Love is a Magical Force!

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes, 40 seconds

Too Far Away – October 2023

As I spoke, I could sense the tension in my voice, like a rubber band stretched to its limit. The distance between us was painfully apparent and seemed to keep us apart. I know we live far away from each other, not even in the same state,” I said, my frustration becoming more and more evident. We talked for over an hour, but it felt like we were going nowhere. I couldn’t hold back any longer and asked the woman I had fallen in love with the question that had been on my mind for so long: “How many times have I offered to visit you?” Her response was like a punch to the gut. It was the same answer I had heard every time we spoke, “Soon, we will be together.

After bidding her good night, I got out of bed to ensure all the lights were off, even though I knew they would be off as I had them connected to WiFi timers. It’s just one of those habits that I have developed over the years. After checking the lights, I paced around the room for a few minutes, taking a dozen steps to my parlor and back a few times. The rhythm of my footsteps echoed in the quiet room, and for a moment, I felt like I was the only person alive.

When I returned to the bed, something caught my eye on the right side of the bed. At first, I thought it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but as I approached, it looked like someone was sitting on the edge of the bed. My heart skipped a beat, and I spoke quietly, hoping it was not a shadow or a trick of the light.

As I leaned closer to the bed, I realized that it was only the pillows I had held in my arms earlier to get me through the night. They were bunched up to look like human figures instead of feathers. A sense of relief washed over me, and I chuckled softly at my foolishness.

As I slipped under the covers and nestled into bed, I reached for my favorite pillow. Its plush texture and gentle embrace provided comfort I couldn’t find anywhere else. I closed my eyes and held onto it tightly, savoring the feeling as if it were a warm, comforting hug from a loved one. It may seem odd to some, but for me, there was nothing quite like the solace that this little inanimate object could bring.

As I lay there, surrounded by darkness and silence, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of loneliness. I longed for a woman’s warm, comforting embrace, the kind of intimacy that only a human connection could provide. Desperate, I turned to the pillow beside me and whispered, “I love you!” To my surprise, the empty room echoed back with a faint whisper, as if the pillow had come to life and responded to my affirmation, and the pillow had been transformed into a real woman, providing me with the human connection I craved.

Feeling a sense of relief and contentment, I pulled the pillow closer to my chest and basked in its warmth and softness. I caressed the pillow as if I were exploring a woman’s body I had never touched. I kissed the cushion despite not finding any lips. My abdomen became warm, wet, and sticky, and my body collapsed in joy and exhaustion. I drifted to sleep, grateful for moments of pleasure and comfort.

I opened my eyes to a sense of emptiness and detachment. The feeling of being all by myself in a crowded world was overwhelming. As I lay there, I couldn’t help but wonder, if the only way to find solace was by hugging a pillow, then what kind of existence was I leading? Was I a living, breathing human being, or just a machine going through the motions of life?

Love is All You Need, Or Is It? March 31, 2021

“Richard, promise me you won’t live alone for the rest of your life if something happens to me,” Jan’s voice was so loud that I was sure everyone on the fourth floor could hear her. She had been home for two days after spending weeks in the hospital. I knew that she was not well and that she might not survive, which frightened me. I asked if she believed anyone would want an older man like me.

“Richard, you are a great husband, and I appreciate how much you care for me and how focused you are on my needs,” she firmly stated, “especially when we make love.” Despite my best efforts to avoid blushing, my face turned red as the blood rushed to the surface. Jan then listed several women she said loved me and would be delighted to partner with me. Holding my hand, I stopped her and pointed out that almost all were happily married or had partners. However, she insisted there might be others, even some I might not know, who would be interested.

The room was filled with an eerie silence that seemed to last for an eternity. It felt as though the intense emotions of the moment had drained us of all our energy. That’s when Jan took a deep breath and looked me straight in my eyes. Her voice was gentle but firm as she said, “Don’t settle for just any warm body. I’m sure there will be women who will offer you that.” Despite trying to hide my emotions, I knew my face betrayed my confusion. Sensing my vulnerability, she continued, “Honey, I know you too well. Richard, be honest; you are not a one-night stand person. You’re special because you’re a romantic at heart, and you believe in love. If you fall in love again, make sure they love you just as much as you love them.”

