#rootless

[momentsbeforemass]

Roots

When my dog Leo was a puppy, he chewed on everything. Literally.

Not just the usual, like shoes, books, and toys. But anything he could get a hold of. Including a porch railing. It's not like he didn't have rawhides and chew toys. He just had other ideas about what needed chewing.

So it probably shouldn't have surprised me. When he chewed through the root of the grapevine on my back fence.

At first, you couldn't tell anything had happened. For a few days, the vine looked so good I started thinking there might be a second root.

Then the weather went from cool to hot. And the whole thing wilted. Fast. Because it was it cut off.

Kind of like when we cut ourselves off from God. Whether we do it dramatically or quietly, with a sudden breach or a slow drift, it's kind of the same thing.

At first, there's no difference. We're still us. Everything still looks okay.

Until things heat up. Then we learn the hard way what it's like not to have roots. 

Don't get me wrong, trouble will come for us. It always does.

The only question? Whether we'll be well-rooted in God when it does.

Or if we'll try to face it cut off.

Today’s Readings

[dirtsoilmulch]

i lov giving personalities to characters who so badly lack them

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

It feels a bit on the nose that Tablet Magazine has pulled the plug on Unorthodox and replaced it with "Oops, all Liel Liebowitz!" Kinda feels like a metaphor for the political transformation of Tablet itself (and to a lesser extent, to the American Jewish community in a way that we don't like to think about)

[eyefeelthebeat]

Lower case society Tied to no community A kingdom without a king With no sense of belonging

[howifeltabouthim]

I feel myself to be a desolate, solitary being, without any tie to any person, or to any place.

Anthony Trollope, from Can You Forgive Her?

[keplercryptids]

thinking about halkifell and the ifrit like. you honor people by letting them tell their stories. and thinking about damavand and the dao like. you honor people by recording their stories. and thinking about these two communities meeting for the first time wahhhhh

[hiljametsa]

For a root

For a leaf

For a branch

For a tree

[memoriesfrombooks]

The "why" of Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah covers a lot of ground - the immigrant experience, discrimination and prejudice, cultural expectations, parental expectations, gender expectations, and parenthood. Despite the shifting timelines, the empathy that develops for Efe could have resulted in an emotional story. Then comes the ending. My reaction... Really? Really? After all that, this is how it ends? Did I really read that entire book and begin to invest in it for this? 

Reviewed for NetGalley.

[excusemykill91]

The irony of rage is a knife and the hand holding it .

Where is the ultimate belonging we find if not in the desire to die.

[healinginsideoutandinbetween]

You were my home; now I'm a wanderer seeking you in every place I wander, so I find you and our home.

[mermaidinthecity]

Running with my roots pulled up so they could cut me free of love. Running with my roots pulled up. Caught me cold so they could cut what there was left of love. I'm rootless, I'm rootless. Dragging my roots through the snow. No home sweet and no sweet home. I've got nowhere to go. I'm rootless, I'm rootless.

Rootless by Marina & The Diamonds

[bloodmaarked]

➫ monthly book round-up: march 2024

books read: 6 [=] average rating: 3.1 [-14%] average speed: 10.5 days [+35%] total pages: 2,219 [+7%] yearly goal progress: 17/50 best of the month: a psalm of storms and silence, roseanne a. brown worst of the month: saving time: discovering a life beyond the clock, jenny odell

4.5* reads:

a psalm of storms and silence, roseanne a. brown

4* reads:

the murder at the vicarage, agatha christie

3* reads:

rootless, krystle zara appiah

2.5* reads:

pageboy: a memoir, elliot page

the human origins of beatrice porter & other essential ghosts, soraya palmer

2* reads:

saving time: discovering a life beyond the clock, jenny odell

currently reading:

the meaning of mariah carey, mariah carey

[fashionandfrappes]

Everything I Read in August 2023: Marriage and Complicated Relationships

It was a good reading month but not very varied. Out of the 6 books I read this month, 3 were about marriages. Which I love but probably not a good read if you do not care at all about this subject. Sorry but I would rather manage your expectations! The general announcement I have is that I will be posting on Saturday going forward. All of you helpfully told me you don’t read on Mondays thats…

[dustedmagazine]

Rootless — Other Reasons (Island House)

other reasons by rootless

Rootless is the Brooklyn-based guitarist Jeremy Hurewitz caught here emerging from his guitarist chrysalis. In Other Reasons, the jangle of guitar comes as if from a distant time or place, wrapped in an amber-y, ambient glow and shot through with vocals that are both disembodied and curiously soulful.

“Feet of Clay” has faint echoes of Six Organs’ Companion Rises, that alchemical blend of forthright picking and gnostic bliss. It is filled out with spectral swoops of violin (that’s Zachary Paul a composer and improviser from Brooklyn) and haunted with the sweet trill of female vocals (Ash Brooks, who often works with Matt Lajoie). Lajoie himself turns up in “Half Truths,” a luminous interweaving of clear, pure tone, where tremulous guitar vibrations skate over wavering tone washes like a long-legged water bug crossing the pond. There’s turbulence within the calm, a muted scream, a rumble of dread, a massive noisy crescendo, but it resolves in steady strum and breathy vocals. Think Hush Arbors emerging from a whorl of John Bence.  

Side two leans more towards acoustic blues folk, letting the mystery arise from simpler, more familiar parts. It starts with “Who Am I?” with its upward slanting picked line and its whispery sung melody.  A patter of hand drums picks up the rhythm after a bit, and a violin slips between the notes in a vibrato-laced lament. It is, perhaps, the most folk-song-ish entry on this five-song cassette but slowed to a meditative pace and distilled to essence. “What Was Once Will Be Again” is likewise mostly acoustic picking without the whoosh of ambient sound or the flutter of spectral vocals. And yet though these songs are made of plainer material, they are just as evocative and stirring.

Hurewitz’s previous albums have focused more on fingerpicking, agile and shaded with blues, folk and non-Western influences. His What the Truth Leaves Out from 2022 may put you in mind of Sir Richard Bishop. But Other Reasons is another thing altogether, wholly its own experience and worth having.

Jennifer Kelly