#i devoured it

Borgor.

Describes pretty much how I felt while reading this rollercoaster of a book.

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

I started and finished it today. Just now, after only 4 hours of reading. I really really reeeeeeaaaaallllly lived it. However, I wish there were more to come in Elfhaim with Jude and Cardan 😭

When my mother says, while we lie, sandwiched between dogs and blankets, in a bed together, “You’re the glue that holds us crazies together. You’re stable. You’re good. You’re always there,” and then for her to continue, “It’s true. You’re solid. You’re solid,” I think of Marge Piercy’s lines from “To be of use:” “The work of the world is common as mud. / Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. / But the thing worth doing well done / has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.” I also think of the lecture and reading Kiese Laymon gave at the festival, and the brief contact I had with him where I did not say all I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was about how vital to all our lives, to humanity, that the chronicling of the fierce love that can still vibrate within “broken,” brutalized, traumatized, and impoverished homes and families is. It is an experience so central to the choices I make, have made, will make, and it is an experience I don’t see so concretely communicated often if ever. It is also an experience people do not usually instinctively understand if their upbringing took on a different tone. It’s real, but it’s also complicated and messy and tough. What I said instead was some spliced version of my thoughts because I was whispering them, thrown into speaking to him by someone who sat next to me who said, “Kiese is leaving! Go get your book signed! You will never see him again---go!” I think that person had a glass of wine with me one night where I liked them better than I had initially---I always like people more when there is not a large group around to influence their behavior---and had told them my feelings about the reading of his book, but another lecture was being introduced. Because of this, I held up my hand and nodded my head at the stage before feeling them nudge my leg and seeing them gesture their own hands toward the back of the room. Somehow, this person nudging my leg and gesturing was enough to get me to ignore my discomfort. Perhaps it was just that their pressure was greater than my anxiety. Still I thought how uncomfortable and rude this is to run off after him and have to whisper my disjointed and ineloquent interruptions while academics do their academic things, but as well I thought of how much I wanted to say what I wanted to say and have him know, to be reminded in the moment, of the magnitude of what he has given through his work to one more person in the world. But then I couldn’t because of the constraints of manners that come screeching through always anyway, that gray sedan of society---except this is a lie, because it was because my own vulnerability refused to be cast out and was like a flailing animal inside of me just trashing around in that cage---and so I said half of it. But I think half of it was enough. And I think of what he wrote in my copy of his memoir Heavy: “I am thankful we can be better.” And I think tonight: Me too. Me too. 

A few months ago I tore through @missdreawrites‘ Bone Collectors series (well, excepting the explicit stuff; I’m an SFW gal lol) and sketched this up immediately afterward! I forgot to post it then but here it is now; that series was a terrific, wild ride!