User:RD/9k/Q12,1,18/comm
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 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(no mark): comment