Book Report: The Fox Wife

10. Yangsze Choo, The Fox Wife (2024) (5/30/25)

My sister-in-law recommended this book. She listened to it, and said the narration (by the author) is beautiful. Maybe I should have listened to it, because for some reason reading it didn't captivate me. Indeed, one thing that positively irritated me was the author's tendency to repeat things—"key" facts that you'd better not miss! Sometimes mere paragraphs apart. The way I listen to books, my attention tends to fade in and out. Maybe I would have appreciated the repetition, if I managed to listen right past one of those key facts at first mention. I did not appreciate it while reading, though. This story could, I kept thinking, have been a long-form short story, or a novella anyway—so much shorter than 384 pages...

The basic premise is this: it is 1908, Manchuria, the final, turbulent days of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, and a huijing, or fox woman, named Yuki (meaning "Snow") sets off to exact revenge on the man who two years earlier killed her child (human child? fox child? both?). Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we learn the story of Bao, a detective who is investigating the murder of a young woman, possibly linked to foxes, whose path takes him on a collision course with Yuki. The story is complex, with many characters: well-off Chinese patriarchs whose sons are attending university in Japan (and may be involved in revolutionary activities); the old woman, once the head of a Chinese medicine house, who becomes Yuki's employer; photographers; and two beguiling men, Shiro and Kuro ("White" and "Black"), who befriend the sons and who know Yuki from way back. Yet despite the complexity, it seemed plodding, never really picking up steam, the characters flat, the scenes nondescript, too many dreams, not enough reason for the historical setting, too little passion. 

I did like Bao, who had a special gift: when people tell lies, his head starts to buzz. That could be a handy skill in life. 

I flagged one paragraph, involving a conversation between Bao and a young woman who is in love with Shiro, in a greasy-spoon noodle restaurant:

She recovers her composure. What a strange, furtive conversation they've had, almost like old friends meeting up except all she's done is talk about this mysterious Shirakawa [Shiro]. It's like one of those dreams where you meet peculiar people and talk in a dark space, steam rising around them from the giant bamboo steamers filled with dumplings and steamed buns. The emptiness of the restaurant, the sticky floor. The sensation of being displaced from the normal flow of time and circumstances, discussing the secrets of an unknown world that lies parallel to theirs. She hasn't lied, though there are slanted omissions. Especially the last bit, about disappearing people.

I did like that "sensation of being displaced," one that seems to crop up fairly often in this book. But maybe that's to be expected, when humans are foxes—or are they?

 

24. Japanese superstitions

I'm reading a book partially set in Japan at the start of the twentieth century featuring foxes—as in, magical beings (kitsune in Japanese; hui jing in Chinese). The Japanese concept of rokuyō was mentioned: a calendar for determining lucky days (or days when you should just stay in bed). It was introduced from China in the fourteenth century. 

Today, May 28, for example, is an unlucky day (except at noontime, 11 a.m.–1 p.m.), 赤口 (shakkō, meaning literally "red mouth"). Fortunately—or maybe not—there are only six rokuyō days, and they just rotate merrily along. Unfortunately, all but one involve at least some unluck. Yesterday was a lucky day all day long: 大安 (taian, meaning "great ease")! Too bad I didn't realize it, otherwise I might have taken advantage! Tomorrow is good luck in the morning, bad in the afternoon; the next day, good luck all day, except at noon. You get the drift. The day before Taian is a bad-luck-all-day day, 仏滅 (butsumetsu, meaning "Buddha death"). It must get tedious, to suffer so much bad luck... Though even Butsumetsu has a bright spot: since it's an inauspicious day for a wedding, wedding halls offer a discount. It may be a good way to test your luck—assuming you're not superstitious.

The website I've linked above also has loads of information on Japanese superstitions—about death; animals; health, wealth, and happiness; parts of the body; numbers. For example, whistling at night will summon snakes, and so should be avoided. Or, you might put irises on the roof to repel evil spirits. Or, eel and pickled plums are a bad pairing (said because salty plums can be used to disguise rotten eel—but normally, they make a very tasty summertime pairing). Or, you should hide your thumb if you see a hearse, lest the spirit of the deceased enter you through your thumbnail. Or, it's bad luck to dry laundry at night—said because it reminds people of the old custom of washing the kimonos of the dead and hanging them out to dry at night to ward off evil spirits. That said, if you leave your laundry overnight at a laundromat (which are very, very common in the cities of Japan), watch out: it might get nicked—bad luck!

