Volume 25 🐣
Hello, beloved reader! After two months of what felt like a long nap of the mind, heart, and spirit, I feel fully AWAKE. I find myself dragging my feet less often. In an attempt to not create more of what I dislike out there, I will be your friendly neighbourhood squirrel, bringing you something positive-ish to your digital doorstep.
(This newsletter is very very long, I'm so sorry. I tried to trim it as much as I could. Do you think I should send smaller installments instead? Let me know. I worry I'll end up sending novellas that nobody would want to read and they'll rot on my laptop for eternity)
Here are some essays, some recommendations and lots of love -
📝 Yobo
It was a regular morning when I found myself curled up like an overcooked shrimp on a chair waiting for the coffee to finish filtering. I hadn't slept well and was already planning my naps for the day. My father was stretching outside by the window and called us outside. There was a tiny white spotted fantail watching him intently. Slightly creepy but okay. This fellow was perched on a branch with no leaves and many offshoots. It hopped from one branch to another without taking its eyes off us. Was this bird possessed or was it something in dad's legs that the palm-sized creep couldn't get enough of? We wrote it off as a weird incident and went to get ourselves some much deserved coffee. None of us had slept well and a pool of caffeine was welcome.
I was walking around with my breakfast from one end of the house to another as I often do because as restless as I am, I eat as slowly as a cow. (My great grandmother affectionately called me a cow because of how slowly I ate. Investigations were done to see if I could indeed regurgitate. I don't, in case you were wondering) I saw the bird there. I whistled to her. (Don't know if the bird is male or female) She may be a creep but she is unbelievably adorable. She did a mini somersault mid-air and landed back on the same spot. My grandfather and my father took turns to whistle and every time she noticed a human at the window she'd flit from branch to branch making ellipses mid-air and land on the same spot like a boomerang. Mum spoke to her in a special baby-talk reserved for birds and animals. She did the little hop and fly routine again. We assumed she'd fly away but she didn't. I came downstairs to check on her a few times that day and she was waiting patiently in the same spot every single time. The question of what this cutie should be named naturally arose. (Is naming animals around us our need for control at play or a way to cement our affection?) We agreed to name her if she turned up the next day. SHE DID. We decided to name her Yobo which we picked up from the TV show Kim's Convenience. In the show, Mrs. Kim calls Mr. Kim Yobo affectionately. I googled it, it means darling or beloved in Korean. It seemed to fit this tiny fellow. Yobo hung around the next day as well.
She'd disappear when it rained. Pauses between showers were a good times to find here there. Her aerial formations got bigger and grander by the day. What could possibly make a bird so excited to see us? Our hearts had melted into pools. Will she continue to hang around? Should we get attached to this little being or not? She showed up the day after that too. The novelty may have worn off a little because she didn't wait in the same spot all day but if you whistled she'd fly from wherever she was back to that spot. She would turn her head ever so slightly as she listened to us talk to her. She yawned once but who can be offended when a bird that small lets out an even tinier tongue to yawn? Whistling, cooing and fawning clearly doesn't make the most interesting conversation and she most definitely won't be inviting us to any dinner parties. The next day she decided to join the conversation. Let me teach you how it's done, humans. My father and I were asking her how her morning was going when she chirped in the most adorable and melodious way. She could poop on my laptop and steal my headphones and I would still find her cute. Could this bird do anything wrong? She chirped/sang again while we gushed over the previous chirp. Who allowed this bird to be this cute? We had to up our conversational game.
Yobo's aerial acrobatics also involve flying from the branch to another tree, land on its bark and leap off to land back on the branch. Yobo or any other fantail for that matter doesn't glide smoothly through the air, their flight looks uneven and strange. It feels like a dance even more so because of this. She started to inform us when she was there to see us. Waiting around no longer made sense, she had a life to live and places to go! We would keep our coffee aside to say hello. She would occasionally stop by the kitchen window to see what mum was up to. One day, she took to hiding when she saw us, only appearing once we whistled for a while. She popped out of a corner when she saw us head back to the kitchen. Play with me, humans! Okay fine, bird. That phase ended as quickly as it started. There was a day I was working late and heard a loud chirp, it was Yobo demanding that one of us humans attend to her. I was happy to oblige. We have to keep on our toes, new ways to engage have to be found.
We don't feed Yobo. Fantails eat insects and it made no sense adding grains or any human food to her diet. She doesn't want anything from us. She merely comes to hang out.
