religion, and unto me my Religion

Are you a history buff interested in accounts of War—specifically moments like Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? If you are, you must know the potent, practical knowledge of studying instances in which the USA has been forced to abandon ideals of isolation to wage war in foreign lands.
I have met professional and amateur historians that rattle off facts and stories about D-Day, Pearl Harbor, or the A-bombing of Japan as if they stood there with omniscience on each of those days—but I have met very few people that are receptive to the same, vivid discussion concerning what happened on 9/11.

This is understandable; the wounds of 9/11 have hardly scabbed over. We still feel an emotional connection to the event and there is a collective seething just beneath the surface of our skins that makes objectivity an arduous pursuit. Alas, in order to channel our emotions toward greater resolution we must ready ourselves to have discussions with our peers without the fear of sounding “Un-American” or resorting to branded key words that numb our tongues and blind our vision.

As for many of the most difficult dilemmas, the Shelves of Lemuria may hold the answer.

I had only begun to realize what happened on 9/11, and so six years after the towers fell I decided to buy a first edition copy of The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright from Lemuria. Previously, it had been impressed upon me that the reason we were attacked was the product of an animosity driven by jealousy, silently brooding over seas, seething in envy of American ideals and freedoms.

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright exposed frailty and incongruence in my own perception of what happened on 9/11, 2001. The pages of this work armed me with a powerful weapon—understanding. Besides my own heartfelt praise, The Looming Tower has been internationally lauded as a must read by a myriad of authorities, and won the Pulitzer Prize. After finishing The Looming Tower I feel it is my civic duty to encourage you to read this book.

Within the book, Wright makes poignant elaborations concerning the atmosphere that propelled the atrocities of 9/11. Much of The Looming Tower is spent analyzing Osama Bin Laden’s complex relationship with the West and with Saudi Arabia. An effort is spent to humanize Bin Laden and understand the importance of his exile from Saudi Arabia and the dual issuance of Fatwas against Saudi Arabia and the United States concerning the presence of an American military base on Islamic ground.

The Looming Tower makes the claim that Bin Laden’s expulsion from Saudi Arabia, where he was gaining traction as a populist mobilizer, led to his formation as an internationally sought financier and organizer of several grass roots extremist organizations. Bin Laden allowed the hunger for retribution corrupt his high levels of education and pervert his ideology towards gruesome ends. His thirst for vengeance upon the religious and political elites of Saudi Arabia catalyzed his momentum towards the violent culmination of 9/11.

Bin Laden’s motive as shown in The Looming Tower for organizing the hijackings of 9/11 was a strategic maneuver of wicked guile. He wished to strike the Saudi government, but found his organizations’ numbers too small to carry out such an audacious move—so he did the one thing that would become the legacy of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: improvisation.

The lesson applied to The Looming Tower explains to me why Bin Laden attacked America in the first place. The thousands in the Towers, on the planes, and working in the pentagon were doves—completely innocent to motives and intentions of Bin Laden. The American Air Force, being the metaphoric red-tailed hawks theoretically would have become hungry for large meals of the religious and political elite of Saudi Arabia (being the metaphoric timber rattlers).

The stratagem was quite simple: attack Saudi Arabia by proxy. Al-Qaeda casted the 9/11 hijackers nearly exclusively from Saudi Arabia in order to illicit a violent response toward Saudi Arabia from the US. The intent of this design was to make it appear that the attack originated from Salafist and Wahhabi communities within Saudi Arabia, which (in thought) would propel America to employ their tools of war upon the political and religious infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps, this could’ve happened if it weren’t for the hard work of our intelligence officers, who understood that the Taliban was housing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

If you haven’t read a well researched, objective account on Al-Qaeda or extremism in general, The Looming Tower is the best place to start. Come to Lemuria, put the book in your hands and feel the historical proximity of yourself to Wright’s work. Open it, let your emotions flow as the pages turn and you will connect to this book immediately. Then the next step should come naturally: tell others how you feel and what you think should be the next step in “The War on Terror.”

