#244: Start again
Dear reader,
Today’s going to be another quick newsletter because Haiku’s about to wake up soon + tomorrow’s a mid-week holiday and I’m excited.
I’ve been thinking about how bringing a kitten into my life has changed me. There’s the obvious layers of unconditional love and responsibility, which I’m learning anew. But there’s also this warm, fuzzy feeling of a new phase of my life beginning. And by default, a shedding of the old self, which for the first time in my life, doesn’t feel like a loss.
So here’s to starting again, letting go, and moving full steam ahead to all the wonders waiting round the corner.
Poetry Corner
Just some refreshingly real poems I read this week:
1. Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out? by Ron Koertge
Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.
It’s all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.
Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.
Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.
Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author’s name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.
You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, “Shhhh.”
Then start again.
2. Theories About The Universe by Blythe Baird
I am trying to see things in perspective.
My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter
chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot
have this, because chocolate makes dogs
very sick. My dog does not understand this.
She pouts and wraps herself around my leg
like a scarf and purrs and tries to convince me
to give her just a tiny bit. When I do not give in,
she eventually gives up and lays in the corner,
under the piano, drooping and sad. I hope the
universe has my best interest in mind like I have
my dogs. When I want something with my whole
being, and the universe withholds it from me,
I hope the universe thinks to herself,
“Silly girl. She thinks this is what she wants,
but she does not understand how it will hurt.”
3. For a New Beginning by John O’Donahue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
4. How to Start Over by Stuart Kestenbaum
We knew that things were deteriorating.
Gothic houses collapsing, sharks patrolling the lagoons,
the born-again ministers warning of an immediate conflagration.
All the flights to paradise had been cancelled and even
pinhole cameras weren’t letting light in.
It got to be so bad we didn’t want to listen to the news anymore,
where all we were doing was gawking at someone else’s trouble.
It wasn’t worth the effort. Where was the satisfaction we longed for?
We couldn’t sleep so would spend all night watching the full moon’s
beams cement themselves to the silky water and travel for miles
on the waves. Someone was rowing along the shore,
and in the silver light the evergreens were shaking slightly.
At the edge of the forest the thistles
were attaching themselves to the fur of animals.
What serendipity to hitch a ride to your future.
5. A New Century by Algernon Charles Swinburne
An age too great for thought of ours to scan,
A wave upon the sleepless sea of time
That sinks and sleeps for ever, ere the chime
Pass that salutes with blessing, not with ban,
The dark year dead, the bright year born for man,
Dies: all its days that watched man cower and climb,
Frail as the foam, and as the sun sublime,
Sleep sound as they that slept ere these began.
Our mother earth, whose ages none may tell,
Puts on no change: time bids not her wax pale
Or kindle, quenched or quickened, when the knell
Sounds, and we cry across the veering gale
Farewell, and midnight answers us, Farewell;
Hail, and the heaven of morning answers, Hail.
Recommended Listening
My dear friend Jeevan Antony (of madràs fam(e)) just put out his first single as backup dancer, a recording experiment featuring longtime collaborator benjamin hance on drums. And it sounds so damn good. :D
“i wanted to recreate the feeling that my favorite records in college gifted me with, so i wrote songs for college me.”
-jeevan antony
Listen to it on Spotify, y’all! You can also buy the track and show some love on Bandcamp. Also, if you’re in Bangalore this weekend, please drop by for the debut show with my other dear friend Mayur (stuck in november/six flying whales), who are opening for The F16s. Much love all around. Expect a special rendition of the band’s jangle pop sound that will swim through early unreleased demos, and future releases. Woo!
Parting thought
“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
-Mary Oliver
Happy Monday!
Ro
Loved this 😌🍃