In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s great-grandmother and her sister marry two brothers. One is named Aristotle.
Do you know of any brothers in one family who marry sisters from another?
Tag: Relationships
What gives, Karmen
about it, except for an annual holiday trek up the railroad tracks along the river and brisk swim before the pool closes with Labor Day as ritual with a list of things to do filling four pages feeling depressed half the time even overwhelmed would be natural, too much I lose balance, lose focus, lose center then need to get back into the room by myself relating her entire summer rather beat
A culminating novel
It’s is not my debut novel. Rather, I have the feeling it’s the opposite — the final one. I could never do this again. What’s Left is a big novel chock full of surprising turns, deep thoughts, and lively details. Unless Cassia starts speaking to me again, there will be no sequels. For me, at least, the story condenses so much into its pages I’m feeling completed.
Unlike my earlier novels, this one was not written on the fly while working full-time as a journalist. Like them, though, it’s undergone extensive revision.
Woven through the book are themes I’d explored in my earlier stories, now seen in a new light, while investigating others I’m tackling for the first time. Family and family enterprise, adolescence and childhood, death and divorce, and Greek-American culture, especially, are new while counterculture, romance, spirituality, community, nature and specific place, livelihood, journalism itself all run through my previous work.
~*~
Think of this bit as going into the compost rather than being served on the plate:
All I’m doing is asking you to apply your new comprehension to the rest of your life.
~*~
Of course, you’ve heard somebody blurt out, “I’m never going to forget this as long as I live!” Or some such. And sometimes it’s true.
Me? I have trouble remembering nearly everything. Could it be one reason I read so widely is to help me remember? Of course, writing gets it down on paper, once again so I don’t forget.
So while I read to help me remember and to gain insight on the world around me, it’s not the only reason by any stretch.
What do you look for most in a novel or poem?
~*~
How do those mixed identities add up?
Like most of us, Cassia finds herself carrying a host of identities. She’s Greek-American, on one side, and Midwestern WASP, on the other. She’s been raised with both Tibetan Buddhist and Greek Orthodox religious influences. She’s a female, of course, and an entrepreneur. She’s part of a large extended family, a Hoosier, a bohemian, a college graduate, a devoted sister, a daughter. And that’s just for starters.
What are your most prominent identities? How do they shape your life?
Straw hat
Jacob rather frowns on swimming, but Bleu and Ohio Boy love it while Swami just grins “Om” before a letter from South Carolina says they’ve named their farm Bee Riddle Farm, which I find wonderfully poetic yet if the buzzers proliferate, shouldn’t it be Bee-Riddled Farm? ending with Love and God’s Peace, no doubt, but who ate all that sweet corn?
As for that question, ‘Do you have a sister?’
In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s great-grandfather and his brother marry two sisters. One is named Athina.
How do people in your circles discover each other as couples?
With the element of chance in tie-dye or batik
you no doubt recall a cheery visit in Rhode Island or a ferry trip to Block Island an hour-and-a-half each way in gray eight-foot swells (we, too, rent a Mo-Ped to zip around on while out there) or a smoky Cog Railroad to the top of Mount Washington, a strategy that beats hiking to the 6,288-foot-elevation’s windy sub-alpine summit
How tightly are they bound together?
Cassia and her brothers and cousins face a crucial decision. Do they continue to jointly hold the family business as a resource for future generations, requiring them to keep working for a living, or do they divvy up their shares and then live independently wherever and however they desire?
Put yourself in Cassia’s shoes.
How would your life be different if you didn’t have to worry about how you’d make ends meet? What would you dream of doing?
~*~
An ongoing internal tension
Trying to strike a satisfying balance:
Between my local Meeting and serving the wider world of Friends.
With my writing, finding a wider audience for my existing work.
With the rest of my life – householding, exercise, reading, etc.
It just never seems to come together neatly!
So just what, exactly, holds it all together?
Banzai, Zeke
to know a good life is not easy just look at all that’s broken here knowing you miss so much is to concede abundance and blessing as well until the eyes move away from what’s harmonious see, a house wrapped in leaves repeats marriage and even the compost unassumingly transforms to its own succulence while the children expect everything before attaining focus, at last requited by frugal exercise where we may be generous
Jnana's Red Barn 