I've been reading Thich Nhat Hanh's works a lot recently. When everything seems to be this raging maelstrom of pain, anger, frustration, and loss, his words seem to be a rock that, while I may not be able to cling to, I can see and head towards.

And that counts for a lot.

Mom gave me this book to read. I read it along with Reconciliation, also by Thich Nhat Hanh. The second is about looking inward, the first also about looking inward, but also about looking outward to another, a person, or a group. It's about being gentle with ourselves, understanding that suffering is all around us, and that anger is manifestation of that suffering. We suffer, but so do our opponents.

I don't know, the book might not arrive in the right place at the right time for the next person who reads it. It arrived when I needed it. It is a calming book, I've already read twice. I'll be turning to this copy again, I'm sure.

I strongly recommend this book. If you need a copy, let me buy you one.

Usually when we are angry with someone we are more interested in fighting with them than in taking care of our own feelings.
Page 14

We “kill” our anger by smiling to it, holding it gently, looking deeply to understand its roots and transforming it with understanding and compassion.
Page 20

Sometimes when we attempt to listen to another person, we can’t hear them because we haven’t listened to ourselves first. Our own strong emotions and thoughts are so loud in our heart and in our head, crying out for our attention, that we can’t hear the other person. Before we listen to another, we need to spend time listening to ourselves.
Page 23

When you practice compassionate listening, it’s important to remember that you listen with only one aim, and that is to help the other person to suffer less.
Page 24

The ability to apologize sincerely and express regret for the unskillful things we say or do is an art.
Page 38

When you express regret, do so unconditionally. Don’t make excuses for having committed the mistake.
Page 39

When someone else offers us an apology, accept it and offer understanding and forgiveness in return.
Page 39

When you feel upset or angry, it’s important not to do or say anything.
Page 41

The Buddha said, “Nothing can survive without food” — not even love. Without nourishment, your love will die.
Page 45

If you continue to suffer, it’s because you feed your suffering every day.
Page 45

Sometimes, the person we want to reconcile with is far away and we feel we have lost the chance to mend our relationship.
Page 60

One of the deepest teachings given by the Buddha is that we should not be too sure of our own ideas. Don’t be fooled by your perceptions. Even if you are sure you are seeing clearly, check again. Keep an open mind. Be ready to let go of your views.
Page 65

Sometimes we have the impression that someone intentionally wants to make us suffer. Believing this, we get very angry, even despairing, and we want to hurt that person in return, firmly convinced they are a threat to us. War is a product of this kind of misunderstanding and of fear on a large scale.
Page 66

When we’re angry with someone, and we’ve tried many ways but have still not been able to resolve the difficulty, we can try offering the other person a gift. We prepare the gift in advance, when we’re happy, calm, and solid, and we hide it, ready for the time when we may need it. We don’t wait until we’re already angry because then we won’t feel like doing it. Then, when we’re angry, we can get it out of hiding and give it to the other person.
Page 72

Part of acknowledging suffering is acknowledging we need help. It is much easier to practice compassion if you have the energy and support of a community. A community helps us not lose hope.
Page 79

Creating happiness is an art. Living together is an art. Even with a lot of goodwill, you can still make the other person very unhappy. Goodwill is not enough. We need to know the art of making the other person happy.
Page 81

Of course we have made mistakes. Of course we have not been very skillful. Of course we have made ourselves and the people around us suffer. But that does not prevent us from improving, from transforming, from beginning anew.
Page 85

The Buddha said that if you have not suffered, there is no way you can learn. We learn by making mistakes.
Page 85

Usually, when we lose something or someone, we begin to suffer. But while that something or someone is still there, we don’t appreciate them. Everything is of the nature to change. When we understand this, we appreciate the other person more deeply and we can do something today to make them happy, because we know tomorrow may be too late.
Page 89

War is the fruit of our collective consciousness. If we wait until another war is imminent to begin to practice peace, it will be too late. Peace begins here, now.
Page 92

Sometimes we’re eating a meal and we don’t even know who’s there eating with us. Our loved one is there physically but it’s as if she’s not truly there. To love someone, you need to be there one hundred percent. The mantra “I am here for you” says that I care about you, I enjoy being in your presence. It helps the other person to feel supported and happy.
Page 102

Sometimes we forget about impermanence. We think that our loved one will be with us forever and we forget how precious her presence is in this moment.
Page 103

Sometimes we are criticized. We do need a certain amount of feedback in order to help us progress, but it’s important not to be caught in the criticism and become paralyzed by it. You can say the mantra to yourself or out loud, “You are partly right.” It means: “Yes, I do manifest that unfortunate characteristic sometimes, but I am much more than that.
Page 106

