I miss the pause for mystery the beguiling crook of the crone's withered finger how a crevice advancing through a toppled log can fit the whole of a kingdom, comfortably moss overtop to muffle the secrets I miss the wondering wave of not knowing collapsing upon some silver-sighted shore where the questions sprawl across rocks like sirens calling, calling, calling for more
Ten years ago, I slipped inside a backyard rocket and launched myself to the moon Strange thing is— I live here now. Not quite as bouncy as I was back then Not nearly as beholden to the eyes of men And yet— You should see the Earth from my perspective Blue and beautiful if full of Martians and thick with treasure I long to explore
How to mark a year like this? Has it, in fact, been a year? Time seems as slippery as everything else. A year ago, I woke up to the knowledge that we were about to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. I was happy for the historical significance of the milestone, though I was not as excited as I was in 2008, when Barack Obama ascended to that office. The campaign had been too ugly, the divide in the country too troubling, and for as much as I hated Donald Trump, I did not love Hillary. I did, however, believe she'd make a good president, though I doubted she'd be given the chance to succeed by the opposition party in power. Still, when placed next to her competitor, I didn't see how a rational person wouldn't prefer her by a hundred million squintillion to one. But anyway, that morning I was high on anticipation, filled with the sweet, near-relief of it all being done. In 24 hours, I would never have to think about that man ever again: or not as an existential threat, at any rate. Early in the morning, I went out to fill the bird feeder at the top of our hill which faces a steep, wooded ravine behind our backyard. As I approached the feeder, I stopped short. There was a stag standing beyond the chainlink fence. He looked at me. I returned the gaze. In the space between breaths, I counted ten or twelve points on his rack. He was imperious. Imposing. Magnificently wild. I'd never seen a buck so near before. They're notorious loners: people-shy. In the film of my memory, he snorts and stamps his hoof a little. In reality, I think he simply walked on, crunching the fall leaves as he went. A little thrilled, I chose to see this encounter as a sign. I'd never seen a stag so close! Our country had never elected a female President! It was meant to be, wasn't it. That night, as it began to dawn on us that the impossible was fast becoming the nightmarishly probable, I fell off a cliff, like so many of us did. Today, I'm still down here, struggling. Horrified. Disgusted. Mourning what we've lost and almost despairing of what's to come. I still don't feel like I understand what happened. Nor do I know how we reclaim our footing and place in the world.* I know this, though: I've stopped believing in signs. ------ *I wrote this before the Tuesday elections, and the subsequent wave of Democratic victories in Virginia, New Jersey, Maine and elsewhere. Citizens came out in high numbers for an off-year election and rejected Trumpism full-throatedly. A startlingly high percentage of the new Virginia officeholders are women—including the first transgender person ever elected to a state legislature—spurred to action by their love of country and hatred for what Trump and the Trump-enabling GOP have wrought. I am buoyed by these results. I am heartened. They are a chink in the side of that cliff. Now let's all grab hold and climb.
Ever since then, it goes like this. We eat. We sleep. Sometimes we dream before getting up and losing the thread. We walk the same steps to the bathroom, the sink. We sit down We rise. The floorboards creak. We reach for our phones, inevitably. Click— and free fall down holes without any roots. Ghost walk through mirrors which enlarge and distort. On rooftops patroled by wolves in wolf clothing, we sit on adrenaline and wait. some. more. Click. Why this grief we've invited that's just within reach? Trump. Puerto Rico. Mass shooters and "balance." Nuclear war. The first amendment. Environmental armageddon. Ire comes early. Shock, then despair. Because—none of it's as shocking as it was last year. We put the stone in our pocket, get ourselves off to work. Back home, tucked in bed, we dread what's in store for our children's kids. Wonder at the blitheness with which we gifted them life. Would we change it? No. But it's a thought. And yet the most of us— we do keep our heads. We've adjusted—roughly—to the nightmare we live, ears barely ringing from the blanket alarms, eyes blindly scanning for the next savior or devil. Denial—oh yeah. But only in spurts. Hope? Oh, Obama. Hope is changed. For fear's made us children in our abuser's house and hope is most dangerous when the tyrant is scared. And yet, what I want on this crisp, Sunday morning that seems, by all appearance, so ordinary is for someone to cover my screen with their hands and to say: "I don't know, either, baby bird, little lamb. But it's autumn outside. Look. All the things—they're changing again. Point your finger out there, to the ones you can touch. Take the roof off the sky— see how high we can jump."
I'm not as sold on you as I am on your cousin You have little in the way of her arabesque angles and know nothing of the slow, melodious way she takes umbrage, packing up the long legs, concert hall wings crook neck into an island she heaves out and then skyward raising the calm of her own private ocean feet far behind like a lover's old token until dropping anchor, en pointe and alone. Lucky, you don't seem to mind the comparison, too busy listening to the indiscreet secrets of minnows feet tucked in slime eyes grim and primordial on the shoal of a river the blue guy let slide.
