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Sondra Charbadze Books

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“We have all eaten of the fruit of life, not knowing we have swallowed its death-seeds. The seeds sprout into weeds tall as trees, choking. Smothered or not by distraction or belief, this we share: death as a shared feast, suffering as our communal drink.”

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Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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“I sit for a long stretch of time, focusing on that pain like an original point, like the early ache of displacement that explodes into the shape of our lives, like the fires which rage around us for the entirety of our days, threatening to swallow us blank. But as I wrap my breath around that original point, as I sink deeper and deeper into the loss, I feel a shiver like presence. I squint and imagine the pit splintering open. A spot of red at the center: Is this joy?”

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Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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“Love is a gathering of minutiae. Stones, dirt particles, the waxing/waning light, goat’s milk, chamomile, and honey. I am learning the excruciating art of attention, my small gift of sight to the world. The wider the world, the smaller I seem. This smallness is relieving. Concerns, like the self, are pebbles to be tossed into the sea.”

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Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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“In a culture where the brain is considered the center of consciousness, an unraveling brain is an unraveling self. To let the mentally unstable live in our midst is to face the fearful fragility of the ego. So we whisper our fears over their heads, driving them into the wilderness of the streets or locking them away where they can’t be seen. We let them pale into husks of human beings, cut off from the mutual blood of society. Sometimes we toss them a coin; it’s a small price to pay for the relief of looking away.”

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Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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“Where does the pain go when we die? does it stay in the bed as it begins to stink— does it racket through the home like a scream— do the children inherit it like a sprawling estate— And where does it go while we live? Maybe the pain is like me, desperate to be seen in the lives of those around me. I will abandon others again and again until I can finally be free of my own abandonment.”

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Book:The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language
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