Flower fairies, evidence of

 

X Ways of Speaking about Silence

 

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"Everyone is driven by the urge to 'say something'...We are oppressed by silence. We feel that to be silent before a wrongdoing is to be an accomplice to it, and that to be silent before the obscure is to be overwhelmed by it."

        - Resil Mojares, on "Writing a column" in House of Memory  (1997, p.7-8), Anvil Publishing.

"...the problem of speechlessness, which is a state without agency... that we feel impressed upon by things but unable to push back at them."

        - Mark Doty on The Art of Description: World into Word (2010), Graywolf Press. 

"Everytime my country

breaks into a war of words,

I make sure I break out

the heavy artillery

of my silence. "

        -Allen Samsuya, "34" (2022). 

Upon drawing attention to a kapok tree in full bloom for the nth time this summer

 

Rumi is a mood.

Long fallen wide

What is it that makes one think this really isn't a poem about a house filled with photographs and cutlery, cushions and stools and vases? Is it the attribution of sadness to a thing? One's own propensity to live for other people's comfort? To have been raised to be that comfort to those who will outgrow the need for it? One's stubborn performance of home-liness, stasis, to call back into existence what is no longer there? Though we would like to believe in permanence--the idea of it, spurring us forward, further into the future, with the promise that there will always be home to return to, no matter what--we are, all of us, irredeemably fickle,  neglectful, and beyond that, mortal: so that even those amongst us who have in fact promised, in earnest, to return, are party to ruin--if not today, then some day. 

Lucky 2020

S was curious about Fully Booked's 2020 Fukubukuro promo. We were circling the bag pile at ATC when she yanked a Wildcard bag from the middle of the pile with such conviction--

I gave in.

It turned out to be a pretty good deal. This illustrated Edith Hamilton volume is 1 of 19 Fully Booked gave away this year. We also got two interesting business bestsellers, a Newberry award winner that S says is really good, and a Neil Gaiman pocketbook. Oh, and a steel bookmark too.

Lucky us. Lucky S.

Quiet, by Susan Cain

Introvert and high self-monitor here. Very consoling. Helps  recalibrate self in places that privilege extroversion. Good first read of the year.

Paired with: Whittaker's Single Origin Samoan Cacao: Extra Dark Chocolate from the family's holiday gift stash.