Tag: books

483: “And Watched The Heart” (Aliette de Bodard)

                “Thuỷ stood in her cabin in The Goby in the Well, her bots arrayed on her shoulders and clinging to her wrists, and watched the heart of the nebula.”
                -Aliette de Bodard, “Mulberry and Owl,” We’re Here (and also here in Uncanny Magazine)

                I almost always write about a quote from something I’ve finished reading. Or at least, I often think of it that way, which is weird, because I’ve never actually finished reading any of the stories that I love most. They swirl and come back, less single events and more waves & eddies & seaspray & quick sips & long drinks. In any case, tonight, I’m thinking about de Bodard’s line because I’m just starting to read “Mulberry and the Owl.” Half a page in something pulled me away. And there’s something lovely about story beginnings, something that connects to why I like fiction and speculative fiction in particular.
                Years ago I heard Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky lecture about human interest in “newness.” One of his suggestions was that an individual’s interest in newness tends to wear out overtime— if an American hadn’t tried sushi by their early twenties, his research found, the odds were they never would. If they didn’t have a piercing by their early twenties the odds were they never would. Similarly his research indicated that Americans tend to set their taste in music by their teens or weary twenties. One interesting nuance: Zapolsky said that if you set out to be a beginner in anything—pick up the harp, which you have no idea how to play, and deeply start learning—your interest in newness across the board tends to go up. A regular, purposeful practice of being a beginner brings you back to new beginnings.
                Like short story opening lines. Like all opening lines, maybe, if you read them that way. I start reading and I’m a beginner in this world, because Thuỷ has bots arrayed on her arm. (What kind of bots, I wonder?). Because I’ve never looked at the heart of any nebula. (What does Thuỷ see?). Because reading this I’m listening, wondering: who is this? What community web do they live in? What matters to them, and as we gaze into this nebula, what’s possible?

by Azlan

482: “All The Water” of Us (Sayaka Murata)

                “‘[…] there’s a different air about you.’”
                […] Yukari was right I thought. After all, I absorbed the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too. When we last met a few years ago, most of the store workers were laid-back university students, so of course my way of speaking was different then.
                ‘I guess. Yes, I have probably changed,’ I said with a smile, not elaborating.” – Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

                Earlier today my sister-in-law, Fa, and I ended up chatting over the different ways we see ourselves in our friends and family. She told me about meeting one of her roommate’s sisters: “Just wait,” the roommate said, “meeting my sister is going tell you so much about me.” And it did. In their mannerisms, their phrases, their playfulness, Fa recognized the sisters by seeing them together.
                I often feel that way. There’s a kind of American individualism that’s really attached to an inner, essential, solitary self, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that—but sitting here now, what I feel is the wash of water as different people fill me. My parents, of course, and my siblings. Even from thousands of miles away I was looking at a palm tree today, and the way I looked at it came in part from my dad. I said hello to someone who passed and my mom’s phrasing washed through me. And then there’s my spouse, my spouse’s siblings, my friends, the other people I meet. In the last few days I’ve met a lot of my partner’s cousins, uncles, and aunts, and already I hear new phrases on my tongue. I find myself making new jokes. It’s fun.
                I used to love jumping into puddles. The splash. The reflection. The game. I’d stand and watch the changing water, too, the rippling tree branches and the sky. Sitting here I splash and reflect and play, my own little puddle self. Smiling, just like Sayaka Murata’s character.

by Azlan

481: Writing Webs (Ishita Dharap)

a word web by Ishita Dharap, inspired by her 2023 artwork “grief maps”
a web by Azlan Smith, inspired by Ishita’s 2023 “grief maps.” We made these together, tonight, for this post.

