Available Formats
The Love of Impermanent Things: A Threshold Ecology
By (Author) Mary Rose O'Reilley
Milkweed Editions
Milkweed Editions
1st June 2006
United States
General
Non Fiction
Mind, body, spirit: thought and practice
813.6
Commended for Minnesota Book Award (Autobiography/Memoir) 2007
Hardback
320
Width 139mm, Height 215mm
566g
At midlife, Mary Rose OReilley writes, we are called to an archaeology of memoryturning over a potsherd here, a fragment thereto assemble something whole out of the messiness of experience. Excavating her own life, she traces the middle-class Irish American background that shaped her, with its mix of antic humor, terror, and mysticism, and finds meaning in the seemingly smallest, most transient encounters.
But OReilleys purpose is less to recount these moments than it is to find the language for a different kind of story, in which the narrative of daily life opens to admit the holy and its corollary, the comic. Encouraging all of us to contemplate our own deep story, she calls hers a demo-life, in which the facts of personal history ground a narrative of consciousness and perception.
Earthy and luminous, unconventional and profoundly illuminating,The Love of Impermanent Thingsoffers a threshold ecology for readers of all ages.