Photo Credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

In Defense of Graphic Novels

By Former Lemurians

On June 25, 2015

In Culture, Fiction, Graphic Novels, Staff Blog

First, read this article.

Now, read this.

To most of us, college is a time to broaden horizons, mentally stretch, and to find out where to draw our lines. For Tara Shultz, the line was immovable from the beginning with no hope of being re-drawn. The problem of her protest is twofold: trying to force the books out of curriculum for all students instead of personally removing herself from the class is ultimately a selfish and bullying tactic; and by claiming that she was “expecting batman and robin, not pornography” is patronizing and belittles an entire genre of literature (and its authors) that can have the emotional depth and breadth of the written novel.
We at Lemuria have been striving to carve room in the store to build up our stock of graphic novels that we believe are fulfilling, fun, and thought-provoking. We encourage all of our readers, young and old, to explore this medium of literature and remain open-minded as they read. Ultimately, a graphic novel on any subject can be challenging because instead of being the commander of your imagination and creating your own version of the world being described to you, an illustrator takes that power away from the reader. It can be hard to un-clench our fists and relinquish that control. However, handing over the power of imagination to the artist does not make this mode of literature any less powerful or interactive. I believe that reading a graphic novel is in no way a passive act like watching television, but that it works different muscles in your brain, much like switching from jogging to swimming; both are cardio, both are effective exercises, but you can get sore in different places.

On several occasions when reading a graphic novel that was particularly weighty in its subject matter, having the wheel of imagination taken out of my hands was a relief. I can’t speak for all readers, but being able to take my mind off of the architecture of the world in the story and focus my attention on the characters themselves- it was transformative. So many brilliant artists use the illustrations in a graphic novel like a highlighter, underlining important ideas or phrases. In David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp, as the protagonist ages and changes, so does the style of art on the pages; and, peeling back even more layers of the title character, the style evolves even more as his opinions of the people around him change. It’s like looking through a pair of binoculars into a microscope; ultimately tricky and hard to wrap your mind around at times, but as the images come sharply into focus, the headache goes away and the wonder begins.
In a turn of events that would probably surprise one miss Tara Schultz, the first time I experienced the moment when the rug of low expectations was pulled from beneath me was- you guessed it- when I picked up Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Poetic justice is a glittering and sharp sword. Miller weaves a story of regret and a scabby old identity crisis instead of simple vigilante justice and a good old fashioned political spanking for the corrupt. The Bruce Wayne of Miller’s Gotham City is older, tireder, and angrier than we are used to, and his self-conscious antics are equally compelling and embarrassing to see. The feeling of intense, growling reality that came from watching a man transform in such raw and painful way was shocking. I went in expecting witty one-liners and came out at the end shocked and emotional; feeling as if I had had a cold bucket of water sloshed over my head.

This new age of literature isn’t so new- Miller’s Dark Knight was released in 1986- but it feels as if it’s just had a fresh bath. More literary readers are turning to the medium for consumption, and authors are skillfully doing away with the “Batman and Robin” stereotype that people like Tara Shultz are trying to paste over the whole genre. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home waltzed into the spotlight when it was rewritten for the stage and recently won a Tony for Best Musical. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (one of the books that Shultz is protesting) became so widely known and influential that it has become required reading for many high school social studies classes. We are lucky enough to be living in a time where art, literature, and music are being appreciated and consumed in ways we never could have foreseen, but that won’t stop naysayers from trying to do away with anything they deem inappropriate or different. Educate yourselves. Read new things, stretch those unused muscles, and help us to encourage the growth of a generation of forward-thinking, open minded individuals.

Bleak but Relatable: Happenstance

By Former Lemurians

On June 24, 2015

In Poetry, Staff Blog

In my opinion, just because someone can compare a cup of sugar to the idea of love does not mean they are a clever writer. I prefer poetry that can make me think, and I only came across this poem for my British Literature class in college. But it really resonated with me, because it was one of those few times I read something and felt relief because someone addressed a really specific feeling I’ve had.

