Blueberry Fool: Memory Moments and Meaning

Description: Is it possible to find the revelatory to find faith in a tiny blue berry? This is but one of the questions explored in this collection of engaging essays aimed at the intrinsically human intersection of memory and belief. Threaded throughout with an ever-changing cast of meadowland characters not the least of which is a rambling barren of wild blueberries these writings offer an intimate chronicle of one mans quest to understand what it means to believe. Again and again the authors words bring the reader from a particular geographical place to a location at once familiar and foreign universal and unique: the landscape of memory. Whether grappling with the implications of adoption or grieving over a lost family recipe; recalling a surprise encounter with an equally surprised red fox or reconsidering the meaning of migration Blueberry Fool is about the sheer fragility and strength of belief the idiosyncratic light of memory and the simple year-round pleasures of a wild meadow. Endorsements: Thom Rock has crafted an enchanting meditation on some of lifes urgent questions: What is memory really? How does belief work in a world full of inevitable loss? When we seek meaning do we need to look further than a patch of wild blueberries in summer? The language is vivid and beautifully cadenced; the stories tenderly told. Blueberry Fool consoles the distracted mind and opens it to a wondrous natural world where asking is enough. -Carolyn M. Bardos author of Yesterdays Daybreak The wild blueberry sometimes called starberry is Thom Rocks North Star which he follows into a deep exploration of faith family and identity. Rocks essays shine with the incandescence of the celestial berries themselves. If youve ever tasted the tart sweetness of summer or felt the bittersweet memory of loved ones youve lost youll sense kindred spirit in these gentle powerful meditations. -KRISTEN LAINE author of American Band Thom Rocks Blueberry Fool is I think best read alone and aloud. Alone because it invites to memory that is deeper than reminiscence. Aloud because its crafted words are viscerally arresting. Rock encourages his reader to plunge into memories of meaning beyond the obvious. Just as Augustine saw memory not as simply recovering past facts but as leading toward the deepest insights so Rock teases language to recapture the inchoate tastes and sounds of lived life. Berries and birds fireflies and hummingbirds flicker through these pages enticing the reader to mine the depths of the past experiences that make us who we are of hopes adumbrated in memory and inscribed in a faith that abides in the unstable stability of questioning what those experiences mean. Rocks meditations grounded as they are in backyard paths through blueberry fields remind one of the evocations of nature in Matsuo Bash_s haiku poetry or the ecological visions of Aldo Leopolds Sand Country Almanac. These words are to be savored-like Rocks preserved berries and pickled cucumbers in midwinter. Read his meditations slowly attentive to the flavor of words that call forth the memories from which we have constructed our sense of who we are and how we embrace faith-not as adhered belief but as the embodiment and reflection of our own lived experiences. If someday we get to hang out with sympathetic souls in heaven I believe that Thom Rock will likely find himself in the company of Augustine Bash_ and Leopold. -John P. Keenan author of The Meaning of Christ: A Mahayana Theology and together with Linda K. Keenan of I Am / No Self: A Christian Commentary on the Heart Sutra About the Contributor(s): Thom Rock is an artist writer and native New Englander. His artwork has been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in Yankee as well as several anthologies.