tyn (rk)

i'm thankful that i bought this cheap sandalwood and rose incense, which i don't think many other people would really like because it does smell cheap and cloying, thankful that no one else has to like it because it's just for me. i'm thankful that at the store where i bought it, the bagger put a big plastic bag of apples into my shopping bag as well, saying 'a gift from us, happy new year.' i'm thankful to have been given the apples even though i didn't need them and they were heavy to carry around, and the bagger didn't seem particularly happy about having to put them in each bag, and i imagine that the gesture was based more in an unsalable surplus of apples than the desire to give a gift.

i'm thankful that my mother sent me this image of Pema Chodron styled as Rosie the Riveter earlier in 2016, and that it says "yes we can! smile at fear". i'm thankful that although it wasn't immediately clear to me it was Pema Chodron, since her features aren't necessarily very distinctive to me out of context, and my mother included no note or explanation of why she sent it or what it was, i eventually figured it out. i'm thankful for how bizarre and ahistorical the image is, and how funny it is to me to reappropriate an image that i associate with a capitalist military industrial complex to refer to radical mindfulness. i'm thankful for how much joy the image brings me, and how it's become more important to me as the world around me has gotten worse and scarier. i'm thankful to have been given, through both my mother and i becoming more interested in mindfulness and buddhism this year, some small guidance about what to do with the feelings of terror and dread and rage that this year brought, some instruction on how to keep going despite the urge to succumb to paralysis. i'm thankful to think that there might be something constructive in allowing myself to acknowledge feeling this afraid, even if i cannot quite access what that thing could be yet.

- rk (01/02/2017).