41 Comments
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Mara K Loving's avatar

This is so beautiful and to be read again and again

We need your words so much.

You are our Virginia Woolf.

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erg art ink's avatar

I can’t say this to many authors, but what I just read here from you as a writer on Substack is the reason why I have read all your books. Soaring and swooping so close to us with a brush of air and wing.

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BJ's avatar

Words used to dance for me. Now that I am 85, they have become slippery little escape artists.

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Dawn Burns's avatar

"when we put in a bit of time to be with language that works at multiple levels, we find it both raises us up and calms us down." 🧡

Thanks for this!

These days I find myself turning back to stories, both in what I read and what I write. I am hungry for stories, and for language I can't own and that can't own me, that can blossom into community. This is how I keep going, how maybe we all keep going together.

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Jenny's avatar

❤️

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Jay Sparrowhawk Ray's avatar

Thats so beautiful. Words both elate me and terrorise me, but I dont want to be without them. As I age the archivist in my brain takes longer to find them, but they are still there, for which I am extremely grateful. But giving them time to do their job requires patience to on my part and that of the reciever of my words. In this world of txtspeak, jargon, capitalized letters, and anachronism, its all about moving on fast, rather than savoring the feast.

Slowing down to roll words around needs to be a blessing not a nuisance.

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Heather Bacon's avatar

no words to add except thank you

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Rosalind's avatar

What you have said today is enough. Going towards silence is such a wonderful thing. The clamour that surrounds us is overwhelming but with the right words and time for silence we can be happy.

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Carole's avatar

When I read your essays I hear the words spoken in your voice, this is rarely the case with other writers. The words hit a different spot in me. Better, more truthful. Thank you.

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Laura Luck's avatar

thank you, so happy to be able to keep reading your work, brings much joy everytime

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The View From Bed's avatar

So beautifully put. I love words and sentences and paragraphs, love poems and prose, love stories and yet, some of my deepest experiences have been in yhe quiet of early night, sitting on the moss covered glacial rock at the top of my yard, hearing the music of the wind and the owls and deeper in the surrounding forest, the coyotes. Smelling the flowers and grasses and pines exuding their aromas, feeling myself reach out and up to the bazillion photons of light coming from the millions of suns speaking to us, singing to us, all of it cradled in silence.

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Joanna Milne 🏺's avatar

A word massage. Thank you.

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juliet nicolson's avatar

Reading this before I sleep is the best way I can think of to approach the silence of the night and later, maybe, to inspire my dreams.

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Amy Brown's avatar

Loved every word of this ode to words and it filled me with inspiration! Thank you. Will reread again and again because these words are ‘packed with the good stuff.’

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Mark Antony Owen's avatar

Everything I have ever read by Jeanette is read, inside my head, in her voice (as accurately as I can replicate its timbre; her pacing, phrasing). Try it. It brings you closer to her words.

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Alexandra Papadimitriou's avatar

Thank you so much for this. It was the best way to start the week. I read it watching the sun rise in Corinthian Bay in Greece.

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