Then came the day a cat was 'stuck' on our chajja. I suspect she was fake meowing for sympathy. She disappeared when we got someone to help her down. Yobo flew uncomfortably close to the cat. I gasped. Was she going to peck the cat? In every case of blind love there comes a point where one wonders if the being they love is evil. My love for cute animals is naive and I see no red flags, I only see big brown eyes looking back at me. What if Yobo was one of the raven pecking birds I talked about last month? Have I been gushing over a bully??? Thankfully Yobo inspected the cat and lost interest soon enough. There is a possibility Yobo may be evil when she isn't hanging out with us but I won't dwell on it.
Yobo has now learned to latch onto the bird proofing net on the living room window. She sat there patiently after my dad's yoga class. Every day comes with a new development with this bird.
It feels so good to engage with these birds and animals in whatever form I can. They have a life of their own, I have a life of my own but for these brief moments we can make life better for each other. I would like to think my inane conversation and whistling makes her day better. I want to pet her and love her. I am learning what it means to love a bird from afar. I want to give back to her what she gives to me. It must be nice to be a bird and not be so transactional.
This is Yobo. I'm not making her up -
📝 Chaos, the ultimate fuckboy
Have you ever randomly paused work to think about what you were doing only to feel...satisfied? I wrote about being 'satisfiable' in April and I must say I feel like I'm there. I think there is a tendency to want to judge happiness because being happy would imply settling or not moving towards something. When I say there is a tendency, I mean it used to be my dysfunctional tendency. I seem to have collected the absolute worst tendencies over the years and it might just be my life's work undoing that. I was 17 or so when I wrote a mildly depressing piece on Facebook which I thought was oh-so-deep and reflective of what a complex little snowflake I was. People loved it. (Thank you o encouraging people who I haven't spoken to in a decade) I then wrote some more melancholic sounding things about how life generally sucked and then some more. Artists were supposed to be interesting because they could turn the blues, a broken heart and the garbage heap that life can sometimes be into something beautiful(ish). Picasso had his blue phase. One would argue it was meeting his wife and not his art that made him happier but I'm trying to make a point here. There's nothing wrong with transforming your heartbreak into art. There is nothing wrong with putting your anger, your dissent, your numbness and your discomfort into art. All of my doodles and early artwork that I ever shared online which eventually led me to graphic design started from a heart shattering breakup. Art helps you make peace with parts of your life that you can't seem to accept otherwise. They feed each other. Writing, drawing and collaging things does that for me. Recently, I called myself out on perhaps overdoing the life is awful bit in my mind and in my art. (Covid and the house arrest-like sitch is truly awful and I make no apologies for calling it the heap of dung that it is although I do attempt to make peace with it later in this essay)
The challenge at hand is what art can I make when I am not unhappy? What if I wasn't dragging the carcass of my grumbles into everything I made? What does happy, satisfied and peaceful art look like? I talk about writing and art with respect to wellbeing because that is life for me. I take what I'm feeling and make something out of it. Be it an essay, a painting or a roast pumpkin soup. They aren't mutually exclusive, they never have been. So the real question is, can I savour the joy my life offers me every day instead of demanding that it offer me something else? And can my writing, art, and approach champion relishing the fullness and adequacy of my life as it is?
Ten years ago, I asked my teacher why he meditated as much as he did and if he missed how the chaos of life made things interesting. He looked me straight in the eye and said no. I asked him why and he said I wouldn't understand if he gave me all the answers because I justified kept chaos around and called it interesting. Our mind tricks us into creating mischief in the most peaceful of circumstances. It can creep up on you as the niggling feeling in your tummy asking you to do dumb things. It is what creates quarter/mid life crises. There are many spiritual schools of thought but most of them agree on one thing - peace is your natural state of being. You were born peaceful. Your monkey mind adds chaos to your life the way a weirdo thought of adding mint to chocolate chip ice cream. (It tastes like toothpaste!!!) As someone who has given in to the temptation of leaving a job, a relationship or a situation on a whim, I can say chaos isn't the answer. Chaos is the fuckboy I must rid myself of asap! My teacher was right, you have to experience peace, even for a moment, to not want to return to chaos again. I'm a slow learner when it comes to important things. I picked up trigonometry in a jiffy but not how to stay grounded.
