#128: Hello, January
Hello and welcome to the first edition of The Alipore Post in this new year. I don’t know what it is about January but it feels like I’ve floating and daydreaming and finally getting my act together without much difficulty.
I spent the entire Sunday making art in Cubbon Park, befriending dogs and feeling inspired, hopeful even. I also feel a renewed sense of pleasure putting together this newsletter, which turns six years old next month. How time flies! If there are some of you here from the early, early days, thank you for sticking around :)
In honour of January and a new beginning, here are some rather beautiful poems I read recently:
1. January by Betty Adcock
Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness. If a star
shines now, that shine is
swallowed and given back
doubled, grounded bright.
The timid angels flailed
by passing children lift
in a whitening wind
toward night. What plays
beyond the window plays
as water might, all parts
making cold digress.
Beneath iced bush and eave,
the small banked fires of birds
at rest lend absences
to seeming absence. Truth
is, nothing at all is missing.
Wind hisses and one shadow
sways where a window's lampglow
has added something. The rest
is dark and light together tolled
against the boundary-riven
houses. Against our lives,
the stunning wholeness of the world.
2. This Is the Dream, by Olav Hauge
Translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin
This is the dream we carry through the world
that something fantastic will happen
that it has to happen
that time will open by itself
that doors shall open by themselves
that the heart will find itself open
that mountain springs will jump up
that the dream will open by itself
that we one early morning
will slip into a harbor
that we have never known.
3. Swift Things Are Beautiful, by Elizabeth Coatsworth
Swift things are beautiful:
swallows and deer,
and lightning that falls
bright-veined and clear,
rivers and meteors,
wind in the wheat,
the strong-withered horse,
the runners’ sure feet.
And slow things are beautiful:
the closing of day,
the pause of the wave
that curves downward to spray,
the ember that crumbles,
the opening flower,
and the ox that moves on
in the quiet of power.
4. Thinking by Danusha Laméris
Don't you wish they would stop, all the thoughts
swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers
tapping their way across the stage? I should rake the leaves
in the carport, buy Christmas lights. Was there really life on Mars?
What will I cook for dinner? I walk up the driveway,
put out the garbage bins. I should stop using plastic bags,
visit my friend whose husband just left her for the Swedish nanny.
I wish I hadn't said Patrick's painting looked "ominous."
Maybe that's why he hasn't called. Does the car need oil again?
There's a hole in the ozone the size of Texas and everything
seems to be speeding up. Come, let's stand by the window
and look out at the light on the field. Let's watch how the clouds
cover the sun and almost nothing stirs in the grass.
5. how to ferment a poem by Pragya Bhagat
log in
dip your tongue into cotton candy web
things will dissolve
let them
face the fan’s milky iris
objects might be closer than they appear
it’s better this way
press your face into his spine until
bone become marble
in your cheek, fit
your chin between vertebrae c4 and c5, dig
a tunnel with your jaw until
your mouth swishes with
marrow and brine, hum
your favorite song, examine
the bulbous clarity of words
in the hollow of his neck
this is the thrum
of the living
welcome
Recommended Listening:
1. Sahil Vasudeva - Jvaar - Live at Oddbird Theatre
2. Clara - Richard Luke & Amira Bedrush-McDonald
4. I Can't Stay Mad At You - Skeeter Davis
5. Bye Bye Blackbird - Ringo Starr
Links of the Week:
1. Kaviya Sekar’s illustrations on photographs
2. Seed: a comic by Woshibai
3. How to write an elegy in the year of dying: Tishani Doshi (the most beautiful and heartbreaking piece I've read in a while. It also hits home because I spent time with the lovely Bagheera :( Rest in peace, sweet one.)
4. Emoji Kitchen (Combine emoji to create new ones)
5. Learning My Father by Photographer Christian Rodriguez
6. Studio Ghibli Makes 1,178 Images Free to Download
Workshop Alert: Poetry Workshop
I’m hosting my first online poetry workshop of 2021 on January 28th in association with Svami as part of their Curiously Sober Jan workshop series. There will be writing activities like Spin-A-Yarn poetry, blackout poetry, writing prompts and other experimental methods to make the creative process even more enjoyable.
Register here.
This is my newsletter #23: Allison Nguyen
This week’s newsletter comes from Allison Nguyen, founder of The Snoozeletter, a nightly self-care newsletter to uplift and relax you all before sleep. She writes a refreshing How to get over 2020 List, complete with useful links, interesting recommendations and tips on looking forward instead of dwelling in the past.
Read her full newsletter here.
Before I end, I’d like to recommend the book The Lonely City by Olivia Laing to everybody. I finally completed it two days ago, and it has been all I can talk about. It’s a powerful window into the different kinds of loneliness, especially the kind we’ve been feeling stuck since the pandemic hit. A truly enriching read (I’ve never underlined so much of a book!) that takes you deep into the inner lives of artists like Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz and Olivia herself, and talks about how solitude and creativity go hand in hand. Olivia writes:
What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.
You can also check out Manjiri Indurkar’s take on her own experiences with loneliness, an interesting piece on modern dating and loneliness that she wrote while reading The Lonely City.
Logging off to read a few pages of The Fantastic Mr Dahl by the wonderful children’s book illustator Michael Rosen before bed. Roald Dahl fans, you’ll appreciate Mr Dahl like never before if you read this book :)
Good night and have a lovely year ahead,
Rohini
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