roach

”But there it is, the neutral roach, without a name for pain or for love.”

“For I was exaulting. I was coming to know the violence of the happy dark — I was happy as a demon, hell is my maximum.”

“Oh God, I was feeling baptized by the world. I had put a roach’s matter into my mouth, and finally performed the tiniest act.”

“Through the living roach I am coming to understand that I too am whatever is alive.”

“That was when the cockroach began to emerge.”

“The cockroach is pure seduction.”

+++

nearly done with my first chapbook, the memoir of a cockroach. I have plans for this little lovely when done. currently: seeking an epigraph from the astonishing book The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (the source of all the above quotes), which I highly recommend.

near to the wild heart

In putting together my final MFA packet of this semester I was tasked with writing an annotation of Clarice Lispector's Near to the Wild Heart. The novel is influenced by James Joyce & is written almost entirely in an introspective dialogue. There is very little, if any, physical action. Reading the book felt like being lost in a blue waterworld, with no direction & no footholds to grasp at. Needless to say, I wasn't sure how to write about it.

So I put together this audio/visual piece called lispector blue as a kind of response/exploration of the process of reading the book.

lispector blue from Natalie Raymond on Vimeo.