In 2019, which was one of the worst years I have had the misfortune of encountering, I got a little sick of making my own life miserable and signed up for a Vipassana retreat. I had let the monkey mind talk me out of leaving a job and some people. On day 7/10 (I will never forget that day) in an hour long break between two sessions I stopped thinking. I was walking in a garden at the Vipassana center, fantasizing about how someone would swoop in and give me a dream job and relationship as soon as I walked out because I'd won some cosmic lottery. In the middle of fantasy about being in Amsterdam (not sure why Amsterdam) I felt that bubble pop. I had no thought for the remainder of the break. Nothing. For over 40 minutes I thought of nothing. If this is what peace feels like, sign me up. It didn't last long, but gosh was that an experience to remember. There is no joy greater than experiencing a moment as it is, without demanding it be anything other than what it is. TL;DR - Omg, I didn't fuck things up for fun. Give me a blue ribbon already because I just aced life.
(I had other interesting insight during the course which I'll write about in another newsletter because this one feels endless and I do want to spare you, dear reader. I felt a voice in my head lovingly call me out on some patterns with ways on how to live better.)
A month after I finished the course and wrongly assumed my life would be sorted because insight was delivered straight to my head like Chinese takeout, my mum told me that insight means nothing if I behave like a jerk outside the meditation hall. She was right but ouch. I was being a jerk, albeit a slightly enlightened one. The perfect practice means nothing if it doesn't leave my head and engage with the world. What they kept telling us in the course applies outside regardless of whether you meditate. You will deviate, your mind will wander but every moment is a chance for you to come back to center. Your mind will be tempted to wreak havoc but you must choose to come back. It is a practice. It is a choice every day and every minute offers you. Will you be here or will you be in an imaginary situation where you finally get to pick the crevices of Neil Gaiman's brain/ visit Japan/ go on a date with hot celebrity du jour? Enlightenment or Gosling? Tough choices.
Lately I've been choosing to be more loving with this wretched animal of a mind. I try to not get exasperated. I deserve to be happy. We all deserve to be happy. We can all use a little compassion from ourselves especially with regards to the life we've built for ourselves. If not the house or city we find ourselves in then our mental landscape. We have worked tirelessly to be where we are today whether we acknowledge it or not. Isn't wanting a better life a way to look after yourself? It can be done from a place of accepting where you are. Must it always be violent?
Will the universe let me be a preachy wannabe Oogway and not have me practice what I preach? Hello no. I want to travel! I am dying to visit a gallery, go to a bar, latch on to a friend like a baby koala, meet someone for brunch or host game night in person. I find myself wanting to scream because of this almost house arrest like situation. HOW is this fair? How long are we expected to go on? WHEN will hot celebrity du jour realise that I am the person they should be talking to? The times I have managed to ask myself how I can thrive now, how I can make the best of this moment have been the ones I truly enjoyed. The more I do it, the easier it gets. Sometimes the answer is take a nap, sometimes it's making a card for someone, sometimes it's cleaning, sometimes it's doing nothing. The pace is glacial but the result is always rewarding.
Right now, I will choose better.
Every moment is a choice. It really is. I am figuring out how to sustain happiness and revel in it. I'm toying with happy-ish art and I'm enjoying it. I hope I have more joyous things to share with you in the months to come.
If you're an overthinking baboon like myself this is what helps me ground when + I feel a tsunami sized niggle to change what's happening around me because it's boring/ isn't good enough or + when it's just easier to hate the world but I'd rather not or + I need an ordinary pick-me-up -
🌱 I think of at least one thing or one person you love. Love in all caps kind of love. It helps bring the emotional charge down rather quickly.
🌱 I say out loud or in my mind to myself "I love you, I'm here for you. What can I do for you right now?" There is ALWAYS an answer. Try to listen.
🌱 Do that or something close to it. Whatever is accessible!
🌱 When a huge wave of dissatisfaction isn't around, I make sure I hype up little delightful things. Make it count. I have taken to making soups. I try a new one every day. I love cooking dinner...for now.
🌱 I keep telling myself how I'm enough. I now tell myself that what I have is enough. What I have to offer is more than enough. I have everything I need to be happy right now.
BOOKS
⭐️ Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity by Justin Baldoni - (This book talks mostly about cisgender men and women because it's a personal account. I use men and women in the way Baldoni does in the book)
Justin Baldoni is an actor-director-producer who has been diving into what it means to be a man in today's world and all the expectations that come with it. Reading this book was unexpectedly curative. I can't speak for others or give an objective review of this book without making it personal. This book isn't a manifesto on what men should/ shouldn't be. Justin doesn't promise to fix masculinity or our perceptions of it. He doesn't claim to be an expert in gender studies. What he does is share his experience with such vulnerability that you can't help but open yourself up to it. It is unbelievably rare to see a man be so vulnerable.