Hap is basically about how Thomas Hardy wishes that some god or higher being would tell him that the hardships he’s had to endure in his life have some meaning, even if it is only for the entertainment of the god. But Hardy knows that most likely there is no meaning to his life at all, everything that has happened to him is simply chance, thus the title of the poem, Hap, is short for the “happenstance” of his life’s events.

Yay existential crisis! So it’s pretty sad, but just the idea that a famous poet has felt something that I have makes me feel a bit better. It’s a pretty cool poem, and is worth reading and researching the words that Hardy uses to describe his feelings because they have specific definitions that help with understanding the poem. Also, if you feel depressed after reading the poem, just imagine reading it out loud in the middle of the rain while sad music plays like in a movie, while you, I don’t know, shake your fist at the heavens. Then it’s hilarious. So I hope you read this poem, and I hope you feel oddly comforted by it like I did.

Hap By Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Environmental Creative Nonfiction: a fascinating niche of literature despite its horrendous umbrella term

By Former Lemurians

On June 23, 2015

In Adventure, Nature, Staff Blog

First off, introductions: Hello all, there’s a new Maggie of Lemuria in town!

Well, not really. You might recognize my face. I’ve been in and out of the Lemuria rotating staff since the summer of 2013 before my senior year of high school. After a summer internship in Oz, I worked part-time as a senior, learned enough to provide an extra hand to wrap or work Oz during the holidays, and here we are. I just keep coming back, even after my freshman year at Ole Miss. I’m working on an English degree my parents still disapprove of.

Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Recently, I’ve become acquainted with the genre of “environmental creative nonfiction”. Bear with me- it’s a fascinating niche of literature despite its horrendous umbrella term.

When I say environmental creative nonfiction, I’m talking about adventure pieces by John Krakauer, Cheryl Strayed’s wilderness memoir Wild, and Rick Bass’s diary-style Winter: Notes from Montana. What these pieces have in common are their personal narratives of growth and experience as influenced by their environment. The environment becomes a character within the work because it plays such a crucial role in where the piece goes.

One of my favorite pieces within this highly specific genre is David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen. I was first introduced to this work in Nature Writing, an English course I was lucky enough to weasel my way into during my second semester. I was mostly in it for the chance to get some real writing critique and a trip to Costa Rica (lemme tell you friends, it was awesome), but I was lucky enough to also be exposed to some really phenomenal works of nonfiction.

David George Haskell is a professor of biology at Sewanee, and The Forest Unseen follows what he refers to as “A Year’s Watch in Nature”. Haskell observes a one-square-meter patch of old-growth forest, referred to as the mandala, for an entire year. The work is divided into chapters concerning specific anecdotes and aspects of life in the mandala, from fungi to insects to plant and animal interaction, touching on how all are linked together in a complex web. Everything is intensely researched and backed up with scientific fact. There are detailed descriptions of life cycles, bizarre adaptations, histories of scientific discovery. But what makes The Forest Unseen such a phenomenal book is Haskell’s skilled weaving of the scientific and the spiritual.

It begins with Haskell’s use of the term “mandala”. Mandalas are small circular sand drawings that are representative of the entirety of the universe and are in the tradition of Tibetan monks. From this one concept, Haskell brings into his book a complex layer of spirituality. He alludes to many different branches of faith and their relationship to the environment, discusses the nature of souls within the concept of the natural world, and draws parallels between his observations and religious concepts. By discussing spirituality in relation to science within the concept of the mandala, Haskell connects humanity to the environment, something we so often tend to view as some inconceivable other.

I want to put this book into everyone’s hands. I look for any excuse to recommend it to someone, but it is such a hard book to quickly summarize. It is about so much. It is about humanity and the environment and religion and science and the relationship between it all. It is about the past and the future. It has the power to speak to you if you let it.

In short, Haskell transforms a potentially dry, textbook subject into an ethereal reading experience (okay, maybe it’s a bit dry at the beginning but you can’t have everything). He creates intoxicating yet informative prose that reads like a poetry collection and a textbook. He brings the environment he observes to life, lets it breathe on the page and gives it a voice. Haskell has me head-over-heels in love with environmental creative nonfiction, and I have a feeling this is going to be a rather drawn-out love affair.

