After several days of grim clouds shouldering each other, the rains have arrived where you live. You feel renewed. There are few things you’re as good at as you are at looking at clouds (or at the sea). You were not at all good at confronting your shame and vulnerabilities, but you’re slowly inching your way there. Much is quiet and white around you. The heart no longer feels scuppered and exposed, no longer a thing on the dining table. A white homecoming. Books and verses open themselves up to you and you gently sit in their pods for a while. When the news floods in and fury surges within, you think of the following lines:
"मैं क्यों करूँ घृणा और रक्तपात का समर्थन:
मुझे प्यार व ममता से भरी एक माँ ने पाला है."
- गीत चतुर्वेदी, 'उस समय'
Some days, lightning-bolt memories strike you breathless and have made you fall in love with these photographs by Bianka Schumann.
You have slowly been wading through The White Book by Han Kang, a book so sad and so filled softness such as this:
“Before being steamed, those bright white shapes of rice dough are a thing so lovely they do not seem of this world. Only afterwards, dished up on a plate with a pine-needle garnish, did they become disappointingly matter-of-fact.”
Lastly, you remain enamored by the paintings of Nguyen Thanh Binh - this tender beauty in particular.
As always, you are grateful for poetry and companionship and all those greener-than-green trees that know who they are.
#1
Lovely! <3