#188: Make your soul blossom!
Guess who's back? :)
Dear reader,
How are you? I have truly missed writing these emails to you these past few weeks. As I wrote in my last newsletter on April 4th, I needed to take a break for myself from everything. In the past month, I’ve written poems that needed to come out, started experimenting with lettering, taken myself on umpteen walks and grown stronger and quieter as a person.
As someone who observes and feels a lot and thrived on being emotionally/visually wired most of the time, it’s nice to hear my friends tell me that I seem calmer, less reactive. I feel it too. There is less stimulation, more unread emails in my inbox. I have discovered that there are pink dragonflies in Bangalore. There is a quiet need for community and deeper sense of belonging with the people in my life versus the bubble in which I dwelt for a long time.
It also helps (sort of) that a week ago, Instagram blocked me from logging in because I put The Alipore Post’s birthday instead of my own. Since they think I’m 7 and underage, I’ve been blocked from @thealiporepost page and my other accounts. While I’d still like to get my access back (any leads would be appreciated), it’s been wonderful to not keep looking at my phone or seeing what others’ lives look like.
A larger reason for this semblance of balance in my life (in this phase, at least) is therapy. While I won’t go into the benefits of therapy, I’d like to urge you all to read this amazing essay I read via one of my favorite newsletters Kat’s Kable (thank you, Vishal), on how people change through therapy.
In the article, Elitsa Dermendzhiyska writes:
After a while, clients internalise the warmth and understanding of their therapist, turning it into an internal resource to draw on for strength and support. A new, compassionate voice flickers into life, silencing that of the inner critic – itself an echo of insensitive earlier attachment figures. But this transformation doesn’t come easy. As the poet WH Auden wrote in The Age of Anxiety (1947): “We would rather be ruined than changed.” It is the therapist’s job, as a secure base and safe haven, to guide clients as they journey into unfamiliar waters, helping them stay hopeful and to persist through the pain, sadness, anger, fear, anxiety and despair they might need to face.
-How you attach to people may explain a lot about your inner life
Please read the full piece in your own time. It did something to me because more than anything, therapy has helped me go inwards on a path of self-inquiry. To cultivate a sincere curiosity to understand myself and the world I live in, to grow and listen to my intuition, to be more present.
Before you read the poems I’ve picked for you today, a few lines from the latest Dear Jasmine column: Fight for Joy: (also read #3: The Curtain Between Life and Death) that resonate a similar feeling:
“The idea that anything has to last forever in order to have value is robbing us humans of our capacity to enjoy our lives…our Earth is tangible proof of the fact that a season doesn’t have to last a lifetime for it to be valuable to our planet and to us. Do you ever want the monsoons to last all year long, or the summer to never fade? Our lives mirror the universe, and as long as we live paying tender attention to the present, we don’t have to focus on making delight last forever. We only have to enjoy it.”
-Dear Jasmine
Poetry Corner:
I’m only now realising how much I’ve missed handpicking these gems for you, lovely human across the screen.
1. Do not make Grief your God by Mahogany L. Browne (Excerpt)
Instead
Make it a cup of coffee
The espresso percolator wheezing on
the biggest eye
of the stove
Consider the dress
line up every spark you own
and weep at its small finalities
Hold each piece of silk and cotton
like the gone love/hero/heart
Name the garment, please
give Grief a name
Then fold it
origami
Place it kindly in a home suitable
for royal things
Text every contact
In your cellphone
I love you
I love you
I love
You
You
You
Try this same exercise with your email inbox
newsletter, spam and such correspondence
Each item will bounce back with your declaration
in the subject line:
I love you. I love you. I love you. you. you.
2. Let go, unlearn, give back by J. C. Sturm
Let go, relinquish
Charms, talismans, taonga.
Return them, in the turning time
To their source.
Unlearn, put aside
Chants, prayers, incantations.
Exchange them, in the changing time
For silence.
Give back, but gently
Loving and being loved.
Then leave them, in the leaving time
And go alone.
