the verb 'to gnaw'
i gnaw, you gnaw, it gnaws
this week’s Thought (singular)
my second grade class math class, where i learnt fractions using smarties and was allowed to eat the candy at the end of the period.
hi
this issue is inspired by Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry (you might remember her from last week’s newsletter) and This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. both pieces of literature are treasure troves of human experience. although separated by time and space, traversing completely different eras and genres, they manage to find commonality in one of the most visceral of emotions - longing.
farrokhzad longs for freedom - she says the necessity for more gnaws at her. red and blue (from the aforementioned TIHYLTTW) long for connection, long for each other. their letters drip with need and life, her poetry is saturated with a frothing-at-the-mouth desire for a bigger existence. longing for something, anything, everything. there’s nothing pretty about it, nothing gentle.
the title of this issue - to gnaw - is intriguing to me. the very word itself is ugly, elegant. starts with an awkward double consonant, proceeds into a big, shapeless, smooth-edged container, ends in a hideous and unsightly open-end. it makes me think of sharp lion claws, it makes me think of a dark, yawning and endless cave filled not with horrors unimaginable, but the worst conceivable - nothing at all.
i’ve fixated on this concept, this unremovable two-strand braid of the verb ‘to gnaw’ with the noun/adjective/verb ‘longing’. how can you separate the cause and effect? the yearning will eat at you, consume you, become bigger than you until you’re contained in it. longing gnaws at you, until there’s nothing left but a hole.
i don’t mean to be cynical. on the contrary, i’m delighted. how lovely is it that as a species, with all our critical thinking skills and evolutionary intelligence, we still manage to stay stubborn in the face of certain agony? how lovely, that we can’t help but pine, hunger, wish, covet, need? we long so much that we let it gnaw at us. we offer up our peace of mind, our temporary happinesses, willingly handing them over on fine china like they aren’t pieces of our very being, to an excruciating lion claw, a cave of nothing, that has enough power and more to engulf us.
i’d like to leave you with this line from Notebook Fragments by Ocean Vuong.
read the full poem here.
English Recitation Competition
Some feel sunlight well up in blood-vessels below the skin and wish there had been less to lose. Knowing how it could have been, pale maples drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments. Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can’t be snapped?
For the Bird Singing before Dawn, Kim Stafford
Some people presume to be hopeful when there is no evidence for hope, to be happy when there is no cause. Let me say now, I’m with them.
A Study through Homes, Ae Hee Lee
At one point, I thought my home was a pair of hand-me-down pants I’d eventually grow into. But home was the blur of my body, in which the same bloodstream didn’t flow twice, in which a deep breath made my lungs embrace my heart tighter, before letting go.
A Poll!
[i just discovered this button on the substack editor and now you’re all going to get irreverent questions every week]
Middle School Book Review
The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy by Sofia Tolstoy and Cathy Porter (Translator)
follows the story of leo tolstoy’s wife, through her marriage and all its troubles, her children, her work and devotion, right up until her death. it’s a heavy read - her life was far from ideal, and her marriage farther so - but illuminating nonetheless.
The Good Side of the Internet
What happens when we sleep? (video, 3 minutes)
Every night almost everyone on the planet enters into a state of unconsciousness and paralysis - but what is really happening inside the body when we drift off, and what's the impact if we don't get enough sleep?
Absurd Trolley Games (website, playable)
A not-so-classic version of the trolley game that constantly escalates into weirder scenarios.
Luxury ships attract outrage and political scrutiny. The ultra-rich are buying them in record numbers.
How Nokia ringtones became the first viral earworms
Ringtone culture arguably began in the mid-’90s with the Nokia Tune, which borrowed from the song “Gran Vals” by classical guitarist Francisco Tárrega. Wherever you went back then, it was impossible to escape the sound of Tárrega’s greatest legacy. Timo Anttila, one of Nokia’s early in-house composers, bought his first phone, a Nokia 2110, in 1996. “Suddenly everybody got their own phone and everyone wanted to have personal ringtones and background images,” he says. “First buzzer tunes were… really annoying, but those were iconic and changed the sonic environment quite dramatically.” When Nokia unveiled the world’s first polyphonic ringtone in 2002, piercing melodies became a ubiquitous part of daily life and took on new significance as a form of personal expression.
Unpacking the Allegations Against Ezra Miller
In the past few months, Ezra Miller has been arrested twice and accused of multiple instances of physical assault as well as brainwashing 18-year-old activist Gibson (formerly Tokata) Iron Eyes and keeping them from their parents. In June, another allegation surfaced after a courthouse issued a temporary harassment-prevention order against Miller on behalf of a mother and her 12-year-old child. Miller was charged with felony burglary in August stemming from an incident where they allegedly broke into someone’s home and stole bottles of alcohol, and Vermont police are also searching for a woman and her three children, who neighbors said were living at Miller’s farm in unsafe conditions earlier this summer.
this week’s Song
This Year’s Love by David Gray
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
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