#281: One day at a time 🌻🌙

"Mostly, I want to be kind." -Mary Oliver

Hi there,

Life continues to toy with my head, as if to see how far a person can stay in a state of sustained discomfort. How do you compartmentalise the many, many facets to yourself? How do you label every thought and emotion objectively, for the sake of awareness? Things seem tougher on some days more than others, which fills me with a deeper gratitude for moments of hyper-aliveness: the morning sun on my plants after weeks of gloom, the heart-warming news of a lost pet returning home, and the ability to show up here, once again, despite it all.

Take that, Monday. I’m doing this one day at a time. Slow and steady. Easy does it.

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Poetry Corner

Art by Anne Magill

1. Starting a Poem by Robert Bly

   You are alone. Then there’s a knock
   On the door. It’s a word. You
   Bring it in. Things go
   OK for a while. But this word
   
   Has relatives. Soon
   They turn up. None of them work.
   They sleep on the floor, and they steal
   Your tennis shoes.
   
   You started it; you weren’t
   Content to leave things alone.
   Now the den is a mess, and the
   Remote is gone.
   
   That’s what being married
   Is like. You never receive your
   Wife only, but the
   Madness of her family.
   
   Now see what’s happened?
   Where is your car? You won’t
   Be able to find
   The keys for a week.

2. Untitled [No one’s awake] by Rose Styron
   No one’s awake
   but us, and a bird.
   The day’s too beautiful
   to speak a word.

3. Prayer by Galway Kinnell

   Whatever happens.  Whatever
   what is is is what
   I want.  Only that.  But that.

4. Cutting Loose by William Stafford

   Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
   you sing. For no reason, you accept
   the way of being lost, cutting loose
   from all else and electing a world
   where you go where you want to.
   
   Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
   that a steady center is holding
   all else. If you listen, that sound
   will tell where it is, and you
   can slide your way past trouble.
   
   Certain twisted monsters
   always bar the path – but that’s when
   you get going best, glad to be lost,
   learning how real it is
   here on the earth, again and again.

5. An Invitation by Mary Oliver
   Oh do you have time
   to linger
   for just a little while
   out of your busy
   
   and very important day
   for the goldfinches
   that have gathered
   in a field of thistles
   
   for a musical battle,
   to see who can sing
   the highest note,
   or the lowest,
   
   or the most expressive of mirth,
   or the most tender?
   Their strong, blunt beaks
   drink the air
   
   as they strive
   melodiously
   not for your sake
   and not for mine
   
   and not for the sake of winning
   but for sheer delight and gratitude –
   believe us, they say,
   it is a serious thing
   
   just to be alive
   on this fresh morning
   in the broken world.
   I beg of you,
   
   do not walk by
   without pausing
   to attend to this
   rather ridiculous performance.
   
   It could mean something.
   It could mean everything.
   It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
   You must change your life.

---

Recommended Listening

Not really been in a mood for music. But I did begin a July playlist. 🤷🏻‍♀️

---

Soothe thyself

via

• A Guide to Miyazaki’s Weird Little Guys (Vulture)

• The Exotica Project, a collection of vintage exotica 45s through the motifs that connect them.

• The way you wanted to feel (Austin Kleon)

• They by Hayden Thorpe (Oh by the way)

• There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the Inner World (The Marginalian)

• Marseille Tarot deck illustrated by Virginia Mori (Tumblr)

• The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (Open Culture)

“None of us understand what we’re doing but we do beautiful things anyway.”
-Allen Ginsberg

Here’s to setting intentions and being kind. 🌙

Sending moonshine,
Rohini