#149: Here’s to everything undone today
Dear reader,
I finally have a vaccination slot and I’m jumping in joy :) It’s been a good start to the week and I’m suddenly optimistic, excited even, about the way things are going to pan out for me. I’ve been trying to make a vision board and create a road map for the future I want for myself. This tool-kit helped, as did this 30 days of Intuition challenge.
For today’s newsletter, I didn’t feel like sticking to any theme. Instead, I dug up some short, beautiful little verses for you to savour:
Ode by Zoe Higgins
Here’s to everything undone today:
laundry left damp in the machine,
the relatives unrung, the kitchen
drawer not sorted; here’s to jeans
unpatched and buttons missing,
the dirty dishes, the novel
not yet started. To Christmas
cards unsent in March, to emails
marked unread. To friends unmet
and deadlines unaddressed;
to every item not crossed off the list;
to everything still left, ignored, put off:
it is enough.
2. Every Dog's Story by Mary OliverI have a bed, my very own.
It’s just my size.
And sometimes I like to sleep alone
with dreams inside my eyes.
But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy
and I wake and am afraid, though I don’t know why.
But I’m no longer sleepy
and too slowly the hours go by.
So I climb on the bed where the light of the moon
is shining on your face
and I know it will be morning soon.
Everybody needs a safe place.3. Flowers by Wendy Videlock
for my mother
They are fleeting.
They are fragile.
They require
little water.
They’ll surprise you.
They’ll remind you
that they aren’t
and they are you.
4. Love Comes Quietly by Robert Creeley
Love comes quietly,
finally, drops
about me, on me,
in the old ways.
What did I know
thinking myself
able to go
alone all the way.
You do not need to fall to your knees to beg by Aron Wander
God: you can say please,
please, at the bus stop,
in line at the hardware store.
Please. After feeding your dog,
watering your plants, paying
your therapist. In the awful
immensity of your bed
late at night. Please.
Please. & if there
is no answer,
you will at least know
that you want one.
Recommended Listening:
-Ojos Del Sol - Y La Bamba (currently my favorite song. I hear it at least 7 times a day)
-Zero - Ólafur Arnalds (what a magical video)
-Take Five, but featuring broken air con, jazz door, glove box and a bin
-Bright Eyes - Anoushka Shankar ft. Alev Lenz
Links of the Week:
1. Cross a bridge (Lenka Clayton's beautiful typewriter drawings come to life)
2. Register for Workshop Week 2021 (Learn from 35+ amazing artists for free)
3. What Are You Doing With Your Life?
4. Write a letter to your future self
5. Watch: Spell of the West
6. Photographer Lea Thijs documents her father with Bipolar Mood Disorder
7. Mister Rogers meets Eric Carle
8. K Srilata reads her poem Last Rites (for Natasha and Mahavir Narwal)
9. Huh, a new incarnation of StumbleUpon
10. This quote from Why I adore the night by Jeanette Winterson:
“I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights – then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought.”
This is my newsletter: Fathima Zahra
“I dream of the sea most days. When I think of freedom, I think of my ankles planted in the water, body turned towards the sun like a sunflower that’s been repotted. My dreams have changed shape - eyes water at the thought of stretching a conversation over lunch at the Apple Blue Patisserie and wolfing down food made by someone else. Loafing around after class with friends, time falling away from us, laughter suspended in the air.
When it’s safe to be outside again and hold each other without worry, I think of the deep joy. How many pockets our smiles will hold, how many detours in our conversations. Here’s to holding out for a new future.”
-Fathima Zahra
Read Fathima’s newsletter here for comforting words and poetry.
New on the website:
Poetry
1. A letter to myself by Namrata Narendra (Excerpt)
Spread even, your flesh against the gnarled roots-
push against the carmine walls that caress you;
you will learn to outgrow them.
Drape around the trunk until one can’t tell
where flesh stops and pulp begins.
Breathe in carbon, breathe out oxygen
Remind yourself that you are a symbiont;
move branches to give, but do not forget to take
support to lift yourself up to the sun
and allow the sunlight to pervade,
penetrate the earth you’re growing out of
making visible the bodies that hold and nourish you”
-Namrata Narendra
Read the full poem here.
2. Where I grew up by Swathi Sriram (Excerpt)
“I didn’t grow up near the sea with its fishermen flinging their nets through the sun’s golden beams. I saw no boats, caught no waves or ate no bites of the fish’s flesh, its silver skin scaled off with a steel scalpel.
I didn’t grow up in bungalows with long hallways and Afghan mosaic tiles that glittered in the sun and streamed through tinted windows casting colourful reflections in summer. I didn't spend my time in the midst of Hindu Gods’ guards trumpeting in religious bliss as they were carried through markets of flowers, fruits, vegetables, iconic landscapes and sculpted edifices that dotted the strip of the land.”
-Swathi Sriram
Read the full poem here.
That’s all, folks!
Rohini
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