There are loads of others, and various websites devoted to superstitions, such as here, here, here, here, and here. I may have to have a superstitious person (maybe just jokingly, to have fun with the children) in the book I'm writing. 

23. Leaving

I have remarked in the past that I could see leaving this country if things get really bad.

And they are pretty bad right now. The government (so called) is dismantling our society—our educational institutions, our scientific endeavors, our social welfare, our trust. 

It continues to astonish me how fast annihilation can happen.  

But when I think of leaving, I also think (a) I'm too old and (b) I'm really fine, right here. Our house will be paid off in September. This is a wonderful place to live. And do I really want to deal with all the bureaucratic bullshit that moving anywhere else would require? 

No. 

Plus, with David getting his cancer miracle treatment right here, we're not going anywhere anytime soon. 

And yet.  

Until lately, I've always considered myself "just a person." Not restricted by birthright or whatever. Now, though, I recognize that I'm "an American," whether I like it or not. Yes, yes, I could move to France or wherever—but then, I'd always be an outsider. Would that bother me? Maybe not. It's something I need to consider.

Because yeah, if in 2026 the elections just bolster this bullshit "Republican" (aka MAGA) party, I may very well be seeking an exit strategy. After David dies.

But with any luck, 2026 will bring us some hope. I am hoping bigtime for hope.

I'm also even more strongly hoping that David doesn't die anytime soon.  That's my biggest wish. My lifeline. 

There's a whole lot of hope—or do I mean wishful thinking?—spinning throughout my present reality.

 

22. What to say

I know I started doing this daily (well, that was a pipe dream!) blogging thing so I'd stay engaged, keep looking around, paying attention, and find something, anything, to say something wise about each day. But I'm finding I don't have much energy for that. Today, for example, I could post some photos I took and tell about an excursion a few of us made this morning to Santa Cruz to do a "puzzle adventure"—which ended up a bust because the server wouldn't/couldn't connect. So we ended up taking a walk down to the end of the pier, and checked out the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary visitor center—and it was nice to sort of be tourists in our own backyard, just wandering around, following our inclinations. We ended up with sandwiches in the downtown area, outside in the sunshine. So pleasant! Okay, here's a photo—a plastic wolf eel in a plastic kelp forest, from said visitor center:

I took a bunch of photos of letters while we were walking around—

—which I may one day cobble into an alphabet collage, as I do; though I was with people, so I wasn't fastidious about hunting down every single letter, and may have to pick up the last few separately. But then, it occurs to me that I have a Costa Rican alphabet and a Copenhagen alphabet, still unassembled. I've gotten too lazy—or something (I'm not really lazy)—to do the last step. 

Back home come afternoon, David and I took the dog for a walk, and I shot this picture, of cactus blooms (a favorite subject: this particular cactus has gotten enormous, and it makes the most beautiful flowers): 

We saw a turkey on a roof, squawking, looking for its pals (no photo), and a chestnut-brown squirrel bounding across the dogless dog park, tail in the air (no photo, but it would have made an amusing video).

I've been considering devoting a post to the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado (he died Friday at age 81), whose work I've long loved, but I keep seeing other testimonials to him online and I figure, why bother? It's all already out there. 

You might call it depression. Certainly, overwhelm. 

Everything, lately, feels like too much: too much bad news, too much chaos, too much uncertainty, too many people, too many opinions, too much anonymity, too many cars (too many fast cars running red lights; or, too many cars slowing Highway 1 down to a 20 mph crawl), too high of prices, too much me-me-me, too much name-calling, too much are-we-great-yet (or rather, from my perspective, are-we-totally-screwed-yet)? 

And then the Howlers meet up to discuss a poem ("we have questions!"), and Sherilyn mentions a short piece on CBS News Sunday Morning about a forgotten cartoonist, and things fall into place again. What matters. 

