47. Day 876 of Quarantine
If you’ve found your way over by some miracle (someone forwarding this to you!) but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:
Oh hi friends,
Happy Sunday from me and the nude print my cleaner refers to as ‘that dirty thing’. She also seems to believe that it’s a photo of me and because we lack a common language (plus I’m a little flattered in all honesty), I haven’t yet got round to correcting her.
In that vein, here’s a quote and gentle reminder to start your Sunday:
“When people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.”
―Maria Popova
Here’s some interesting and/or meaningful internet that I read on your behalf this week.
1. A Poem
Kindness — Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
2. Bits Of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights
Behold, the original. (which is pretty fucking bananas)
3. Indistinguishable from Magic
*thank you Jacqui for the share
4. Looking Closely
This great interpretation of meditation (I wholeheartedly agree)
via Craig Mod.
What’s a good first step to getting better at looking closely? I’d say meditation is a fine first step.
Ten minutes a day, observe your breath — the literal movement of air into and out of your nostrils. Do it first thing on waking up. Before you look at your phone, before your partner rises. Reduce friction by placing a pillow on the floor in a quiet corner of your home the previous night. Then sneak out of bed, make a beeline for that pillow, and just sit and pay attention — to the weight of your body, how your shoulders fall, the tension in your face — as you closely observe that nose air. Is it hot? Is it cool? Does it come out of both nostrils? Just one? Neither? Are you stuffed? Is it pollen season? Why did they plant so many cedars post-war here in Japan? Our eyes are closed, but burning, those damn cedars, wh— oh right, we’re supposed to be focused on our breath. Can you control which nostril the air comes out of? Do you feel the follicles on your upper lip being tickled by the breath? How long can you keep focus on that part of the body? You’ll lose focus. That’s OK. Those stupid cedars will be billowing out pollen upon your world like the pheromones of leopards in heat. Forget the leopards. Bring the mind back to where the air is moving. Note your posture again, the weight of your body sinking in to the floor. Keep that in mind. That’s your archetype, your unique mind-body configuration to which you return when you need to focus the attention — on a sentence, a photograph, the light in a film, a government policy, whatever. There is a physicality to looking closely, to paying attention, and the more aware you are of what attention feels like, the more aware you become of things pulling you out of that state.
Attention is the muscle. Looking closely is the application of that muscle. It can be exercised through deliberate action.
5. Watching
Who wants 고구마 (sweet potatoes)?
See you next Sunday.