Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet with Celler 9 Cantaperdius

For a while now I’ve been circling around a thought. Trying to follow it to some yet-unknowable depth, which is a thing I like to do: obsess. The thought is something about reading as consuming: my mind, a hungry mouth. This is how I’ve always read. Looking for answers in language, finding meaning in the ways we are always looking for meaning—outside of ourselves. It isn’t a new thought, but rather a very old one. The Ultimate Quest. At times this philosophy of reading can feel like too much, and when it does, like the taste of something long-ago consumed lingering in your mouth, I am reminded that when caught up in the underworld of our minds, what we often need to pull us out again is humor, even about what’s most painful, which is something this month’s book has in droves. An emotional chiaroscuro of what it means to be alive, and searching. Like so much of Art, how, or with which self, you read this book will be highly subjective. I found Oloomi’s protagonist to be both hilarious