As a person who grew up in a patriarchal environment and read feminist material growing up, men were the root of our troubles. I tried to engage with them as equal peers who I loved while somehow balancing my constant rage. After years of nurturing that rage, I began to get curious about what happened at their end. What made this part of humanity the way they are? (Preferably through essays and not in academic sounding jargon that I'd quit after a few pages.)
I always knew things were hard for men too but how hard could it be really? Nobody was forcing them to get married, pressuring them to have children they didn't want, trapping them indoors when it got dark, depriving them of equal opportunities, policing what they wore or objectifying their bodies. Their loss of freedom is of a different kind, a kind I refused to acknowledge because the freedom women lost was so much more obvious and tangible. When does discussing gender stop becoming a contest of whose life is worse off?
I saw some ways in which it's hard for men to live authentically too. If family isn't beating the sensitivity out of them, it's their peers. Baldoni talks about expectations when it comes to their bodies, their confidence, how they are in bed, how much they earn, their ability to protect and provide and more. He also talks about the self destructive things men tend to do to fill the gap between who they are and being man enough, whatever that means. He doesn't know what it means either. Nobody does.
I remember seeing a boy in school mock another boy for not being masculine enough because he didn't do an arbitrary number of pull ups. I remember thinking that guy #2 was such a nice fellow, how does an odd number of pull ups determine anything about him? Guy #2 promptly did a few more pull ups, he had a reputation to protect. Guy #1 seemed pleased by the power he held over guy #1. It didn't seem right.
There is a lot of work men need to do when it comes to questioning what masculinity means to them. It is their job to question their beliefs, go to therapy and open up but that doesn't mean we can't support them wholeheartedly while they're at it. This book made me more open to listening and being there for more men should they want to work on themselves.
It helped me move from 'you suck, leave me alone' to 'can we heal together and make the world a better place?' I don't want to live in a world where I am parading around all self-actualized and jubilant but men (or anyone else for that matter) are torn down in different ways every day. There is more than enough room for all of us to flourish and be happy.
Popisho by Leone Ross (Currently reading) - This book is a wild ride through a vibrant, juicy and colourful world. Popisho is an imaginary archipelago where every person is born with a special ability called a cors. Having a cors is common place. The entire novel takes place in the span of one day. Backstories are spun effortlessly to give you context about our complex characters with their unexpected powers. The writing is lush and all over the place in a good way. Screw minimalism. More is more when it comes to this novel. It takes a while to get into it but once you sink your teeth into this strange fruit of a novel you're going to want to hang around to see what happens.
I haven't finished yet but I'm enjoying what I'm reading.
Second Place by Rachel Cusk - This book was....weird. I have heard so much about Rachel Cusk and I wanted a small bite of her work before I decided to dive into her famous trilogy. I get why people love her writing. It is razor sharp and deeply insightful. But I didn't love this book very much. The plot is simple: a middle aged woman (M, yes her name is M) who is deeply conflicted about her place in life invites an enigmatic artist (L, yes his name is L) to live in another house on her property hoping his presence and his art can lift her out of her dissatisfaction. M is a little...nutty. The drama and the oscillation of tone takes place through her narration more than the actual circumstances. There were some parts of the writing that I loved and highlighted. I wouldn't recommend this unless you're in the mood for something odd yet deeply (and uncomfortably) reflective. How much of a literary risk are you in the mood for?
AUDIO GOODIES
⭐️ Christine Runyan - What's Happening in our Nervous Systems? on On Being - "The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing - yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation - what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead."
It helps to remind myself that my nerves feel frazzled for a reason. I feel crazy on some days for a reason. This house arrest like sitch isn't normal. Our bodies need our compassion more than ever. This is something we can take forward as we gear up for another wave and a longer period of staying at home. May we not go mad and kill each other in 2021. 🤦🏻♀️
+ Nicholas Christakis on How We're Wired for Goodness on On Being - what would happen if we believe in the better angels of our nature instead of what makes us terrible? What if we truly believed that all humans are inherently good?
++ Alex Elle on Self Care as Generational Healing on On Being
Matters of Time on 99% Invisible - Stories of old and close to unbelievable ways people kept track of time. I didn't think I took the convenience of standard time for granted until I heard this.
The Great Narrative Exchange on Invisibilia - A deep dive into Norwegian slow TV. Would you watch it?
ARTICLES/ ESSAYS
⭐️ Used 2 Love U - an essay by Kenny Ng featured on the Audacity by Roxane Gay.
What did COVID do to friendship?
