i am at the very beginning of the rest of my life

this truth will not change with age

May 27, 2023

this week’s Thought (singular)

no thoughts, the sun has sucked out all the thoughts from my brain with a straw glucon-d style

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 have the loveliest meal of their life this weekend. thank you for joining us. may your lunch put you in a food coma, and may you feel just full enough to have a superb nap after but not full enough to throw up.

this week’s edition has been inspired by this tumblr post -

i’ve been on a comfort kick lately, in the sense that i’ve started to consider the fundamental idea of making things easier for myself. that could mean being the only person at the office who has a tetra packet of mixed fruit juice every morning without fail. or wearing some truly ridiculously draped headgear to protect myself from the sun. or keeping reminders for very regular things just so i don’t have to constantly keep them in my head.

in a similar vein, i’ve also started to consider the idea of easy thoughts. or, perhaps more accurately, comforting thoughts. every so often, i’ll come across a phrase or a poem (or a tumblr post) that gives me pause, for how comforting it is.

something about you, and consequently your mistakes, being insignificant in light of the universe. something about the fact that if your friends hated you, they wouldn’t hang out with you, so your friends don’t hate you. something about there only being so much under your control, and it’s pointless to pay mind to the rest. and something about being at the very beginning of the rest of your life, and that this truth will not change with age.

i’ve only recently started becoming comfortable with the idea of looking ahead, and only recently started dabbling in the concept of optimistically looking ahead. it’s a bit disconcerting to realise that acknowledging the-rest-of-my-life is comforting in a way it rarely used to be. it’s a lot disconcerting to realise that i’m willing to fill the open expanse of the future with something even mildly positive, rather than a vague foreboding. and it’s downright weird that i’m delighting in this constantly mutating, uncertain idea of the-rest-of-my-life, that with everyday i grow and every decision i make, there is a subtle transformation in this endless crawling tube and i am none the wiser. i crawl until the next turn, the next dead end, with zero knowledge of what’s around every bend, and behind me is pieces of my erstwhile person. life is a game of pac-man, life is a game of mario, life is any platform game where i collect things and leave things behind.

awkward crawling tube and video game metaphors aside, i’d just like to say that it’s nice to be looking forward to a future, and that it’s comforting to know that it comprises the rest of my life, safely ensconced, no matter my age.

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English Recitation Competition

One Art, Elizabeth Bishop

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The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

Wetland, francine j. harris

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The sea is so far from us now. Partly I think because we  
are not softspoken desire. There are rude thoroughfares 
and abandoned mines that brag. They gather and pile 
with ruin and vacancy. It’s an accrual that is in me, it seems.  
At best, a wetland. Beautiful and useless in the face of flood.  
So that when we walk the perimeter, we can see the ground  
starve and crack. But then fear of sinkhole is so self-important. 
Truthfully, I am not enough to steer clear of. To fall in love again,  
dear, reforested bund, is a matter of preservation. In your expert  
opinion, will you tell me how to know you if I am forever meant  
to leave you undisturbed. This will not save us, I’m afraid. A brownstone  
for hummingbirds is shortsighted too, like picking out honeybees  
from the dog’s mouth. Then blowing on her tiny hairs like a breeze.  
Love, we can wish it were so; it does not make us fit to survive.

Boihood, Jari Bradley

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All I ever wanted to be was a song— 
something soft and light held in the mouth 
sung sweet beneath the coming dawn.

A Picture!

*very satisfyingly displayed sarees at a saree shop*

The Good Side of the Internet

(subscribe to my standalone publication The Good Side of the Internet for consolidated and extra links at the end of each month!)

Violent Delights
The serial killer media industrial complex rages on, but what has it taught us? Very little about the crimes in question, and much more about ourselves.

Why I Had to Get Older to Write About Youth
Allegra Goodman on Finding the Necessary Distance to Write up Close

Our Struggle
Their grandson is one of the most successful Hindi filmmakers of the 21st century. But back in the 1950s, the Motwane family of Chicago Radio already knew that celluloid made legends—and preserved them. This is the story of their forgotten magnum opus, “Andolan.”