Beginning Anew is a practice to help resolve conflict or a difficulty when it arises. To begin anew is to look honestly at ourselves, at what we have thought, said, or done that has contributed to the conflict.
Page 110

1. FLOWER WATERING We look deeply to see the positive qualities in the other person and express our appreciation for them. Share at least three positive qualities that you have observed in them and things for which you feel grateful. Be as concrete as possible. Sometimes we may need to water someone’s flowers for a long time to heal the relationship and build trust
Page 111

2. SHARING REGRETS We may mention any unskillfulness in our actions, speech, or thoughts that we have not yet had an opportunity to apologize for.
Page 112

3. EXPRESSING HURT We may share how we felt hurt by another, due to their actions, speech, or thoughts. Before expressing a hurt, be aware that most of our perceptions are wrong. Often our difficulties and pain originate in the past, in early childhood.
Page 112

4. ASKING FOR SUPPORT When we share our difficulties with the other person, we help them understand us better.
Page 113

This is book 2 of the Imperial Radch trilogy As such, given how much I enjoyed the last one, and was engaged with the universe Leckie created, I continued with this one (and, let's be real, I'll read the next one, too).

This book starts up a couple weeks after the previous book ended. I like the continuity in the books and the world Leckie created. As with the first book, there is an element of social commentary in the book. The style is reminiscent of Heinlein, actually but a bit more towards the way I think about power and its corrupting power, so perhaps that's why I'm noticing it and paying attention to it in these books.

I love how Leckie weaves the attitudes of privilege into works, but in such a way you know these aren't the "good" people, even if the words you read are words you've heard from your own friends (or own mouth, to be honest).

The plot isn't anything twisty, the universe didn't have any aspects that were new. This book was a continuation of the previous book so much that it could have been a Part 2 of the same book and no one would have blinked (except maybe Leckie, "Write how much in one go? Uh... no." but I'm projecting there).

I personally enjoyed this book, both for the science-fiction part and the power play part. Again, recommended.

When I had first met her, a baby lieutenant of seventeen, she hadn’t thought ships’ AIs had any feelings in particular—not any that mattered. And like many Radchaai she assumed that thought and emotion were two easily separable things.
Location 492

“And over three thousand years she’ll have changed. Everyone does, who isn’t dead. How much can a person change and still be the same?
Location 516

“I gave an order, Medic.” Isolated as we were in gate space, my word was law. It didn’t matter what my orders were, no matter how illegal or unjust. A captain might face prosecution for giving some orders—her crew would without fail be executed for disobeying those same commands. It was a central fact of any Radchaai soldier’s life, though it rarely came to an actual demonstration.
Location 658

"Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you’ve eaten and slept.”

“Really?” she asked. Bitter and challenging.

“Well, not necessarily,” I admitted. “But it’s easier to deal with things when you’ve had some rest and some breakfast.”
Location 692

Still that expressionless face. “Water will wear away stone, sir.” It was a proverb. Or half of one. Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be.
Location 995

To Captain Hetnys, standing beside me, I said, “That story strikes you as plausible, does it?” One ruler for the entire system. They surrendered right away. In my experience, no entire system ever surrendered right away. Parts, maybe. Never the whole. The one exception had been the Garseddai, and that had been a tactic, an attempt at ambush. Failed, of course, and there were no Garseddai anymore, as a result.
Location 1054

Obvious, in retrospect. Obvious before, you’d think. But it’s so easy to just not see the obvious, even long past when it ought to be reasonable.
Location 1332

“Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”

It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”
Location 1428

An example of that privilege thing.

So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”

“Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to pick tea.”
Location 1436

Imagine this conversation happening in the 1850s in the South in the United States of America, and you'd get similar if not the same words.

“Tourists!” said Raughd. “They want to be robbed. It’s why they go there to begin with. All the wailing and complaining to Security.” She waved a dismissive, blue-gloved hand. “It’s part of the fun. Otherwise they’d take better care.”
Location 1446

Yeeeeeep. Blame the victim.

And if expansion stopped, what to do with all those ships and ancillary soldiers? The officers that commanded them? Keeping them was a drain on resources, to no purpose. Dismantle them, and systems on the periphery of Radch space were vulnerable to attack. Or revolt.
Location 1507

Questions that need to asked about the American Military Complex, tbh.

