81. Octavio Paz, poet

I decided to kick off today's Wordle post in my little FB group, and so I went in search of a poem. I glanced at a book of Donna Hilbert's work, but no, nothing jumped out. Then I thought, in the spirit of Bad Bunny's halftime show the other day, what about something in Spanish? So I googled Octavio Paz, and found this (notated as "for Roger Caillois"; translated by Eliot Weinberger):

Wind, Water, Stone

Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,
stone's a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.

As for the Spanish, a little more searching, and it came:

Viento, Agua, Piedra

El agua horada la piedra,
el viento dispersa el agua,
la piedra detiene al viento.
Agua, viento, piedra.

El viento esculpe la piedra,
la piedra es copa del agua,
el agua escapa y es viento.
Piedra, viento, agua.

El viento en sus giros canta,
el agua al andar murmura,
la piedra inmóvil se calla.
Viento, agua, piedra.

Uno es otro y es ninguno:
entre sus nombres vacíos
pasan y se desvanecen
agua, piedra, viento.

How beautiful. A reminder of how everything, always, is moving, changing, vanishing, becoming.

Book Report: Rubbernecker

4. Belinda Bauer, Rubbernecker (2013) (2/9/26)

My sister-in-law recommended this book to me, and since I failed at my N book (a brief comment on that below), I decided this time it was okay to break protocol and read a random letter of the alphabet, to wit, R. 

The book, set in Cardiff, Wales, is a mystery—there are murders—but it's much more than that, as it delves into what's in our hearts, what we want to understand about life, and possibilities for connection. It follows several threads, beginning with a car crash whose driver (we soon learn) ends up on the "coma ward" of the local hospital. As traffic inches past the scene of the crash, a young man leaves the car his mother is driving to get a closer look. This is Patrick, who has Asperger's syndrome. Ten years before, he lost his father in a hit-and-run accident, caused in part by Patrick refusing to hold his hand while crossing the road (he can't stand to be touched, and his father knew it). Now, Patrick wants to understand what happened when his father died, where he went, and he thinks the key may be learning about human anatomy—so he enrolls in the anatomy lab of the nearby medical school. Here, he and four fellow students spend 22 weeks disassembling a cadaver, Number 19. Meanwhile, we sometimes flash to the coma ward, where we are made privy to the thoughts and feelings of one of the patients—who as things progress begins to "emerge" from his disability.  

In the course of the cadaver disarticulation, Patrick finds evidence (in 19's throat) that suggests he might have been murdered. By now Patrick has abandoned the notion that he might understand death, but he figures he can solve this mystery. He also finds out (through a bit of B&E) who 19 was (you will probably not be surprised to learn that he's the original crash victim, also the patient whose thoughts we've been privy to on the ward). Why would someone murder him? Patrick finds accomplices of sorts in one of his fellow students and in 19's daughter, whom he seeks out. And yes, he does figure out who is culpable—and almost gets killed himself as a result.

What makes the story so compelling is Patrick's condition—his awkwardness with other people but also the clarity of his thinking. He doesn't get bogged down in sentimentality and unreality. In this, Bauer combines various material and behavioral quirks to give Patrick substance. He makes for an interesting mirror to the ways in which those around him interact. In the course of the book, Patrick makes some progress in learning how to get along with others. Which makes it a story about relationship as well.

I enjoyed the book, though it took me a while to understand how the various plot elements wove together. One, about an unserious nurse, never quite did, except (I decided) to illustrate how blind "normal" people can be to what's right in front of them—something you can't accuse Patrick of. 

As for the abandoned N book—it was Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, which I know people love, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for a flight of magical fantasy into below-parts regions of London. Or I wasn't in the mood for Gaiman's cleverness: his writing felt a little (or a lot) too self-satisfied, and far too two-dimensional. I only got a quarter of the way in, but it just wasn't picking up. So: another abandoned book. It's getting to be a habit. But better to realize I just don't care for a book than suffer through it. Right?

Now, I'll scan my shelves for another N book. Back to the alphabet

80. Ashley M. Jones and Mary Szybist, poets

We howlers met today, as we do more or less weekly, to discuss a poem from the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024). The poem that rose up for discussion was this one, by Ashley M. Jones.

Lullaby for the Grieving

at the Sipsey River

make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too—
what else can i call the crown of light
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?

Jones is the poet laureate of Alabama, 35 years old, author of three poetry collections. Two poems of hers are featured on the Poetry Foundation website, including this one:

Hymn of Our Jesus & the Holy Tow Truck

after Mary Szybist

And yes, of course, I next had to investigate Mary Szybist. This poem of hers delighted me, partly because it's an abecedarian, partly because it's about jigsaw puzzles, partly because it's about girls chatting.

Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle

Are you sure this blue is the same as the
blue over there? This wall’s like the
bottom of a pool, its
color I mean. I need a
darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
elastic at the waist so it actually
fits. I can’t
find her hands. Where does this gold
go? It’s like the angel’s giving
her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.
I don’t see why God doesn’t
just come down and
kiss her himself. This is the red of that
lipstick we saw at the
mall. This piece of her
neck could fit into the light part
of the sky. I think this is a
piece of water. What kind of
queen? You mean
right here? And are we supposed to believe
she can suddenly
talk angel? Who thought this stuff
up? I wish I had a
velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
wish we could
walk into that garden and pick an
X-ray to float on.
Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
zillion yeses to anyone for that.

