#284: Notes on caring

Dear reader,

I tread into this particular newsletter with caution. For it is on a subject that is personal and rife with difficulties in a million different ways for each and every one of us.

For the past few months, I have been deep diving into the world of self-care, community, resilience and care-giving. First, there is my own daily struggles of caring for my own ADHD-anxiety riddled mind: boundaries, taking the medication on time, fixing the forever-increasing sleep deficit...Gah, the list goes on. As Dani Medrano put it, “sometimes, healing feels like backsliding.” So I continue to pick myself up, trying and failing yet again but never giving up.

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There was Haiku, my dearest feline friend, who changed my life completely. Her arrival and existence was the best thing to have happened to me. A purpose to live, wake up, clean the litter box, feed, play, care and give her all the love I could possibly muster up. But she left this world, too abruptly, and the vacuum of care could not be filled. Sometimes, love is so pure and the protectiveness we feel towards a specific being in our life is so strong, there’s really nowhere else to channel all that love.

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I have come to realize that caring is like a muscle, which must be strengthened. It is a strength stored within us, waiting to pounce into action when you get a call from home that your mother is sick, or when your partner runs a high fever.

There are degrees of intensity, of caring and being cared for. Nurturing and being nurtured. And it seems to stem from accepting the universality of loss, love, pain, and grief, which keeps returning in waves. Time changes everything, forcing us to heal, to stay open, to leave the door ajar so the light may creep in.

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

I love how Bill Murray articulates this: “I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that’s sort of how you’re supposed to live.”

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Poems on Caring

Art by Joseph Lorusso

1. Don’t Worry by Anna Kamienska
   (Translated by Grażyna Drabik and David Curzon)

   Don’t worry there’ll still be a lot of suffering
   For now you have the right to cling to the sleeve
   of someone’s blunt friendship
   To be happy is a duty which you neglect
   A careless user of time
   you send days like geese to the meadow
   Don’t worry you’ll die many times
   until you learn at the very end to love life

2. Waiting by Leza Lowitz

   You keep waiting for something to happen,
   the thing that lifts you out of yourself,
   
   catapults you into doing all the things you’ve put off
   the great things you’re meant to do in your life,
   
   but somehow never quite get to.
   You keep waiting for the planets to shift
   
   the new moon to bring news,
   the universe to align, something to give.
   
   Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry, the dishes the job —
   it all stacks up while you keep hoping
   
   for some miracle to blast down upon you,
   scattering the piles to the winds.
   
   Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
   Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.
   
   But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
   And then you turn forty. Or fifty. Or sixty…
   
   and some part of you realizes you are not alone
   and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom —
   
   when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
   it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,
   
   and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
   if the pupa is brushed, it will die —
   
   and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
   it’s because the thing is too small, too small,
   
   and it needs to break out.
   And midlife walks you into that wisdom
   
   that this is what transformation looks like —
   the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,
   
   the yearning and writhing and pushing,
   until one day, one day
   
   you emerge from the wreck
   embracing both the immense dawn
   
   and the dusk of the body,
   glistening, beautiful
   
   just as you are.

3. Joy Soup by William Palmer
   “We should start cooking/the joy soup.”
   – Rumi
   
   Too much sad soup will turn
   your raspberries gray.
   
   Sleeping all day won’t make
   them red again.
   
   But Someone is pulling up
   humble carrots, rutabagas,
   
   and sweet potatoes.
   Someone is busy
   
   in the kitchen of the heart
   with the window wide open.
   
   Someone is cooking joy soup
   with mint leaves.
   
   Let the aroma pull you awake
   and draw you toward the pot.
   
   Watch the light simmer on top.
   Someone waits for you.

4. Why Not? by Julia Fehrenbacher

   If death is inevitable, if it is a sure
   thing that this face, these hands,
   this body that holds a lifetime of this living,
   will, someday, no longer be here,
   if you don’t get to take a single thing with you—
   
   then—
   
   why spend a moment more refusing,
   worrying about who might disapprove,
   measuring every move
   as if there is some fixed formula you must
   find? Why hold tight to anything?
   
   Why not, instead, love every honeyed drop of yourself,
   why not leap into life—belly-laughing
   and light, light like the soft kiss of moonlight,
   light like the light that you are,
   have always been, will always be—
   
   why not take this quickly passing day
   by the hand and dance
   like there’s no tomorrow? And if you’re too tired
   to dance, why not rest lightly here
   just as you are?

5. The Rose by Hafiz

   How did the rose

   dare open her heart

   and give to the world

   all her beauty?

   She felt the encouragement of light

   against her being.

   Otherwise,

   we all remain

   too frightened.

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Links that felt like hugs

Perfect Days (2023)

• Must watch: Perfect Days (Can’t get the film out of my mind)

• Sanity by Tanmoy, a must-read newsletter on mental health

• Cinematic Literature: A growing archive of books in films and TV shows

  thescatterjoyproject

  

  A post shared by @thescatterjoyproject

• “Grief can be a way of revisiting memories, reaching for moments that defined our connection. In this way, loss becomes a celebration of the life or moments we once shared with them.”
  -Hanif Abdurraqib, via The Scatter Joy Project ^

• How to Build an Archive (Mmmm.)

• ‘Birches’ by Robert Frost: An Optical Poem, 2024 ^

• My Own Private Book Club

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“We approach our lives on different trajectories, each of us spinning in our own separate, shining orbits. What gives this life its resonance is when those trajectories cross and we become engaged with each other, for as long or as fleetingly as we do. There’s a shared energy then, and it can feel as though the whole universe is in the process of coming together. I live for those times. No one is truly ever “just passing through.” Every encounter has within it the power of enchantment, if we’re willing to look for it.” 
― Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations

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Sending you love and light, dear reader. Keep growing and caring, please.

Hugs,
Rohini