#138: Wherever you are, be all there
Hello!
Before I turn 30 next month, I’ve been ticking off a bunch of things on my pre-30 bucket list. Some of these include:
Social Media Detox (I’m on Day 5 and am cherishing the abstinence)
Inbox Zero (I reached it *finally* in November, but I’m back to 125 now. Sigh.)
Setting up a Behance page for art and a website www.rohinikejriwal.com
Finding a therapist whom I can actually work with (Accept, don't expect, she told me in our last session)
Learning how to make a GIF on Procreate:
“Wherever you are, be all there.”
-Jim Elliot
I’ve been feeling lighter and more energised since deleting all the social media apps from my phone. Infinite Scrolling is a curse on mankind, and it feels good to be more in control of my headspace and time. I highly recommend trying it.
Even the poems that have appeared in front of me seem to be potent reminders of life’s mysterious gifts, offering strength between the lines. As Charles Simic writes in his lovely poem Summer Morning, It seems possible / To live simply on this earth.
Read the full poem by Simic below + other poems that gave me strength this week:
1. Summer Morning by Charles Simic
I love to stay in bed
All morning,
Covers thrown off, naked,
Eyes closed, listening.
Outside they are opening
Their primers
In the little school
Of the cornfield.
There’s a smell of damp hay,
Of horses, laziness,
Summer sky and eternal life.
I know all the dark places
Where the sun hasn’t reached yet,
Where the last cricket
Has just hushed; anthills
Where it sounds like it’s raining,
Slumbering spiders spinning wedding dresses.
I pass over the farmhouses
Where the little mouths open to suck,
Barnyards where a man, naked to the waist,
Washes his face and shoulders with a hose,
Where the dishes begin to rattle in the kitchen.
The good tree with its voice
Of a mountain stream
Knows my steps.
It, too, hushes.
I stop and listen:
Somewhere close by
A stone cracks a knuckle,
Another turns over in its sleep.
I hear a butterfly stirring
Inside a caterpillar.
I hear the dust talking
Of last night’s storm.
Farther ahead, someone
Even more silent
Passes over the grass
Without bending it.
And all of a sudden
In the midst of that quiet,
It seems possible
To live simply on this earth.
2. The Weighing by Jane Hirshfield
The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.
As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.
So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.
3. Testimony by Rebecca Baggett
(for my daughters)
I want to tell you that the world
is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.
I want you to know that spring
is no small thing, that
the tender grasses curling
like a baby's fine hairs around
your fingers are a recurring
miracle. I want to tell you
that the river rocks shine
like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death,
I want to remind you to look
beneath the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you
are no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.
I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness",
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.
4. On the Other Side by Lynn Unger
Through the looking glass,
down the rabbit hole,
into the wardrobe and out
into the enchanted forest
where animals talk
and danger lurks and nothing
works quite the way it did before,
you have fallen into a new story.
It is possible that you
are much bigger—or smaller—
than you thought.
It is possible to drown
in the ocean of your own tears.
It is possible that mysterious friends
have armed you with magical weapons
you don’t yet understand,
but which you will need
to save your own life and the world.
Everything here is foreign.
Nothing quite makes sense.
That’s how it works.
Do not confuse the beginning
of the story with the end.
Recommended Listening:
1. I Dream (for You) - Com Truise
2. Tezeta (Nostalgia) - Mulatu Astatke
3. Brooklyn Art Library started a podcast
4. A thread of classical music from old cartoons
5. Come Together - Quatuor Ébène
7. Yo-Yo Ma plays cello in vaccine waiting room in Massachusetts
Links of the Week:
1. Oh my gosh, it's a never before seen yellow penguin! ^
2. The Posttraumatic, a newspaper created by creative minds and artists with the common goal of thinking about how we consume information.
3. Making Self-Care Tactical - Focus on Boundaries, Not Just Bubble Baths (Worth reading.)
4. Vintage Japan
5. Needledrop: a turntable interface for playing music from YouTube
6. I want to get my hands on this GORGEOUS pop-up book of houseplants
7. I’m learning + am feeling rather obsessed over embroidery of late. Some favorite embroidery artists: Anuradha Bhaumick | Brenda Risquez | Alice
8. A Pandemic Year for Women (a series of essay by women in India / via FirstPost)
9. Watch: Him & Her (Based on Anton Chekhov’s short story He & She)
10. There’s a name for that feeling when you crave time to yourself but don’t get it. It’s the mirror image of loneliness—“aloneliness.”
Reading One (New)Letter at a Time ft. Rohini Kejriwal, The Alipore Post on the Oftenly Wicked podcast
Last year, I had a long winding conversation about poetry and literature, running The Alipore Post, my take on art, and where inspiration comes from with the good folks of the Oftenly Wicked podcast. You can listen to the full episode here.
This is my newsletter: Azania Patel
“How am I in mourning if the moment of grief hasn’t made itself manifest yet? How am I a person, when much like a cat I find myself sprawled on a couch under the uncomfortable afternoon sun, parched but too drained to move?
I suppose, a year from the first weekend in ‘lockdown’, we are all wary, blurred at the edges, versions of the people we used to be, or rather wanted to be. It is a peculiar anniversary to mark, since the best word I have found to describe the past year has been ‘liminal’. The liminal is by nature ephemeral, a period or place of transition- an airport, a corridor, the brief moment in a ritual, the second before the ghee drips into the yagna. The liminal is not meant to be an abode- and yet it has become one.”
Azania Patel writes on grief, liminality and living in uncertain transitions in the latest edition of This is my newsletter.
Read her newsletter here.
New on the Website:
1. Artist Showcase: Neil Sanders
Melbourne-based Illustrator and Animator Neil Sanders makes limbless, delightful gooey characters called Boogleys.
"My style revolves around quick and spontaneous mark making, I want my work to feel casual and playful like it was drawn by a friend to make you giggle in class. My favourite thing to hear about is people imitating the dance moves and making weird noises, or naming the characters and making up stories about them. Free and unguarded playfulness is wonderful and so important to a happy life, I’m very proud to contribute to that."
-Neil Sanders
Check out my favorite animations by Neil here.
Tonight I decided not to write
a poem. Instead, I would do
my budget. So here I am
bills scattered across the floor
like forgotten letters and I fail
to remember which is which
and how much the last
year has cost me to keep my
head out of my head and just
about how long can I go
with this before I cannot.
Read two more poems by Abhyuday here.
3. The Big Bang (alternately titled 'Inconclusive Poem') by Vartika Rastogi (Excerpt)
We will explode. It may not be today,
not a few days hence. But certainly
sometime in the future,
We will explode.
Because our composure in
life is lent to us, temporarily:
look how complacent we are
being nothing, doing nothing.
Read the full poem here.
Finally, a Pepita Sandwich comic to end this newsletter. She regularly creates How to be the love of your life comics, which are delightful. Check out her work here.
Thanks for reading!
Rohini
P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, do recommend it to friends and fam, leave a comment, or show some love:
Thank you so much for this. It was a beautiful start to my day :)
Such a lovely set of poems today. Thank you :)