Sebastião Salgado definitely matters (seeing his work a couple of years ago was so moving), but I will wait a bit until all the other posts have faded away, so I can make my own reckoning of him. 

Here's the video about the cartoonist, Barbara Shermund (and a NYT piece about her as well, from the Overlooked series of obituaries that I wrote about a while back):

And here's the poem we Howlers read today. Once again, talking about it helped, though it still feels rather elusive; very personal.

We Love in the Only Ways We Can

by Carl Phillips

What's the point, now,
of crying, when you've cried
already, he said, as if he'd 
never thought, or been told—
and perhaps he hadn't—
Write down something
that doesn't have to matter,
that still matters,
to you. Though I didn't
know it then, those indeed
were the days. Random
corners, around one of which
on that particular day,
a colony of bees, bound
by instinct, swarmed low
to the ground, so as 
not to abandon the wounded 
queen, trying to rise,
not rising, from the strip of
dirt where nothing had
ever thrived, really, except
in clumps the grass here
and there that we used to call
cowboy grass, I guess for its
toughness: stubborn,
almost, steadfast, though that's
a word I learned early, each 
time the hard way, not to use
too easily.

Right now, David is cooking Swiss chard to accompany chicken sausages (spicy mango with jalapeño and artichoke & garlic), the little white kitty is sound asleep on the back of the couch (there's a music festival on at the fairgrounds—loud—and we think she's exhausted by it: she doesn't like loud anything...), and the girls nextdoor, Bella and Daniela, are raising a happy ruckus. It's the little things that matter. 

I also know I don't "need" to write tomes on this blog. (I don't "need" to write anything.) And lately, I'm finding that it's the small moments that are satisfying—to me. Whether they are something other people care about, I don't know. But I guess I hope that finding those moments and pausing to savor them will be something that anyone actually reading this far does also care about. 

21. Another day

A month ago, I wrote about my day. It's nothing special, nothing earth-shaking—my day. But it's something I think it's worthwhile chronicling. Because the details are important. What we pay attention to. What we get outraged by. What stimulates us. What makes us glad to be alive.

This morning I slept in! All the way to 8:15! (I've been waking up at 5, 6, 6:40 lately, so this was a treat.) I had some coffee, an end-slice of toasted homemade sourdough bread topped with truffle cheese. Then it was time to meet my Oaxacan friend (whom I mentioned last month). We started re-reading the practice book we finished last week. We started re-reading because, yes, we could have gone straight into book 2, but every week when we meet, and we read a new passage involving the adventures (and sorry love life) of Bob the bicycle mechanic, she invariably says she understands "a little." I want her to understand. So yeah: let's just start over. Keep it easy. Today, she seemed more engaged with the language. She paid attention to every word.

Then I worked for a few hours: an "edit" of a beautiful translation from the French of a Martiniquan writer, about a West Indian woman in the 1960s in France. I put "edit" in quotes because there's virtually nothing to do: occasionally I change a comma to a semicolon (in long run-on sentences), or query a term for an explanatory footnote, or wonder about a word choice. It's a dream job! (This after the book about tubers that I mentioned here last month, which was fine—I sent it out for author's review yesterday—but probably only interesting if you're a historical geographer/ethnographer focused on potatoes, yams, and cassava. Which I'm not.) 

At 2 I met my friend Nina at a coffeehouse in Monterey, Captain + Stoker, a big room with rustic seating and lots of light; a good crowd, including several under-two-year-olds (separately) who were huge-smiling and exploring and looking winsomely adorable. They have no idea what they've gotten into... Nina and I did, yes, go on a bit about just what that is—the deep shit that is this supposed government. That's what we do. It doesn't solve, or even help, a thing, but I suppose it's somehow useful to rant. To know we're not alone in hating what's going on. Worrying about what those sweet little kids will encounter in another twenty years, when we'll no doubt be dead and gone. 

On our afternoon dog walk, we watched a couple of black phoebes swooping from fencepost to fencepost, chatting. Yesterday, there were six turkeys.

I made a Provençal fish stew for dinner—Provençal because of capers, olives, and anchovies, plus there was shrimp and squid, and tomato paste, garbanzo beans, and spinach! It tasted pretty good. 

