#104: A letter from home
Art by Edmund Blair Leighton
A Letter from Home by Mary Oliver
She sends me news of blue jays, frost,
Of stars and now the harvest moon
That rides above the stricken hills.
Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain,
And lists what is already lost.
Here where my life seems hard and slow,
I read of glowing melons piled
Beside the door, and baskets filled
With fennel, rosemary and dill,
While all she could not gather in
Or hid in leaves, grow black and falls.
Here where my life seems hard and strange,
I read her wild excitement when
Stars climb, frost comes, and blue jays sing.
The broken year will make no change
Upon her wise and whirling heart; –
She knows how people always plan
To live their lives, and never do.
She will not tell me if she cries.
I touch the crosses by her name;
I fold the pages as I rise,
And tip the envelope, from which
Drift scraps of borage, woodbine, rue.
Recommended Listening:
Noon - Jeevan Antony (Black Letters Remix)
Francis and the Lights - Friends ft. Bon Iver and Kanye West
Kulning - Ancient Swedish herdingcall Ojos Del Sol - Y La Bamba
Links of the Week:
The Art of Solitude (pandemic series on Scroll found via Riya Roy's newsletter The Nook)
What Toulouse Lautrec Taught Me About Intimacy
The extraordinary life of Ethiopia's 93-year-old singing nun (Loved this profile of my favorite Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou)
Kukuwa Fitness (I can't believe I'm sharing a fitness link here but this African dance workout is amazing! Go try it now and shake your boombsey!)
Attend: Summer Studio by Whitney Museum of American Art
New on the website:
Quarantine Art: Still Life by Noopur Choksi
"Life has been oddly still(yet chaotic!) and stagnant for a while now. But as a self-proclaimed low key optimist, I am trying my best to find beauty in the stillness and channel that collective anxiety into something that I can look at and remember this time by." - Noopur Choksi
Letters from The Snail Mail Project
Sumedha Sah, Founder, The Snail Mail Project, shares some of her favorite illustrations created in response to letters she received.
Art by Lucian Freud
4 poems by Akanksha Arya
"When words fail.
Speak, if you will,
In a language
I haven’t yet heard.
If you will."
nether x The Alipore Post: Distant Prayers
Art by Charles Sarka
The final collection of poems for the month-long collaboration with nether. Featuring poems by Siddhartha Menon, Saksham Khosla, Vijay Nambisan, Eunice de Souza and Bharat Iyer.
via Chitthi Exchange
I've been on a 'completion energy trip' of late, and making ideas come to life. In July, I've conceptualised and made two new projects a reality - This Is My Newsletter, a newsletter with a surprise guest curator every week, and Chitthi Exchange, a letter exchange aimed at bringing back the penpal tradition.
If you'd like to support my journey and help me spread joy through the newsletter and other such projects, do consider becoming my patron at www.patreon.com/thealiporepost. Thank you! :)
-Rohini