“Those who live in caves, die in caves,” said All-Father, “and the love of the Wanderer is to wanderers.”—Naomi Mitchison
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Book Magic has been a part of my life. My hope is that in naming it, I can articulate something that other people have felt, perhaps even without having put a name to it. Maybe there is a community of us who feel this way and if I hold space publicly for it, we can call it into being together, a common wealth of inspiration of solace and connection and possibility.
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On Reading Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels
There are some things I started before I came out and then finished after I began my transition. The Wire. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Octavia Butler’s unfinished Earthseed Trilogy. I spent four years making my way through the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante and I can remember where I was every time I read a book from the series. Two months ago I finished the series.
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A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems by Patricia Spears Jones (White Pine Press 2015)
“Life is full of injustices large and small / but also moments of tenderness and regard” Jones writes in her poem “Day After May Day” and to me this epitomizes the spirit of this collection.
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Once dæmons become separable from their humans, however excruciating this process and its aftermath are, they become fungible. So what we see at the end of the The Secret Commonwealth is the process of something becoming a commodity—and it’s pretty chilling.
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I just finished reading The Secret Commonwealth (spoilers ahead), racing through to the end of the book along with Lyra as she races, tired and wounded, to the Blue Hotel aka Selenopolis aka Madinat al-Qamar aka Al-Khan al-Azraq. I should say up front that that post, unlike the last, is actually ABOUT The Secret Commonwealth which title Pullman credits to Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth. In short, the secret commonwealth describes the world of half-seen, half-hidden things; the supernatural, which has a more palpable, if increasingly uncertain, presence in Lyra’s world than our own.
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