But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite, and besides I suspected that the entire Undergarden was already in a dire state, as far as ritual uncleanness went.
Location 2010

"To you, of all people. And it’s so easy to just go along. So easy not to see what’s happening. And the longer you don’t see it, the harder it becomes to see it, because then you have to admit that you ignored it all that time. But this is the moment when it’s laid before you, clear and unambiguous."
Location 2164

“You disagree,” Sirix said into my silence. “But isn’t justice the whole reason for civilization?”
Location 2868

I came to see her strangely serene manner as both a sign of just how much she expected to get whatever she wanted, and also an instrument by which she managed to do that, plain persistent saying what she wanted to be true in the expectation that it would eventually become so. It’s a method I’d found worked best for those who are already positioned to mostly get what they want.
Location 3038

“But they could still grow them here,” Tisarwat argued, “and still sell them themselves. So I don’t know what the problem is.”
Location 3054

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.
Location 3369

“Do you even know,” she said, and I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was about to cry, “can you even imagine what it’s like to know that nothing you can do will make any difference? That nothing you can do will protect the people you love? That anything you could possibly ever do is less than worthless?”

I could. “And yet you do it anyway.”
Location 3412

“Most esteemed Queter,” I said, “idealist that you are, young as you are, you can have no idea just how easy it is for people to deceive themselves.”
Location 3417

The magistrate turned to Queter, who had stood straight and silent this whole time. “Is this what you wanted, Queter? All this heartache, a family destroyed? For the life of me I don’t understand why you didn’t put your obvious determination and energy into your work so that you could make things better for yourself and your family. Instead, you built up and fed this… this resentment, and now you have…” The magistrate gestured, indicating the room, the situation. “This.”

Very calmly, very deliberately, Queter turned to me. “You were right about the self-deception, Citizen.”
Location 3581

Again, blaming the victims with this one.

And yet, isn't this a similar example for the Ivy League swimmer guy who raped a woman? He destroyed her life, but people were still asking for leniancy for the guy, who received it.

"Citizen?” I replied with my own question. “Where did justice lie, in that entire situation?” Sirix didn’t reply, either angry or at a loss for an answer. Both were difficult questions.

“We speak of it as though it’s a simple thing, a matter of acting properly, as though it’s nothing more than an afternoon tea and the question only who takes the last pastry. So simple. Assign guilt to the guilty.”

“Is it not that simple?” asked Sirix after a few moments of silence.

“There are right actions and wrong actions. And yet, I think that if you had been the magistrate, you would have let Citizen Queter go free.”
Location 3603

“No sympathy for Queter? Raughd acted from malice and injured pride, and would have destroyed more than me if she had succeeded. Queter was faced with an impossible situation. No matter what she did, things would end badly.”

A moment of silence. Then, “All she needed to do was go to the magistrate in the first place.”

I had to think about that for a few moments, to understand why Sirix of all people thought Queter could or should have done that.

“You do realize,” I said finally, “that Citizen Queter would never have gotten within a kilometer of the district magistrate without my having explicitly demanded it. And I beg you to recall what generally happened in the past when Citizen Raughd misbehaved.”

“Still, if she had spoken properly she might have been listened to,” Sirix replied. Queter had been right to expect no help from the district magistrate, I was sure. “She made the choices she made, and there’s no escaping the consequences of that. I doubt very much she’ll get off lightly. But I can’t condemn her. She was willing to sacrifice herself to protect her sister.”
Location 3618

“There’s been some complaining outside the Undergarden the past few days, about residential assignments.” Ostensibly calm, only the barest trace of her feelings in her voice. “There are those who think that it’s not fair the Ychana are going to suddenly have luxury quarters, and so much space, when they don’t deserve it.”

“Such wisdom,” I observed dryly, “to know what everyone deserves.”
Location 3695

“And when you want something,” the governor remarked, her voice sharp, “you say so, and you expect to get it.”

“So do you,” I replied. Serious. Still calm. “It comes with being system governor, doesn’t it? And from where you sit, you can afford to ignore things you don’t think are important. But that view—that list of important things—is very different if you’re sitting somewhere else.”

“A commonplace, Fleet Captain. But some points of view don’t take in as much as others.”

“And how do you know yours isn’t one of them, if you’ll never try looking from somewhere different?” Governor Giarod didn’t answer immediately.
Location 3793

“When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
Location 3802

“Everyone is potentially one of those people, Governor,” I replied. “It’s best to learn that before you do something you’ll have trouble living with.” Best to learn it, really, before anyone—perhaps dozens of anyones—died to teach it to you. But it was a hard lesson to learn any other way, as I knew from very personal experience.
Location 3822

“Not mad,” I corrected. “When you’ve lost everything that matters to you, it makes perfect sense to run and hide and try to recover.”
Location 4249

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I think Medic has me dosed up. I can tell because I’m not wishing every ten minutes or so that you’d thrown me out the airlock when you found me.”
Location 4270

“But then, people can look very strong on the outside when they’re not, can’t they."
Location 4375

“Mostly. I think. To be honest, Fleet Captain, I feel like… like everything I thought I could depend on has disappeared, like none of it was ever true to begin with and I’ve only just realized it, and now, I don’t know. I mean, I thought I was safe, I thought I knew who everyone was. And I was wrong.”
Location 4380

When visiting Mom last week, as I was lying on my bed, she came in to lie down next to me and chat. This is a ritual we do, and I love it. We lie on the bed, talking about life, memories, upcoming plans, and sometimes hard topics. We talk about her mother, and her relationship with her. We talk about family. We talk about what's on our minds.

