An expressive, if sometimes elusive, assortment of thoughts and ideas on love.
One man explores the idea of divine love through his collection of poetic musings, meditations, and observations.
Mihal’s examination of love’s divine nature comprises four parts. The first, “Daily Meditation: Her,” begins with dated excerpts that start on August 7, 2019, and introduces readers to the unidentified “Her.” Each entry consists of anywhere from a half-page to multipage snippets of thought. Although Mihal spends much time discussing his feelings for Her (“I try to remember at what point my heart became irreversibly touched by her soul image”), this feeling often bleeds into a more expansive concept of “divine love”—also referred to throughout as “The Goddess Within.” The second section, “Daily and Walking Meditation: Seoul—South Korea,” loosely follows the narrator’s time in Seoul as he contemplates things like the need to feel grateful when “the beloved” accepts the gift of offered love. Part three, “Deep Meditation and Visions: Thoughts of Enlightenment,” dabbles in more concrete language and practical advice for readers. Mihal defines mantra, for example, and demonstrates how the idea exists across multiple religions under different names (Hesychasm for Christianity, Sufism for Islam, Bhakti Yoga for Hinduism, etc.). The last section, “Memories of My ‘Self,’” expresses Mihal’s belief that everyone has the ability to change their reality through dreams. He then recalls a handful of dreams that have stuck with him: “I saw the arguing guy’s face so close that the details were like being in reality…And I had the impulse to Matrix out of this environment and push his car like in those damn movie effects.” Sprinkled throughout are occasional quotes from people like Maya Angelou and Mother Teresa, as well as “inspiring music” suggestions, like “Hey Laura” byGregory Porter.
Mihal creates mini prose portraits of feelings and moments that trace the nuances of his emotions, some of which will likely be familiar to others (“Time becomes a value more appreciated than anything else when feeling kind or loving someone in moments of togetherness”), while others are more abstract (“Warmth, happiness and the echo of eternity make a point in a vacuum. Your soul is bathing in those feelings encapsulated in a simple word like ‘Love’”). While the blend of poetic reflections and meditations are beautiful, the writing ultimately leans too heavily on the vague, sometimes indistinct musings of the author. Passages often contain terms and phrases that haven’t been fully fleshed out (“soul message,” “soul dreaming,” etc.). Even the sections that attempt some sort of narrative thread, like those in the Seoul section, are very much open to interpretation: “After the movie, being close to my beloved friend, Han River, hearing its calling to talk over a walk meditation along with the Wind and Sun all day long was a stroll through the veil of time.” Mihal’s overall message—embrace the vastness of love and use the physical and spiritual selves to reflect it to others—is an uplifting and admirable one. Regrettably, that message gets lost among inexact phrasing and structure.
An expressive, if sometimes elusive, assortment of thoughts and ideas on love.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781068630026
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Mystic Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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