17 Comments
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A. A. Kostas's avatar

simply incredible. thank you for sharing this. Instant subscribe from me.

Car Hiller's avatar

Stunning and surprisingly convicting. Thank you!

Teodora's avatar

Wow, I loved this. Absolutely outstanding, can't even go into further detail because I am speechless.

Cordelia's avatar

O thank you!

Stan Goff's avatar

Wow.

I wrote a dad-daughter novel if you have the time and inclination.

<<When they’d come to the Upe with Daddy—the ropey little green-eyed white man—they’d been spared “the swivel” for more than an instant. There was that extra helping of polite that vibrated back off of the threat people sensed from Daddy. She’d loved him, but, as she grew older, even she could see it. He’d never puffed up on people with threat displays. On the contrary, he was scrupulously courteous. Always understated. He detested loudmouths, braggarts, and overcompensating men. “Macho dickheads,” he called them. Nonetheless, there was a nearly tangible eidolon draped around him like a great spider, warning people the courteous little white man with the weird aquamarine eyes didn’t always belong to himself, and that trifling with him might be a grave error. She’d thought of her dad as a rock when she was younger, but in the end, he’d been a suicide bomb.

“And who is your father?” Ryan had asked.

My tender advocate, she thought, who’ll drink your fucking blood. When Daddy had left the last time for Afghanistan, his mind was making little phase-leaps. Then he was dead with less than five days on the ground.

Theodora, dead. Daddy, dead. It made the pervasion of ravens seem somehow apropos, like oracles standing in a place between the visible world and the Valley of Hinmon.>>

https://stanleyabner1951gmailcom.substack.com/p/new-moons-and-sabbaths

Cordelia's avatar

Oh wow ! I will check it out. Is there an Amazon version? I prefer paper for novels.

Stan Goff's avatar

Just this one. Sorry. Agent failure. (I prefer paper, too.)

Cordelia's avatar

I’m gathering an hard Internet library so let me know if you do self publish

Stan Goff's avatar

Don’t even know how. Thanks though.

Victoria Roderwald's avatar

I am. So moved by this having lost my father at 21, before I could appreciate him, I find myself looking at his life and mine along with my sisters in such a new amazing light. Her and I have always held him in a pedestal which we have thought about being too generous but this biography holds our thought true…he was amazing and true…thank you for reminding me…

Cordelia's avatar

Awe I’m so glad you had that experience, truly an honour that people let my worlds into their hearts 🙏

Cosmic Louche's avatar

A remarkable essay, Cordelia.

Shadow Rebbe's avatar

I loved this. as a father, this spoke to my heart

Marissa Gamberutti's avatar

I am left with so much to sit with, thank you for sharing this. I feel it helping me find my own way through.

Cordelia's avatar

awe good <3

Samara's avatar

so so beautiful - thank you