On Reading Deliciously Slowly

Reading my dear friends first novel

I know you feel it—everything moves so fast these days. I find myself more and more apologetic about my text response time, my forgetfulness and so on. At the beginning of the year I did a cutesy thing and made a punch card of goals, one of which was to read 6 books throughout the year. It doesn’t feel like a lot, but I wanted to give myself the opportunity to stretch out time, to read at a pace that slows my nervous system, rather than turning one of my earliest pleasures into another task.

Life is busy, and I’m taking longer than I expected. It’s May and I’m only on book two. The first book, Sea of Poppies, I finished fairly quickly, but this book, The Ones We Loved by Tarisai Ngangura is one of my best friend’s first novels, so I intentionally have been taking my time with it. I don’t want to skim pages, or read for the gist. Plus, Tari writes in such a way that you can live inside of a single sentence.

I find myself reading two chapters at a time, setting the book down and feeling my cells rearranged. Tari writes like that. Provoking something deep in your spirit to move that may have not moved in generations. An example:

“What is there to do, to grow through, to reach for, if living is not the thing that is protected?” (The Ones We Loved)

In this section, Tari writes from the perspective of a woman, as she recalls the earlier days of her life when she permitted herself to experience wonder. She reflects on an atrocity that she’s heard about from across the room, and the tragedy that people will harm one another because they are so disturbed by others who are choosing to live their own lives fully.

I don’t want to give too much away—and to be honest I don’t need to. The sentence can do it’s work without you even knowing the context. What is there to do, to grow through, to reach for, if living is not the thing that is protected?

This sentence so beautifully demonstrates the moment we are living through. So much of the collective structural choices around us are oriented towards destruction and harm. I think about my own tiny daily choices and silently wish for more time and space to sink into living. It is all too easy to forget that life is a gift, that every moment holds an opportunity to be courageous, and feel a little bit more acutely alive.

Then, Tari’s words reveal a new layer that makes me think of trauma. Maybe many humans are so willing to self-numb because living a color within the lines life creates a feeling of safety. Maybe all the scrolling, tv watching, workaholism, vices are a reflection of some deep and untended wound. The wound of being harmed, in some way, by expressing authentically, or choosing a radical life.

I believe in soul wounds and past life trauma. Whether you subscribe to that spiritually or not, we do know that epigenetic inheritance is real. Are there remnants of fear, shame, or otherwise that we grip to, passed down from our ancestors? Yes, of course. We know this, but sometimes forget the subtle ways it can show up in our lives.

There is beauty that can be found in the fear of living fully, too. I think it points to a desire to stay alive, to be alive without being damaged by some of the evil that we can encounter in living. It seems to me, a sort of fear-based scarcity mindset. An attachment that rather than sustain life, actually creates a glaze over it that turns all things gray.

Well, those are all my thoughts. Thank you Tari for the beautiful, accidental prompt. If you’ve read this, I’d love to know what sentences prompted you. If you haven’t read this, you should really go read this…