1. A Book
Bluets by Maggie Nelson, 2009
Bluets is easily one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in recent years. One of the ways I measure the impact of any work of art is by the amount of time I spend ruminating on it after encountering it. I read Bluets two and a half years ago, and I am (very much) still ruminating. I love Maggie Nelson, and her other works, Like Love and Jane, are not far behind Bluets.
“I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you.”
“It calms me to think of blue as the color of death. I have long imagined death's approach as the swell of a wave - a towering wall of blue. You will drown, the world tells me, has always told me. You will descend into a blue underworld, blue with hungry ghosts, Krishna blue, the blue faces of the ones you loved. They all drowned, too. To take a breath of water: does the thought panic or excite you? If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do.”
“For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
“The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.”
2. An Artwork
The Thrill of Affection, Naudline Pierre, 2018
It was very difficult to choose just one of Naudline Pierre’s works to feature; one of my favourite contemporary artists. Her pieces are an ethereal meditation on tenderness, ecstasy, devotion and despair in a way that makes it hard for me to look away.
3. A Quote/Poem
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
- Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
4. An Audio
Album: Tower of Silence, Roberto Musci, 2016
5. A Place
One of the few reasons I can continue to live in Los Angeles is due to its proximity to Big Sur. Deetjen’s Inn is a must; the Henry Miller Library is fun too.
6. A Film
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, by Jaromil Jireš, 1970