Jeannette L. Clariond's ammonites are spiral traces that, through an image, a stinging observation or an inflection in time, give different orientations to events, life and writing. Ammonites have their own speed and syntactic composition. They are not aphorisms or fragments. Ammonites chase intensity, not concentration; they seek to mate with the transformation crests – of the bees, of the shadows, of the water, of desire – rather than approach a center. Like the islands, the ammonites are united by what separates them: a silence stretching out, a cycle meandering through their joints, the presentiment of an encounter. Its brevity is not categorical, but multidimensional: only from the multiplicity is it possible to observe that the flower flows in its permanence and that living poetry means being what we do not know how to be. Jeannette L. Clariond gives us a book full of presences where shadows are included, the spiraling events in the river of life.