                One of the (many) wonderful things about my friend Ishita Dharap is that I’m not sure how to describe our friendship.
                We’re art friends. That can be drawing or crafting or eye makeup, familiar mediums, but it also means painting words into classes, balancing relationships into museum art exhibits, playing sunlight like you’d play a piano until it sounds sweet. Or maybe being a piano for some sunlight’s silly hands.
                We’re cooking friends. That means we like sharing meals, love standing over the stove and stirring things, love the blur of heat and flavor into time and texture. I think it also means that we’re mischievously aware of ourselves as cooking, too. The idea for this post has been bubbling away on low for years. We make space for one another’s boiling and slow-bubbling.
                We’re quick friends, ever since our first conversation while trees danced outside. Vibes, Ishita says.
                We’re slow friends. Sometimes we don’t talk for a long time. That’s not a turning away or forgetting. It’s a growing— leaves that flicker in their curiosities, and roots that steady in their quiet, hidden curiosities.
                Did any of that make sense? Do you have friendships like that? Or maybe I should say like all these. I’m thinking about manyness. About how in my experience a friendship that is is many things. Ishita’s approach for mapping words into webs is one of my favorite ways to try and write that manyness. You can read in branching threads, following the different connections. People sometimes comment a lot about the linear structure of an English sentence, the sequence of a word then a word, but when I think about anything I’ve read the words are more a web than a line. Are they that for you? A knotted association of the threads above and this thread here and the next threads, and other memories or thoughts that all these threads tie to? They are for me, and Ishita’s word maps are a way of writing toward that web.

by Azlan

478: Drawing “What We Cannot Yet See”

                “How do we draw—or write—the emotions and parts of ourselves that we cannot yet see?”
                -Rachel Gu  my friend!) and Azlan Guttenberg Smith (that’s me!), “Our Monsters, Our Breath,” Experiments in Art Research

                Rachel and I sat next to each other in a grad seminar. Hour by hour, I watched shapes and shades wash out from the colored pens she brought with her. The pattern from a classmate’s shirt. The arrangement of our tables. A few branches, framed by our classroom window, and an abstract shape that was Rachel’s response to a piece of today’s reading.
                I’ve been scared of drawing for a long time. A mark on a page can feel so final, so I tried to put down perfect marks, clear edges, and everything I drew felt stiff, self-conscious, incomplete. And I’m also entranced when I watch people drawing. Smudging. Erasing. Playing out ratios and relationships.
                I started drawing along with Rachel. Class by class period, first with the pens she shared with me, then with colored pencils I brought to share with her. I picked up specific techniques, of course. (She dripped water from her bottle onto the table, and used it to smear her pen’s ink, and I loved it). But more than the specific techniques, I felt the space of drawing opening, the fear I’d felt settling into one tree in this rustling forest of shapes and shades as Rachel ran ahead and I followed—or turned off to wander a different way. Months after Rachel helped me start drawing again, I helped her start writing some poetry. These practices together led to the chapter we wrote for Experiments in Art Research, where you can read some of her poems and our translations. And these practices helped me—I hope us—sketch our way into a version of studying that is a kind of making space to share ourselves and share what we cannot yet see.

by Azlan

470: Receptive Language, & Listening (Alexis Pauline Gumbs)

                “What I want to say to you requires a more nuanced field of receptive language than I have ever spoken. It requires me to reshape my forehead, my lungs. It requires me to redistribute my dependence on visual information. So I will close my eyes and say it: Here. Here I am. Here I am with you. Here is all of me. And here we are.” -Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

                I’m writing this from an airplane. Billowing white clouds outside. The jets thrumming through the wall where I rest my head.
                Last week my beloved and I got married. As part of the ceremony we read Alexis Pauline Gumbs out loud, including the lines above. Gumbs is thinking about the way marine mammals speak and listen across oceans. How the shape of their bodies collects sound, connects songs. Resonates. Now, as we travel back home, I’m practicing listening. A long, slow, lovely practice. I hear my partner chatting with our sweet seat mate. I hear our seat mate’s baby, discovering fingers and red grapes. I hear all the little sounds of people shifting and talking. I hear breathing. I hear keystrokes. All around I hear the wind, threaded through with the jet’s thrum, and I think about the sky as an ocean of air that we all swim through. How precious every breath. How precious the chance to share them. How delightful, my love, to listen, to practice that close-eyed receptive language that sings through oceans. That sings here we are.

