121. Poetry, Like Bread, Is For Everyone 🍞
Quick note if you’ve been reading along here, I’ll be finishing up on The Dossier soon (4 more posts, #125 will be my last) as I’m focussing my spare time on growing and nurturing a different personal project.
Feel free to follow along here ⬇️, or not 😊.. I support an uncluttered inbox!
Friends,
BUONGIORNO from Italy!
It feels like it’s 400*c and I’ve adopted a survival lifestyle consisting of just gelato and sea swims. If this is what late stage capitalism slash the new climate emergency normal looks like, I highly recommend you surround yourself with beautiful Italian men too.
Here’s three things you may find interesting and/or meaningful.
1. Reading 💉
Speaking of cultures where taking an entire month off is normal, I really enjoyed this lovely newsletter post on why it’s not just ok to take sabbaticals, we should all be taking them. Book one RIGHT NOW.
“I am not taking this sabbatical to rest, or reset, or "recharge my battery." That's just a thing people say.
I am taking it because the world is breaking my heart–and has been for a while now–and I need to just be with that sadness for a bit.
To allow myself to be sad, without interrupting it, or enforcing it to a work schedule where it shrinks to the other parts of me that are more convenient and therefore lucrative. I need to pause and exhale in my grief for a minute.
This is how I care for myself: to say my feelings and memories are real; that it hurts, just to be in the world right now and that hurt deserves room for its depth and its weight, even if it detracts from my bottom line or burdens my business rubric.
I care for myself by honoring my fragility and advocating for my tenderness without secretly scolding myself for being too sensitive or hysterical, or ungrateful for my privilege if I find myself unwilling to positively affirm or gratitude it away.
Both things are true: I am privileged and grateful– and I am still sad.”
2. Listening 🎧
3. A Poem 💖
Like You — Roque Dalton
Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.
Como Tú
Yo, como tú,
amo el amor, la vida, el dulce encanto
de las cosas, el paisaje
celeste de los días de enero.
También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.
Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan, de todos.
Y que mis venas no terminan en mí
sino en la sangre unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.
See you next Sunday.