Saudade, Anik See

In her most recent collection of essays, Anik See confesses, “Call me old-fashioned, but I like the texture of slowness....Slowness permits a capturing of moments.”  Saudade: The Possibilities of Place indeed leisurely wanders through Sri Lanka, Yellowknife, the Republic of Georgia, Karumba, Vancouver, Minnesota, Amsterdam, Cuba. However, these essays are not travel guides, nor are they memoirs.  Saudade examines how lives and landscapes are constructed and connected.

Observation and analysis of a place link the ten essays in the collection.  See provides the reader with precise and appealing description, and then examines the implications of what she sees.  In the opening essay, “Letter to a Friend (Whose Mother Is Dying),” See deftly describes a fisherman: “It’s sunset and there he is, heading out, a silhouette sitting on the ocean’s surface, diamonds of light coming through his basket.”  She quickly zooms out and muses, “Maybe that’s what the ocean is: either faith or a ritual of death and renewal.  Seventy-five percent of the earth’s surface a prayer.”
I devoured “Squeezing a Spiral into a Square Hole,” a rhapsody on design and proportion; it is also worth noting that See is an accomplished book designer (whose projects include Saudade). See explains, “A good design will mix math and spontaneity...because the eye needs to be directed, but it also needs to have room to wander so it doesn’t feel manipulated or stuck.”