rewriting
relearning
this week’s Thought (singular)
experiencing weekdays and weekends again
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 get to use many colourful pens. thank you for joining us. may you make your notes silly and whimsical.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
before we begin
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doing some housekeeping and rearranging around here. the this week’s Song section that’s usually at the end is now media diet - a roundup of everything i’ve watched/read/listened to over the week. happy consumption :D
if anybody reading this is coming for the wesness women’s 5k next weekend in bangalore, please let me know (i have doubts).
hi
i’ve been thinking about how nothing is ever one thing, and everything is different, and how you think you know something but something happens and you remember how young you are and how less you know, and how the world is so large and there are a million lived experiences waiting for you. what a relief. how nice it is to know that you can keep rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and that there is no one right thing, and that you can keep relearning and relearning and relearning and that there is no bad knowledge. i thought something was set in stone. i thought something could only be one way. i am being proven wrong, and i’m watching this discovery unfold with delight. i am so young. the world is so big. what a joy to have so much to learn.
i’ve spoken a lot (a LOT) about the joy and madness of finding a routine, about how a schedule often feels like an anchor for me and how having a habit in place feels like stability and predictability. i’ve been in the process of finding a schedule over the last week ever since i’ve gone back to an office, trying different timings and variations and combinations of activities everyday. it feels like care in a way little else does, like laying bricks for an easier future where i can reduce the mental effort of daily planning. i’m trying to let fluidity be a part of this process, to allow room for variations and not hold it all so rigidly. this, too, is care, i think.
i’ve been trying to let optimism be natural1. i’ve written about hope being a violent, revolutionary thing, especially now, and i agree - but i think i’m started to appreciate a hope that’s less bloody as well. quieter optimism, simply as a way of being. a hope that feels less desperate. it’s a work in progress.
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a picture!
media diet
watching - started watching the paper, which is fun so far. also this tyra banks deep dive video. i quote myself from my close friends instagram story when i say, “she jus be saying anything.”
reading - i’m still figuring out when to read when you’re so socially done after coming back from work, and you don’t want to really give your brain any more input, but i think it’s a matter of training it back up. in short, no reads this week but hints for the washington post crossword.
listening - Mystery by Jesse Jo Stark
find all shared songs here.
english recitation competition
Chicken for Breakfast, Kazim Ali
A book led me to the particular performance of the cello suite And watching the cellist play so tentatively, I imaged dance A body moving slowly in the morning Emerging from death Chicken for breakfast How do you survive even one morning even one day With no mother to tell you Time to change
The Alchemist, Louise Bogan
I burned my life, that I might find A passion wholly of the mind, Thought divorced from eye and bone, Ecstasy come to breath alone. I broke my life, to seek relief From the flawed light of love and grief. With mounting beat the utter fire Charred existence and desire. It died low, ceased its sudden thresh. I found unmysterious flesh— Not the mind’s avid substance—still Passionate beyond the will.
Trim, Yalie Saweda Kamara (full poem here)
We are climbing strands to each other’s roots, searching for homes that we have already passed. Behind your head & in my hands, we are closer than secret.
thank you for reading, and see you next time <3
this is tough, on account of the state of the world.