User:RD/9k/Q12,1,18/comm

Chouette

very short time devoted to magic owl 3

probably for the best wait 117 mom worried about owl baby years ago? there's lore 9

two mentions of sex in first five pages. what a book 5

"housekeeping is nothing more than a losing encounter with entropy" 4

- husband is a patented seed lawyer 7 well that job's going away after the revolution,,

- 95% of this narrative is in the mom's head 1-6,12 - toxic positivity 10

- mom talks about wet playing card. wet card happens 9,10

- grandma had ornithosis, disease found in parrots. hand scaled like claw 15,18

- that's not a dog. if I see you on my property again I'll get my gun

- anti-abortion protest 13 yeah, this is California

- baby makes noise, cannot sleep 11

- a sleepy one-horse town until a rare ore was found in the area 15 - mom describes twice divided origins of good and bad, the neighborhoods "gleaming/gloaming", the good and bad parents. - standing in weird classist prejudices and not challenging them the whole time 15-16 okay, no, mom really has internalized this disgusting view of imperfect people as not human 17-18

- old song of prophecy reverberates and messes up violin playing 25 - i am bad and it will corrupt my child 25

- fateful day at the zoo 16-17 - owl trapped in tiny cage; you will be one if you keep speaking up 17 - turned back, bit, hit by zookeeper, hit by father 17 - grandma runs away with baby into darkness 17 [S] taking baby, fleeing Kent Hovind 🇪🇪🇺🇸 [S] beasts are of the moon; Journey to the West — owls may be literally but it's also meant very figuratively here - mom forgets what happened, grandma 'must have' become a tree 18

- looking out towards the horizon thinking something having to do with pioneer spirit 19 - grandma-in-law keeps misshapen wild birds but doesn't care for them correctly 20 - emphasis placed on how grandma- and granddad-in-law are both really fake. their love of birds is fake. their farmer appearance is fake. their farm feels like another world which has been built differently from 'reality' 20 - family tradition of throwing siblings into deep end of swimming pool 31 - moms protect kids in superstitious ways that don't match reality — grapes but not pool 22 - mom vaguely disappointed grandma-in-law got rid of the trees 19

- metaphor is freedom: no logic, rules, or facts can bind me down 21 mom is a fucking (pronounced redacted) anarchist. when reality limits her Freedom she changes reality god this book could have an ideological color swatch

I wonder where the name "Oshetsky" came from that might reveal some really interesting things about the characters Oshetsky * Russia 🇷🇺 * Poland 🇵🇱 * Ukraine 🇺🇦 Olschefsky [1] [2] * Romania 🇷🇴 * Eastern Europe 🇸🇮 * Eastern European Jews ok to me I don't care whether someone is Jewish, I'm more interested in what region they moved in from because the interesting geopolitical stories emerge there

- violinist sisters from Czech Republic 🇨🇿 24

- I put away Mozart, take out Anna Clyne's Dance, and play until I'm perfectly free 26

- honey let's go away for a few days 27

- secret aborter 23 mom never says what relative secret aborter is married to which... might have an ulterior reason. - terrible lesbian love triangle 23,112

- thicket gnarled and tangled 66

- godmother's story returned to throughout book 117 - first met as 'childhood crush', then 'lived together in wood'  ?? - godmother took over old abandoned room 67 childhood room or copy of current room? not totally clear. sounds like childhood room - returned right after the moment marriage went downhill 117 - I would give anything to take you to an owl nest house where you could belong, Chouette, but I've forgotten the way 87

- the Bird of the Wood "taught me to trust the sound of my own voice" 18 - I could fly in those days; I could hear the earth's heartbeat 98 - sounds of nature as songs 97-98

- Chouette needs a mother or she needs to die 67 - I'm afraid of you. you disgust me. I'm your mother. I love you. 73

- in the space for the other parent I wrote owl 70 - though my mother-in-law shouted about the father they let me go 70

we spent a third of the book on pregnancy and two thirds will be about Chouette being a child 73

- the poison of mother-love 74

- mom and dad, we flew across and switched opinions almost metaphysically 76

- [S] Serengeti/veldt as bleak treacherous place 79 what's that other story called with the projector room? The Veldt? [yes] [3]

- put baby in stock pot to clean constant watery poo out; dad is terrified 80

- no one thinks you're worth the trouble to keep alive 81 - [S] L'homme naît bon, c'est la societé qui le corrompt (Rosseau) [4]

- recurring idea of every food animal having been a baby once 83

- [S] your birth has severed our blood connection 84

- [S] baby monastery 87

- dreaming about going to family gathering and other members not getting upset about baby 89

- mom gets tired, leaves baby crying, and goes to home studio covered with vines 90 - I'm going truant to Berlin until I'm free 90

- [S] is breaking instruments performance art? 98-99 I mean, it is, you're not wrong. it takes an expert to make something so basic part of good art though - they're new notes. they're your notes 99 - the times are different every time 100

- baby is oddly specific about what pieces are okay. Romantic composers good, Bach bad 100

- [S] Bluebird's wife abandoned at home with bone for key 101

- baby spins around, spots gerbil, and glides over and kills it 102 - mom I can't find Peanut 103

- uncle the chiropodist dreams up weird scheme to fix "her condition" through medical science 107 ok but how? > there are treatments 111 - medical journals specifically about owl babies, apparently 108 - dad looks at every drug, even a couple that don't make sense 138 - dad: it's as if you believe she's subhuman 170

> What if she is meant to be exactly who she is? 108 what does the word meant mean. who meant this?