And for the evening: The Last Detective on Britbox—an amusing-enough police show, British so no shooting; and then a couple of new series for us: The Rehearsal and The Righteous Gemstones. Both of which had me cringing. I know the Gemstones is meant to make us cringe—the arrogant and hypocritical entitlement of the evangelists. I'm not entirely sure what to make of The Rehearsal, but after a while all I could think of was the money they put into pulling off that elaborate ruse. Yes, I like entertainment. And yes, entertainment costs bundles. But we don't like it when the thing itself calls attention to those bundles. 

To make fun of Christian evangelism is one thing (and I sincerely hope that the finale of this series has all these fat smug "Christian" people seriously contemplating an uplifting reason for being on this planet), but day after day we are seeing this country getting scorched. And half the country is cheering! Half the Congress yells, oorah! Or, more to the point, does absolutely nothing for this country. For the people of this country. Isn't that supposedly their job?

It's all so bewildering. 

But just now, as I get settled for bed, the blue-eyed white kitty came to say hello. She stretched out on the floor, luxuriating in her isness. Reminding me: this moment. Breathe. Just breathe.

20. May 21

When I'm stuck for something to post (which I have been for a few days now—where does the time go?), I go into my Flickr archives to find photos I posted on whatever today's date is. For May 21, I get four hits (and again, because I no longer use Flickr, these go back a long ways):

May 21, 2008: Made it! Project 365 accomplished!
And on Monday I'll be pulling onto Highway One,
starting a five-week journey to and in Minnesota—
so this "one" is fraught with meaning. (It's also a little fuzzy,
but oh well. That's probably symbolic too : )

May 21, 2009: My father raised chrysanthemums. He would nip off
two buds of three, to make the third, central one into a huge blossom.
I loved the huge blossoms that he made, they were magnificent
and beautiful; and nowadays I'm not especially interested
in the little flowers that flower sellers sell, on stalks with
multiple blooms, because I know what a chrysanthemum can do.
If it's trained. 

May 21, 2010: Got into Edinburgh by noon,
took a much-needed nap, then set out to explore.
My first excursion took me up to the castle—
but I didn't want to visit it again (especially not for £13),
so I decided to find some geocaches instead—down
toward the botanical garden.  One of them, a multistage
that I neglected to jot down one important component
of, got me to this spot. Beautiful view, and the little kid
was SO happy to be feeding the swans

May 21, 2011: Steve and I flew to Ridgecrest today
to attend the trimesterly regional MRA meeting
(China Lake Mountain Rescue Group being the hosts this time).
The operative word here is "flew." One and a half hours
versus six and a half or seven by car. And we got to ogle
California from above into the bargain. I could become
a fan of MRA meetings if this were a regular perk.
Which it seems to be. Our pilot, Ken Petersen,
offered his services anytime. Yay Ken!

And somehow, this collage of photos (by other Flickr photographers) that I faved during 2008 also showed up when I searched for May 21; the links to the original posts can be found here:

19. Hands

Just some shots from my archives.

Nest time around, I need to feature women's hands...

18. Nicholas Wilson, wildlife artist

As I've mentioned before, occasionally while scrolling Facebook I will stumble on something artistic—visual art, music—that intrigues me. Today it was an artist whose work captures the life of the US Southwest, both in oils and in woodblock prints. At the end I include a very short video where he talks a bit about his unusual technique for painting fur. (Click the images to view them large.)

17. Some more IG six-packs

Back in January I posted a couple of what I call "IG six-packs"—a cluster of the last six shots I've shared on Instagram. I don't post there often, which makes these collections kind of pleasingly random for me. So here are some more—an easy out for me on a day when I don't really have anything to relate.