3. Therapy by Nayyirah Waheed
the hard season
will
split you through.
do not worry.
you will bleed water.
do not worry.
this is grief.
your face will fall out and
down your skin
and
there will be scorching.
but do not worry.
keep speaking the years from
their hiding places.
keep coughing up smoke
from all the deaths you have
died.
keep the rage tender.
because the soft season will
come.
it will come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both hands in your chest.
up all night.
up all of the nights.
to drink all damage into love.
4. Tomorrow by David Budbill
Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.
Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.
Drunk on music,
who needs wine?
Come on,
Sweetheart,
let's go dancing
while we still
have feet.
5. Within This Tree by Jane Hirshfield
Within this tree
another tree
inhabits the same body;
within this stone
another stone rests,
its many shades of grey
the same,
its identical
surface and weight.
And within my body,
another body,
whose history, waiting,
sings; there is no other body,
it sings,
there is no other world.
6. Thoughts on Getting Out of a Nice Warm Bed in an Ice Cold House to go to the Bathroom at 3am by Judith Viorst
Maybe life was better
When I used to be a wetter.
Recommended Listening
new feeling - Mathew Antony (best sleep/wake up music)
Links of the Week
Handy Mnemonics: The Five-Fingered Memory Machine (Fascinating!)
On (Not) Mourning Our Icons (Thanks for this, @bakingpoetry)
Virginia Woolf on being ill as a portal to self-understanding and growth
Dreamers in Broad Daylight: Leslie Jamison considers why and how we daydream
‘Small Kindnesses’: A Collaborative Poem by Teenagers From Around the World (My favorite: Waving back to little kids in public)
Tanubai Govilkar: Jambhali’s last vakal maker
“Let us love each other to the end.”
Movers & Makers (A collaborative series between Mailchimp & Co and It’s Nice That on how to nurture an authentic business within the creative industry)
Mike Sullivan uses masks to explore the performative nature of identity
Thrilled that my feature on artist-photographer Mike Sullivan, whom I had the pleasure of watching in work mode, is out in The Hindu Sunday Magazine. Also, first print byline in years. Woo!
“Because nature is a tender, universal language that’s accessible to everybody. I had political differences with loved ones but I didn’t want to write them off. I wanted to make my queer expression palpable to them despite our different ideologies. So I started using nature and flowers as a way to destigmatise being queer.”
-Mike Sullivan
Read the full interview with Mike here.
I had the pleasure of speaking to Indumathy Sukanya for Creative Corners, a lovely series about writers, artists, musicians, founders and other creative individuals and their relationships with their workspaces. A tiny excerpt from the interview:
What's the one thing that has always been at your workspace over the years? Why?
I’ve always had a drawer full of all the stationery that I like—POSCA pens for doodling, Uniball pens in black and blue for writing, markers in every colour, paper, paints, sketchbooks. And they’re all here, hoping to be used. I have this idea that if you keep the workstation ready, inspiration will come to you more easily. I also love having flowers at the table, especially when I have a big project going on. Yellow flowers, preferably, because they make me feel inspired and happy.
Read the full interview here.
In March, I was invited to paint a table by Ansh Baid of Bangalore-based furniture makers Studio Bavl who “create pieces with precision, love and an intimate understanding of materials”. It was such a fun experiment with a new medium and I even made a time lapse video to remember how therapeutic the whole process was.
The table’s up for auction on Instagram! If you like it then you should put a bid on it.
“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
-Marcel Proust
This gardener sends love and good energy your way. Here’s to more monsoon showers and blossoming souls! 😊
Take care,
Rohini
Dear Rohini Kejriwal: I have been reading your newsletter for a while now, and I just wanted to thank you for all you have given me and others. I especially enjoy the rich variety of poems you share. I live in NYC, and it is refreshing to get glimpses of the world through other eyes. For 23 years, every Sunday without fail, I have sent a poem that I have found and like to a growing group of friends and colleagues, as well as people whom I don't really know at all. I can't imagine that you need another source of poems, but should you want to be added to the list, let me know at richardgbruno@gmail.com. This week's poem, #1171:
Memory
first dream I remember
maybe I was three
wearing a little coat
you were pushing a baby carriage
down the block away from me
you were running
my mother my queen
I was trying to catch you
Alice Suskin Ostriker
I spent the pandemic in therapy too! felt like a long, warm hug ❤️