Your Face Is a Forest

Warning: Do not operate a vehicle while under the influence of this book.

Once you begin reading it, you’ll be somewhere else. Your eyes won’t focus on this world, but on another one. In your dreams, you will journey deeper into that place. It will be days before you inhabit this world again.

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So definitely don’t try to drive a car. And be very careful or you might find yourself taking Rhyd’s advice to “get out of your car. Remove the roof, fill it full of soil, and plant a tree inside.”

Rhyd rarely writes directly about himself, so the autobiographical story that introduces this volume is unusual, revealing part of where he came from. It’s a coming-into-self or maybe a coming-into-life story. The other essays and poems describe his relationships with nature, celebrations, gods, places, and people. (In his blog, he also writes about capitalism and this world—but when you are reading his words, it’s this world that is other.)

Your Face is a Forest takes you on a journey. Rhyd's otherworld may not be the same one you knew as a child, but his vision is a reminder that there are other places and other powers. As a kid, I only saw the edge of “my” otherworld; Rhyd lets himself be overwhelmed by his. And he pulls you in with him.

Rhyd challenges us, not to see the world as he does, but just to see.