December Reading; "Know Love Loss"

Hello all,

Sliding into the end of the year, and already treading the waters of that strange time between Thanksgiving and New Years where many of the people I know seem to scale back our efforts and “pre-rest” for the oncoming exhaustion of the flurry of activity that is Holiday Break. Marking the end of a large and heavy year, and a general season of what’s come before, I’m spending more time in an ongoing study of grief, in preparation for a few projects.

Much in the same way that Ross Gay talks about Delight and Joy as fundamentally connected to experiences of loss, pain, and even anger, I want to approach meditations, reflections, and engagement with grief from the Standpoint of Love. This month’s primary text is the book that kicks my ass on love - and Love and Grief especially.

“All About Love”

by Bell Hooks

Just read this book. Bell Hooks is remarkable for many things - a depth of humanity, an openness and curiosity, a willingness to question and investigate, and an unveiled grounding in a sense of Spiritual depth. As I’ve detailed here before, I once sat in a park and polled people as to whether they believed Love is a feeling or a choice. Hooks comes out swinging, borrowing Erich Fromm’s definition of love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. [...], Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice.”

This book is a strong bid to center our notion of love, and among the many spokes on its wheel is an exploration of grief that I’m still sitting with. Come grab a seat.

Related Readings:

“Thanatology - NEW Interview (DEATH, GRIEF & MOURNING) with Cole Imperi + Tips for Going Through It”

Ologies, by Alie Ward

This is an interview I’ve linked before in some form, and one that I’ve come to many times for many different kinds of need. The update in particular reflects an ongoing thread of watching creators I admire and enjoy be varying degrees of public with their ongoing journeys of personal grief - but in general, this question of what lessons we avoid and could learn at the end of life and after still sits with me.

“Whalefall”

Daniel Krauss

I literally just finished this book, so I’m working out my relationship to it—it may well appear as recommended reading for a future month, and the Telelibrary reading request is in the mail. For now, it certainly deals with grief and loss and what the author describes as “the question of what makes a ‘good death.’ ” It’s also a page-turning thriller in the science-survivalist mindset of “the martian but he’s in a whale.” Strange reading, surprising depths, and a sustained, earnest attempt to stay rigorously plausible about the increasingly speculative scientific fact of being a person literally inside of a whale.