'Leaves and lives falling away'
Dearests,
I hope you are holding up okay in these difficult times.
This photo was shared by friend and follower of this newsletter, En. I needed this photo the very day they sent it. Hyderabad has been hard to navigate cause I feel a bit out of water during this pandemic. All my regular interactions and engagement with people has reduced so much that I am not sure I know what to do when I encounter people now. Outside seems so welcoming yet we have rising cases and a need to be safer and safer. I hope you and your loved ones are safe.
I have been baking a lot and that's also good news. My absolute favourite new discoveries are: Nigella's Devil's Food Cake and sister's recipe for a delicious cookie.
This week is always hard for me and I am coming on four years of missing my first love acutely. It is not easy to write this so I have avoided it. In this avoidance I rediscovered, Gudetama who I first discovered in the middle of a depressive spell in 2015. Gudetama is an egg with crippling depression. He's someone I related to when I couldn't get out of bed for ages. So today, as I try to not be depressed by the world, I share this gem with you.
Hope Gudetama helps you as he helps me.
All my love, warmth and kindness,
Nidsitis
Poems I loved
Learning from Trees
by Grace Butcher
If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do—
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.
Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.
Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing,
leaves and lives
falling away,
the spirit, complex,
waiting in the fine darkness
to learn which way
it will go.
----
The Work of Happiness by May Sarton
Healing recommendations
"If poetry is a means of telling the truth, June,
and poetry is as sturdy butterfly as the steady tap of my cane's dance,
then poetry is crip. Then truth is crip.
Then this poem be a crip hand to hold you."
Full poem on adaptive devices.
Kohl journal has this wonderfully insightful artwork called Tears in the Fabric. Link.
It’s really settling in now, the losses large and small. From On Being. Link.
Readings/audio/video I enjoyed
I had an autoimmune disease and then the disease had me - Meghan O'Rourke. Link.
"My joy is my freedom. I championed the act of effort and patience with myself by forcing myself to reroute negative thoughts with positive ones. Instead of saying what I hated about myself, I spoke aloud what I liked about myself. In doing this, hope and joy became precious, sacred, a singular and collective journey."
Choosing joy by Keah Maria Brown. Link.
'I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?' - Rainer Maria Rilke