Nathan Bransford posted a list of his 100 favorite novels and extended an invitation for other bloggers to do the same. Intrigued by the idea (and eager to waste some time), I decided to take him up on the challenge. It was a fun, if exasperating, exercise. What I found most difficult was evaluating books I hadn't read in ages, but remembered having strong feelings about. It's difficult to rank the things you love, anyway, but how to rank books you last read in high school against the ones you read last year? I'm a different person now. The older books' nuances (and sometimes, entire plots) might have escaped me in the intervening years. In the end, though, I figured if the book was powerful enough to have left an emotional fingerprint, then it deserved to make the cut (though it likely ended up in the bottom part of this list). I did not include collections of unrelated short stories, shorter novellas or memoirs. So, without further ado, here's my list of the top 100 novels:
So there you go! No doubt I've forgotten a few. And I clearly have some big holes here. No James Joyce, no Marcel Proust, no Toni Morrison, Herman Melville, or Vladimir Nabokov—not because I haven't read their work, but because I haven't read any one book to completion. I hope to remedy that someday. I'm also not that adventurous when it comes to genre fiction, and I know I'm missing out on some wonderful mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, etc. If we were keeping tabs on frequency of mentions, Anne Tyler, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Strout, E.M. Forster and Marilynne Robinson would take the prize. One final note: Jane Eyre may or may not be the best novel of all time, but I've come to believe that the novels we read at a formative age (I was 13) are the ones that stick to our souls and won't let go. I've read that book a couple times since in the intervening years, and it's always held up. I love Jane. I love Mr. Rochester. I even love poor Bertha, raving away in that attic of hers. They're why I fell in love with literature. And they're at least partly responsible for why I write today. Thanks for the fun challenge, Nathan! I hope others take it up. If you do, be sure to share your list in the comments section of Nathan's original post, and he'll link his post to your blog.
Lousy at speech, she became a writer marching her words out single file (some missing shoes, others tottering) instead of enduring the alarm bell's clamor sentences smothered, meaning kinked everyone panicking, losing their shit— hearing that crunch of bone on teeth.
Now, years later, I'm still learning what it is to make a story
where to shine the point of focus to feel the scourge of self-immolation leave my body for the length of a page — and shape the fire into glass.
Take my hand, let's plunge into woods, dart between pines like fairy-tale riffraff sprung from a cage Something is lurking, Something sees Is that why the rocks are so rigid and straight? Why else should we stick like words to our page? What if, instead, you let go of my hand and pushed me, ungently, into a lake? What if I laughed instead of getting mad, slime on my head a fish up the leg? Impossible to live like orphans, you say, but it's spring and I'm drunk and I want to be nuts The clock says I've lived but half of this life I want to get wet, be charged with a quest, kiss your hot neck— storm the castle
As if volcanoes were born to make art of the lava You, Francesca, a human person Young. Naked. Even in dresses. Needful as the living dawn.
Young. Dead by the time that I turned five. Francesca Woodman, a suicide a great crawling prostrated obscured in full daylight laughing silently through your lens with a slippery, feral, unnatural intent. Gaze made of marble, Body ether I bet you thought gravity would bend. Baby-girl voice. Varicose ambitions. Your mother, the ceramicist, didn't quite get you, did she But your father, the painter, let go of his canvas chasing you through the halls of your pictures, to be trapped like Escher in the mind of your eye
Francesca — Italia. Woodman — New England. How uncanny your black, how holy your linens But you — you are still the something Other. You ghost. You specter. You witchy shapeshifter. Francesca: Girl eternal. Francesca. 22 years old when the body struck pavement. Francesca. Wallpapered in to the seam of your story. Lacquered. Canonized. Ethereal angel. And so. But then. You got what you wanted. Francesca, Francesca— what a price.
I can't write horror. I can't write resistance. I can't write our way out of this, I'm sorry. I'm useless. The world, overnight, betrayed our trust, becoming nakedly monstrous (without turning serious). Artists raged, felt the pull toward truth, spitting nails from their mouths, tasting blood at the roots. Minds were distorted, preconceptions split up. And I know, I know. We ought to fight evil with all the words in the arsenal. Every writer worth her salt should be screaming, "Look out!" and "Fire!" Remember your history? The hellscapes of Bosch, the Germany of Weimar? What power! (Drop your illusions, Sarah: be a truth-teller, finally.) But I can't do it. I am petrified wood in the face of this fire. I need beauty. I crave it. Turn my back so to save it. Giddiness! Upsweep! Poetic indulgence. Oh, I seek awe in the marriage of molecule and light. I will have it. So spring—do your thing. Swamp my soul like Ophelia's. I want his eyes synched to mine, heart foolishly reeling. Oh God but I'm tired of caring so much. Atlas—that's it! Shrug off that burden. Sit with me. Stretch. Watch the mayflies grow older. A tulip. A daisy. The arc of the heron. All I'm asking for—please—is the grace of a moment. And I will make of it a monastery. At the top of the waves.
It seemed fitting to run my Kindle Countdown Sale during Valentine's week, since Sarabande is, at heart, a love story.
The novel will be priced at $0.99 from 2/12—2/19. Remember that you don't need to own a Kindle device to read a Kindle title. Just download the app to your tablet or phone. You can also read the book on your computer.
One of the benefits of enrolling in Amazon's KDP Select program is the ability to run a "countdown sale" and/or a free giveaway during the author's 90-day enrollment period. I will be interested to see the results, before ending my exclusive contract with Amazon and enrolling the book in Smashwords, too.
The book is also available in good, old-fashioned paperback.
I appreciate all the lovely reviews I've gotten so far. If you'd be interested in writing an honest review of the book, contact me and I'd be happy to gift you the ebook version or even send you the paperback by mail. I'd be especially interested in getting reviews up on blogs, Amazon and Goodreads.
And, because it's almost Valentine's Day, here's a favorite love song I make mention of in Sarabande. Enjoy the lyrics of the great Leonard Cohen, interpreted by the now defunct duo The Civil Wars.
