First, a correction about yesterday’s post, a minor matter: the black elastic band bound into the cover of “How We Are Hungry” is not a bookmark. It’s some kind of elastic band, apparently meant to hold the book closed or something. I’ve seen journals with that, now that I think about it. Oddness, but in a cool, quirky way.
However, there is, in fact, a silver ribbon bound into the spine that is, in fact, a bookmark. It doesn’t show up in the picture I posted, but it’s there. I discovered it last night.
It’s strange to think of a book as having undiscovered properties or features. But, you know, in a cool, quirky way.
The book is so good so far. The second story features Hand, one of the main characters from “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, but the story is told from the point of view of Pilar, a girl who is not Latin but has dark hair and a Latin name. Let me quote from the story (p. 50):
If there were a question that needed to be answered in this story it would be not one but many, and would be these: How can a world allow all this? Allow these people to live so long? To travel all these miles south, to a place so different but still so comfortable, and in that place, meet again? To allow them to be naked together for the first time? What would their parents think? What would their friends think? Would anyone object? Who would plan for them? How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated–maybe we are–to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that’s run for miles just to strike you.
The story is called “The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water”.
So good.