Notes

Note: Lacuna

A lacuna is an unfilled space or interval; a gap or missing part; a hiatus; a missing portion in a book or manuscript.

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The potential benefit of analyzing Bookswept’s lacuna would be to arrive at a conclusion that prevents it from happening again. Beyond that, such self-examination risks wasting even more time, when all there is simply left to do is do. I greet this space with just enough shame to inspire determination lest another four seasons pass with few words as evidence.

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At the moment I work at a book club of sorts, its finest feature a library with over 10,000 books about books, books on California, and fine press books printed in California. They are cataloged and arranged in a way that evidently made sense to the only librarian the books have ever known, who died just six months before I began my employment. Two slim volumes have held my attention the longest: John Steinbeck’s How Edith McGillcuddy Met R.L.S (1943) and Joan Didion’s Telling Stories (1978). Describing the early years of her writing career when she wrote photo captions for Vogue (“the monthly grand illusion”), Didion writes, “I learned a kind of ease with words . . . a way of regarding words not as mirrors of my own inadequacy but as tools, toys, weapons to be deployed strategically on a page.”

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I take the train into San Francisco and for the first time I experience the city as a purely practical destination, the streets as a means to get to an office. The city used to feel inaccessible, always suggesting that it was too busy to get to know me, but I think we’ve grown accustomed to each other.

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The sidewalks are now full of familiar faces, like the valet in the top hat outside of the Marriott, the girl wearing a red bow tie who turns right on Harrison Street, and the impossibly friendly Jehovah’s Witnesses with tight grips on their pamphlets. I once caught a man on pamphlet duty lean over to whisper something into his comrade’s ear, who in response leaned his whole body back in laughter, louder than anyone should be laughing at 7 a.m. in the cold. I can only assume that those pamphlets indeed hold all that is good and holy, as promised.

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Buildings replace trees and pieces of trash replace leaves, and on one morning the wind was so strong that trash swirled up into the air, and for half a second a few scraps circled right above my head like a crown.

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I’m currently reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, in which I’m reminded “nothing is ever what they say, and no one holy one hundred percent.”

Note: Election Results

It has been one week since the United States made the irrevocable decision to bestow its most sacred title to the most profane and undeserving man. To envision the president-elect in the White House is nothing short of sacrilege, and I suspect that the betrayal will be freshly felt every day that he remains there.
 
If there is room for hope, I hope that democracy considers this an opportunity to prove its resilience; I hope that the country proves that it can bend and fold in unprecedented ways only to straighten itself up, weathered but stronger and more refined; I hope progress proves inevitable.
 
As events continue to painfully unfold, let us remain on the right side of history. Let us learn, collect and connect ideas, and act accordingly. With renewed enthusiasm, Bookswept will continue to share the wide range of perspectives that are born of literature. It may become harder than ever to extract truth from our leaders and institutions. The opposite can be said of our books. Let us put them to good use.
 

Note: Summer

Summer leaps above the rest of the year, much like the holidays, a brief period of entirely unique rituals. Perhaps long summer days are to be appreciated, but I’ve never appreciated when things linger, be it days or guests or feelings.
 
I’ve traveled up and down California throughout the season, driving alongside sunflowers that bravely line the highways, the wild kind whose tiny heads branch out in all directions. In Lake Tahoe, tall pines swayed until they creaked, like a house near collapse, and in the southern Sierra Nevada, stars appeared and I counted four, nine, and then sixteen before they flooded the sky and the counting proved futile. The photo above was taken in Joshua Tree, where in that very same dress I ran at full speed among the giant boulders because at 6 a.m. there is not a soul in sight, and thus every reason to do just about anything that comes to mind.
 
Summer unveiled a few surprises so I’m in the midst of just as many changes, which I hope to (happily) reflect upon soon. I have a feeling that this fall will bear little resemblance to summer or spring or the previous fall, which is perfectly fine by me. When I was younger, adjusting to new situations proved difficult, but I now find change to be less daunting, more stimulating. I feel relieved that life refuses to be overly pleased with itself, that it is biased toward change.
 
I recently finished Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016), the dreamers being those who cling to the American Dream, the supposed direct and easy transaction between hard work and success. The author goes as far as to call America “a magnificent land of uninhibited dreamers,” which seems to suggest that we don’t know when to stop. But these characters do, eventually. More on this Cameroonian writer’s million-dollar debut soon.