#121: Find the right words for it
I just returned to Bangalore today after 8 weeks of nurturing and family time in Calcutta. I'm still acclimatising to the new/old feelings, trying to readjust to life as I knew it though something within me has certainly shifted. Since I'm struggling to find the words for this transition, I'm sharing some poems on finding the right words to describe feelings that are hard to label.
1. Words For It by Julia Cameron
I wish I could take language
and fold it like cool, moist rags.
I would lay words on your forehead.
I would wrap words on your wrists.
"There, there," my words would say–
or something better.
I would ask them to murmur,
"Hush" and "Shh, shhh, it's all right."
I would ask them to hold you all night.
I wish I could take language
and daub and soothe and cool
where fever blisters and burns,
where fever turns yourself against you.
I wish I could take language
and heal the words that were the wounds
you have no names for.
2. Blue Curtains by Alex Dimitrov
That day we were in a room with blue curtains.
Every time I wanted to speak
some hand would lift that pale, translucent fabric
and I’d see him standing on the circular balcony
which held something old and shapeless.
It was late morning.
We were already late for everything.
So I stood at one end of the room
and watched him. And between us
was a bed and a table and things
in a hotel—you know,
things that are anonymous
and belong to no one.
Like a sea or a life.
And all I remember is how expensive it was.
Not the room, but the feeling.
3. The Language by Robert Creeley
Locate I
love you some-
where in
.
teeth and
eyes, bite
it but
.
take care not
to hurt, you
want so
.
much so
little. Words
say everything.
.
I
love you
again,
.
then what
is emptiness
for. To
.
fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full
.
of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.
4. The Word by Zaffar Kunial
I couldn’t tell you now what possessed me
to shut summer out and stay in my room.
Or at least attempt to. In bed mostly.
It’s my dad, standing in the door frame
not entering – but pausing to shape advice
that keeps coming back. ‘Whatever is matter,
must enjoy the life.’ He pronounced this twice.
And me, I heard wrongness in putting a the
before life. In two minds. Ashamed. Aware.
That I knew better, though was stuck inside
while the sun was out. That I’m native here.
In a halfway house. Like that sticking word.
That definite article, half right, half
wrong, still present between enjoy and life.
Recommended Listening:
-Lambchop’s Recent Departures Playlist (Kurt Wagner compiles a list of his favorite tracks from artists we’ve lost this year)
-Dr. Nicole LePera on The Minimalists
-Broken Sleep - Agnes Obel
-Only She Knows - Loving
-Field Recordings (A podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields)
Links of the Week:
-Growing Sunflower Time Lapse - Seed To Flower In 83 Days (this is just so beautiful!)
-An Altar to Dalit Honour (Interviews by Dhanya Addanki)
-This 'Telewriter' Transmitted Handwriting Across Long Distances in the 1930s
-Instagram accounts I like: Rachel Lopez's cab ceiling selfies + On Adventure with Dad (funny photographs sent by a father to his partner when asked if their baby is okay)
-Wrapped in Festive Neon, Tate Britain Marks Diwali (my piece on Chila Kumari Burman's bright and luminous installation on Hyperallergic)
-What a Simple Haiku Can Do for a Friendship (two friends who have been texting each other a haiku every day during the pandemic)
This is my newsletter #17: Riya Roy (The Nook)
For this Sunday's takeover of This is my newsletter, the delightful Riya Roy curated a special edition of The Nook, her weekly newsletter full of poetry, love and magic!✨🌸
Read the full newsletter here.
New in the Journal:
1. Fractured Figures by Geetanjali Dhalia (excerpt)
"I see a familiar face tonight,
Standing before me, she cries.
Broken into several pieces,
Only I see her helplessness."
-lines taken from Fractured Figures by Geetanjali Dhalia
2. Interview: Mark Mulroney
"When I was a kid I spent a lot of time in my room for doing one wrong thing or the other so I had a lot of time to draw and make things out of cardboard boxes. All those days in my room alone prepared me well for the life of an artist."
-Mark Mulroney, whose work and characters exist in a world of their own.Â
Read the full interview here.
3. Origami Dream by Aakriti Kuntal (excerpt)
I have a dream. I'm made of paper. A paper folding and unfolding, folding, unfolding. There is a scissor in my mouth and a cavity in my large stomach. I am a dream, a dream of paper. I'm almost done. I do not exist. I'm so thin, I could compel myself into non-existence. Become the air that floats through me. I roam. I roam. I roam. I'm gay. I'm joy itself. I'm the tower of a building. I am a cable wire hanging in the eye of the sun. I am the shutter behind which the cat sleeps. I am its hallucination of pearl. I roam. I roam. I am the air itself.
Read the full prose-poem here.
4. The Astronaut in Quarantine series by Mohit Mahato
"I have done some 25 works in the astronaut series. Every day, I painted one page since I Â have been visualizing my character in a spaceman suit for a while now. So it was perfectly fitting with the present COVID-19 precautionary protocol during the lockdown."
-Mohit Mahato
Check out more paintings from Mohit’s series here.
5. Niyogi Books x The Alipore Post: The Light Within by Sipra Das
Sipra Das' photo book The Light Within: A different vision of life is the culmination of a 12-year-long project. When the photojournalist decided to make a book that would capture the lives of the visually impaired, she did not want it to inspire the usual blend of sympathy and pity. She wanted it to evoke a sense of awe and empathy at how beautifully the visually impaired are integrated into society, how diverse their worlds are and the amazing things they achieve. See more photographs from the book here.
I need to hibernate and recuperate now, so I'll end this newsletter with a quote I pondered over and created a doodle about on the flight back home:
"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop."
-Rumi
Good night and stay warm, folks!
-Rohini
If you enjoy the newsletter, do consider becoming a supporter on Patreon/via thealiporepost@okhdfcbank (UPI). It would help me sustain this labour of love :) Thank you!