The Sparrow
Title: The Sparrow
Author: Mary Doria Russell
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Genre: Literature/ Philosophical Fiction
Length: 431 pages
In 1996, 2019 must have seemed so far away. Now, in 2013, while reading Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow I am struck with the oddity of dates in science fiction novels and the disadvantage of time. Then again, Russell’s novel isn’t science fiction so much as philosophy and a study of human nature and peoples’ thoughts on God.
It is like 1984 that way, a study of the world as it is and always will be, not just one particular society. And like 1984, The Sparrow is timeless.
More than God and philosophy and all those huge thoughts I’m supposed to have about the book – you know, the ones you discuss in Book Club and during literature courses in college – I was stunned by the humanity of it all.
Quotes about relationships like,
“The antagonism he sensed but could not understand. And finally, ending at the beginning, the almost physical jolt of meeting her. Not just an appreciation of her beauty or a plain glandular reaction but a sense of… knowing her already, somehow.”
Russell’s work is full of those moments. Those gut reactions, nuances, and descriptions of sensations everyone has had at some point in their life – or if they haven’t, they will. Those epic feelings of “knowing,” the ones people adore having in movie-like surrealism, but are completely caught off guard and unprepared when they happen.
Russell has written something uniquely philosophical and thought provoking, but amidst aliens and Christian theology, atheism, Judaism… in space travel and anthropology, I was caught off guard by the sensation of understanding these characters so completely that I felt like they were my own. If not my own, a part of me… or maybe, just me.
I am riveted by the emotional anorexic. I am captivated by the seduction of doing God’s purpose. I am amazed by their choices.
More than that, I wish I could write something like this – something so thoughtful. But I suppose the reality of my life is that I am stubborn and obedient, curious and creative, but not thoughtful. No, I am not that.
I seem to be lacking the thoughtfulness and critical thinking skills, the ability to really pursue enlightenment. Instead, I find myself caught up in the safety and the dogma, and more than anything in the whole book, the innocent friendship between Sofia and DW – that was my favorite part. How simple of me to read something so profound and I just want to bask in a cozy friendship.
Seed Savers: Heirloom
Title: Heirloom
Author: S. Smith
Genre: Young Adult
Length: 300 pages
“I haven’t been this in love with a young adult series since Harry Potter,” I wrote after reading the first installment of the Seed Savers Series – Treasure – for the first time. Having now read the second and third installments – Lily and Heirloom – I can happily say that the statement still holds true.
No, there aren’t wizards or magic. The adventure doesn’t reach any of the same fantastical levels, but it is very epic. It is based in a truth that could easily lend itself to being our future. This dystopian society is so intense, because it’s so plausible.
Treasure featured two runaway kids (Clare and Dante) after their discovery of the wonderful world of planting your own seeds and growing your own food, in a government where that is forbidden. They flee for their safety. They flee to learn more.
Lily is where you get to know another character, Clare and Dante’s friend and fellow cohort in the Seed Saving excitement. In this book she blossoms before our eyes into less of a sidekick and more the hero. I was pleasantly surprised to find she had such a huge role in the story. She’s not just the key to almost everything, but the narrator as well! Who knew?
After a long alienation from Clare and Dante, Smith is wise enough to bring us back and feed our curiosity. Heirloom is told back and forth between what’s happening with Clare and Dante, and the world according to Lily. I loved this pattern for a third in a series. It wrapped up some lo0se ends, it led us into asking more questions, and we were able to adventure cross country and learn more about growing plants in a cozy environment in the same book. My brain needed this.
Heirloom, even more than the other two in the series, is full of interesting facts about how a society would get from where it was in the 1980’s to what it is in Smith’s novels. In a time when we are debating GMOs, organics, seeds, and patents, this book is a must have to help middle grade students grasp all the political nuances decisions of today will have on tomorrow. I love that Smith was able to take an intense political topic and weave it into a fascinating (and fun) story.
The fun comes into play, I think, because Smith did not intend to strictly bark all this information at us. It comes from love, and you can sense that as you read. Love for what? “[M]y love of good food,” she said in a blog interview with me once, “Seed Savers is a love story starring home-grown food. I love food—growing, harvesting, cooking, eating, and sharing it. And I think a lot of people these days maybe are missing out on that.”
