Dear friends,

If only I could blame the dog for the lack of blog posts! Unfortunately I am not allowed to have pets in the household (somehow I ended up writing poets instead of pets – cue existential crisis).

What in fact took place is just as outrageous though. I somehow managed to lock myself out of the blog and then proceeded to do the same with the email account associated to it. To give you an idea of how things are going at the moment, I also seem to have forgotten the password that gives me access to all accounts at work.

With a bit of optimism still in me, and an extra key just in case, I might just make it to Edinburgh in one piece. First escape of the year, mid-January, of course it had to be to Scotland.

“The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” by Gabrielle Zevin

“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and then.”

Every now and then, more often than not when I am going through one of my sporadic yet maddening not sure what to read, if anything phases, I wonder why I do it, why I read. Well, this is it. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is it.

A.J. Fikry is an Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast, a specialist of sorts, turned bookseller by the heart of Nic, a woman of poetry with a particular, peculiar and yet endearing thing for vampires. Together they open Island Books, the only bookstore in Alice Island. Then life happens, and it could have been the end had life not happened again… and again, following no particular storyline, having no consistent plot. Had it been a novel and not his own life, he would have probably thrown it at a wall. To be fair, he does try, but it doesn’t stick.

Commonly written off as a snob for his specific taste in literature and awkward-mistakenly-taken-for-standoffish behavior, the epic tale of A.J. Fikry’s life is told through a list of short story recommendations… and I’m afraid that is all I’m willing to say, because I don’t want to end up disclosing by mistake one of the many little revelations that make this book the treasure that it is. I would like future readers to face it as a stranger and have the pleasure of watching it grow into something possibly as familiar as an old friend.

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

Gabrielle Zevin’s writing is… charming. It doesn’t stand out, it doesn’t shout look at me, how magnificently tailored I am. Instead, it focus its attention on the characters’ voices, giving them a physicality that is almost, if not truly, palpable. If that’s not a gift, I don’t know what is.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is one of those books that blends with reality in such a way that it makes it almost impossible for the reader not to blend with it. These people become family and you get to know their little quirks and that’s how you feel it, you feel it happening. I found myself putting the book down for five minutes at a time, half expecting, daring, fate to change. It didn’t. Oh, but how I appreciated, loved, every moment spent in the company of this book. Quoting A.J. Fikry himself, “Every word is the right one and exactly where it should be.”

As is by now evident, I loved every single thing about this book, but there’s an idea in particular that has my heart full of wonder – life as a collection of works instead of a novel. I needed this. Not making sense as a whole is perhaps what makes sense. After all, is there such thing as linearity when it comes to life? We are made of moments, are we not?

“In the end, we are collected works.”

To every book lover out there, if you haven’t read this, DO IT. You won’t regret it.

“The Life List” by Lori Nelson Spielman

“Finally, this book belongs to every girl and woman who sees the word ‘dream’ and thinks verb, not noun.”

This book was given to me by a darling friend, a very special friend that I cherish with all my heart. That said, you sneaky little you! I am usually the one who sends books around just because I feel like someone needs to read them. Books are more than just stories, you know? They are open conversations and I had to have this one with myself. For a long time, really. So thank you, lovely. Even if far, I felt you right here. Whether you meant it or not, THANK YOU.

“No. You don’t need meds. You just need more love in your life – be it from your father, or from a lover, or from another source, perhaps yourself even. What’s lacking is a basic human need. Believe it or not, you’re one of the lucky ones – you admit you need it. There are a whole lot of unhappy folks out there who’ve stuffed away their needs. Seeking love creates vulnerability. Only healthy people can allow themselves to be vulnerable.”

This novel follows the life of Brett Bohlinger, a woman who has somehow convinced herself that she has everything she wants, everything she needs. When her mother passes away, when her rock suddenly goes invisible under her, Brett’s foundations begin to crumble. It’s from the ashes, with the help and guidance from someone who knew her better than she knows herself, that Brett rises, getting reacquainted with her dreams, with her heart, with herself.

I really did enjoy this book. I must confess that at first it was hard to connect with Brett, but then again, Brett was having trouble connecting with herself too. As time goes by, though, understanding and respect take over. As improbable as the scenario might seem, if you allow yourself to just go with the flow, heartbreak and dry humor and all that, you are in for a treat.

Predictable? Maybe. Or maybe that’s just life, so simple that once you see it for what it is all the troubles just start to seem ridiculous. But not irrelevant. One needs to fall to learn how to get up. Light would be nothing without darkness. So maybe it’s time to put things into perspective. Perhaps it’s time to make a list of our own.

“And I thank you, my dear reader, for allowing me into your life, whether for a day or a week or a month.”

Thank YOU.

