#96 - Searching for the light
Art by Fritz von Uhde
Survivor by Vijay Seshadri
We hold it against you that you survived.
People better than you are dead,
but you still punch the clock.
Your body has wizened but has not bled
its substance out on the killing floor
or flatlined in intensive care
or vanished after school
or stepped off the ledge in despair.
Of all those you started with,
only you are still around;
only you have not been listed with
the defeated and the drowned.
So how could you ever win our respect?–
you, who had the sense to duck,
you, with your strength almost intact
and all your good luck.
Other poems I read this week:
"Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous."
-from Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens
"All it would take
is one slammed door
to make the whole thing
fall. Once bottle hurled
against a wall,
to start the hammering
on the heart
and crack
the body’s shell.
One sneeze, one cough,
one doubt.
All it would take
is one breath,
no more."
-One Breath by Imtiaz Dharker
"Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. “All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?” Write: I don’t know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
an ABC never read,
air that laughs, cries, grows,
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in the line."
-from Hunger Camp at Jaslo by Wislawa Szymborska
"Awake tonight
with loneliness,
I cannot keep myself
from longing
for the handsome moon."
-Ono no Komachi
Links of the Week:
A list of resources for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement
A Window into Isolation + A peek at SOUP founder Meera's bookshelf
Harper Collins India x The Alipore Post: Vijay Seshadri
Recommended Listening:
Still I Rise - Maya Angelou + How to write a protest poem by Janice Pariat
Vaa Rayil Vida polamaa - Pariyerum Perumal
Interview: Jarek Puczel
"Showing your deeper emotions in painting is inevitable, even if you would rather hide or suppress them somehow. Although you decide what to show and what elements should be reduced, absence is as important as presence. Both are also meaningful. The creative process can be regarded as a talk with your 'self', and an important source of personal, intimate information. Sometimes, an element that you are not aware of in your life, appears on the canvas, and only there can it be perceived."
-Jarek Puczel
Read my full interview with the Polish painter here.
Workshop: An Introduction to Gratitude Journaling by Mindful and Body
June 10th, 7.30pm IST
Join Sheena, the founder of Mindful and Body for guided gratitude journaling. This 1.5 hour Zoom workshop will equip participants with new perspectives on gratitude, and how it can be practised daily to transform and bring more mindfulness, joy and clarity into your life.
I had the pleasure of attending Sheena's workshop last week, and have been feeling a positive, more intuitive flow of thought to the page since then. It’s a subtle inner shift, and I'm thrilled to have partnered with Sheena in the hope that more people get to try and experience it for themselves.
Write in to mindfulandbody@gmail.com to sign up or DM @mindfulandbody on Instagram
“I was always a great believer in buttered toast.”
-Frank O'Connor