Your Custom Text Here
Writing, Reading, Far to Go
The Bathtub.
Hushpuppy, her daddy Wink, Jean Battiste, Miss Bathsheba, the wild Aurochs. Beasts of the Southern Wild. Thinking on all y'all tonight. Despite my friends who disliked your story, I still hold on to liking it. It's a good story. Without being overly philosophical, by responding to the narrative with my heart instead of my mind, I lean into a little girl's words of wisdom and courage and spirit, and I feel glad.
I've been reading Andrew Lam's story collection, Birds of Paradise Lost. Surprised and inspired beyond belief by these stories, I realize how the words are sifting and settling. Connections, ideas, dreams. Take the dance expression, "pas de six," and add it to a scene in which relationships, language, and surprise play against each other. Vietnamese and American characters. The Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Include cat-o'-nine-tailed whips, sadomasochism, misunderstanding, parasols painted with poetry, angels' wings and confusion, leather and elation, eventual understanding, even love.
The metaphor of the flower, six-petaled, blossoming before our very eyes.
"THE FLOWER BLOOMS. A pas de six."
Quotation from "Love Leather," Birds of Paradise Lost, 2013, Andrew Lam
Thunder & Lightning - Flora - Kauai, 2008 - by Karin Cecile Davidson