Geocaching encounter, cymbidium on my deck, 
photography challenge, Milo!, baby sunflower star

apple blossom, Jimi mural, a few of the 83 heads,
begonia blossoms, me and my brother (and a few others,
including kangaroo), Window on the Bay march

Mt. Shasta, Milo says "no more," Ashland OR trail,
oak, iris, Salinas valley

ladybugs, Carmel River, closed-off underpass,
Costa Rican artifact, planes, lamps

16. Geocaching adventures

We spent a very pleasant morning with our friend Alastair (aka Mimring) in the Santa Cruz Mountains, looking for—and finding, yay!—nineteen caches along the Fall Creek Trail up near Bonny Doon. Here are a few photos:

A Tribute to Hunger Games (GC43HZ0):
a thoroughly rusted shut ammo can with a dainty little bison tube
("the container") attached to the handle: excellent refurbishment!

The Bonny Doon Biggie (GCATVQV):
the biggest ammo can I've seen in quite some time,
and the satisfying reward of a puzzle cache

We originally thought the "biggie" referred to this big
burnt stump: here David and Alastair consult their oracles

A beautiful face in the redwoods

The trail

It's always excellent to catch up with Alastair, an economist who until Trump came along worked in international aid & development. Lately, he's been fixing up houses (his and his wife's, the house nextdoor, and his mother's house in the UK), getting at least one or two of them ready to rent—for a little necessary income. But come a week from Friday, he's going to hit the road for two-plus months, his goal: to find the oldest geocache in each of the lower 48 states (save California, which he found in January). 

Here is a list, with links to the cache pages, which go back to 2000 and 2001—25 years of geographically oriented fun. 

The oldest still-active cache in the US and in the world is GC30 Mingo, in Kansas, created on May 11, 2000—the seventh cache ever placed. (In those days, caches tended to be published rather haphazardly, and by region, so the first hundred or so aren't sequentially numbered.) 

The very first geocache was stashed a week earlier, on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer near Beavercreek Oregon. Here's what AI and Atlas Obscura tell me about that event:

Ulmer, a computer consultant, hid a 5-gallon bucket containing various items, including Delorme Topo USA software, in a forest near Portland to test the accuracy of GPS. He shared the coordinates with an online group, and two people, Mike Teague and another individual, were among the first to find it. This act of hiding and then sharing the location of a container, along with the chance to take something and leave something else, marked the beginning of geocaching. 

Here's a more detailed look at the story:

Motivation:

Dave Ulmer, a computer consultant, wanted to test the accuracy of GPS technology, which had just become more precise after the removal of Selective Availability by the US government. 

The "Stash":

He placed two CD-ROMs, a book by Ross Perot, a VHS of the movie George of the Jungle, four dollars cash, a slingshot handle, a cassette tape recorder, some topographic software, and a can of black-eyed beans in a bucket, left it in the woods, and sent its coordinates (N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800) to sci.geo.satellite-nav. There was also a logbook with instructions: “The Rule Is: Take Something Leave Something.”

 

First Finds:

Within three days, two people, Mike Teague and another individual, successfully found the bucket using GPS. 

Spreading the Word:

The experience was shared online, and the idea of hiding and finding stashes quickly spread, leading to the creation of a mailing list called "GPS Stash Hunt" and the term "geocaching," coined by Matt Stum. 

Legacy:

The original geocache, no longer in place, is honored with a plaque in Beavercreek, and the can of beans that was part of the original stash is now a trackable item. 

You can read more about the history of geocaching here. 

Today there are 3.3 million active geocaches (I've found 5,554, since 2007—I've got a ways to go), in 191 countries. As a sport, it is most popular in Germany, then the US, the Netherlands, France, and Czechia. David and/or I have found caches on six continents (we lack Australia—it's on our list for next year—though if you count Oceania as a "continent," we've got all of them accounted for, yes, even Antarctica). We enjoy the pastime greatly.

Though I'm not sure we're quite as crazy as Alastair, with this mad adventure he's embarking on. That said, I'm very much looking forward to following him as he posts each state's find on Instagram—something I have commanded him to do, and will nag him about if I see him flagging. This is epic! Crazy, but definitely epic!  

I hope he has a wonderful time, and finds every last one. Some of them, he says, look really hard. But what's a hobby without a challenge?

15. Poems about the loss of a mother

My somewhat monthly poetry group met this morning. Among us six, two have recently lost a parent. Here are a few poems on the subject, specifically on the loss of a mother. The third one was read at Emily's mother's funeral by Emily's sister. And here is a photo of my mother as I never knew her, not really. She would be in her mid-forties here; I would have been about six. My father took this, developed and printed it himself. He never got around to spotting it. Maybe I should do so. Or, maybe it's poetic to leave it as is.