“Franny & Zooey” by J.D. Salinger

I have been sitting here for quite some time now, trying to find a way around the maze of thoughts this book has created in my mind. I feel like I have removed every single one of my books from their current assigned place, put them all on the floor, as if mixing ingredients together, and read my way into finding a connection between them, the recipe. It’s not something physical, the connection, I mean, it’s not a thing, or a word, that you can point at and say, Look! There it is. That’s it. Instead, it’s a feeling that I find gathered in the very last line of Franny and Zooey,

“For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling.”

I honestly don’t know what else to say about it. I would perhaps call it a revolution, but that doesn’t seem to be the point, at all. Instead, I think I will go with calling it an experience, for it certainly was one. The construction and deconstruction of everything and nothing… it was absolutely marvelous. It somehow reminded me of Voltaire’s Candid − must have been the discussion of wisdom, knowledge and intellectuality.

I think this is one of those that will require at least a second visit. Don’t mind if I do.

Currently Reading Quotes: “M Train” by Patti Smith

“I look down at my hands. I’m sure I could write endlessly about nothing. If only I had nothing to say.”

“Such a sad portion of injustice served to beautiful Bolanõ, to die at the height of his powers at fifty years old. The loss of him and his unwritten denying us at least one secret of the world.”

“I count the lines of the envisioned one-hundred-line poem, now three lines shy. Ninety-seven clues but nothing solved, another cold-case poem.”

“It occurred to me, as the heavy curtains were opened and the morning light flooded the small dining area, that without a doubt we sometimes eclipse our own dreams into reality.”

“I suppose I was busy thinking about such things or attempting to untangle the mystery of an expanding network of seemingly unanswerable questions.”

“The compass was old and rusted but it still worked, connecting the earth and stars. It told me where I was standing and which way was west but not where I was going or nothing of my worth.”

“Perhaps there is no past or future, only the perpetual present that contains this trinity of memory.”

There is truly something magical about Patti Smith’s writing. It feels like we are in an alternative reality where time moves in a different way – it follows you instead of having you run after it. It’s quite extraordinary.

Currently Reading Quotes: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”

From the introduction…

“Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.”

“Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!”

“In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane – bonkers. (…) Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

“Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it.”

Currently Reading Quotes: Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”

“The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.”

Sylvia Plath’s The Night Dream.

“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.”

Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus.

“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”

Sylvia Plath’s Elm.

Author of the Month: Michael Cunningham

The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most significant awards an American writer can be honored with. Our author of the month, Michael Cunningham, was the recipient of the aforementioned grandiose praise in 1999 for his masterpiece The Hours.

“What lives undimmed in Clarissa’s mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it’s perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.”

If I had to choose just one word to describe Michael Cunningham’s novels I do believe I would go with honesty. There is no space for sugarcoating in his books. Don’t expect his characters to look out for your feelings, for your susceptibilities. They will be so blunt they will hurt you. They will make you think non-stop from sunset to sunrise and back again. They will whisper truths in your ear till you allow your eyes to open and see that change is nothing but acceptance, nothing but a step forward on the long path of discovering and accepting who you truly are.

The writing feels as though the words he uses were created and given such definition and meaning so that they could later on become the sentences that decorate the pages of his novels.

“How, after all, can such a turmoil of hope and fear and lust be inaudible? How do our skulls hold it in?”

You find yourself reading the same passages over and over again, for they are so effortlessly put together, and they convey so much emotion, so much feeling, so much life. They seem to reach out from the pages to caress your face, to wipe away your tears, while you just fall… in love.

“Love, it seems, arrives not only unannounced, but so accidentally, so randomly, as to make you wonder why you, why anyone, believes even fleetingly in laws of cause and effect.”

Reading Michael Cunningham is like being extremely afraid of heights and choosing to go on the world’s greatest and most frightening roller coaster, a roller coaster with such low downs that it makes you wonder whether there is any sense to the word bottom and floor. It’s like being extremely afraid of heights and choosing to go on the world’s greatest and most frightening roller coaster and finding out that the feeling of the wind caressing your face is worth the chills that go down your spine as you queue to go in. Everything loses reference but then suddenly everything makes so much sense…

Reading Michael Cunningham is discovering your zero, your middle, your ground. And then breaking it. And then finding it again.

Reading Michael Cunningham is getting in touch with your humanity. And it’s beautiful. Scary… but beautiful.

He always seems to find the path to the extraordinary, even when starting from the most ordinary spot. I believe that to be one of his many incredible talents: to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. And he invites us to do the same, to look at what surrounds us and what’s inside us, and find our extraordinariness.

“Why I Wake Early” by Mary Oliver

Languid.

The word reminds me of the early hours when there are no thoughts of rush, when every single thing takes its time. It feels as if the universe has been rehearsing this moment for perfection. Cue the sunrise. Cue the first singing voice of the day. Choir, you are up next.

Every little thing sounds so loud in the silence of the morning. Peace is palpable. There’s a sense of plenitude. Your breath falls in rhythm with the surroundings. The air smells of possibilities, of new beginnings.

It’s both breathtaking and reinvigorating. If you wanted to, you could reach out and touch the sky.

That is how Why I Wake Early made me feel.

