orsi🌷 > Recent Status Updates

ok so i’m further along than page 85 but can’t remember exactly where. Thoughts so far: I am invested in the mystery plot and the romance plot, but I feel like the narration makes it feel kinda anticlimactic when things happen. Or like… climactic but in a way where I’m caught off guard because it was so downtempo right before. I think that’s also due to the characters’ personalities. Also so much dust!!

I need to stop reading this while exhausted because I sometimes need to reread to pick up on the subtleties of their relationship. Also…there is so much fog on this version of Jupiter! My brain hurts trying to imagine such dense air/sky stuff. Cool world building so far.

I dislike the narrator very much but I’m interested in the ‘Why’ of the plot so I’ve decided to keep going. It feels like the story is being told through a busy mind with lots of judgements/angst, which probably makes sense for her age (I think 20?), but I got tired of it pretty fast. Shall see if the plot is worth it, based on the reviews it might be.

I’m further than page 73 now but don’t have time to check where!
In the story it is currently almost Christmas. I feel very connected to the holiday melancholy. I too love a nighttime sad drive through the neighborhood.

“Is Earth not enough?”

I don’t love how she keeps referring to the parks and public land as our birthright and our inheritance because it feels pointedly ignorant of colonialism (even though she means everyone). I do like the bits pulled from the presidential declaration of bears ears because they are detailed and affectionate. Hard to read in the current moment.

The tea ceremony essay was pretty cool in terms of literary structure but I feel like I’m only intermittently connecting with the author’s voice/way of seeing the world. A lot of times she feels untethered, which is totally fine! But I think I just prefer a more focused/precise essayist who lingers for longer on moments. Also I would like fewer essays specifically about the fossil fuel industry I think.

The author has a deeply personal relationship to the lake. She articulates it very differently than me, but this is how I feel about the Gulf of Mexico or the river nearest to me. Being in the water feels very safe and familiar.

Tears have a different molecular structure and chemical composition depending on the emotion that causes them ??! Obsessed. I want to be a teardrop researcher. I want to know how they make you cry for the study. Need a podcast on it ASAP.

I actually like all the other contributors much more than the main author. The interview with an activist named Tim was great, it was a treat to have a different voice.

“You Americans, you’ve mastered the art of living with the unacceptable” yupppp

p.114 good but harrowing bit about climate change “I’m sorry my generation failed yours”
p.116 “married to sorrow” “I just refuse to look away”
p.117 concept of wilderness as total absence of influence, distillation of self and existence when all is stripped away. The world just is how it is naturally, and being there allows you to be your natural self.

“We are not the only species that flies around the world”

The essay Bird Blind is probably my favorite so far. I got into bird watching last year-ish, and sometimes seeing a particular bird, or any wild thing, in real life feels like an omen or a sign that the earth is still okay. “Their return is our assurance that the world is still fit for beauty.”

okay so I went back to page 45 because I wanted to record this idea: “For marginalized communities to feel supported in wilderness, not alienated from it or at risk, the separation narratives of a wilderness without people must cease, so that our survival and the survival of the planet can be woven together into a story of wholeness and planetary health”
brb having a think about this 💡