Mother

by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever. 

 

When I Am Asked

by Lisel Mueller

When I am asked   
how I began writing poems,   
I talk about the indifference of nature.   

It was soon after my mother died,   
a brilliant June day,   
everything blooming.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   
in a lovingly planted garden,   
but the day lilies were as deaf   
as the ears of drunken sleepers   
and the roses curved inward.   
Nothing was black or broken   
and not a leaf fell   
and the sun blared endless commercials   
for summer holidays.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   
ringed with the ingenue faces   
of pink and white impatiens   
and placed my grief   
in the mouth of language,   
the only thing that would grieve with me. 

Only as the Day Is Long

by Dorianne Laux

Soon she will be no more than a passing thought,
a pang, a timpani of wind in the chimes, bent spoons
hung from the eaves on a first night in a new house
on a street where no dog sings, no cat visits
a neighbor cat in the middle of the street, winding
and rubbing fur against fur, throwing sparks.

Her atoms are out there, circling the earth, minus
her happiness, minus her grief, only her body’s
water atoms, her hair and bone and teeth atoms,
her fleshy atoms, her boozy atoms, her saltines
and cheese and tea, but not her piano concerto
atoms, her atoms of laughter and cruelty, her atoms
of lies and lilies along the driveway and her slippers,
Lord her slippers, where are they now?

14. Khadijah Queen, poet

My Howler co-conspirators and I have added a new mini-ritual to our routine: weekly poetry. As in, Sherilyn recently got a book of poems called You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, and she had questions. To begin with, her questions concerned a poem by Victoria Chang, "A Woman with a Bird." Turned out, discussing the poem, offering our own disparate interpretations and thoughts, really enriched... me, anyway, and I'm certain the others too. Different insights, different things we noticed and appreciated. Poetry really should be a shared experience, I'm learning.

Today we met again, for our second poem, by a fellow Antioch University classmate, Khadijah Queen. I find Khadijah's poetry challenging. Beautiful; austere. Elliptical, with a resonant depth, not at all narrative. (Me, my poetry? Way too narrative. Why don't I just stick to prose?)

Fortunately, this poem wasn't difficult. We definitely had questions, but the beauty of this one was that it had plenty to hold on to even if some subtleties may have been elusive. 

Tower

A black snake plays dead
on the path between 
dogwoods and a meadow of wild
Ageratum, pretends to be water-soaked,
a fallen branch. Others lie
strewn about, their bark-flaked corpses no
mirage. All is well, say the midges, dragonflies,
moths, ladybugs, even the wind
stirring the leaves says to trust
instinct's music. I walk to unravel
panic's thousand fingers braided through
my insides—false roots. When I see death
I think lose lose lose
automatically. The tarot says let go,
change. I haven't read Gospodinov's
The Physics of Sorrow, yet; can only take
Sharpe's In the Wake in small doses.
I don't want to drown in ocean math.
I narrow my eyes to the scam, don't
move too fast, switch directions
then pause—turn back to see
what choice the snake makes sans my alarm.
In the forest, grief lives a new life
as devotion. Early August leaves play at color
before surrendering to both
man-made ground and messy slopes
collecting undergrowth. I wonder what's past
resistance to change, on the other side
of fear. If I don't look down, or walk away. Step
over the snake instead, realize
both living and dying require giving up.

Thanks to Kim for understanding the title, a reference (we believe) to the Tarot deck: the Tower, the sixteenth Major Arcana (following right on the heels of the Devil). In A. E. Waite's 1910 book The Pictorial Guide to the Tarot, the Tower is associated with "misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe." Curiously, the Tower is even worse than the Death card, which suggests transformation, change, new beginnings. The Tower is just catastrophic. And yet, once one has fallen from the tower, perhaps there can be an escape into freedom? Maybe the Tower represents an even greater transformation, a conscious reorganization of awareness?

I don't know why Khadijah settled on the Tower as the central metaphor here, but it's definitely interesting to think about. There are questions!