#256: Walking poems + Scrapbooking + Delightful links ❤️
Hello!
I spent my whole weekend avoiding my laptop and cutting up words and pictures from old magazines. The act of scrapbooking is one of my favorite forms of foraging. It’s much like going on a walk through the interconnected rooms of the brain, picking up a word from here, a patch of blue from there, and voila, a collage appears with a little patience. Two of my cut-and-paste experiments:
Memories on a Plate is finally out in the world! And this overwhelming feeling of the love and kind words we are received feels like a dish prepared with care for a loved one being appreciated.
It reminds me of this quote by Barry Jenkins:
“When you cook for someone, this is a deliberate act of nurturing.
This very simple thing is the currency of genuine intimacy.”
FYI, last 50 odd copies of the book left in stock. Get yours soon!
Poetry Corner // Walking Poems
1. Poem by Matthew Rohrer
You called, you’re on the train, on Sunday,
I have just taken a shower and await
you. Clouds are slipping in off the ocean,
but the room is gently lit by the green
shirt you gave me. I have been practicing
a new way to say hello and it is fantastic.
You were so sad: goodbye. I was so sad.
All the shops were closed but the sky
was high and blue. I tried to walk it off
but I must have walked in the wrong direction.
2. Metempsychosis by Jane Hirshfield
Some stories last many centuries,
others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.
Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.
There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.
Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.
Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off --
the immeasurable’s continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.
In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.
I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.
I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further.
3. Walking by Robert Bly
Rain falls on mountain grass, we walk all day.
The fuchsia lifts its tendril high.
I need you, to hold you, to be on wet mountain grass.
Dampness falls on dampness, rain on wet earth.
I am the traveller on the mountain who keeps repeating his cry.
4. Nature Walk By Gillian Wegener
The fern fronds glow with a clean, green light,
and I lift one and point out the spores, curled
like sleep on the back, the rows so straight,
so even, that I might be convinced of Providence
at this moment. My daughter is seven.
She looks at the spores, at the leaf, at the plant,
at this wise, wide forest we are in, and sighs
at my pointing out yet another Nature Fact.
But look, I say, each one is a baby ready
to grow. Each one can become its own fern.
But she is already moving down the path
toward the bridge and whatever’s beyond.
5. Altruism by Molly Peacock
What if we got outside ourselves and there
really was an outside out there, not just
our insides turned inside out? What if there
really were a you beyond me, not just
the waves off my own fire, like those waves off
the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,
though not well — just enough to know that off
to the right belongs to someone else, not you.
What if, when we said I love you, there were
a you to love as there is a yard beyond
to walk past the grill and get to? To endure
the endless walk through the self, knowing through a bond
that has no basis (for ourselves are all we know)
is altruism: not giving, but coming to know
someone is there through the wavy vision
of the self’s heat, love become a decision.
Links of the Week
Download: Butterfly Designs by Meiji-Era Artist Yuho Tanaka ^
Open Planet, a free-to-use video library of climate and nature footage
ALSO: archives.design, a digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives (Yum yum)
Coco Capitán documents the space where Dalí lived and worked.
Sandhya Gajjar, one of our contributors, wrote about Memories on a Plate in her newsletter :)
Use the A24 Movie Browser to decide which cinematic treat to watch next.
“If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories aren’t finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going.”
-Jamie Tworkowski (via)
Excited to start my Tuesday sipping on coffee in this lovely little mug I designed for The Strange Co. Order yours here and bring the characters Rani, Detective Dino and Spoony into your life. Danke!
Wishing you warm beverages and peace,
Rohini