i accidentally ordered too many bottles of laundry detergent

...and now i obsessively wash my clothes

this week’s Thought (singular)

gratitude for two working nostrils. prayers for this to continue.

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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 rediscover an old song that they used to love but had forgotten about. thank you for joining us. may the music bring back good memories.

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a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.

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happy belated friendship day <33

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hi

i’ve been sitting with the idea of meaning-making lately, and how necessary it feels when you’re doing a bunch of things that feel like they actually mean nothing. how do you make things matter? how do you make things mean something?

from pandeymonium by piyush pandey

i’ve been having some trouble being creative over the last month (as you’ve noticed, obviously). i’ve felt like an empty toothpaste tube that’s been squeezed and contorted in a million different ways in an attempt to get the last little bit of creative juice out, and all that comes any time i try to sit and write is a truly pitiful trickle of nothing. but that’s okay, because there are easy and fun ways to refill this tube! ways like reading and listening to new music and putting the voice in your head on mute more often and being around people you like and who like you virtually or in-person for an extended period of time. leave the toothpaste tube alone. soon, it’ll fill up on its own.

from kim addonizio’s “solace” in ordinary plots

god, it feels like it’s been so long since i was obsessed with this world. it’s always something. there have been Signs of a clear reduction in whimsy levels in me recently. i don’t have a single picture of a tree or the sky or some clouds or something silly on my phone from the last month, which is not quite a recession indicator, but personally concerning nonetheless.

marking the date for my mother’s visit on my calendar. i’m the taller one.

i need to get silly again immediately. i see no point to anything without silliness. when i say silly, i mean looking outward at the world and allowing yourself to come to a dead stop at how lovely it is. i mean seeing a cat sleeping very peacefully on a chair and bothering it anyway. i mean spotting your friend coming down when you’re on your way to your room in the middle of the night, and abandoning your plan to go to bed in favour of walking to the other end of campus so they can satisfy a midnight craving for omelettes. i mean stepping out of your head long enough to acknowledge and appreciate and be grateful for everything outside yourself. i mean the physicality of looking up and out. when i say i need to get silly again, i mean awestruck and full of wonder and drowning in whimsy, because all of this makes me feel light, which is so important when everything else is heavy. truly, the only way to not be bitter and disgruntled and angry and scared all the time, the only way to be obsessed with this world, is to get more silly!!

a rare blue sky spotted last week. lasted approx. 3 hrs before it started raining again

here’s what i’ve been watching -

• gossip girl. i’ve just completed season 4, and also realised that it’s been 3 years since i started the show. truly, i love you gossip girl. you have been with me through so much.

• a terrible film called my oxford year that i couldn’t finish

• rewatching the lizzie bennet diaries on youtube, which i had last watched in tenth grade the day before my social studies final exam in its entirety. (there’s a hundred episodes and each episode is between 3-5 minutes long). i wouldn’t shut up about it then, and i still highly recommend it now.

from slip away (a warning) by lou reed and john cale

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that’s all for this time. i’ve been going out, and spending time with my friends, and trying to not take everything so seriously always. thank you for reading, and see you next time <3

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if you liked this post, please hit the like button! it’ll help more readers discover thodi and join this lovely community. thank you!

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English Recitation Competition

1. For My Wife, Reading in Bed, John Glenday

   I know we’re living through all the dark we can afford.
   I’ll match your inward quiet, breath for breath.
   Thank goodness, then, for this moment’s light
   What else do we have but words and their absences
   and you, holding the night at bay
   – a hint of frown,
   those focussed hands, that open book.
   to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart;
   to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny
   and significant? Whatever it is you are reading now
   my love, read on. Our lives depend on it.
   

2. Kaōnōn, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner (full poem here)

   We will,
   we will. Exist. Exist. 
   It’s a kind of 
   love, isn’t it? 
   To commit to enduring. 
   Despite, despite. 
   

3. “Track”, Norman Finkelstein (full poem here)

   Drunk tonight
   in the House of Being
   Laughter tonight
   in the House of Language
   So many
   turned away at the door.
   
   So many
   you would think it a story
   an allegory
   awaiting commentary
   a history
   in all its futility.
   

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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

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this week’s Song

Slow Disco by St. Vincent

find all shared songs here.

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thank you for reading, and see you soon <3