If you’ve read books one and two, you cannot miss this third part of the series! It’s essential. It has propelled us so much deeper into the story and I’m jittery waiting on the fourth! It didn’t maintain the same read in one sitting quality of books one and two, but I believe that’s because the characters demand more of your time. There is so much more going on, and in the midst of it all they want to teach you as well. That takes more than a day. Clare, Dante, and Lily are growing and stretching their legs, and with them Smith is becoming more detailed and dynamic in her tale. Like good food, Heirloom was made to be savored.
If you haven’t read any of the series, you must. Purchase it for yourself, purchase it for your children for Christmas and read them together – or just swipe the copies and read them yourself. They are so good.
A Homeschool Mom Meets Seed Savers
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The thing about homeschooling – the awesome thing – is that plans are made, expectations logged, and as a parent you do a lot of letting go of both of those things as your child sort of takes over.
I personally planned on going full force into the alphabet and phonics, drill numbers and be sure my three year old was the smartest on the block. At age two she already knew all the states on the U.S. map south of the Mason Dixon line.
Kiddo, God, and the universe, had other plans. And I like them.
With the help of S. Smith’s Seed Savers series, some extreme budgeting issues (I’ve been the poorest person I know for the last twelve months), and Merriweather’s fabulous foraging site (see the links on the right), we’ve pretty much spent our ‘school days’ in the woods.
It all started many, many moons ago (as I like to say to my kiddo when telling stories)… somehow I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Seed Savers: Treasure from S. Smith by mail. I remember reading some of it out loud, but then giving up and devouring it all alone. I gave up because I wanted to read it faster, I wanted it all to myself, not because Kiddo was anything but cooperative.
What resulted is a long standing admiration for S. Smith, requests for her to participate in Earth Day 2013 (which she graciously accepted from 3000 miles away) and taking Kiddo to said Earth Day celebration. Before Seed Savers, I was already on a mission to be more self-sufficient and have my own garden, but Seed Savers really solidified that need in my heart. Instead of *wanting* to do it, I got my butt in gear and did it. This shift in my mentality eased over into the preferences of my daughter.
She loved the Earth Day celebration. She got to plant seeds with volunteers from the Mercer Arboretum. She got to watch me raffle off S. Smith’s first two books (Treasure & Lily), and it was all over – these Fall plans I had noted during my pregnancy were half out the window. Without hearing the entire Seed Savers story, Kiddo fell in love with seeds. S. Smith’s words are so powerful they radiate into every aspect of our house just by sitting on the shelf.
We have seen and read The Lorax more times than I can count. On her third birthday her great-grandmother gave her spending money and she spent it at Good Books in the Woods on two Cat in the Hat Learning Library books. One is on Rainforests and the other on Seed Planting.
We spend our days looking for birds on the trails, foraging for produce, growing our own bell peppers and okra, and now reading Heirloom as we tromp through the woods.
However, you don’t have to be a mom, a conservative, a homeschooler, a toddler, or a hippie to enjoy the Seed Savers Series. Seed Savers, including the latest – Heirloom – is full of courageous characters, a rich adventure, and exciting philosophical food for thought.
What started out as a really unique young adult dystopian society concept on Smith’s part, has evolved into something more than we initially bargained for. The story is more complex than I anticipated. The effect on our lives has more reach. Smith has matured as a writer along with the growth of her characters. I’m a little disappointed that the stories will, at some point, come to an end…
If you don’t believe me, find out for yourself.
Purchase the Seed Savers Series from Amazon
Visit the Author’s Website: http://authorssmith.com
Go Like Her on Facebook: http://facebook.com/AuthorSSmith
Follow S. Smith on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AuthorSSmith
Whispers for the Soul
Title: Whispers in the Dark
Poets: Ashley Nemer, Stacy Moran, Torie N. James
Genre: Poetry
A Product of The Art of Safkhet
A Guest Review by Angelina JoiAnn
As I was reading Whispers of the Heart by Ashley Nemer I felt depressed at the beginning by reading words like cry, darkness, kill, and beat. The first poem “They Say” gave me hope with “angel, strength and spirit.” I did not understand why “I walk and feel wetness” is in the “Darkness” poem – I am guessing it is raining, but to me darkness is not wet. Rain is more of a cleansing – a way to feel alive – not isolated. The the depression goes into a vampire and human relationship with “Forever you are mine” and “Immortal Love.” I can picture a vampire saying/writing those words after biting a human. I kind of get the darkness feeling going into the Vampire poems but after that I get thrown off with memories, dog, and grandpa.
