#122: On coping and finding patches of sunshine
This has been a rough week. I’ve been having uncomfortable inner conversations, journaling more, and coping, with whatever tools I have at my disposal.
Poetry, as always, has come rushing to the rescue.
I re-read almost every poem I shared on this newsletter, back when it was an email going out to the first 500 subscribers. You can read the first 300 editions of the then-daily newsletter at thealiporepost.wordpress.com, which has now moved to www.thealiporepost.com.
I wrote a few lines:
patches of sunshine
all i need
on cruel winter mornings
I also found some powerful poems on coping, and other gems from here and there:
1. Clatter by Neil Hilborn
It is impossible to imagine a color
you have not seen. I can’t call my mother
because she makes me panic. When I
say I am crying what I really mean
is that I want to cry but can’t. Instead
of dying, the jellyfish simply ceases
to move. Glass moves like any other
liquid, but slower. Sex is another way
of communicating with your body
like self-harm or sign language. I complete
five crosswords a day because it stops
the panic. Trucks are downshifting
on Main Street. Most of what I do I do
to stop the panic. I never cry at things
outside of my head because they all
seem so far away. Hair is partially
composed of cyanide. Napalm
is just gasoline and plastic. I am just
carbon and bad timing. If I were someone
else I think I would still be mentally ill.
It is impossible to imagine a color
you have not seen.
2. Lessons from Darkness by Anita Barrows
Everything you love will perish. Try saying this to yourself
at breakfast, watching the amber-colored tea
swirl in the teapot. Try it on the tree, the clouds, the dog
asleep under the table, the sparrow taking a bath
in the neighbor's gutter. A magician’s act: Presto!
On a morning you feel open enough to embrace it
imagine it gone. Then pack the child’s lunch: smooth the thick
peanut butter, the jeweled raspberry preserves,
over the bread. Tell yourself the world
must go on forever. This is why
you feed her, imagining the day—orderly—
unfolding, imagining what you teach her
is true. Is something she will use. This is why, later, you will go out
into the garden, among the calendula, rosemary, hibiscus,
run your finger along the trunk of hawthorn
as though it were the body
of a lover, thinking of the child
on the steps of the schoolyard, eating her sandwich. Thinking nothing,
transparent air, where her hands are.
3. a poem by Ashe Vernon
People must think
that being a poet is very slow,
sincere and quiet.
But at night
the inside of my chest is
so loud,
sometimes I stay awake for days,
trying to out-howl
the hunger
inside it.
4. Coping by Audre Lorde
It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.
5. O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman (yes, I re-watched Dead Poet's Society)
What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer: That you are here,
That life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on,
And you may contribute a verse.
Recommended Listening:
Links of the Week:
1. This year, I've really started looking forward to the Creative Boom newsletter, Madeleine Dore's Musings on Extraordinary Routines and Boooooooom TV
2. "This is one of the deep cultural anxieties of our time: We work so much, and yet we are rewarded so little, and for what? What is it all for? Why do we do this?"
-from Self-care at the end of the world, a very important read for this day and age
3. I took on my first paid client project as @ro.doodles, and went deep diving into fonts for the first time in my life. I fell in love with Germs, Sunday Best, Futurism and Magical Mystery Tour in particular.
4. Show some love to The Smritsonian (Rag dolls of Maya Angelou,Savitribai Phule, Kalpana Chawla and other female icons to help the women members of a local self help group in Kodaikanal)
5. Street Piano : Instrument of Change (I've only ever seen street pianos in movies but what a charming addition to the cityscape!) + Piano for Macaques in Abandoned Cinema
6. Must watch: Leoforos Patision (Patision Avenue) by Thanasis Neofotistos (the short film was shot in a single take. The buildup of tension is insane.)
7. I find staring at the wobbly, beautiful jelly cakes by Eat Nunchi rather therapeutic.
8. 2020 feels like the Year of No Grudges, as Andrea Gibson puts it.
9. When Covid hit, I started walking 20,000 steps a day. It's changed my life
10. This Twitter thread on functional anxiety is worth going through.
This is my newsletter #18: Rashmi Tyagi
This week’s edition and poster of This is my newsletter comes from the sun-soaked valley of Dehradun, from the ever-inspiring Rashmi Tyagi @findingmili
She talks about change and hope, finding her rhythm through the quarantine months, and recommends art, music and writing that moved oceans within her.Â
Take a walk into her inner garden here.
New in The Alipore Post Journal:
1. A Poem a Day by Gulzar
A Poem a Day is a volume of Indian poetry by Gulzar. It showcases 365 memorable poems, a poem for every day of the year written over the seven decades since Independence by some of the leading poets of the Indian Subcontinent.
Here are some poems from the immersive collection.
2. #BodyShamingArchetypes by Shivranjana Rathore
"Body positivity is a well known conversation point, oft used in marketing newer products and lifestyles. However, I decided to do #BodyShamingArchetypes because knowledge alone isn’t enough to embody justice. If it were, there would be no violence, mental health crisis or oppression. Embodiment takes time, patience and consistent effort. Until all of us embody that which we seek to build, I feel that for our own sakes and to validate our own inner revolutions, it is important to continue to sound the bell, to state what may seem obvious."
-Shivranjana Rathore
Read more about the project and see more artworks here.
3. Before Love by Kaushiki Saraswat (excerpt)
"There is prolonged sadness of losing before love.Â
There is undying hope against better judgment of the world.Â
Hours of silence, of learning the texture of their skin below which the heart beats, hours of just beingÂ
Before love, there is letting go and greater good and selfish ink.Â
Before love,Â
there is love,Â
until "
-Kaushiki Saraswat
Read the full poem here.
4. Niyogi Books x The Alipore Post: Picturesque India by Sangeeta and Ratnesh Mathur
A most wonderful labor of love, Picturesque India: A Journey in Picture Postcards of India — 1896 to 1947 by Sangeeta and Ratnesh Mathur takes the reader through the history of picture postcards in India. A collector's item by Niyogi Books, the well-researched book documents the visual evolution and variety of over 500 picture postcards from India. Not only is the book a testament of the bygone era, it also meticulously describes the evolution of postcards, the changing architecture and sociology, and the postal delivery and transportation systems in the backdrop of the development of Indian cities in the early 20th century.Â
See my favorite postcards from the book here and order the book here.
Recommended Reading: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing
I’ve (finally) started reading Olivia Laing’s book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, an early Christmas gift from Pallavi, one of the subscribers. Thank you, Pallavi! I’m so so grateful for the gift, and am in awe of how the right book finds its way to you, just when you need it.
Here’s a short excerpt from the book I’ll leave you with before calling it a night:
So much of the pain of loneliness is to do with concealment, with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantly inhabit peak states, or to be comfortably sealed inside a unit of two, turned inward from the world at large?
I hope this newsletter made you feel a little less lonely.
Wishing you patches of sunshine,
Rohini
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