#202: Notes from a residency + Love poems inspired by nature + Mountain music
Notes from a residency
Hello
I’m writing to you from a creative residency I’m doing at the gorgeous Sparrow’s Song Cottage in Fagu. I’m living with my head in the clouds, figuratively and literally, surrounded by pine trees and wild daisies and cosmos in bloom.
It’s the most inspiring place I could’ve written this newsletter from, albeit with partially numb fingers. I’ve been spending my time here admiring the lilac butterflies and baby sunflowers, imprinting wildflowers onto my sketchbook, writing poems and doodling on clouds (of course):
Another experiment that I’ve been doing during my time here is playing with double exposure on my film camera. Before I left for Himachal, I got back a reel I shot over in Dubai, Goa and Calcutta.
Here’s some of the unintentional magic with the chemicals and film:
I’ve been consciously trying to repeat these ‘mistakes’ and create a series of surreal double exposed photographs during the residency too. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Mountain music
August has been a largely music-free month, given that the chirps and winds and rustling around me has been loud and wholly satisfying.
Nevertheless, here are the few songs I’ve been looping through August.
Love poems inspired by nature
1) Yours by Daniel Hoffman
I am yours as the summer air at evening is
Possessed by the scent of linden blossoms,
As the snowcap gleams with light
Lent it by the brimming moon.
Without you I'd be an unleafed tree
Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.
Your love is the weather of my being.
What is an island without the sea?
2) For Keeps by Joy Harjo
Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.
3) Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window by Martín Espada
For Lauren Marie Espada
June 13, 2019
The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping
a city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian
composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth
we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen
on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.
4) bouquet by Lucille Clifton
i have gathered my losses
into a spray of pain;
my parents, my brother,
my husband, my innocence
all clustered together
durable as daisies.
now i add you,
little love, little
flower,
who walked unannounced
into my life
and almost blossomed there.
5) Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape by Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape
and the little churchyard with its lamenting names
and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others
end: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again
among the flowers, and look up into the sky.
Good news! :D
Heck yeah. The Alipore Post is now a featured publication on Substack! ✨🙆🏻♀️
Thank you, Substack. ❤️
Artists i adore
Scenes from a Bombay chawl by Taarika John
Saleheh Kamalzadeh’s adorable illustrations
Katherine Akmulun’s delicious sketchbooks
Looking for tazos 🤞
I was recently reminded that I lost my beloved tazo collection as a kid while moving homes. And it’s left me with a heavy heart and a deep yearning for tazos.
If anybody still has their tazo collection and wouldn’t mind sparing one or two, please let me know? I’d be forever grateful.
(I even found an online petition to bring tazos back. sigh)
No recommended reads or links this week as I’ve been away from my laptop.
But a parting thought on inspiration by Wisława Szymborska before I run indoors and get under the warm blanket:
Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”
-Wisława Szymborska
Stay curious, dear reader.
Sending misty love from the mountains,
Rohini
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Your newsletter brings so much joy. Thank you.