this week’s Thought (singular)
i never feel more powerful than when all my water bottles are filled and lined up on my table. i’m invincible. power of five bottles
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 their glasses never get dirty. thank you for joining us. may you not have to search for the sneaky microfiber cloth that’s never where you left it last. where did it go this time.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
i am okay! the previous thodi might have indicated the opposite, but i did say that it had been written at 2 in the morning and that we should never take the things you think at 2 in the morning seriously.
also wow time is so weird it feels like it’s been so long since i was in your inbox last but it’s only been exactly seven days don’t look at the date. onward!
hi
today is a bunch of things i’ve been thinking about + poems, songs, etc. that i’ve encountered recently.
this instagram post that lasya had shared under my previous thodi that i have not been able to stop thinking about
i have once again been thinking about the power of friendship and walks and walks with friends. and i’ve been thinking about how i’ve been thinking about it, about how i continue to be amazed and delighted at the life-changing impact of fulfilling relationships. i had submitted an essay a couple of days ago where i spoke about how the appetite for things like joy and care and friendship and laughter is truly bottomless and constantly growing. it’s a heady drug. once you’ve spent one sunny afternoon outside in a park with your friends, you become a glutton for it.
this multi-lingual playlist for when i’m getting ready for my first class in the morning or winding down from the day before going to bed. i’m constantly adding new songs that are slow and soothing, the audio equivalent of calm yellow lighting
i’ve started documenting my days every night before bed in short-hand diary entries in a little pocket notebook that my friend had gifted me last month. my grandmother would meticulously document her days with delightfully mundane comments like ‘slept in the afternoon’ or ‘enjoyed in the beach’, and i think there’s merit in this attention to the ordinary, the remarking upon the unremarkable. she doesn’t do this anymore, but sometimes i still think about the treasure trove that is the vast number of notepads that are filled with these super-normal observations in her neat and tiny handwriting. if for nothing else, i write which classes i went for so i can stay on top of my attendance.
this part of Spells for Dread by Cynthia Hogue
The shimmering trail crossing a clear sky growing brighter and brighter at dusk didn’t dissipate. The haloed round tip. The luminous streak. We thought it a rocket or bomb, not landing but leaving in its wake nerve gas or some other poison to drift over the hills around us as a glittering dust. We’d sit in a circle together, marveling at the luck of communion, the flickering candlelight. The care that was cure.
i’ve been thinking and reading about how we hold so many things at once, and how a lot of times, even when one thing feels particularly heavy, we are still holding the others.
lisa olivera in an edition of from last october wrote—
The grief. The gift. Can I stay with both? Can I let one inform how I tend to the other? Can I notice the ways others are also holding both? Can I let them point me in the direction of compassion, of witnessing, of Being With? Can I allow them to infuse my heart with a reminder of who and how I want to be?
mary oliver wrote in Evidence—
We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
in a thodi from last march titled being in your early twenties is like—
Being in your early twenties is like
I recognise that I do not stop at 18 years old. I consider what I will be at 25, 35, 70. I reel under the weight of all my choices that will determine the course of this long life that has suddenly and inexplicably opened up in front of me – in all of its intimidation and all of its glory. I shake in fear, and I shake in excitement, and my body sometimes does not feel like it can fit both.i’m sitting with the idea that just because something feels big, it doesn’t mean it’s the only thing i’m feeling, or that there’s no place to feel anything else. i’m sitting with the idea of containing multitudes, of nothing existing in isolation, and of the abundance of space and capacity to hold several things at once.
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this week’s Song
Dead Man’s Party by A Thorn For Every Heart
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3