Spend Father’s Day With the World’s Largest Man

By Former Lemurians

On June 17, 2015

In Culture, Southern Culture

by Andrew Hedglin

“Well.”

This is how all of Harrison Scott Key’s stories begin, according to the end of the first chapter of his tragicomic memoir about his father, The World’s Largest Man.

He doesn’t literally begin all his stories this way, at least not in writing, but I’d like to think he really does when he’s telling them aloud, whether to his children at bedtime or to a small group at a party in somebody’s kitchen.

It’s a little pause that gives opportunity to the storyteller to think about if he really does want to tell what he’s about to, and for us if we really want to hear it. In the moment of the pregnant pause between collecting his thoughts and dispersing them, lies the warning I first heard from the late, great Lewis Grizzard: “I don’t believe I’d-a told that”.

But that’s the difference between him and me, I guess, and I’m glad he committed to the story. And once he commits to telling, we also commit to the listening, because it’s impossible to resist the honest, hilarious, stylized absurdity that is about to follow.

Key begins by telling us stories about a man—shaped by a culture—that has no use for the art of storytelling. Our protagonist gravitates towards his mother, growing to prefer the quiet gentleness of her cooking and reading to the violence-soaked nature of his father’s obsessions: hunting, football, fighting, and farm work. Yes, even the miracle of (bovine) childbirth aims its roughest edges at Key, working on a neighboring farm, for free, at his father’s behest.

Did I say “gentleness” in that last paragraph? That’s not exactly what I mean.

Although sometimes uncomfortable with the more physical aspects of attempting (and often failing) to fulfill the expectations of Southern masculinity, he brilliantly unleashes his own aggression through his God-given talents for sarcasm and smart-ass-ery at every target available: his father in particular, the South in general, his rivals on the baseball field, potential bullies, his ne’er-do-well Savannah neighbors, later his wife (who is just as good at dishing it back), and even (and especially) himself.

His twin talents of insult and empathy lead him to say things which he then instantly regrets throughout all of his stories. That’s easy enough to let happen in conversation, or the dialogue of these stories, but leaving such joking truth on the page, after having enough time to consider what you’re saying? That’s a practiced and glorious art.

Curiously, he wounds his father mostly with disappointment rather direct verbal attacks, until about halfway through the book one day when his father beats our teen-aged narrator, half-naked and cornered on top of a washing machine, angrily with a belt. Key asks his father the question that has been building in his mind, and many of the readers’, throughout the narrative: “What the hell is wrong with you, old man? Are you crazy?”

Crazy can be a relative term, defined by both culture and circumstances. The second half of the books shifts the focus to his adulthood, leaving him a husband and a father himself in Savannah, Georgia. While he escapes the condemnation of the rural Rankin County mores he rejects, he examines the more unreasonable side of his nature in the face of challenges such as his wife’s pregnancy, his daughter’s potty training, tweaked-out neighbors relocation next door, and the very same home-invasion paranoia he began the book mocking his dad for.

The power dynamics do shift from a boy trying to connect with his different-natured father to a man trying to connect to his wife, the mother of his children, and sometimes partner-in-insanity.

Key has to learn which lessons to remember from his raising, and which ones to forget before it’s too late. It’d be easy to sell this book on Father’s Day as a exploration of a certain type of fatherhood, but there’s a lot to relate to whether you’re somebody’s child, parent, or spouse.

Mostly, I can guarantee if you make it to the book, you’re going to laugh a lot. You may even be tempted to tell a few stories about the things you remember from the harrowing experience of growing up.

Would you or I have the courage to celebrate and excoriate ourselves and even those we love as faithfully as Key has here?

Well…

Harrison Scott Key will be signing copies of this book at Lemuria on Thursday, June 18, at 5:00 p.m. and will be reading at 5:30.

