It feels like a natural day to reflect on silence as my husband is on a field trip with our son and I have the whole house (and garden!) to myself. It’s just me and the distant sirens on this hermitage (oh, the joys of opening the windows on a summery day). But I’ve been thinking about silence and the things we say and don’t say ever since I read Pico Iyer’s Aflame, followed quickly by The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk.

Peaceful Reflection in Aflame: Learning from Silence

Maybe I’m always thinking about silence. That’s part of the reason why I put Aflame on my Christmas, birthday, and Mother’s Day wish lists. Of course I love Pico Iyer’s work and worldview, and I’ve been re-exploring Buddhism in this time of reconsidering after I left my job. That last bit is why this book felt so necessary for me right now—the book being not just about one retreat Iyer took, but instead touching on the hundreds of retreats he’s taken throughout his life.

“The new Pope [Francis] prayed, I read, not for an answer to any problem, but only for the courage to live with the unanswerable.” – Pico Iyer, Aflame

Iyer writes of how this annual ritual, coupled with one he undertakes in Japan in a different season, enriches his life. He describes that at the hermitage, “Nothing feels forbidden here because there’s no one I’m supposed to be.” A feeling I can relate to in this silent afternoon. It’s hard to make the most of it, because, as a monk relates to Iyer, “We bring [stress, acceleration, dividedness] with us… And sometimes it can be more intense here because it’s more internal.” In truth, I’ve felt myself puttering around today, looking for something to do, wondering what it even is that I want to do or even eat. I know from writing retreats, though, that this feeling passes when I give myself the time to stop worrying into it. As another monk that Iyer quotes says, “[P]eople need the silence to hear themselves.”

What made me want to write about this book, though, is the spareness with which Iyer details his experiences. It’s a stylistic choice, and one that leaves the reader open to insert their own experiences, worries, and meditations into the space. It can also feel odd at times, like when Iyer writes of a songwriter friend. He mentions some lyrics that sound vaguely familiar, but leaves off naming Leonard Cohen for quite some time. This technique effectively focuses the reader (at least one with a poor memory) on what they are discussing rather than the blam, in-the-face fame moment, which I appreciate. But the name drop still slapped me when it occurred and I found myself wondering if Iyer had argued with his editor about even including it, because the book is rich and relatable enough on its own.

Reading this book is itself a meditation. While I miss taking writing retreats (I will again, someday, when I figure out how a better balance between earning and making), just spending time leafing through this book helped me deepen my sense of peace and understanding of the world. Which helped me remember also that there is joy in engaging with it.

“The Buddha’s lesson, too, excessive renunciation is still excess.” – Pico Iyer, Aflame.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud in The Empusium

I have also loved Tokarczuk’s work before, though The Books of Jacob was a bit much for me. So I opened The Empusium thinking only that I was ready for whatever ride she wanted to take me on. I was not prepared for how closely this book mirrors The Magic Mountain, nor was I prepared for how effectively she was going to use a profluence of words against the characters who are speaking them.

The Empusium is, in that way, the exact opposite of Aflame, because it’s only by filling in an excess of detail that Tokarczuk can show us what we’ve been failing to see all along. The book follows Mieczysław Wojnicz as he travels to a health resort to be cured of “various conditions best understood not by him but by his father.” Which, I understood from reading more of the book, was a deep shot not just at Wojnicz the elder as patriarch but at the Patriarchy in general.

This book cleverly turns the Patriarchy flat on its head in many ways, but the one I most wanted to share with you today is how Tokarczuk fills the mouths of the men around Mieczysław with the words and ideas of many great thinkers throughout history.

• “In the philosophical sense we cannot treat a woman as a comprehensive, complete subject of the kind that man is.”
• “A woman should have her rights, of course, but she should never forget that she belongs to society, which appoints the institution of the state to take care of its interests, so to but it logically, a woman, hm, hm, can be commanded by the state.”
• “Women…are incapable of creating a national organization, or even a tribal one, because by their nature they submit to those who are stronger.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when not all audiences would read these ideas as outdated. Some would, alas, celebrate the misogyny. The beauty of what Tokarczuk has done, though, is allowing people to read those characters however they choose, piling (to me) uncomfortable statement on top of uncomfortable statement and then smacking anyone who is confused on where her moral center lies with an author’s note at the end:

“All the misogynistic views on the topic of women and their place in the world are paraphrased from texts by the following authors: Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Cluny, William S. Burroughs, Cato, Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin…[and so on to include 30 additional fathers of knowledge]” – Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

There are other, subtler ways she plays with masculine and feminine roles and stereotypes in this book. There are also less subtle things involving copulating with holes in the ground. It’s a masterful and darkly funny book, one that’s direly needed in the now. If only we could get people to read it…

I’m off to hang out in the hammock with Gary Shteyngart as he skewers the 1% class… May your weekend be filled with the kinds of silence you most love.

“‘Everything will be all right in the end,’ says Cyprian, steering the car away from the precipice. ‘I fully believe that. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.'” – Pico Iyer, Aflame

If you need a meditation or a wake-up call, pick up a copy of Aflame: Learning from Silence or The Empusium from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.

