Annotations from Bed

This text works on the line level for me. So much of the characterization that happens in the text occurs in these small lines, optional additions, dependent clauses. It felt like I got to know the characters here through these additions rather than through a lot of in depth characterization or even a lot of time spent with some of them on the page. 

The layout of the text and the way small paragraphs were given whole pages also worked here. It felt a little choppy and disjointed while still maintaining the connections and tendrils of the narrative. 

I don’t love the way the “you” is functioning in this collection of poems. It feels so overt. Or rather, it feels unnecessary in a lot of the poems, and a little condescending. This stuck out the most to me in the poem “Frida Kahlo.” The narrator is assuming the reader’s desires and then says he will subvert them, but I don’t get why he needed to say that. I didn’t have a lot of expectations for the poem, other than a Frida Kahlo moment, but by telling me he would subvert my expectations the poem lost me. Because the poem didn’t really go any place that interesting, excepting the Diego Rivera shirt..,because everyone should have one of those. 

I appreciate the way this auditory text is taking the quotidian nature of life and essentially saying that it is worth talking, in this case singing, about. However, for the most part I don’t think this text has done that well. Because the genre of music varies greatly throughout the memoir it creates disjointed flow within the song. Maybe, this is because different parts of life feel so drastically different, but it feels like these differences could have been highlighted without changing the genre of music so much.

Also the simplistic language of the songs is often so overly simplistic and about simple life events/feelings that the songs just end of feeling like they are about nothing with no purpose.

A couple notes I jotted down while listening:

“Cockroach song, so bad.”

“Judy Garland—What’s the point?”

“Eye contact, annoying AF”

“Beatniks song, trippy hippie. Overdone?(.)”

“These are all bad theme songs from sitcoms no one wants to watch”

I liked the way this book worked in multiple worlds. Journalistic/exploratory writing, present tense imaginative writing, personal family narrative. These toggles gave me new ways into the piece, and it felt like the way they were weighted made the piece feel natural. 

The emphasis on the coopting of the female, through the story of Kamala and Amala, made me meditate on the horrors of domestication of a culture, postcolonial narratives of oppression. 

The personal narrative of family, father, gave me another vantage at the way these threads are interconnected. 

This book worked for me. 

Clarice Lispector’s A hora da estrela left me feeling confused, or I guess bemused, mostly. This meta fiction narrative bothered me, which I know is the point. 

Things Jeanne and I talked about when discussing how to be the PIs for this book. 

Men as savior. Olimpíco as giving Macabéa worth through relationship. Boss worth through employment. Rodrigo worth through thinking of her life, “elevating” it. White man to save her from her poverty as foretold by Madame Carlota. 

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This problematic psychological pyramid Maslow developed in relation to Macabéa. The way that her life ends in this moment of self actualization, skipping over other elements of the pyramid, only as she is bleeding out on the road. As if the only way for her to achieve self actualization is death. 

This is a text to read out loud. To savor with friends. Languish in the way each one reads different, lingers on text in new ways. See how we develop images, notice themes of female body, bodies torn by war, nature mutilated. How we begin to read “HOU” as “HOW.” Find meaning in the white space, that gives us room to breathe. To wonder about war and death and how. how. how. 

Stare at the sun and think of the way it becomes body, human, but also war. Gore. 

This book made me sad, the lives of these characters. The ways that they each felt the impact, saw death. The way that for some of them, Dr. Sasaki, Mrs. Nakamura, Dr. Fujii, small changes in daily routine affected their survival of the day.

The way that confusion becomes such a theme in the text. Radio broadcasts unheard by survivors, confusion over where to go, where safety is located. The confusion that each of the characters share in this text felt visceral.

Some of the images in the text that stuck out to me the most, were of cremated bodies shoved in x-ray envelopes, disposed. Mrs. Nakamura and her children vomiting from river water, just trying to quench thirst. Hemorrhages on skin, all over body, radiation.

But at the end, I wondered about why finances mattered, part five. It feels like after surviving an atomic bomb money is not important. But maybe, my perspective is too different, too far off. Maybe, I would like to think I’d be enlightened after surviving horror, but would still care, because I live in a capitalist culture. And maybe the reality is that money is part of survival, that after an atomic bomb money is still a part of life. Mrs. Nakamura needed money to provide for her family.

Reading Koolaids: The Art of War in phx/tempe in cars and coffee shops with Kendrick. A photo series. 

Saturn is not explained, like the falling sky, or the mechanical tortoise. Merced de Papel is folded, rolled out of paper. Just is.

And I love the way these things are so principal, grounding. Not because we know how they are. Because, the people of paper understand, get it for the non paper.

It feels like this book is meant to be read here. Where there are people, humans. Not of paper.

Cunt is my favorite word. Mia, who has read this book before, did not tell me it was coming. And I tell her that I hate her for not telling me, but she says, there is joy in the surprise. She says, “fuck you.” Which is kind of our “I love you.”

And she is right, thinking about the word, independent on the page. Days after first lingering of eyes, I smile. 

I have fallen in love with his last lines. The way that they break open, pour out onto the bodies of the characters. Sticky and sweet, affixing onto the texture of their skin, freckles. Sliding down the backs of their spines.

Lingering.

Let them press, swell into the pores of your skin. Fold into your sheets at night, fall asleep thinking of them. 

“The mattress and sheets tore, and the bed frame collapsed, but none of it has to do with decay” (51).

“Although Don Victoriano never admitted this to anyone, except once in the confessional, he never boarded the plane because he was afraid of dying away from his book” (116).

I don’t piss the bed. But sometimes, my dog licks wet spots onto my sheets. Near my hip, my toes.

My husband works overnights, and I read in bed alone. It is not always lonely, but sometimes, when I am rereading the lines that are most beautiful, it is. Reading to empty pillows. 

Federico de la Fe is lonely, too. A lost love loneliness, wandering thoughts loneliness. Wish that he did not wet the bed, flood their sheets, damp their bodies.