Filling Up With Stories

By Former Lemurians

On June 16, 2015

In Southern Culture, Southern Fiction, Southern History, Staff Blog

In the heart of Belhaven stands a little house among all the other mismatched houses. It is framed by flowers and pine trees, and children run through the carpet of green lawn, blowing bubbles and fingers sticky with the melted popsicles they claim as priceless treasures in the heat.

On this porch is a blue wicker rocking chair, and as the summer storm rolls in, it rocks, empty, a glass of sweet tea by its side.

Earlier, before the children were let loose to run like wild banshees, they sat on that same porch and listened to a story or two. This June, every Thursday from 3 to 4 p.m. I have been fortunate enough to read stories in conjunction with the Eudora Welty House for Summer Storytime. Last week, the group of children was so big that we split it up into three separate groups to hear multiple stories before they clamored for popsicles and ran through the sprinkler.

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This upcoming Thursday, June 18, we will be reading stories about writing your own story, and what a better place to do this activity than at the Eudora Welty House, the home of an author who made her own stories. We hope you and your children will join us from 3:00 to 4:00 to make a book.

Who can say whether there is or isn’t a certain magic imbued in a place? When the last of the children left, led by the hand by their parents, it was just as if Ms. Welty herself had been there the whole time, smiling as words and stories filled these children, just as they in turn filled her garden.

As I turned to leave, the rocking chair creaked in the wind, and the little house was quiet, the grass worn by the patter of little feet, standing just as it was before with all the other mismatched houses, right in the heart of Jackson.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

—Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings

A Little Bit about A Little Life

By Former Lemurians

On June 15, 2015

In Culture, Fiction, Staff Blog

Every once and awhile (and it is more rare than you would think, since hundreds of books are released every year) a book comes out that is important.
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, is one such book. It is full of misery, injustice, wrongs so wrong they cannot be undone or fixed or ignored. But it is also full of small moments of joy. Glimmers of hope, not that the past can be reckoned with, but rather moments when the clouds clear and the future holds a promise.

This book is about many things, without the self-consciousness of being about anything. It is first and foremost a story.

A Little Life follows four friends struggling to survive in New York City after college. They are all full of ambition, as we all are after finishing college and trying to “make it big” in the city. JB is an aspiring artist, Malcolm an architect working for a big firm that is paying the bills but killing his spirit, Willem is handsome and friendly and failing to land a role in any plays, and Jude is a lawyer working for the public defenders office.

Although they all have their secrets and their suffering and their insecurities, the lens of the novel slowly tightens on Jude. Jude and his mysterious past. His scars and limp and success; he is the surprising point around which the four friends revolve.

The story does not linger. It is not about how these four friends find their paths and become successful (although we watch them fall into the decisions that will determine their futures), rather it is about life. All of it. Yanagihara pushes us forward, from Thanksgiving dinner to Thanksgiving dinner, from dinner parties to fallings out. With each step forward in time, more of the past is remembered.

A Little Life could be about the unattainable nature of justice or the mysteriousness of love or about forgiveness. It could be about homosexuality. But A Little Life is more then even that. Yanagihara has successfully written a book in which sexuality is a non-issue and anyone arguing that this book is about homosexuality or sexual identity is missing the point. By identifying ourselves solely by our sexual preference we do ourselves an injustice. Before we are gay or straight or whatever we are, we are human. We are kind (or not) and generous (or not). We fall in and out of love. We try and succeed and fail.

But again, A Little Life is not about that. Or it’s not only about that. A Little Life is the story of Jude.

It’s time to be honest about summer reading.

By Former Lemurians

On June 9, 2015

In Culture, Fiction, Parenting/Family, Staff Blog

If you have walked outside recently you know that it is definitely summer in Mississippi again- and I couldn’t be happier. I love the way the summer smells, I love the long days, and I might be the only one that loves the heat. Spending an entire day outside getting filthy and sweaty is still a real pleasure to me- one I rarely get to enjoy anymore. But there’s also fresh veggies being pushed by a farmer’s market that has made some real strides in making fresh produce more available to people in this city. Fondren had it’s first all day First Thursday last week, which I hope a lot of people went out to support the small but growing group of artists blooming all over the city. If you work in a bookstore or have children of your own you know what the summer is really all about: SUMMER READING!