- you scream and you kick him in the jaw 109

- you're lucky; most children grow up to hate their parents but owl-children never grow up and will always need their mothers 110

- this dog will teach her life skills 111 - dog eaten 111

- wood shrews in the bathroom? nice. let's let in some mice so we have more to eat 114 - vines; precisely the home you need; I barely need to encourage the natural order of things 115 so mom found 'the way back' I see

- you see the turkey; I brought my axe 123

- secret friend is hot 112-113 - dad is not because he never came out of the garage apartment 113 - ~3 years before, dad says sorry for emptiness in relationship but it's not helping, he can't really put it back together 116 - secret friend eventually writes back 115 - she first-sighted me on the day I met my husband 119

- lesbian noblewomen sending letters 116 this is questionably historical. lesbians probably existed then but look how angry people got at King James

- it is in small slips of thought too short to be called decisions that our lives take shape 118 - new thrill of not knowing what happens next 119 what a weirdly post-structuralist book

- every room was unsuitable to show her except the bedroom, oh no,, 120

- secret lover once lived on hippy small farm 121 this has significance but I don't yet know what to say

the Lady praises mom but still afraid of baby so what's going on here 121 - gives me the strength to care and love 127 - all of my doubts grow small 121 - lock the doubts in a safe with a bone key 122

- I take you out at night 122

- it's a wonder that any woman agrees to be a mother; my death and disembowelment 127

- do you want me to gut him? 117-118 tiny is weirdly violent. each one of these escapes is a decision about whether to kill - 'I'm pregnant and I have to leave' okay time to kill her 128 tiny is like. intolerant of normal babies. owl babies only. owl nationalism

- day of tears and blood 127 - she didn't die. she just got a nasty rip 130 - Lady has to drive to hospital with one hand 130

- mom is terrified wondering if she should never have encouraged Chouette to kill 131-132 - can I teach her moderation between extremes? 132 - should her power be used to fight those who wish to kill her? 132 - what if social workers come and take me away? 133 - I'm a terrible mother 137

- I learned to stop apologizing to others about your unexpected behaviors 142 - to keep still enough to see her 145 - the trill of nature, it's how Chouette sounds when she's happy 144

- I looked at my girlfriend. i was afraid to grow up to be an owl 149 - eventually I couldn't quite stand her; that was how I met my husband 150

- swim therapy 138-139 > It helps nonconforming children learn to conform 138 > Our girl is not an animal ... grotesque stories 145 - they're all crying including the mothers 140 - coach tells off dad 140-141 - what are you doing to that child?? 174

- that you'll make friends, and that your future opportunities will expand beyond that of apex predator 146 - other parents try to block baby from special school 145-146 - are you sure she crushed the chicks, and not the students? she slices cleanly 147

- Chouette goes to another school; mom has to sign another incident report 151 - lacerations? what bureaucracy! 152

- tough love therapy 153 - mothers are always the problem 153 not for tiny they weren't. what irony - trust the process 154 - baby is vibrating furiously, then goes and smashes instruments. baby and mom glare at each other about ready to kill each other 155

> there are treatments 111 - we won't be here to take care of her forever. we're going to die one day 157

- beauty is in front of us in the most circumscribed spaces 158 thanks Jevil

- christian mother invites baby to church to meet pastor 160 - somehow baby is calm 169 - mom, driven crazy without community, heads to church 161 - baby's mood shifts wildly on baptism stage but everything is okay 164 - then other woman's driving startles baby and she attacks 164-165

- dad is hardly caring about the science of the treatments now 166

- brain crafted by technology? 174-178

- dad: I hate it when you shut down like this 167 - I'm a box that needs to be opened with a hammer 168 - dad: why do you not listen to me, do you want power 169 - dad: why do you lie to me 179 the only thing he's said that's fair

- Chouette caught in bird net 182 - mom passed out on painkillers 186

- baby goes to some kind of tutor and starts writing letters 186-187 - mom catches scent of probably just unusual cleaning products and gets paranoid about secret doctors 186-187

- dream? 188-213 - you're bad for me, mom 195 - mom: is my existence nothing more than a language approximation device 199 - baby not fixed by baptism, fixed by getting rescued from the pool 201,210

- Chouette eats father's right eye 217

> I want what's happening to be the real thing 222 > this other kind of life ... where all the magic and music has drained out of me 223

- our child is in danger 222

- you'll like the doctors ... I can't take this any longer 224-226

- the doctors get Stonewalled 227 > Life is, in fact, a battle 227

- through to the thicket of darkness 228-229

- actually going to different towns feels like a religious revelation 231-232

- I see her growing, in volume 233 - she knows where she's going 234 - didn't look back 235 - the earth wants me to turn into a tree 234 oh gosh this is like. Girl From the Other Side. the generations turn over and you turn into trees - for nothing 235 this is the only part that doesn't make sense. isn't this good? - if only you were hiding behind a curtain 235-236

it ends with confusion; it ends in the middle 237

Legend

• >: direct quote
• -: statement directly in book
• [S]: abstract theme directly in book
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