While reading Whispers in the Storm by Stacy A. Moran I felt like the section would have been more aptly named Whispers of the Soul. It felt like the poet was writing poems from different growths of her soul, and perhaps had even lost a child. The poetry seemed to speak from a child to a woman, from a woman to a mother and so on. I would have liked to see them organized from love to heart break, but I felt a lot of growth over all and really enjoyed this section.
Whispering Flames by Torie N. James has to be my favorite. I felt like a phoenix flying out of the fire. I felt free while reading the different poems – as though the weight of the first two sections were being lifted off my shoulders.
Overall, I was taken on different feelings and journeys throughout the book and felt the different aspects and growth from the souls of the writers. I did feel that each section had a weird, random organization, and that the poems could have been better placed within each author’s portions, but that’s just my OCD. I enjoyed peeking into each poet’s lives.
I love you, I love you not
Title: Player Piano
Author: Kurt Vonnegut
Length: 295 pages
“Anita, I love you.” The compulsion was upon him to tell her everything, to mingle his consciousness with hers. But as he momentarily raised his hand from the drugging warmth and fragrance of her bosom, cool, fresh air from the Adirendacks bathed his face, and wisdom returned. He said nothing more to her. – from Player Piano
It wasn’t until I read that paragraph on page 118 that I really began to appreciate Kurt Vonnegut.
I’m stubborn. People love Vonnegut. Especially nerdy literature geeks. I’m a nerdy literature geek. My friends love Vonnegut. I should love Vonnegut. But because I should, because I am appropriately quirky and should be his target market; because of these things, I’ve never cared for him much.
I wrote a character who adores him once. Whenever I read Vonnegut, I summon this character in my brain and try to feel his words the way she does. It gets me through the book… small details got me through Cat’s Cradle (Bokamaru! or somesuch nonsense).
Still, I am stubborn. The excitement that quote on page 118 gave me died down by page 150.
I wrote the character previously mentioned based on another friend’s love for Vonnegut a few years ago. My friend who loved Vonnegut is gone now, so any details on the passion are completely fabricated, only the source is rooted in anything real. My friend and I swapped paperback copies back and forth, and though it’s something I vaguely recall about him, it is not what we bonded over.
So, though he sits politely in my brain any time I pick up something Vonnegut related, I don’t remember which ones he read and which he had not. He had a habit of reading parts of a book and rarely finished many in their entirety. Was Player Piano something he read completely? What were his thoughts while he was reading it? Did he make it to page 118 – did he read those words about mingling consciousness?
I’m stubborn, but beyond being stubborn Vonnegut is tainted for me. There’s too much pressure. Too much connection and disconnection at the same time. Too much expectation.
“I’m more than halfway through this novel in a day and will finish before I go to sleep “, I journaled earlier tonight, “But I am not involved in the story. And my stomach is in knots.”
Instead of preparing for a book club meeting, my mind is with the dead. My mind is on the dead when I get to page 191, “He discovered that there was nothing disquieting about seeing himself dead. An awakening conscience, unaccompanied by new wisdom, made his life so damned lonely, he decided he wouldn’t much mind being dead.”
And when my mind is not with the dead, it is with the merely absent. It’s certainly not here. It’s certainly not in this book. It is on a bike ride with my friends – or off in the manuscript of my second novel that I wish I was finished with already.
So Vonnegut, you will always reside on my shelf. I love the familiarity of your spines and covers loitering in my library. I think you are important. You will not be forgotten, because “Well, sir, it hurts a lot to be forgotten.” And clearly, I think you are beautifully quotable at times. But I do not love you. I’m too stubborn.
Death Without Cause
Title: Death Without Cause
Author: Pamela Triolo
Genre: Crime Fiction
Length: 297 pages
Murder mysteries are an easy sell. There’s something innately intriguing about one human being ending another. I noticed this not only when I worked retail where people impulsively picked up clearance paperbacks with shiny letters over black spines, but also as I toted around Pamela Triolo’s Death Without Cause.
I took it to get a pedicure at the Kingwood College (or Lone Star, rather) Cosmetology department. It was my mother’s treat for my niece’s birthday and she took me and my daughter along. It’s a great place to take children for their first, as it’s inexpensive and allows the students to practice on not so picky clients. It’s apparently also a good place to talk books.
