this week’s Thought (singular)
we’ve covered the holy trifecta of refreshing beverages (butter milk, fruit juice, coconut water). along similar lines, the holy trifecta of fruit juices themselves comprises mixed fruit, cranberry, and lychee. if you could be a bit patient, we can get to the other holy trifectas momentarily. (dosa varieties, flavoured powders to mix with milk, upma types, pasta shapes, and so on and so forth).
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hi
i’ve had a rough couple of weeks, so i’d like to talk about hope today. by which i mean, i’d like to compile a bunch of media about it, and then translate my very dramatic soliloquy into something coherent and readable.
from Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
from twitter
this illustration by Maggie Rudy
from Dare You to Move by Switchfoot - ‘I dare you to move / I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor / I dare you to move / Like today never happened’
from Absurd Creation by Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays)
There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart.
from Fleabag
from tumblr
from Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance - ‘I am not afraid to keep on living / I am not afraid to walk this world alone’
from episode 4 of Pokémon Concierge
from Tennessee Williams’ journal, Notebooks -
Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.
from three related poems, given here in an odd reverse chronological order -
If grief is love with nowhere to go, then Oh, I’ve loved so immensely. That summer, everything I touched Was green. All bruises will fade From green and blue to skin. Let me grow through this green And not drown in it. Let me be lawless and beloved, Ungovernable and unafraid. Let me be brave enough to live here. Let me be precise in my actions. Let me feel hurt. I know I can heal. Let me try again—again and again.
Sorrow Is Not My Name by Ross Gay
Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.
To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
You need not die today. Stay here–through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.
from Kedi (2016)
from Ask Polly: Help, I’m The Loneliest Person In The World!
You are young and you are learning how to live. Write that down. I AM VERY YOUNG AND I AM LEARNING HOW TO LIVE. Tape it to the wall by your bed and read it every morning.
You are very, very young. You are learning how to live.
from tumblr
I hike up the hill to find my feelings. Instead, I run into Hope, who doesn’t look at me or stop, but walks down the hill. Today could be a day where everything is beautiful.
from Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
from the novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Of all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself.
photograph by Daniele Buetti
And here is the serpent again, dragging himself out from his nest of darkness, his cave under the dark rocks, his winter-death. He slides over the pine needles. He loops around the branches of rising grass, looking for the sun. Well who doesn’t want the sun after a long winter? I step aside, he feels the air with his soft tongue, around the bones of his body he moves like oil, downhill he goes toward the black mirrors of the pond.
from the novel Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.
three recurring themes in the above words/images are inevitability, intent, and persistence.
‘Still, I’ll rise’ Angelou writes. battered and bruised, hope stands up, ready for another go. Camus calls hope stubborn, simply unwilling to relinquish its place in the heart. The Priest from Fleabag implies that you can choose to believe in something wonderful, that you must make that sensible choice even when melancholy is being incredibly loyal. ‘Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes’ Williams says–confident, infallible, defiant. there is no other possibility. Chen talks about trying again and again. and again and again, every single time you get it wrong. ‘Optimism is […] whether you still believe there is a possibility’ Ai Weiwei says. In ‘Who doesn’t want the sun after a long winter?’ Oliver gives an almost comforting reassurance of the seeking of hope; a pre-destined thing, an obvious thing. Solnit calls hope an axe, something to wield with purpose and effect. Cortázar says that your hope doesn’t even belong to you! its potency is precisely because it doesn’t belong to you, because it is a failsafe protection mechanism put in place and utilised by life itself. what could be more powerful?
i tried drafting this so many times, tried putting the resolve i’m forcing myself to regain into words, but everything i typed felt too melodramatic and juvenile. of course it’s difficult. everybody knows that! if it weren’t difficult and common, there wouldn’t be so much media about it! if it weren’t difficult and common, it wouldn’t be the subject of so much gorgeous art!
from 2024 by -
i’m not big on new year’s resolutions, but if i did make one, it would be this–
hope is stubborn. so am i. i will let it find me again and again. if it doesn’t, i will be such a menace that it cannot possibly miss me. i will not hide from it, and i will not let it forget that i am waiting to be found. i am willing to wield all of its inevitability, intent, and purpose.
ps: happy january :D
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A Picture
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this week’s Song
People Ain’t No Good by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
Amazing piece! Vv moving :D
Also
HONEY IF YOU STAY YOU'LL BE FORGIVENN,
NOTHING YOU CAN SAY CAN STOP ME GOING HOMEE
“Courage does not always roar, sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.” 👈Thank you for reminding me of this too. 🫶