by Azlan

463: “Research is my saving grace” (Shelby Criswell)

                “Research is my saving grace, and it led me to every person who inspires me in this book.” -Shelby Criswell, Queer as all Get Out: 10 People Who’ve Inspired Me

                Sometimes I think about the many different things research can be.
                Most of the undergraduate students I teach don’t like “it.” Research papers feel like a threat. Or maybe I’m projecting, because for me, “research papers” often felt like a threat. There was a right way to do it, though people wouldn’t tell you—they’d just tell you what you did wrong. There was a place you were supposed to find in the pile of encyclopedias, library books, search engines, online journal databases. It was like trying to find the right grain of sand on the beach.
                In my classes I’ve started playing two games. The first is a common wikipedia game, the one where you start with some page (this one, for instance) and try to get to a common page (this one, for instance) in as few clicks as possible. (Or as quickly as possible). Then you can play around by talking to people about the different “paths” people took through information. The second is starting with some random page and then clicking along until you find your way to something that interests you. I like hearing people describe their experiences with these two games. Some people say the first is fun, because someone wins: there’s a goal, a finish line, and in a group someone does it the fastest. That gives the game momentum. Some people say the second is fun because there isn’t a goal, a finish line, and in a group no one has to do it the fastest. I get both. And I wonder about what I mean by research, or rather, the many things I could mean, and all the different ways to walk into or excavate or link or challenge or weave together or build with or sing along to the so many ideas washing around us. 
                So it’s fun to stumble across perspectives like Shelby Criswell’s. There are plenty of times I still don’t like “research.” Times I feel intimidated by it, or frustrated by what voices the research-assigner counts as “legitimate” or not, or realize I’m more interested in some question besides the one I’m “supposed” to be focused on. And sometimes I love it. Or even find my way to love through it.

by Azlan

462: “The Height of My Ambition” (Katherine Addison)

                “The height of my ambition at the moment is to make it into bed.” -Katherine Addison, The Angel of the Crows

                I read somewhere that snoozing in the morning doesn’t actually help you get up more rested. I can’t remember the source (probably somewhere I wandered online, and probably not reliable), but the idea was that slipping in and out of sleep doesn’t bring you into REM for that deep rest. So I set out to stop snoozing in the morning. To get up as soon as I woke up. A few years later that changing habit came up in a conversation with my therapist, who said, “Well, but I love that time in the morning. Especially with my partner.” And I was like, huh. I love that time too. The warmth. The skin. The half-awake togetherness, dreams messing around nearby like kids who know it’s time to stop playing but also know it’s still time for playing.
                So I like Katherine Addison’s play with ambition. The ambition to make it into bed. To stay there for a good long time. My to-do list for tomorrow is long-ish, and today’s was long-ish, but maybe I’ll add in a “height of ambition” that’s playing veo veo with my partner (“I spy with my little eye,” in Spanish) or saying hello to the bushes I hurried by today. Touching their textures. Ambitions of a moment, an hour, an afternoon. Some friends and I once spent several years compiling a list of words that are animals and actions (fly, of course, and badger, ferret, duck, ram, wolf—horse if you allow “horse around,” and we disagreed on “shark”). We could’ve googled it but that’s cheating. What a lovely ambition of the moment that was.

by Azlan

461: “Whom To Ask” (Katherine Addison)

                “So many things are a matter of knowing whom to ask.” -Katherine Addison, The Angel of the Crows, p. 305