First thing the girl said was how much she loved mysteries. She talked a minute about her various reading preferences – always a topic of interest to me – and I passed her the bookmark that Triolo included in my copy of the book. For good measure, the girl took a picture of the cover with her smart phone. I hope it results in a sale…
Because even though murder mysteries are a dime a dozen – sometimes, quite literally if you find yourself in the right shop – and even though I generally always enjoy them, there’s a difference between a mystery that fills time and one that’s really good. Triolo’s is really good.
“The nurse was the first and last line of defense for patients,” a character in Death Without Cause observes. What happens when that defense fails against a calculated and knowledgeable killer?
Triolo is a registered nurse as well as a skilled writer. Just read the prologue of Death Without Cause and you can’t help but understand why this woman would want to study medicine and write mysteries to boot! She makes the heart sound solid and sexy and desperately fragile at the same time, an organ too tempting for a psychopath to pass up tampering with.
It’s also clear that Triolo knows what she’s talking about. She’s not just a writer throwing around jargon she’s heard… I always think of films where the character peeks in the stalled car on the side of the road and says something utterly ridiculous and then walla, the car is fixed… No, Triolo is a nurse, sounds like a nurse, and has captured the ambiance of the hospital hands down. I was riveted.
For those who like a bit of a romantic twist, don’t worry, Triolo didn’t leave you out – there’s a little budding love story in the background as well.
I anticipate Triolo being a future bestseller. She radiates the finesse and know-how of others who have written from their career experience… Kathy Reichs, John Grisham, and more. I look forward to seeing her name in the New York Times one day. For now, The Houston Chronicle, I’m sure, will enjoy sharing one of Houston’s best with the world.
Pamela Triolo and Melanie McEwan at Half Price Books Humble during Nurse’s Week.
Aspects of a Novelist
Title: Aspects of the Novel
Author: E.M. Forster
Genre: Literary Criticism
Length: 176 pages
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a very small child. So small that I don’t recall the first revelation or declaration. I simply always knew it was something I wanted to do one day. I also have always enjoyed books. I remember loving to read before I was even any good at it. I remember devouring books before my peers had even mastered their letters. This is not because I was smarter than them, not by a long shot. This is just how much passion I had for the idea of language and the written word.
Naturally, I also love books about writers writing… like Stephen King’s On Writing and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden Letters. I even like authors who get bossy about it like Umberto Eco and E.M. Forster. They deserve to be bossy, as they are brilliant.
I fell in love with E.M. Forster in high school when my favorite English teacher of all time told me to get a copy of Howards End. I remember devouring it almost over night and spending nearly a half hour after school discussing it with him. I remember being utterly blown away by Howards End for reasons I cannot even vaguely recall now, but things amaze you at sixteen for no particular reason at all, it is a habit I have tried to keep as I age too.
My debut as a novelist comes out this week – a novella, actually – called The Bookshop Hotel. I’m about halfway through writing the sequel, a book that will be a full length novel twice as long as the novella, and I’m already paranoid about potential reviews hailing my inferiority as a writer. So, I’m consulting one of my heroes for advice, writerly wisdom from the talented author of Howards End.
As I read Forster’s famous lectures, it is becoming clear to me that I will never be E.M. Forster, John Steinbeck, or even an Audrey Niffenegger! I will never be a best-selling New York Times sensation. I’m ok with that, it was never my intention to be infamous. I have other aspirations.
What I would like to do, though, is to tell a few good stories, make some income for my family, and have the satisfaction of stumbling across my books on shelves in unexpected places. That will be enough for me.
In the mean time, I’ll work as though my goal is to be the next Stephen King (on the prolific level anyway), because even though I am not the most talented, I don’t ever want to be accused of being half-assed. I’d rather be untalented than lazy.
So here I am on a Sunday night perusing Aspects of the Novel, munching on every tidbit, taking notes, wondering if Forster himself would have anything positive to say about my stories because the vital elements to a novel he points out are vital indeed and I’m unsure as to whether my characters can live up to that vitality.
“Forster’s casual and wittily acute guidance… transmutes the dull stuff of He-said and She-said into characters, stories, and intimations of truth,” Jacques Barzun is quoted. Let’s hope he’s right.
Whether it transforms me into something wonderful or not, the book is amazing. Every student of literature, lover of books, or budding author should give this one a go. Then again, I am partial, remember, I fell in love with Forster ages ago.