I loved reading for school and then getting to have a teacher explain the significance of what I just read. Novels became a true love for me with my summer reading books because I learned all books have secrets in them. A single page could contain the right combination of words that unlocks a secret, but this is not just the author’s secret- it is your secret as well. Hidden in that book the author has spoken right to you, to an experience you never knew anyone else felt; but if the author felt it, then it must follow logically that some other reader- somewhere reading those same words as you- knows it too. If we are to join in this community of thinkers and shared experiences we have to start somewhere. A shared library of classics we have all read could be a beautiful way to create a shared experience and understanding.

If that was the best of times, then what was the worst of times? Dull classics that crushed my imagination and frustrated me. When children are nothing more than hormones and imaginations why would you ask them to read The Scarlet Letter or A Tale of Two Cities? These are dense, complex novels with imagery and alliterations I still cannot completely grasp, but I was forced to memorize the details that would be on the tests. The significance of the French Revolution or Puritan morality both certainly went over my head because they were inappropriate for the age group when we read them. It is a mistake to show children these books as the benchmark that other books are to be measured by. For many students these will be the only books they read that year and if you hated every book you read in a year you would stop reading until you were forced to read again, just like most students.

I am very happy to see more contemporary/popular books on summer reading lists these days. I think the only way to get children to become readers is to show them how much fun it is. Reading can be an amazing escape from the stresses of growing up, it can expand your way of thinking, it can nourish you and connect you and make you feel loved. We have to show young readers where to find the books that will do just that for them. Where can we find a middle ground from these two opposing views I put forth? I think it must be in a diversity of books we have all read and are able to relate to. Asking children to read dusty old classics is sure to bore them away from a love of books- but we can nurture that love with a selection of books that are appropriate in content and relatable to the culture they know.

Rearranging

By Former Lemurians

On June 8, 2015

In Decorating, Staff Blog

I looked at my bookcases. I looked, and I knew it was time.

This is all wrong, I said. Who arranged this? Do they know what the alphabet is? It was time to take matters out of my hands and put them back into my newer, smarter hands.

I rearranged the entire bookcase. My husband came home. Again? Why are you doing this again? Now he knows better than to ask.

I think this new system will last for at least another month before I ultimately decide that it’s wrong- IT’S ALL WRONG WHAT IDIOT THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!

Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry

By Former Lemurians

On June 5, 2015

In Poetry, Staff Blog

Blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Every time I eat a blackberry or see a blackberry, I think about Meditations at Lagunitas by Robert Hass. For somebody who loves words, the way they feel in your mouth and the way they look on the page, Hass’ poem is a gold mine of beautiful language and a love letter to the written word.

In the line, “a word is elegy to what it signifies,” the entire written world is open for interpretation. A blackberry in my mind is different from a blackberry in the mind of somebody else. Because you can read the word blackberry, and it is no longer just a word, but takes shape in your mind, takes on a feeling, evokes memories of summer, the way the juice stains your fingers dark purple. My favorite lines:

…because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

And then at the end:

There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Meditation at Lagunitas

By Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light. Or the other notion that,

because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

We talked about it late last night and in the voice

of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone

almost querulous. After a while I understood that,

talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,

pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman

I made love to and I remembered how, holding

her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,

I felt a violent wonder at her presence

like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river

with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,

muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish

called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.

Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.

But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,

the thing her father said that hurt her, what

she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Author: Former Lemurians (Page 25 of 137)

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

In Defense of Graphic Novels

Bleak but Relatable: Happenstance

Environmental Creative Nonfiction: a fascinating niche of literature despite its horrendous umbrella term

Spend Father’s Day With the World’s Largest Man

Filling Up With Stories

A Little Bit about A Little Life

It’s time to be honest about summer reading.

Rearranging

Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry

Meditation at Lagunitas

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