I Am Not Alone

Despite the pain and weakness that she was experiencing, Jan leaned in and kissed me. As our lips parted, tears welled up in my eyes. “I don’t want you to be alone, but I don’t want you to be with someone who can’t love you unconditionally,” she whispered. Her words echoed in my mind long after our conversation ended, and I knew they would continue to guide me on my journey.

I held onto the hope that she would recover and I wouldn’t have to take any action. However, a voice in my head kept telling me that our time was running out. I couldn’t afford to be indecisive like Solomon and split the difference between the two options. Having read countless accounts of people’s last requests before they died, I spoke from my heart and said, “I don’t want to live alone.” Though I didn’t explicitly state that I wanted to fall in love again, it was implicit in my statement. The weight of my words hit me hard, and I felt a surge of emotions rush through me. Within a week, she returned home for hospice care because they couldn’t treat her lymphoma due to COVID or the COVID due to cancer. It was a sad moment, and I knew I had to make the most of the time we had left together.

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Sun City

Read: February 2025

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Sun City by Tove Jansson

by Tove Jansson

Today, I began reading “Sun City” by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal. I found this book mentioned in Maya Chung‘s review in The Atlantic’s Book Briefings, and as an older man, it seemed like the perfect choice for me. In “The Summer Book” and “The True Deceiver,” as well as in her many short stories, Tove Jansson consistently explores the everyday lives of older adults.

She portrays them not as a separate group but as fully fleshed individuals who experience the same jealousies, desires, and joys as any other demographic. It’s no wonder that in her travels through America in the 1970s, she became fascinated with what was then a particularly American institution, the retirement home, where older people lived in their tightly knit worlds.

In Sun City, Jansson depicts these worlds in a group portrait of residents and employees at the Berkeley Arms in St. Petersburg, Florida. As the narrative moves from character to character, the characters move through an America riven by cultural divides, facing the death of its dream. The Berkeley Arms’s newest resident finds a place among the rocking chairs and endless chatter on the veranda while other residents long for past glories, mourning their losses and killing time. Meanwhile, one of their attendants, Bounty Joe, is eagerly awaiting a letter, or even just a postcard, alerting him to the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Nobody’s normal anymore,” the bartender says, “not the old geezers and not the newborn kids.”



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Light to the Hills

Read: January 2023

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Light to the Hills: A Novel

by Bonnie Blaylock

Light to the Hills: A Novel by Bonnie Blaylock is about Amanda Rye, a young widowed mother and traveling packhorse librarian who comes through a mountain community struck by the nation’s economic collapse in the 1930s. I recommend this page-turner as it highlights the importance of family and community. From this foundation, truth lights a path toward survival, mountain justice, forgiveness, and hope.

The novel was recommended by Olivia Hawker, bestselling author of The Fire and the Ore, who said, “Light to the Hills is a touching meditation on motherhood and the importance of community, especially during difficult times.”

Last year I read a modern tale about Appalachia, Demon Copperhead. Both are good novels but very different.

Light to the Hills was a feel-good read despite the problems faced by Ms. Rye and the MacInteer family. It was precisely the book I needed to read this week.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The folks in the Kentucky Appalachians are scraping by. Coal mining and hardscrabble know-how are a way of life for these isolated people. But when Amanda Rye, a young widowed mother and traveling packhorse librarian, comes through a mountain community walloped by the nation’s economic collapse, she brings with her hope, courage, and apple pie. Along the way, Amanda takes a shine to the MacInteer family, especially to the gentle Rai, her quick-study daughter, Sass, and Finn, the eldest son who’s easy to warm to. They remind Amanda of her childhood and her parents with whom she longs to be reconciled.

Her connection with the MacInteers deepens, and Amanda shares with them a dangerous secret from her past. When that secret catches up with Amanda in the present, she, Rai, Sass, and Finn find their lives intersecting—and threatened—in the most unexpected ways. Now, they must come together as the truth lights a path toward survival, mountain justice, forgiveness, and hope.


