#162: Are you Mmmmmming enough?
Dear reader,
I write to you from The Alipore Post Headquarters in Calcutta where this meandering labour of love started back in February, 2015. Six and a half years later, I write to you asking a pertinent life question:
ARE YOU MMMMMMING ENOUGH?
I’ve noticed my badass artist + musician friend Mayur often Mmmmm loudly when he sees good art and found it so refreshing to hear pleasure expressed. Soon enough, I found myself unknowingly picking up the habit and verbalising my satisfaction during a good meal, while reading a well crafted poem, listening to a song I dig or just in the midst of conversations where something enticing is being discussed. Being someone who enjoys appreciating the good things in life, vocalising pleasure has been giving me a renewed sense of joy and desire.
It might be worthwhile to start noticing what makes you go Mmmmm and what your relationship with pleasure is. I urge you to Mmmm aloud and see how you feel. 🤤
Poetry Corner: Poems that make me go Mmmmmm
What if you slept... by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?Untitled by Nanao Sakaki
"If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot"Kindling by Holly Iglesias
"When the end came, the surprise was that it was no surprise. There was a calm, no struggle or wailing, they say, their reports arriving in bundles, soft sacks stuffed with something irresistible, the shape compelling us to guess: what. Who dares pull the string that keeps a bundle closed, and finger within all that was abandoned, then finally gathered as words, a gift?
Those who survived, flesh and blood among the remains of that ancient wooden town, say the noise was such as one expects to belch from the throat of hell. And yet the most beautiful sky, the night red, banks of smoke that intimated mountains, and through it all, silver flecks like snow in the sun floating to the earth. People left their cellars to watch it, the end they knew was coming, a vision of the world without past or future. Do not let it startle you, this idea of observing the beauty of ruin, unsurprised."
Go Give the World by Otto Leland Bohanan
I do not crave to have thee mine alone, dear
Keeping thy charms within my jealous sight;
Go, give the world the blessing of thy beauty,
That other hearts may share of my delight!
I do not ask, thy love should be mine only
While others falter through the dreary night;
Go, kiss the tears from some wayfarer’s vision,
That other eyes may know the joy of light!
Where days are sad and skies are hung with darkness,
Go, send a smile that sunshine may be rife;
Go, give a song, a word of kindly greeting,
To ease the sorrow of some lonely life!For the Pleasure by Erin Pickersgill
For all the times I have opened the door, purposefully,
I am trying to recall ever doing it
To feel the warmth or breeze on my skin,
For the sake,
For the pleasure of it.
Is it worth disrupting the spider webs that have been woven
overnight?– even I as I write
this they work and wrap
and suck.
I am slow to give
without permission, but the spider–
even so, here is:
the web for breaking, the door hinge
for opening, the sun’s rays for drenching.Omelette by Maurice Devitt
I offer to make an omelette for lunch,
knowing in the back of my mind
that it will never be as good
as the one I made in my mother’s kitchen,
all those years ago. It was simply onion,
egg and cheese, yet that day it came together
like never before, and since then it’s been
the gold standard. Still, lately, I’ve wondered
was it really that good or is it, that as I get older,
the eggs could always be fresher, the onion
sweeter, the cheddar more mature,
and I tinker obsessively with the pan,
as though some combination of fusion and heat
could re-create the person I once was.
Recommended Listening: Songs that make me go Mmmm
Links of the Week:
The Pleasure Of: A Video Compilation of Life’s Most Pleasurable Moments
Can you still find joy when it feels like the world is ending?
Japan’s 72 seasons can liberate us from our obsession with productivity (via Priyanka’s lovely newsletter A Home for Homeless Thoughts)
Fingerspelling.xyz (Learn to sign the American Sign Language alphabet using a webcam and machine learning)
The Origins of Indigo, That Bluest Blue (My latest article is out in Hyperallergic about artist Bhasha Chakrabarti’s gorgeous exhibition When I Get That Mood Indigo)
The Sealey Challenge: COMPLETE!
YAY! I just completed The Sealey Challenge today and finished 31 poetry collections in 31 days. I also got featured in The Hindu (Verse therapy: The Sealey Challenge has been a respite from the monotony of the pandemic life) talking about my experience with this challenge.
Here are the last few collections I’ve read as part of this. Click the links below to enjoy my favorite books from each collection:
Day 24: Kora: Stories and Poems by Tenzin Tsundue
Day 25: Columbia Poetry Review, Issue No. 29 (2016)
Day 26: The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems, Edited by Wendy Cope
Day 27: The Owl and the Laughing Buddha by Siddhartha Menon (My English teacher who made me fall in love with poetry)
Day 28: Countries of the Body by Tishani Doshi
Day 29: Playing the Dark Goddess by Lata Ramaswamy
Day 30: Neglected Poems by Gulzar, Translated by Pavan K. Varma
Day 31: Dragon Talk by Fleur Adcock
I’d like to end the newsletter with these potent words by Pema Chodron from her book When Things Fall Apart:
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don’t know what’s really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don’t know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
I hope you welcome love and pleasure into your life with abundance,
Rohini