“I

held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us.“

The poems in this collection are longer when compared to the ones in Felicity. They seem more pondered, as if we are walking in the woods with Mary Oliver, eyes closed as we listen to what she sees, to how she sees. There’s no fear, only trust. She feels so gentle, so kind, so alive… so full of affection and gratitude.

“Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,
are not living. I say,
you live your life your way and leave me alone.“

A cry of joy that breaks the silence disguised as a deep breath of the morning air. It’s absolutely mesmerising.

“and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.“

Poetry of the closed eyes, I called it in my journal. A trip down a memory lane that becomes ours.

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Português

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Lânguido.

A palavra lembra-me a aquela madrugada que se constrói à margem de pensamentos apressados, quando toda a pequena coisa leva o seu tempo. Parece que o universo vem ensaiando este acordar para a perfeição. Entra em cena o nascer do sol. Depois uma voz, a primeira do dia, que se quer cantada. Coro, és a seguir.

Os pequenos sons soam tão alto no silêncio da manhã. A paz é palpável. Vive-se plenitude. A respiração entra no ritmo do que a rodeia. O ar cheira a possibilidades, a novos começos.

É revigorante. Se quisesse, conseguiria alcançar e tocar o céu.

Assim me achei depois de Why I Wake Early.

“Eu

sustenho a respiração
como fazemos
por vezes
para parar o tempo
quando algo maravilhoso
nos tocou.”*1

Os poemas nesta coleção são mais longos quando comparados com os de Felicity. Parecem mais ponderados, como se caminhássemos nos bosques com Mary Oliver, de olhos fechados enquanto ouvimos o que ela vê, como ela vê. Não há medo, apenas confiança. Ela sente-se tão gentil, tão amável, tão viva… tão cheia de afeição e gratidão.

“Algumas coisas, dizem os sábios que sabem tudo,
não são viver. Eu digo,
tu vive a tua vida à tua maneira e deixa-me em paz.”*1

Um grito de alegria quebra o silêncio, disfarçado de uma inspiração profunda de ar matinal. É absolutamente encantador.

“e o que a alma é, também

penso que nunca irei realmente saber.
Embora brinque nos limites do saber,
verdadeiramente eu sei
o nosso papel não é saber
mas olhar, e tocar, e amar,
que é a forma como eu caminhei,
suavemente,
através da luz rosa pálida da manhã.”*1

Poesia dos olhos fechados, foi como a apelidei na minha sebenta. Uma viagem por uma avenida de memórias que se torna nossa.

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Deutsch

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Schlendernd.

Dieses Wort erinnert mich an die frühen Stunden, wenn es keine Gedanken an Eile gibt, wenn jede einzelne Sache ihre Zeit braucht. Es fühlt sich an, als ob die Welt diesen Moment für Perfektion geprobt hat. Stichwort Sonnenaufgang. Stichwort erste Singstimme des Tages. Chor, du bist als nächster dran.

Jede Kleinigkeit klingt so laut in der Stille des Morgens. Frieden ist spürbar. Da ist ein Gefühl von Fülle. Dein Atem passt seinen Rhythmus der Umgebung an. Die Luft riecht nach Möglichkeiten, nach neuen Anfängen.

Es ist zugleich atemberaubend und neu belebend. Wenn du wolltest, könntest du die Hand ausstrecken und den Himmel berühren.

Das ist wie Why I Wake Early mich fühlen lässt.

“Ich

hielt meinen Atem an
wie wir es manchmal tun
um die Zeit anzuhalten
wenn etwas Wunderbares
uns berührt hat.”*1

Die Gedichte dieser Sammlung sind länger als die in Felicity. Sie scheinen erwogener zu sein, als ob wir mit Mary Oliver durch die Wälder streifen, mit geschlossenen Augen, während wir dem lauschen, was sie sieht, wie sie sieht. Es gibt keine Angst, nur Vertrauen. Sie fühlt sich so sanft an, so gutmütig, so lebendig…so voller Zuneigung und Dankbarkeit.

“Einige Dinge, sagen die Weisen, die alles wissen,
leben nicht. Ich sage,
ihr lebt euer Leben wie ihr es wollt und lasst mich in Ruhe.“*1

Ein Freudenschrei, der die Stille der Morgenluft durchbricht, getarnt als ein tiefer Atemzug. Es ist absolut faszinierend.

„und was die Seele ist, obwohl

ich glaube, dass ich es niemals wirklich wissen werde.
Obwohl ich am Rande der Erkenntnis spiele,
weiß ich wahrhaftig,
dass unser Part ist, es nicht zu wissen,
sondern hinzuschauen, und zu fühlen, und zu lieben,
welches der Weg ist, den ich gegangen bin,
langsam,
durch das blass-pinke Morgenlicht.“*1

Poesie der geschlossenen Augen habe ich sie in meinem Journal genannt. Ein Schwelgen in Erinnerungen, die zu unseren werden.

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*1 Tradução livre/ Freie Übersetzung