this week’s Thought (singular)
been very good at staying hydrated lately. like, suspiciously good.
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they remember to pick up their cleaned clothes from the washing machine. thank you for joining us. may you not remember hours later that if you don’t hang your wet clothes RIGHT NOW they won’t be dry in time for you to pack them in your suitcase.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
The Good Side of the Internet’s March ‘25 (and two-year anniversary!) issue just came out yesterday!
this (sorry) -
hi
april comes from the latin verb aperir, which means ‘to open’. this newsletter will first close out march, and then undo the latches for summer to enter.
but first, from the series finale of the good place1 -
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.
And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
i hate to say it, but the character development (difficult and awful, obviously) over the last year has, shockingly, led to growth and maturity. i also hate to say that there is much more character development to come, and that is simply what growing up means. this is a devastating realisation. this is also, i suspect, the reason why the little things matter so dearly. that’s why there are flowers and giraffes on the edges of the height measuring scales that children use—to distract from the horror of rapidly approaching dramatic arcs that are equally necessary and inescapable. that’s why pictures of clouds and birds, smells of flowers and rain, sounds of babies laughing and cats purring are all so important. i’ve cracked the code.
i packed up everything (everything) from my hostel room before i left for the summer two days ago, and it made me realise just how much i’ve accumulated. which is to say, i don’t remember exactly when i got the pedestal fan or the wooden shelf, or when i put up the polaroid pictures or the posters. which is to say, i forget when my room started becoming a place where my friends could come to have chamomile tea before bed along with a good vent. which is to say, i’m not sure just when i began to get so attached and endeared to the feeling of entering it after a long day, or when i learnt exactly how the cupboard needs to be closed so it shuts fully. which is to say, in the last ten months, slowly but surely, i’ve been building a home without even realising it. and i think those are the best kinds of homes—the ones that creep up on you.
when things are happening very fast without a break, time becomes a continuum and tasks flow into each other. in my head, i see myself on a moving conveyor belt. stationary on both sides are tasks lined up. i pick up a task and i only have time until i reach the next one to complete it. when my hands are empty, i don’t know how to stop the belt, or get off of it. it keeps moving. i keep moving. i feel like i wouldn’t know what to do even if it/i even did stop. since i returned home, my body has been re-learning what to do when it isn’t doing something, and i keep reminding myself about how leisure is a deliberate act of rebellion.
from anisha here-
At times, I also carried the quiet weight of feeling like an inconvenience—plans being adjusted around me, places being chosen based on what I could manage. I still have restrictions, but they’re slowly fading, and with them, I’m learning patience—with myself, with my body, with this season of life.
i’m trying to incorporate patience with my abilities, my person, my life.
i’ve become intimately acquainted with the feeling of fear recently. any time i sense it creeping up on me, my instinct is to want to throw a tantrum. it’s to try to run away from the emotion, and hide in the nearest place that offers me shelter. it’s to combat the fear with anger that it’s there, with self-flagellation that it shouldn’t be there, that i’m an adult and i should be able to deal with it, and what am i so scared of anyway? it’s to curse the universe that i’m going through something scary at all, and it’s this terrible, gnawing insecurity that i won’t be able to figure it out. honestly, it’s a lot. but i’ve also noticed that once i slow down, once i step back, the fear is a small thing, and that i am not just a ball of anxiety. this slowing down and stepping back is, i think, the eternal project. its success is in the doing.
i’m about to do a lot of different things in a lot of the same places. but are places really the same if you’re returning to them as a different person? i’d like to think not. i’d like to think i’m better prepared this time, that i’m older now, that all that character development in the gap between then and now will show for something. and because the prospect of being the same is scary, i’d like to think about all the things that are different this time that i’m looking forward to. i’m looking forward to having friends in the city this time, and having more time to explore and take deliberate decisions that make me feel more connected to the place. i’m looking forward to not constantly feeling like going back home, and to being fully present for the building of a new one. that also, i think, is life.
ps: happy april. i hope summer is good, kind, and patient with you <3
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English Recitation Competition
Haiku, Jo Podvin
I would go with you on that trek up Cold Mountain but who’d feed the cat?
A Poem, Gregory Orr
Knowing life grinds us, And dust Is what we’ll become. Sensing, likewise, That the moral Of our story Has to do With being mortal. Yet love grounds us. And the beloved Grows in us: We are her slow cocoon. And the poem is a door; The song, a little window.
Sappho to Erinna, Noelle Kocot
Come. It’s morning. Let me brush the stars from your hair.
The Good Side of the Internet
… has been permanently shifted to The Good Side of the Internet. subscribe for many many links at the end of each month, and tell your friends about it :D
this week’s Song
from this incredible album that i rediscovered last week that made me feel like a 16-year-old again (affectionate) - Hopeless by Train
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next time <3