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Let Us Descend: A Novel

Read: November 2023

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Let Us Descend: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

Today, I started reading Let Us Descend: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward. She is a two-time National Book Award winner, the youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and a MacArthur Fellow. The book is a haunting masterpiece that is sure to become an instant classic. It tells the story of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

The book’s title is from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno: “‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.” Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, beautifully rendered yet heart-wrenching. The novel takes us on a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis is the reader’s guide through this hellscape, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her. As Annis struggles through the miles-long march, she turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout the journey, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history, spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

Let Us Descend is a magnificent novel that inscribes Black American grief and joy in the very land of the American South. Ward’s writing takes you through the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the South, making this novel a masterwork for the ages.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Something About Living

Read: November 2024

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Something About Living

by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

I recently read “Something About Living” by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, a poet and essayist whose work resonates deeply. The book of poems won the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and delved into Palestinian life through the lens of the American language, revealing a legacy of obfuscation and erasure. It questions what happens when language packages ongoing disasters for consumption and disposal.

As a Jew supporting a two-state solution, I initially hesitated to read this collection of poems. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the lyrical beauty of the verses, which explore love not just as an emotion but as a transformative force and “a radical act.” Every poem that genuinely resonated with me. “Something About Living” is a book I highly recommend for its depth and insight!

Ms. Khalaf Tuffaha has an incredible literary repertoire; her previous work, “Water & Salt,” earned the esteemed 2018 Washington State Book Award, while “Kaan & Her Sisters” was a finalist for the Firecracker Award. In addition, “Something About Living” also received the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry. I’m excited to explore her profound insights and lyrical mastery!

Adrian Matejka, the author of “Somebody Else Sold the World,” has written about “Something About Living,”

“It’s nearly impossible to write poetry that simultaneously holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha‘s gorgeous and wide-ranging new collection Something About Living does just that. Her poems interweave Palestine’s historic suffering, the challenges of living in this world full of violence and ill will, and the gentle delights we embrace to survive that violence. Khalaf Tuffaha’s elegant poems sing the fractured songs of Diaspora while remaining clear-eyed to the cause of the fracturing: the multinational hubris of colonialism and greed. This collection is her witness to our collective unraveling, vowel by vowel, syllable by syllable. “Let the plural be a return of us,” the speaker of “On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals” says and this plurality is our tenuous humanity and the deep need to hang on to kindness in our communities. In these poems Khalaf Tuffaha reminds us that love isn’t an idea; it is a radical act. Especially for those who, like this poet, travel through the world vigilantly, but steadfastly remain heart first.



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The Days of Abandonment

Read: July 2024

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The Days of Abandonment

by Elena Ferrante

I’ve just started reading The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante after finishing My Brilliant Friend. This book is among the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I chose to read it after watching An Undoing, a documentary about healing from an abusive 20-year marriage using unstitching wedding garments, one stitch at a time.

The film was part of the first night of the International Women’s Film Festival in Cranford. Although, except for one brief moment, I have never been in the same situation as the woman in the short video or Olga, the protagonist in the novel, I choose this as my next book to read. Of course, Ferrante’s writing is known for rich character development and powerful prose.

The Days of Abandonment follows the gripping story of an Italian woman named Olga, whose husband suddenly leaves after fifteen years of marriage. With two young children to care for, Olga finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her previous lifestyle of keeping a spotless house, cooking creative meals, and controlling her temper. After encountering her husband with his much younger lover in public, she even resorts to physically assaulting him.

In a “raging, torrential voice,” according to The New York Times, Olga describes her journey from denial to devastating emptiness. Trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she confronts her ghosts, the potential loss of her identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.

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Blue Skies: A Novel

Read: August 2023

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Blue Skies: A Novel

by T. C. Boyle

I started reading Blue Skies: A Novel by T. C. Boyle today. The book is an eco-thriller with comedic elements. It explores the relationships between humans and their habitats in a world where natural disasters frequently occur, where “the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.”

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events threatening her survival.

Blue Skies follows the tradition of T. C. Boyle’s finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with biting wit and intelligent social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family—including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd—are struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

But there’s more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the bland façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet’s future. Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, from pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-offs and pummeling hurricanes, in which “the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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