Finally, Ashley M. Jones had this to say about her "Lullaby": "I wrote this poem at the Sipsey Wilderness near that same river in Alabama. I didn’t expect to write about my grief process, but it seemed the Wilderness was showing me that my grief for my father was very similar to the difficult hiking path to the river. I’m not an experienced hiker. I was afraid of ticks and injury. This large, all-encompassing grief is new to me, too. I’m afraid, constantly, of its prick and haunt. But there are angels and carriers of light, and I know my dad is one of them now."

I love discovering new writers, whether of poetry or prose. These two please me no end.

79. Goodbye Milo

And so this evening we bade farewell to our beautiful boy Milo. A mobile vet, Carrie Nagel, came at half past six, and we sat on the floor next to him and talked for quite a while about what might be going on, about potential options, but slowly we circled into the clear fact that he's just not thriving. And so David and I gave her the go-ahead.

Here are a few last photos (all from today) of our sweet sweet boy. We will miss him so so so very much.

Thanks to Carrie for taking such good caring care of all of us.

Not really a book report: Land of the Blind

I won't number this, because it's (as I say in the heading) not really a book report—because I didn't finish it. Heck, I barely started it.

I love Jess Walter. The various books of his that I've read—most recently the 2025 So Far Gone—have been 100 percent enjoyable. I ordered this book with great anticipation.

So yeah, I was disappointed to start this one and, early on, find myself completely uninterested. 

It's the story of a man who's arrested after he's climbed high on a landmark hotel in Spokane, Washington. As he talks with the interrogating detective, he says he wishes to confess. A murder, it seems.

The book (as far as I can tell) then switches between his confession as he writes it out and the detective's detectiving.

I fell out of the story at the start of his confession, which is (a) written in a tediously formal legalese (he fancies himself a lawyer) and (b) harks back to childhood in excrutiating detail. Excrutiating.

I fell out, and then skipped forward, finally, to the end of the book, where the confessor and the detective find themselves again high on the originating hotel. Both alive. Both, apparently, with stuff to consider. 

I guess I'm patting myself on the back for abandoning a book that just doesn't grab me. So many books, so little time! But I'm sorry this one didn't draw me in. 

Book Report: Man's Search for Meaning

3. Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (1959, 2014) (1/22/26)

I've had this book forever, and when I arrived at M in my alphabetical approach to reading, I figured it was about time—but of course I couldn't find it. It's around here somewhere! But an online search of the library holdings said they had it, and it was in. When I got there, however, it wasn't on the shelf; as I was about to leave, feeling dejected, I decided to ask the checkout person, and she went and rummaged around among the recently returned books, and there it was! Another of those small miracles of life . . . which I suppose is appropriate for this particular book. You can find meaning in many things.

And so now I've finally read it. For some reason, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I might be. I guess I thought Frankl had an answer to the question of meaning (silly me). But I got something from it, and that's enough.

The edition I read features what I believe are the original two constituent essays, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp" and "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," as well as a few shorter pieces—a 1984 postscript, "The Case for a Tragic Optimism," and selected letters, speeches and essays. The book was originally published in German in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (Saying yes to life in spite of everything: A psychologist experiences the concentration camp) and in English in 1959 as From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy. 

The section on life in a concentration camp—Frankl spent three years in four camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim, part of the Dachau complex—was, needless to say, harrowing. He speaks of the suffering, the uncertainty, the deaths, matter-of-factly, always pointing to the importance of a responsible, responsive, positive attitude. As he puts it in the logotherapy section (logotherapy being an approach that he created, focused not on the psyche but on the mind), 

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. 

And later he writes:

Man is not fully conditioned and determined [by external conditions] but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. . . . Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

He gives examples, including in his own experience, and throughout I marveled at his stoicism. Could I be so strong? So positive? I don't know, but surely such strength and positivity are imperative if one is to survive soul-deadening events—such as so many are experiencing right now, in my very own country, as they are being torn from their homes and deported to prisons far far away.

A key to all this is being able to get out of one's own mind, and orient toward others with love; to balance freedom with responsibility; to do one's best to be "decent"; to approach the world with "tragic optimism." By which he may have meant, as he put it at one point, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs." 

I confess I did not finish the last few little essays. They were getting rather repetitive and didn't seem to add anything new. I did enjoy the ten-page afterword, by philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst William Winslade, who gave us a short biography of Frankl, for context. He led a full and inspiring life. A worthy man indeed.

78. Milo

We're losing our boy. He's fifteen, and he's done. We took him to the vet today, and she gave us some appetite stimulant, but really . . . he's done. I'm not ready. He's our boy.

Whew. Anyway. I searched through the archives and found nine mentions of Milo. Here:

2016: Meeting Milo
2016: Teflon dog
2017: Sleeping Milo
2017: Milo!
2017: Milo! Again!
2023: Milo
2023: Milo!
2023: Milo's bindi dot
2025: Milo

And that's where we stand. I am taking pictures of Milo still, of course. It's hard to imagine him not being in our life, our lives. He's the best boy ever.