Different Kind of Fighter
Title: The Immortal Class
Author: Travis Hugh Culley
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Memoir
Length: 324 pages
My bike club went camping this weekend. I love bikes and I love camping, so it was excruciating knowing I had a pre-Halloween event at my store, bills to pay, and a general inability to leave my husband and child to go on a frivolous trip that would inevitably involve a lot of drinking and riding.
I love books more than anything, and I adore Chris Rogers (the author we had in the store Saturday), but my mind was off in the distance with my new friends – family really – their tents, their bikes, and the dirt and grit far away from my rows and stacks of books.
This isn’t about me whining about not getting to go on a camping trip, though. This is about the discovery I made because of where my mind was not and my body was… in the city, longing for my cycling friends who were partying it up and having a blast.
The stars aligned, the shelves at the store all seemed to point me in one direction, and a copy of The Immortal Class seemed to fall from the heavens.
So overly marketed as to appeal to the counter culture, zine reading crowd, The Immortal Class is one of those small square-shaped trade paperbacks. With phrases like “adrenaline-spiked” and “frenzied rawness” slapped across a black and grey jacket in egg-yolk yellow.
Months after becoming obsessed with the world of cycling and setting goals to really hunker down, figure it out, and join this world – I discovered this weekend why it appeals to my soul so completely.
“[T]he world down here was remarkably organized. Even if it was loud and bombastic, rebellious and unconventional, the people were often fixated on levels of personal status. With one another, messengers were highly cooperative, and yet competing against one another, they were fighters to the bone. It was a tight society where one could promise lasting respect and recognition for what one could offer to the community.” – pg. 230
Of course this appeals to me – this whole world of simultaneous independence and camaraderie. I grew up in a Kung Fu studio. I trained, I relied on muscle memory and instinct. I know so well the feeling of not remembering what it feels like to not be sore somewhere. I built very specific familial relationships that were directly tied to how much blood, sweat, and tears were spilled in each others’ presence.
I still do my work outs. I still teach occasional students. But I am no longer that kind of fighter. I remember when I knew I would never go back in the ring – at least not in the way I used to. It wasn’t the hairline fracture on my sternum. It wasn’t the broken and busted fingers. It wasn’t even the shin injury that twelve years later hasn’t seemed to heal just right and still swells up when it rains. It wasn’t any one thing, really. It was actually before I got my third degree, something I only got because I promised myself I would. It was actually a summer before that when after working out no less than 55-60 hours a week for months on end, after more than a decade in uniform and sash, I realized I was tired – mentally and physically. My mind was ready for something new and my body needed a break from the routine.
I love hitting the streets at night!
I started running more avidly. For a few years I ran 3-5 miles a day. I enjoyed that thoroughly, and I still run periodically. (You may remember a post about Born to Run, a book on barefoot running that kick started the running bug again recently…) But there’s always been something missing from my running – speed. A rush I can’t manufacture on my own two feet, that I used to get in the ring, has been absent. Running didn’t fill the void Kung Fu, my years of being a tournament junkie, and finally the days of bleeding for money had left behind when I said ‘Enough.’
Cycling, though, cycling has suddenly lit up my world and started to warm my soul in a way I haven’t been warmed in a long time. Probably since I fell in love and got married… yes, it’s that good of a rush! Seeing all that I have to learn excites me. Inspecting bruises from crashes and the act of getting to know my bikes (or loaner bikes until I own my own, rather) fills me with the pride that though I am a far, far cry from being any good at this sport – like a white belt dropped in the midst of advanced ninjas – I am at least one step, one bruise, and one fall closer to the perfection I seek.
I have no illusions of grandeur. No presumption that I will be great at this. I’m pushing 30 and my body feels 50, but I’m sure as hell going to try.
Inevitable black eye commencing in one… two… three… GO!
Haven’t felt so myself in a long time.
I dare you to read The Immortal Class and not get the urge to hop on a bike. I dare you. And just remember this: The more you ride, the more you’ll want to ride.
The Evolution of Everything
Title: The Evolution of Jane
Author: Cathleen Schine
Genre: Fiction
Length: 210 pages
The perfect fall day in Texas: a spinach and onion soup with lots of cheese mixed in, coffee gone cold, Huckleberry Sage in my Scentsy Warmer, all the windows open because it’s so nice outside, Tethered by Sleeping at Last playing softly on repeat, and The Evolution of Jane in front of me.
