#135: On living alone
Dear reader,
When I started living on my own in 2018, I instinctively knew it was the right choice. I’d been waiting to set up a space that could be called mine my entire life. My friends warned me that there would be tough days, lonely days, joyless days. There were.
But I found things that helped me get through those bad days:
-Neighborhood walks, especially to meet the puppies of Cooke Town and browse through the books at Lightroom Bookstore
-Art Hour: distraction-free time dedicated to making art
-Treating myself to flowers
-Organising / cleaning
-A cup of hot jasmine tea
Tomorrow, all my furniture will be gone from this room from which I send out this newsletter, and a new chapter of my life will begin. In the midst of packing up my life and relocating it, I’ve been doodling, writing and visualising the future I want for myself. Here’s a doodle I made last night picturing myself in my new room, with birdies chirping outside and yellow carnations on the bedside table:
In honour of living alone, I’ve picked out a few poems that spoke to me:
1. Ask Anyone by Nancy Naomi Carlson
Ask anyone who’s ever lived alone
How houses seem to shift when winter comes.
It’s hard to settle in against the cold.
Minor sounds grow amplified: groans
From sinking eaves, surfaces that rub.
Anyone who’s lived alone knows
The shape silence takes, framed by closing
Doors and intermittent furnace hum.
It’s hard to settle in. Against the cold
Bedroom window, nightly rhythms unfold:
A loose screen flaps outside, a broken shutter,
And anyone who’s ever lived alone
Knows anything can hide in the quiet approach—
A brush of wings or snowdrifts piling up.
It’s hard to settle in against the cold
And empty sheets, the pillow that holds
the wild scent of an abandoned love.
Ask anyone who’s ever lived alone—
It’s hard to settle in against the cold.
2. On Living Alone by Rochelle D'Silva
After 4 days it finally stops
The incessant pelting of rain
on the tin roof outside my window
I can finally hear the ticking of the clocks
Out of sync
Is this what silence feels like?
The opportunity to create rhythms?
The quieter I feel
The more appliances join in
I don’t need a cat!
I complain that Bombay is never quiet
In protest, I always have headphones in
It has been 4 days of
conversations with myself
Where does all the water go? What must it
feel like to absorb so much? When will it stop?
I put my bins out at midnight
Don’t know who my neighbours are
The watchman is the only human
that can vouch I live here
I like it better this way
I tell myself
The quiet freedom
to exist on my own terms
The forecast says there’s much more
rain to come
I’m going to need a new umbrella
I guess silence is overrated anyway.
3. Advice to Writers by Billy Collins
Even if it keeps you up all night,
wash down the walls and scrub the floor
of your study before composing a syllable.
Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.
Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.
The more you clean, the more brilliant
your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take
to the open fields to scour the undersides
of rocks or swab in the dark forest
upper branches, nests full of eggs.
When you find your way back home
and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,
you will behold in the light of dawn
the immaculate altar of your desk,
a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.
From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift
a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,
and cover pages with tiny sentences
like long rows of devoted ants
that followed you in from the woods.
4. Passion for Solitude by Cesare Pavese
Translated by Geoffrey Brock
I’m eating a little supper by the bright window.
The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn.
Outside my door, the quiet roads lead,
after a short walk, to open fields.
I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows
how many women are eating now. My body is calm:
labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.
Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch
the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive,
but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone.
I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining
among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them.
A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life
of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.
A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still,
in its true place, just like my body is still.
All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness—I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,
lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.
The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.
5. Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom by Dorothy Parker
Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend-
Bed awaits me at the end.
Though I go in pride and strength,
I'll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I'm bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall-
I'm a fool to rise at all!
