One Good Graf: Bees
In addition to our monthly reading, I think I might occasionally send out a very good paragraph from something I’ve read lately. And you’re all very welcome to share recent paragraphs that you loved in the comments, too.
Think of it as a shared commonplace book, where we can jot down things that struck us. And a nice thing to remember when reading—there will be somewhere to share the page you dogeared.
My paragraph is from Helen Jukes’s A Honeybee’s Heart Has Five Openings. It’s the latest in my summer of strange, detailed nature books. Previously: Entangled Life and The Book of Eels. Pre-ordered: Vesper Flights.
In the paragraph below, Helen Jukes is seeing a bee under a microscope for the first time.
For a moment I think there’s been a swap, she is so different close-up. The plates on her back are black and tarnished and they glint like a pool of petrol. They’re punctured with tiny holes. Her abdomen is furred, but the fur is matted and mangy-looking, like a dog that’s been out in the rain. I look at her and think of metal and petrol pumps and the weather; not of bodies, or of bees. And then she dips back into dark.
You’re very welcome to share paragraphs from your own reading in the comments, with as much or as little context as you like. And you can still join the lively conversation on the initial post of the month.
Ex libris,
Leah
“Right there was our catch-22: Because the country was so inaccessible, disabled people had a hard time getting out and doing things—which made us invisible. So we were easy to discount and ignore. Until institutions were forced to accommodate us we would remain locked out and invisible—and as long as we were locked out and invisible, no one would see our true force and would dismiss us.” (Judy Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist)
"'If you knew the gift of God!' The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him." (My favorite paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2560)