Status Updates From Light and Thread

really like the section "small teacup" and the poem "The Coat and I"

"...the work of reading and writing literature stands in opposition to all acts that destroy life."

No because how could a book make me weep within 10 pages

Where is love!
It is inside my thump-thumping beating chest.

What is love?
It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts.

A Very Small Snowflake


A very small snowflake, you
As if dancing
As if slowly dancing, approach
My face

Instead of falling straight down like all the other snowflakes
Somehow, you spread your wings toward my face

But where did you get to, after that?
I never saw you again.

„How many gaps of air does the snow contain?

Crystals.

To die is to grow cold.
For the pile of snow on the face to not melt.
To kill is to make cold.“

„…language that connects us to one another. Literature that deals in this language inevitably holds a kind of body heat. Just as inevitably, the work of reading and writing literature stands in opposition to all acts that destroy life. I would like to share the meaning of this award, which is for literature, with you-standing here in opposition to violence, together. Thank you.“

„Watching that streaming rain, the damp soaking my arms and calves, I suddenly understood. All these people standing with me, shoulder to shoulder, and all those people across the way were living as an
"I" in their own right. Each one was seeing this rain, just as I was. This damp on my face, they felt it as well. It was a moment of wonder, this experience of so many different first-person perspectives.“

As a child, I hadn't grasped the political significance of those images, and the ravaged faces became fixed in my mind as a fundamental question about humans: Is this the act of one human towards another? And then, seeing a photo of an endless queue of people waiting to donate blood outside a university hospital: Is this the act of one human towards another? These two questions clashed and seemed irreconcilable...

Bought this book at a very cute bookshop called Salted Books in Lisbon - go check it out :)