#192: The Friendship Dispatch from Ladies Hostel
Dear reader,
I’ll start this newsletter with a line from Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights: Essays, which I’m currently reading: “I learned this year that my delight grows—much like love and joy—when I share it.”
For the past few weeks, my life has been about sharing delight. As someone who’s been more than a little obsessed with friendship for years now and hopes to do a photobook about female friendships in the near future, it’s been lovely playing host to different girlfriends visiting town and my mother, who came and stayed with me recently.
I’ve been the embodying the role of the nurturing matron to my home that feels like a Ladies Hostel, as a friend aptly called it. What’s amazing is the sense of mutual respect, love, freedom and a feeling of being truly seen I’ve been getting with these incredible friends in my life. Grateful beyond words.
This newsletter is for all of you.
A few lines on the subject of love and friendship
1. The Currency of Care, Lauren Maxwell
“…Acts of care are threads in the fabric of our lives, woven intricately together to hold us even when crisis threatens to rip us apart. Calls made. Snacks shared. Bread delivered.
These tiny gestures of friendship make up a life. We will be okay if we keep making each other tea and helping each other laugh. We will be okay if we insist on keeping each other warm until the day we die.”
-The Currency of Care, Lauren Maxwell
2. Types of People You Need To Hang On To by Molly Burford
3. You build stronger boundaries from the compassion you cultivate for the imperfect souls around you.
“We all want love. Look at your roommate and try to see a person who is just trying to survive, who just wants love, who just needs a friend. Try not to be repulsed by that. Remember the person you were when you met her, the person who loved being needed by her, and show that person some compassion, too. You both need love and support. You’re both doing your best. You both deserve to want things. You both deserve respect.
This is the starting point: Two people. You can both say no. You can both state your true desires honestly. You can both admit that you have feelings that you’re ashamed of. You both deserve to have a voice. You are both free.”
-Heather Havrilesky
Poetry Corner
A few lovely poems about friendship, including one of my own for good measure.
1. In the Company of Women by January Gill O'Neil
Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle.
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.
Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found.
Not tonight. Not here.
No makeup. No tears.
Only contours. Only curves.
Each sip takes back a pound,
each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul.
Can I have a refill, just one more?
Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives.
Let us take this joy to go.
2. Zen of Tipping By Jan Beatty
My friend Lou
used to walk up to strangers
and tip them — no, really —
he’d cruise the South Side,
pick out the businessman on his way
to lunch, the slacker hanging
by the Beehive, the young girl
walking her dog, and he’d go up,
pull out a dollar and say,
Here’s a tip for you.
I think you’re doing a really
good job today. Then Lou would
walk away as the tipee stood
in mystified silence. Sometimes
he would cut it short with,
Keep up the fine work.
People thought Lou was weird,
but he wasn’t. He didn’t have much,
worked as a waiter. I don’t know
why he did it. But I know it wasn’t
about the magnanimous gesture,
an easy way to feel important,
it wasn’t interrupting the impenetrable
edge of the individual — you’d
have to ask Lou — maybe it was
about being awake, hand-to-hand
sweetness, a chain of kindnesses,
or fun — the tenderness
we forget in each other.
3. Downpour by Billy Collins
Last night we ended up on the couch
trying to remember
all of the friends who had died so far,
and this morning I wrote them down
in alphabetical order
on the flip side of a shopping list
you had left on the kitchen table.
So many of them had been swept away
as if by a hand from the sky,
it was good to recall them,
I was thinking
under the cold lights of a supermarket
as I guided a cart with a wobbly wheel
up and down the long strident aisles.
I was on the lookout for blueberries,
English muffins, linguini, heavy cream,
light bulbs, apples, Canadian bacon,
and whatever else was on the list,
which I managed to keep grocery side up,
until I had passed through the electric doors,
where I stopped to realize,
as I turned the list over,
that I had forgotten Terry O’Shea
as well as the bananas and the bread.
It was pouring by then,
spilling, as they say in Ireland,
people splashing across the lot to their cars.
And that is when I set out,
walking slowly and precisely,
a soaking-wet man
bearing bags of groceries,
walking as if in a procession honoring the dead.
I felt I owed this to Terry,
who was such a strong painter,
for almost forgetting him
and to all the others who had formed
a circle around him on the screen in my head.
I was walking more slowly now
in the presence of the compassion
the dead were extending to a comrade,
plus I was in no hurry to return
to the kitchen, where I would have to tell you
all about Terry and the bananas and the bread.
4. Sisterhood by Rohini Kejriwal
What is this lovely feeling
of being seen
just as you are
no judgment,
pure kindness
Two souls collide
into each other’s lives,
the soft glow of friendship,
you are home.
We have found each other.
Let us go on a walk
to our favorite spot in the park.
We’ll lie on the grass,
talk of everything
under the Bangalore summer sun.
You bring the tea,
I’ll bring the cups.
5. Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye (Excerpt. Read the full poem here.)
The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Recommended Listening
It’s Been You - Mindchatter (Obsessed)
Woven Sound + Beep Box (Music making tools, much fun)
Links of the Week
Have you tried bionic reading yet? Use Jiffy Reader to try it out.
You must let me cry my cry for him (Robert Frost writes to the widow of a dear friend)
A Marriage of Minds: Saadat Hasan Manto’s Tribute to Ismat Chughtai
Many Moons 🌙
Many Moons by Jayshree Poddar, is a multi-sensory experience of the moon in its various avatars in woven cloth. The exhibition attempts to express the spiritual through the material medium of textile art, signifying a move away from the mere functionality of fabrics to textiles as a medium of artistic expression.
If any of you readers are in Bangalore, do try and visit my aunt’s show today, which is on till tonight, 8pm. Read more about the show here.
Ending the newsletter with Bertolt Brecht’s Pleasures (1954):
Make a list of all the things that bring you pleasure. I’d love to read it someday.
I’m going to stop overthinking and finally send out this newsletter into the world.
Pushing the Publish button in 3…2…1…
Stay inspired and have a lovely weekend!
Love,
Rohini
Loved your poem!