#226: The Attic Library Dispatch 🌲

Notes from a residency + Mountain Poems + Healing in nature

Dearest reader,

I write to you this week from The Attic Library, a most gorgeous temporary home in the mountains where I’m doing a mini residency. I adore Jyotsna’s book collection, the way the sunlight hits the bed and the snowy mountain ranges in the distance that play hide and seek with me through the day.

There’s so much inspiration, such little time. Wouldn’t imagine it going any other way. :’) I feel like sharing some of my explorations from here because it has been so empowering to have the freedom to play with mediums while the paths, faces and doggos get more familiar by the day.

My first cyanotype ever :D

Foraging near The Attic Library

Long exposure night sky photography experiment. Froze but it was worth it.

Last night, I felt tremors in bed. The only way I could pacify myself was poetry:

3 Tremor poems by yours truly:

1. Everything shook
   Inside
   and
   outside
   

2. Floating lamps
   shaking gently -
   an invisible wind
   

3. The emergency bag is ready:
   Charger, gloves, camera, meds.

   Check.

   I hope
   I never
   need to use

   the damn thing.

So grateful for having woken up this morning alive, and to some sunshine.
Phew.

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Poetry Corner.

Sending y’all some lovely mountain poems I devoured today:

Gorgeousness by Lorenzo Chavez

1. Every Morning by Michael Bourgo

Every morning I am glad to wake
to the light through the slats,
the gift of sun still there,
that great friend in the heavens
bringing warmth to the dawning.
It’s time to stand up and see,
to shake off the stiffness of night,
to lift my dog from the bed,
time to start coffee and go outside,
gather the paper and look at the mountains;
to welcome the grace of more hours
when perhaps nothing will happen,
though we might be blessed,
tumble into some new scent or flower,
find something that penetrates
to such a living depth inside
that we would never want to forget;
both of us happy and grateful
for another day on our planet.

2. A Walk by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Robert Bly)

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on,
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

3. A Dream of Trees by Mary Oliver

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company.
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees,
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

4. Alone Looking at the Mountain by Li Po

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other—
Only the mountain and I.

5. The Second Going by Philip Levine

Again the
day begins, only
no one wants its sanity
or its blinding clarity. Daylight is
not what we came all this way for. A
pinch of salt, a drop of schnapps in our cup
of tears, the ticket to the life to come, a short life of
long nights & absent dawns & a little mercy in the tea.

---

Recommended Listening

• Saath Chal Zindagi - Albert John (I made a music video!)

• Pahadi Dhun - Fursat FM

• Instrumental 3 - Florist

• murmurations - Deadstar

• Alpine - Fog Chaser

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Links of the Week

ORKYD, an experimental display typeface by Anna Sing inspired by the mystique of the blooming orchid plant

• Greenhouse Type, Anna Sing’s typefaces inspired by houseplants

• Making Due by Ilana Harris-Babou (because Nature is healing)

• The Art of Mushrooms

• Nona Fernández on the Constellations We Create With Our Memories

• How to Feel Alive // Tatiana Gallardo

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Parting words

“The experience and knowledge that nature possesses is infinitely larger than ours. Over millions of years, life has been adapting to changes in the environment, while also creating favourable conditions for its own expansion. For example, as the ecosystem of a forest grows, it also fosters soil fertility, produces food, cleans the air and the water, and sets up the conditions for all living beings to breathe. Unlike us, “nature not only takes care of itself, but it also takes care of everything that its descendants will need.”

But all this implies that we cultivate an attitude of humility in relation to our environment, rather than setting ourselves apart from, or above, it, as we have been doing so far.

And I think that it also implies that the processes of nature may amaze us anew, that we may feel an enchantment that our culture seems to have lost. We need to be amazed by the ability of a plant to transform light, water, and earth into energy, as it shows off its colours and scatters its seeds; to be amazed by the ability a spider has to build extremely strong webs, or by the ability of molluscs to develop their shells by transforming carbon dioxide into calcium. That the Earth continues to revolve around the Sun, and that each spring leaves sprout from trees, is continual proof of how extraordinary the smallest and simplest things of life are.”
-Excerpt from Nature was once life in earnest by Heike Rodríguez

Wishing you wonder and inspiration,
Rohini

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