After my lowest weeks, days I spilled over into tears at the slightest provocation, I started to think I might have cabin fever. I may have researched winter-over syndrome, wondering if there was something clinical. I’ve definitely read this article about the pandemic wall more than once. Recently, though, I realized that I’m profoundly bored and that I’m using the fitty energy of that to gnaw at my leg and any other thing I can reach. This whatever feeling has also explained my reading tastes of late—I’m reading almost entirely nonfiction, a category I mostly avoid, except, perhaps, when I’m trying to experience something that feels more like life than this routine we’ve developed to get through the thing. I should say that we’re well, financially stable, and okay in general. But humans weren’t designed to live a full year mostly indoors and away from other humans. Screens aren’t helping. So I thought I’d share some of the lives I’ve been living lately in case you need your own escape.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich

This polyphonic history of post-Soviet Russia is fascinating. It’s fascinating as events unfold with Navalny in Russia. It’s fascinating as the U.S. seems intent on forgetting our own attempted coup. It’s fascinating in general to remember what it was like to live through the fall of the Soviet Union and the clashes and shifts in that country in the years following. It’s also fascinating for me as someone who’s always been interested in the Eastern European parts of my heritage.

Alexievich includes first-person narratives of everyone from dedicated sovoks to capitalist dreamers, from oppressed minorities to people who lived The Gulag Archipelago, and this book helped me realize how rich and complex the post-Soviet experience is. At times it made me feel better about the political situation in the U.S. At times it did not. Because of the failure of our Congress to hold Trump accountable for trying to kill them and their colleagues, I’ll leave you with this quote from someone who was part of massive anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus in 2010:

“As long as it’s only us educated romatics out in the streets, it’s not a real revolution.” – Tanya Kuleshova as reported to Svetlana Alexievich

Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia by Suzanne Massie

My Russian deep-dive may have started with an attempt to finally get this tome off my to-read shelf before the opening the stack of books awaiting me for my birthday. It might also have started because I was remembering my Djiedo, who died about two years ago. Regardless, Land of the Firebird was fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like this cultural history. While it’s easy to be skeptical about any book about Russia published in America in the 1980’s, it’s clear that Massie loves the country of her ancestors and the book is filled with fascinating information.

Massie takes us through the history of early Russia where I learned that the Ukrainians and Russians used to be one people (which flipped some of my Reagan-era prejudices on their head). The early parts of the book are more history as she details Mongol invasions and other political transformations and I enjoyed reading about Catherine the Great after having watched The Great. In more recent history, though, Massie really goes beyond history and deep into the culture and arts of Russia (ending at the revolution). I took so much from this book as I forced my son to sit through Russian composers I’d never considered and started more than one poem tracing lines through the artistic side of my Ukrainian heritage. It’s a nice book, but one I’ve already found occasion to share with another writer online.

The Face Series: Tash Aw, Chris Abani and Ruth Ozeki

I was thrilled when I found this gem in a local Little Free Library one day this past fall, because Ozeki and Abani are two of my very favorite writers. I was also excited to delve into the very personal stories in the book as I work to learn more about individual experiences of race.

True to form, Ozeki’s meditation on her literal face is as inventive, intelligent and humorous as the rest of her books. Her Buddhist perspective is always fascinating and humbling, and I loved how she interspliced mini essays on her life with the minute-by-minute observations of staring at her face in the mirror.

“Making familiar things strange is the job of the artist.” – Ruth Ozeki, The Face

Abani’s book contains his characteristic humanity, gorgeous writing, and knowing humor. His look at identity weaves us through stories of his life, conversations with his brother, and greater lessons about Western African culture. This book is one step in the trail of love he leaves wherever he goes.

I did not previously know Aw’s work, but now I can’t wait to read more of it. He belongs among Pico Iyer’s global souls and this book takes us on a fascinating journey through what it is like for him as a Malaysian writer who both does and does not blend into a variety of cultures throughout Asia. Despite having traveled in several Asian countries, I learned so much about different experiences of the continent from the nuances of this book.

As much as I’d like to, I can’t really do any of these three (short but rich) books justice here, because so much of the beauty is in discovering the way these three writers structure their thoughts. What I can do is highly recommend each and every one.

The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller

This book is actually fiction based on stories from someone who experienced the same deportation to the gulag. I’ve lost the book somewhere (or given it away, it was oh so very depressing), so I cannot treat you to any of Müller’s sentences or the fantastic imagery she imbues into this bleak, bleak experience, but this book is one of the most beautifully written things I’ve read in a very long while and it will make almost any pandemic experience seem cheery.

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

Now we’re snowed in for the long weekend, and after finally finishing the Alexievich book (so good, so long, such small print), I decided to treat myself to Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation. I’m not very far along, but already it’s a bit like reading Simone Weil (which I loved). Because I’m a reluctant agnostic (and most of the time Buddhist), I do not resonate deeply with Merton’s relationship with God, and still I connect deeply with the content of his writing. When he writes of Descartes as a being alienated from his feelings, “in exile from his own spiritual depths,” I recognize a struggle I’ve been working to overcome for the last decade as I integrate my thoughts and my feelings.

In January 2020, I had come to the conclusion that I needed to focus on being more mindful of my everyday experiences, their effects on me, and my relationship with the world at large. Which lasted until about February, when the only thing I was able to be mindful of was my need to stock up on basic supplies and the fear I was beginning to feel every time my son went to daycare. A year later, I feel stable enough (despite the pandemic wall) to breathe and think. And I’m excited to have Merton as my guide on the next step of whatever is to come.

Of course, this nonfiction fixation started before I realized it and most of my last pandemic reading list qualifies. May these (or any other) books bring you some comfort until we get to live our own lives again.