                One of my favorite things about being in graduate school (and running away from graduate school to meet organizers, activists, librarians, gardeners, poets) is talking to so many different people who think so deeply from so many different perspectives.
                I wonder if one of the reasons scholars/experts get a bad rep in the United States is that there’s this cultural assumption, this pressure, that an expert should see everything. Understanding everything. Like Sherlock in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or House in House MD or (yeah, deep cut) Vin Diesel’s Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick. A bunch of wild unpredictable shit happens, and then Riddick says, totally seriously, “That was my plan.” In the movie we’re supposed to believe him. In real life someone told me “There’s no one stupider than someone smart and sure of himself and outside his understanding.” I believe that more than Riddick. I’ve met lawyers with the most bone-headed takes on linguistics. Linguists with the strangest misunderstandings of language teaching. The list goes on and on. I don’t mean that you can’t learn about linguistics by studying law. I’m sure you can. But anytime someone is sure that their perspective captures and overrides everything, I think back to Riddick.
                So then there’s this delight. The delight of looking at a community garden and talking to an ecologist, and another time a farm organizer, and a gardener, and a birder, and an entomologist, and a local poet, and a painter, and people who are so much more than their one profession. Asking what they see. Sitting with it, and sharing our questions about what our eyes still hide from us.

by Azlan

460: “We” (Brontë, Groot, & Vaid-Menon)

“I am Heathcliff.” -Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“We are Groot.” -Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy
“Becoming ourselves is a collective journey.” -Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary

                One of my very close friends is moving to Colorado tomorrow. I’m wonderfully happy for them: it will bring them closer to their partner, to the life and work and community they want to grow. And of course I’m sad. Our routes walking to campus were similar, and from now on, when I see someone walking beneath the magnolias on Oregon Avenue and wonder is that Dusty the answer will probably be no, they moved. They’re walking through other trees now.
                I’ve moved a lot, which means I’ve moved away from a lot of wonderful friends. I’ve had a lot of wonderful friends move away from me. And sometimes we stay in touch. And sometimes we drift apart. But sitting here, tonight, putting together the wonderfully silly collection of Brontë and Groot and Vaid-Menon, I’m struck by how I am my friend. I never thought about Emily Brontë’s line that much (and I’m still not sure about it, sitting how it does in a romantic relationship), but I’m a bit of a gardener in part through gardening with Dusty. I’m a bit of a forager, with plans to visit the redbuds and the magnolias (both delicious!), with Dusty. And while “I am Heathcliff” seems intent on individuals, on separate selves who can be connected or identical, I like Groot’s “we.” We are what we’re becoming together. We are walks through Urbana, following Boneyard Creek through town, pulled along by how the water flows. We are the taste of magnolia blossoms (gingery!) and the thought that my partner and I might plant one, now, and tend to it. Dusty suggested we might. Becoming we.

by Azlan

457: “A Lot of Trust” (Joy Harjo)

                “Sometimes when you go into a creative project there’s a lot of trust.”
                -Joy Harjo, in conversation with Jenny Davis at a CultureTalk on April 23, 2024 

                One of my favorite memories from my teenage years is walking through the forests of Oregon at night. We walked through tall trees. The boughs drinking starlight and moonlight. Filling the forest with a perfect darkness and playing tricks with our eyes. The brown needles carpeting the edge of our thoughts, and our little group following a dirt trail by the feeling of our barefoot feet. I did this once a year for seven years or so. Sometimes we lost the trail, and I would crawl on my hands and knees, feeling for smooth dust and the path that led through creaking tree trunks to a creek and then a river where the sky washed down and the water told long stories. I think, for me, that walking where I couldn’t see was a way of practicing—celebrating—growing into—resting into—trust.
                Creative projects are a wonderful place to grow that way. Lately I’ve been working on a novella I started in 2018. I started it as another kind of walking into what I couldn’t see, another kind of feeling for paths that lead toward river stories. In 2018 the project started as a kind of delighted what’s here?, a curiosity that was strong enough (easily!) to wrap roots around the rocks of worry and uncertainty and keep growing. Can I follow this? Find my way to listening a little more? Returning to the project, now, the can I often feels more frightening. I did an MFA. More of my professional life, more of my career, is tied to this idea of being a writer. That means the feeling of losing a path, of fumbling around for smooth dust in the prickly pine needles, is even scarier. “Can I follow this, learn from this?” can become a threat instead of an invitation. Joy Harjo reminds me that this project (like my love for Harjo and Davis’ poetry, their teachings) started with a lot of trust. And with a practice of trust that is a delight, and that gains even more delight through its strong roots, through the long slow growing and creaking of its tree trunk.

by Azlan