#159: Heal with poems + Find the others
Dear reader,
Today I chanced upon two lines in the poem Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay that made me gasp with joy:
"I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one."
I felt seen. I felt perfectly captured by the poet, touching a hundred flowers and not picking a single one. My life, of late, has been all about pursuing nature any chance I get. Almost daily, I fight the physical slump and fatigue of the last lockdown by getting myself to put on my socks and shoes, charge my AirPods and go for a walk amidst the cypress and silver oak trees in the parks near my house. I have been talking to squirrels, painting leaves and flowers I pick up, and hosting draw hangs with friends in the park: all things that are bringing back a joy into my life that I had almost forgotten.
They say that Bangalore might go into lockdown again. All I can think about is how much time I have under the shade of gulmohar and plumeria trees on the wild trails of Cubbon Park. How many more days of immersing in the greenery, disappearing into the oasis in the middle of the city.
Poetry Corner
My reconnection with nature has me feeling absolutely refreshed and inspired. It has also made me celebrate the presence of poetry in my life, like these gems I'd like to share with you today:
Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!Today Is Sunday by Nazim Hikmet
Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.Stay Home by Wendell Berry
I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man’s life
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don’t come with me.
You stay home too.How to make Apple Crumble by Cathy Grindrod
Balance in your palm a green winter moon.
Slide a steel blade in
to set in motion
the fall of spiralling skin
wheeling in rings, twisting its light path,
splashing a snake-trail on marble.
Slice your naked moon.
Let flour rain
like dust motes through sun beams
in kitchens of glass.
Make a sweet blanket,
rough as a cottage, pebble-dashed;
where a witch once lived
who stirred a spell in an earthenware dish
the colour of sand.
Smother your slives of applie moon
like a fresh snowfall.
Make it white hot.
Take a cold spoon;
dig deep to its creaking core.Sweet Darkness by David Whyte
(I shared this in June, 2017 but the poem found me again)
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.Excerpt from Morning Birds by Tomas Transtromer
Translated from the Swedish by Gunnar Harding and Frederic Will
“Fantastic to feel how my poem grows
while I myself shrink.
It is growing, it takes my place.
It pushes me out of its way.
It throws me out of the nest.
The poem is ready.”
Recommended Listening:
In love with Nanã - Polo & Pan
Brené Brown: Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart (I love this conversation so much)
Links of the Week
Found my old Tumblr page. The one I still update from time to time is thealiporepost.tumblr.com.
How India’s Creative Community Became a Beacon of Hope During COVID-19
Dinosaur illustrations from Samuel G. Goodrich’s Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom (1859) + Martin Gerlach’s Decorative Groupings (1897)
Fishboy, a stop-motion film that explores the theme of guilt by combining hand-crafted puppets and paint on glass animation
This Twitter thread is giving me life:
*Fundraiser Alert: Heal with Poems*
Pravah Changelooms and Compassion Contagion in collaboration with Atypical Advantage + The Alipore Post are fundraising for Rebuilding Post-Covid India. Join us in helping vulnerable communities in India with the devastating impact of Covid-19.
6 Changeloomers (All Dreams Foundation, I Am Wellbeing, GramUrja Foundation, , AnvaratFoundation, Samaveshak and Aatma Prakash) across more than 6 states are joining hands to rebuild the country. Free medical consultation, vaccination drives, mental health counseling, food and rations supplies and support to those who have lost livelihood in the past 17 months are some of things that the Changeloomers are working on. With every donation, you’ll help communities recover.
As a token of appreciation, we will be giving out beautifully curated art and poetry kits to all our donors. We have put together a Heal with Poems set of 10 postcards with art and poetry that evoke hope. Conceived by Compassion Contagion and lovingly curated by The Alipore Post, featuring some of the finest poets and artists from the country, we hope this postcard set will help people heal and bring some joy in these dark times.
Donate Rs 1500 and get the postcard set today!
Featured poets: Janice Pariat, Bhawna Jaimini, Sanghamitra, Vinitha R, Priyanka Basumatary, Ambreen Saniya, Rachana Shah, Ajay Jhawar, Sukrita Paul Kumar and Dhruvi Modi.
Featured artists: Ankita Manuja, Ananya Parekh, Snehal Pendurkar, Ishita Jain, Preethika Asokan, Richa Kashelkar, Shikha Nambiar, Sahana Subramanian and Udisha Madan.
Special thanks to Milaap for putting this ambitious fundraiser together for us!
This is my newsletter: Rohini Kejriwal
I didn’t know I had it in me to stop a project I love working on. But yesterday, I sent out the final edition of This is my newsletter, a newsletter I started year ago with the intention of creating a safe digital space for strangers to inspire each other and share a part of themselves with others. It’s been a beautiful pandemic experiment gone right, and I’m so grateful to each and every one of you for being a part.
While I would have loved to keep this going, a part of me is just tired and needs a break while another part knows that something similar will pop up in my mind soon enough and I will make it a reality when the time is right.
We had 50 different curators take over the newsletter over the past 52 weeks, sharing their little corner of the world. A big, big thanks to every single person who was involved in this project, from the newsletter takeovers to the readers :)
Read my final newsletter here for some poetry, internet discoveries and words of wisdom. There’s also a doodle experiment in there that I love making people do.
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
-Timothy Leary
Check out the full Zen Pencils comic of Timothy Leary’s words here.
I hope you find the others,
Rohini