And sometimes, we can't talk. There's a space between us, an argument gone too far with a dead brother, a reminder of the short time we have, the distance that fluxes.

During one of these times, Mom pulled a book from the bed's headboard bookcase (one must truly love a bed that has a bookcase as a headboard, I know I do), and handed it to me. "This is a good read," she said. I said thanks, and added it to my small pile that I was attempting to read during my week visit.

It was this book. I didn't finish my previous books until today, so this one came up. The book is a Newbery Honor winner, unsure if that's the "winner" or the "finalists list" but, hey, has Newbery associated with it. which makes it a finalist, but not a winner.

The book is about acceptance: accepting losses, accepting people for who they are, accepting loneliness, accepting mistakes, accepting. I struggled a bit with the speech patterns in the book, imagining different races to the characters than what was described, based on the media portrayal of language patterns, and fought the whole book to keep the correct image in my mind of the characters' described race. I did give up and imagine the characters as I saw them, and that made for a better reading for me, even if it wasn't as the author imagined.

It is, as Mom said, a good read. It's short. I recommend reading it with a small person, and getting her take on it. If you don't have a child, niece, nephew, or the like, cuddle up with your five year old self and read to her.

“He just doesn’t want to be left alone,” I told the preacher. “That’s all. Let’s take him with us.” I could understand the way Winn-Dixie felt. Getting left behind probably made his heart feel empty.
Page 31

I finally decided that I was more afraid of losing Winn-Dixie than I was of having to deal with a dog-eating witch, so I went through the gate and into the yard.
Page 62

He was eating something right out of the witch’s hand. She looked up at me. “This dog sure likes peanut butter,” she said. “You can always trust a dog that likes peanut butter.”
Page 63

Except all dogs like peanut butter.

She told me she used to love to read stories, but she couldn’t anymore because her eyes were so bad. “Can’t you get some really strong glasses?” I asked her.

“Child,” she said, “they don’t make glasses strong enough for these eyes.”
Page 92

When I grow old and can no longer read, I want someone to read to and for me.

I said, “I don’t know. Why are all those bottles on it?”

“To keep the ghosts away,” Gloria said.

“What ghosts?”

“The ghosts of all the things I done wrong.”

I looked at all the bottles on the tree. “You did that many things wrong?” I asked her.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. “More than that.”

“But you’re the nicest person I know,” I told her.

“Don’t mean I haven’t done bad things,” she said.
Page 94

“The preacher says that sometimes she couldn’t stop drinking.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria again. “That’s the way it is for some folks. We get started and we can’t get stopped.”

“Are you one of those people?”

“Yes ma’am. I am. But these days, I don’t drink nothing stronger than coffee.”

“Did the whiskey and beer and wine, did they make you do the bad things that are ghosts now?”

“Some of them,” said Gloria Dump. “Some of them I would’ve done anyway, with alcohol or without it. Before I learned.”

“Learned what?”

“Learned what is the most important thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“It’s different for everyone,” she said. “You find out on your own. But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now."
Page 95

And this was when, while reading the book, I realized why my mom had given me this book to read.

"War,” I told her. “That was the war between the South and the North over slavery.”

“Slavery, yes,” said Miss Franny. “It was also about states’ rights and money."
Page 101

Well, no.

It was about money, yes. It was about money because the slave-owners of the south didn't want to lose the cheap labor they had, so that they could keep their money.

States' rights became a sanitized cause, but wasn't really the point.

“Men and boys always want to fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently."
Page 105

"He went off to be a hero. But he soon found out the truth.” Miss Franny closed her eyes and shook her head.

“What truth?” I asked her.

“Why, that war is hell,” Miss Franny said with her eyes still closed. “Pure hell.”
Page 105

“There’s a secret ingredient in there,” Miss Franny said.

“I know it,” I told her. “I can taste it. What is it?”

“Sorrow,” Miss Franny said. “Not everybody can taste it. Children, especially, seem to have a hard time knowing it’s there.”

“I taste it,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Amanda.

“Well, then,” Miss Franny said, “you’ve probably both had your share of sadness.”
Page 114

Sometimes, it seemed like everybody in the world was lonely. I thought about my mama. Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.
Page 132

“There ain’t no way you can hold on to something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
Page 159