In a week of epiphanies, nostalgia, cold fronts, random spurts of rain, and recuperation after sheer emotional exhaustion, Schine’s novel is perfect and lovely. Soft and defined at the same time. A little more perfect than I expected.
It’s supposed to be a comedy… “A cerebral comedy of manners,” the Boston Globe calls it. I find that in itself humorous, as I haven’t laughed since the first page. Instead, it feels (oddly) exactly like life. It’s a mish-mash of inappropriate feelings, unexplained drama, stress where there should be none, and complete nostalgia.
It even has a delicious quote that made me swoon as it so much reflects how I feel about my own life. “I loved my job, for it allowed me to rub shoulders with ideas, to listen without having to retain, to gather information like flowers.”
My job, this job that is part author, part homeschool mom, part event coordinator, part reader and reviewer, part so many things… this job feels like that… like gathering flowers. My life feels like that in general. I am a forager, I pick up and discard things as I go, looking for any bit of nutrients and beauty I can get along the way.
I bought this book years ago at the height of my Darwin and Evolution studies. When I was trying to squeeze every bit of information on anything that briefly fascinated me. When I was trying to retain everything. How appropriate that I wait to read it now, when I can read it with more of a passing fancy, where I can absorb a story without trying so hard to remember it all.
Life isn’t meant for you to remember every single moment. If we were meant to remember it all with such clarity, I think that we would. Some things are best left discarded. This book, however, is not one of those things. If you buy it, you should keep it. It will get added to the re-read sometime pile.
Magical Thinking and the Vortex
Title:The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Joan Didion
Publisher: Knopf
Genre: Memoir
Length: 227 pages
‘I want to go to Malibu. I would have especially loved to be there in 1976… but alas, I am not a time traveler,” I think as I look at the black and white photograph of Joan Didion with her family on the jacket of The Year of Magical Thinking.
I’m holding a first edition, twelfth printing from December 2005. It’s a hardback and does not yet feature the gold emblem in the upper right hand corner you see there. I’m assuming where it announces that Didion won the National Book Award for her memoir about grief.
Didion describes ordinary moments when lives change with such detail and such sadness. All I can think is that I find people who go out of this world in ordinary moments sort of blessed.
I know too many who have departed at the height of some drama or another… a gun to the head, horrible bodily functions that caused them to drown in their spit, people who spent their last moments screaming in horrible pain of the body or the mind.
These other people who depart happy… well, let’s just say I hope I go out that way.
Reading this book brings back the nausea of my own grief. Every description she offers sounds familiar in some way. No, I haven’t lost a husband, or a child, but I’ve lost. And I anticipate their loss every day.
Grief comes to you in a number of ways. One of which is the way you find yourself trying to fill in the hole that missing person left behind. And doing it badly. Leaving not a filled in hole, but nauseatingly burning questions you can never get answered. Song lyrics you can’t un-hear.
When someone dies you are to be there for the family. You are in no way to interfere with their grief. You provide. You silently help. You be there. You do not intrude. I was taught this. I was taught not to draw the attention away from the people in real pain – just as Didion describes.
But reading this, I weep.
What about the people who have no rights? No claim? The person sitting there who viewed the deceased like family but clearly meant less than the real family?
What do you do when one of the best people you have ever known is dead and you have no claim?
You stay silent. Or have inappropriate anger toward the deceased.
You find yourself trying to make new friends to fill their place, only to realize the relationship was entirely unique and can never be replaced. Because they were unique.
Didion speaks of the Vortex – of memories – in a way I know so well. Her vortex are stories of her daughter – her husband – snippets from their lives.
Mine is my own private cage. That world of private thoughts that I don’t have. Mine come in deja vus and too much whiskey. Mine come in always hearing the right thing at the wrong time and the wrong thing at the right time. Mine come in conversations that remind me of silences, and silences that echo long gone conversations.
My Vortex is the panic attack that starts in my pinkie and the moment in which I forget something I used to remember… or suddenly remember something I forgot.
The Year of Magical Thinking is a bit of a Vortex too… best kept under wraps in a comfy chair, with my journal nearby for the uncontrollable vomit of thought and tears that will arise as I turn the page to the next chapter.
Anakalian Whims 