Recommended Listening:
1. Muse d'eau - Víkingur Ólafsson
2. What He Wrote - Laura Marling
3. Home - Rhye (Been listening to this album on loop)
5. The Self-Care You Need vs. The Self-Care You're Sold (“Be curious, not furious”)
7. Sesto libro di madrigali: XI. Alme d'amor rubelle - Carlo Gesualdo
Links of the Week:
1. Arkadia Zoomquilt (This was beautiful and surreal)
2. Read: Orijit Sen and Pakhi Sen's graphic story, ‘Heart of Light’, that draws from the myth of Amir Hamza (via Poetly)
3. The International Cloud Atlas + The Cyanometer, a tool to measure the blue of the sky
4. The Long Tradition of Writers Needing Ritual
5. I recently learnt about Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours. (Found on Chronically Cheerful, a newsletter I recommend subscribing to)
6. Our minds are hardwired to wander, and that’s not a bad thing
8. A guide to overcoming imposter syndrome
9. What's Up With Everyone (an animated campaign on mental health by Studio Aardman) + director Dan Binns on the creative process
10. "I learned that “too sensitive” is a portal, an open window into things the world needs now. I discovered I wasn’t at the mercy of others—I could grant myself the loving acceptance I’d always craved. “Too sensitive” is not a burden; it’s perfect and whole in its unique perspective on the world. It offers endless opportunities to sense and support."
-Lauren Maxwell, The World May Shame Your Superpowers
This is my newsletter: Kaavya Ranjith
This week’s takeover of This is my newsletter comes from across the shores from Bahrain. A tender, meandering newsletter by Kaavya about knots, landscapes, memory and nostalgia. Kaavya writes like a dream, and I love everything she has recommended, and how everything ties in so beautifully.
The newsletter also comes with a warning: “Nothing about this newsletter will flow smoothly. The music is eclectic, the sources are constantly dislocating from themselves, and the entire thing has rough edges and hairpin turns. But they connect, I promise. It’s just up to you to figure out how they do so.”
Read it here.
New on the Website:
Our
comfortable chestnut coloured couch,
A three seater,
TV, reading, siesta,
Threads askew from
stitching our wounds,
A wobbly leg supported
by a cardboard cut-out,
Cushions flattened by
the weight of our memories,
Chafed skin reflected
its devotion,
Few scars hidden
like pencils in the folds,
Still,
It refused to crumble,
Just like us.
2. Holes by Pooja Ugrani
She punches my eye blue,
a toe nail, storing clotted blood
remains black for months
after she drops a heavy vessel on it.
The reflex to strike back
that I never tamed
and always gave back to the world,
I now withhold with caution.
Count, breathe, seethe.
She doesn't know it hurts,
sees me in pain and hugs me
still confused about what she did,
it is always a game for her.
Yet, when all hell breaks loose
for the umpteenth time
after I have, in a low sincere voice
tried to explain, she still refuses to listen.
The physical force of her body
overpowers me,
flailing limbs land hurtful kicks
punches make my arms give way.
I bite my lower lip,
make big eyes, hold her arm
and place a carefully weighed
whack on her behind
with a third of the force
I feel inside.
Rage boils over, a moment
of regained control sears holes
in me and in her
that may take a lifetime to heal.
Read two more poems on motherhood by Pooja here.
3. The Single Room by Asmita Sarkar (excerpt)
Within a single blanket, on a single bed, in a single room
I lied sleeping, cradled by the sultry yet chilly winter evening.
Winters in Mumbai are strange, with no stark characteristic of its own, unlike the city.
I have been busy, trying to make myself ordinary, like the Mumbai winters. But your single room was my escape into extraordinary.
The music, the paintings, the greasy induction, the yellowed paperbacks, the occasional smell of urea and the monotonous mechanical humming of the refrigerator made me feel alive again.
I have lied naked on the cold floor of your single room,
dampening the solid marble with my sweat, giggling in the darkness While the glow of the night bulb stirred the air murky with its purple hue.
Read the full poem here.
Have a good day!
-Rohini
If you like what you read here, please do consider supporting this newsletter on Patreon / ordering the 2021 wall calendar I designed / contributing to thealiporepost@okhdfcbank via UPI. Thank you :)