Member-only story
The book was not made for me or for you. It’s a record, a series of memories and ruminating thoughts that document the author’s experience with heartbreak and a search for meaning in colour.
I’ve never read anything like Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, but when I did I knew it needed a reread. I didn’t think writing a book review made sense, and I feel emotionally unprepared to write an essay on this work. So instead, I’ve just arranged 7 quotes from the 240 numbered sections of Bluets, with short commentary with my impressions.
6. The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love’s primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.
There are a lot equivalences made here. Ocean is love is beginning, blue is untouchably beautiful and something you can only gaze at. I wonder then if Nelson thought that Bluets could in any way “touch” the color blue?
30. If a color could deliver hope, does it follow that it could also bring despair? I can think of many occasions on which a blue has made me feel suddenly hopeful (turning one’s car around a sharp curve on a precipice and abruptly finding ocean…
