Ailbhe > Recent Status Updates

Riley offers gorgeous reflection & language about our relationships to place and each other. Relishing in the reading, even as a pagan.

So glad I’m reading this diary-essay collection in winter, when Jamaica Kincaid is reflecting on the bursts of Summer, but the Winter who must follow; the Winter who is so miserable, but the Spring who will follow. It’s rhythmic, and in that way comforting. At times a ramble, but I like that. Funny and keenly observant. Yesyes!

For a dark and twisted book, Freshwater reads surprisingly quickly once you get into it—fluid as its title. So far, major content warnings for, gore, r*pe and sexual trauma. Powerful narrative voices and world-building. Can’t wait to let the second half devour me.

Wow! The craft Joukhadar demonstrates by making this book so intimately and clearly written for Arabic speakers, while also making sure it’s legible and easy for an English speaking audience (without being explanatory), is so impressive! What a master class.

Ghosts, Arab community in NYC, dysmenorrhea, art history, Teta’a stories, ornithology, transness, a sweet cat... EXCUSE ME how could a book be so specifically for my readership?? I was hooked by the opening line and um, already can’t wait to talk about this story’s revelations in therapy. 😳🦉🌙✨👻🏳️‍🌈

Every night a different line from this book smacks me right awake. How did we get to be so deserving as to receive the honesty, the intimacy, and the reverent beauty of this book?

I’m a third of the way through this retelling, and each chapter is full of a more vivid and complicated account of anger than the last. Ancient anger, the anger of women wronged by caste and patriarchy, by gods and men. Anger that isn’t always righteous, anger that doesn’t always look like rage. I wonder how much of this emotion is Naïr’s, who channeled these voices from the unwritten parts of history?

The rhythm in these poems, the softness and the clarity of them, their stories: all of it, gorgeous.

Let’s be honest, I’m rereading this for the gay content. :p

Thankful for a story who opens with poetry. Thankful for a story grounded in practices of Spirit/magic. Delicious to read, and I don’t want to put it down.

Bless this book. I am listening to the audiobook, as read by Robin Wall Kimmerer herself, and am filled with poetry, witness, and gratitude.

I love reading this book as a practice. I’m recording my non-linear journey with this book and the ways I’m applying each essay to my life over on twitter @ailbhepascal. ✨

So far, I’ve struggled to relate my own experiences as a Pagan to the massive Cons and mystery cults described in this book. I’ve been compelled by the author’s voice and the historical tidbits, but cringed at the rampant cultural appropriation being described as “acceptable.” I was about to put the book in DNF when I got to the “inevitable email” halfway through. Let’s see where this goes...

In the chapter “Evolution Never Gives Up” Thomas makes the compelling point that it’s a false binary to separate “natural” from “artificial” selection. A mistletoe evolves alongside its avian consumers and vice versa, just as cattle evolve alongside us and vice versa. This is not to make comment on GMOs, but on the slower motions of evolution (that are quite rapid, surprisingly). Eager to learn more!

At first I wasn’t sure if this was an apolitical look at the “bright side” of climate change, and then Thomas wrote “the glass three-quarters full is still a quarter empty” and I knew extinction was being recounted with the sadness and care it deserves. I’m thankful to know more about *survival* in the Anthrocene and to have a more wholistic view of life on Earth today (not just despair).

Nnendi Okorafor’s story is my favorite so far. I’m here for captivating, Saharan warrior goddesses. 💕

I’m already hooked. The sentences are written like streams, rippling over moments, flowing on to the next... Gorgeous prose.

also, *sigh*. Arin perpetuates Cunningham’s school of thought that you have to be “healthy” to cast a spell. Ableism is boring and simply untrue. 😑 Give me your reflections without dictating what a worthy/possible/good witch body is like. ✨