COOL THINGS ON THE INTERNET
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Travel Remotely - do you want the ability to walk or travel by car/train in any city while listening to local radio channels to stop yourself from going completely insane from the lack of novelty in your life? THIS is the place to go. You're welcome.
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The other cool things -
⭐️ Bo Burnham's new Netflix special + album - I think it's a masterpiece. It gives me some hope for the feeling of imprisonment I will have to live with for the rest of the year. Maybe I will write a song, maybe I'll sing out loud till my neighbours complain.
Hayley Wall's very corporeal art that talks about being a queer and disabled artist.
Daniel Gray's book jacket design.
Milky Way Photographers of the Year
Shadow Puppetry of Japan's Edo period.
That's it for June! I hope you've all been well, whatever well means today. I hope you find reasons to get out of bed and find the strength the show up for life. Above all I hope that if you don't have the strength, people around you will bolster you when you need it.
May we all get the head scratches, belly rubs, back massages and cuddles that we deserve.
May you find peace and joy.
Warmly,
Sachi
🌸 If you liked this, share it with a friend? I truly appreciate you being here 🌸
You can find older writing here.
(This newsletter is very very long, I'm so sorry. I tried to trim it as much as I could. Do you think I should send smaller installments instead? Let me know. I worry I'll end up sending novellas that nobody would want to read and they'll rot on my laptop for eternity)
Here are some essays, some recommendations and lots of love -
📝 Yobo
It was a regular morning when I found myself curled up like an overcooked shrimp on a chair waiting for the coffee to finish filtering. I hadn't slept well and was already planning my naps for the day. My father was stretching outside by the window and called us outside. There was a tiny white spotted fantail watching him intently. Slightly creepy but okay. This fellow was perched on a branch with no leaves and many offshoots. It hopped from one branch to another without taking its eyes off us. Was this bird possessed or was it something in dad's legs that the palm-sized creep couldn't get enough of? We wrote it off as a weird incident and went to get ourselves some much deserved coffee. None of us had slept well and a pool of caffeine was welcome.
I was walking around with my breakfast from one end of the house to another as I often do because as restless as I am, I eat as slowly as a cow. (My great grandmother affectionately called me a cow because of how slowly I ate. Investigations were done to see if I could indeed regurgitate. I don't, in case you were wondering) I saw the bird there. I whistled to her. (Don't know if the bird is male or female) She may be a creep but she is unbelievably adorable. She did a mini somersault mid-air and landed back on the same spot. My grandfather and my father took turns to whistle and every time she noticed a human at the window she'd flit from branch to branch making ellipses mid-air and land on the same spot like a boomerang. Mum spoke to her in a special baby-talk reserved for birds and animals. She did the little hop and fly routine again. We assumed she'd fly away but she didn't. I came downstairs to check on her a few times that day and she was waiting patiently in the same spot every single time. The question of what this cutie should be named naturally arose. (Is naming animals around us our need for control at play or a way to cement our affection?) We agreed to name her if she turned up the next day. SHE DID. We decided to name her Yobo which we picked up from the TV show Kim's Convenience. In the show, Mrs. Kim calls Mr. Kim Yobo affectionately. I googled it, it means darling or beloved in Korean. It seemed to fit this tiny fellow. Yobo hung around the next day as well.
She'd disappear when it rained. Pauses between showers were a good times to find here there. Her aerial formations got bigger and grander by the day. What could possibly make a bird so excited to see us? Our hearts had melted into pools. Will she continue to hang around? Should we get attached to this little being or not? She showed up the day after that too. The novelty may have worn off a little because she didn't wait in the same spot all day but if you whistled she'd fly from wherever she was back to that spot. She would turn her head ever so slightly as she listened to us talk to her. She yawned once but who can be offended when a bird that small lets out an even tinier tongue to yawn? Whistling, cooing and fawning clearly doesn't make the most interesting conversation and she most definitely won't be inviting us to any dinner parties. The next day she decided to join the conversation. Let me teach you how it's done, humans. My father and I were asking her how her morning was going when she chirped in the most adorable and melodious way. She could poop on my laptop and steal my headphones and I would still find her cute. Could this bird do anything wrong? She chirped/sang again while we gushed over the previous chirp. Who allowed this bird to be this cute? We had to up our conversational game.
Yobo's aerial acrobatics also involve flying from the branch to another tree, land on its bark and leap off to land back on the branch. Yobo or any other fantail for that matter doesn't glide smoothly through the air, their flight looks uneven and strange. It feels like a dance even more so because of this. She started to inform us when she was there to see us. Waiting around no longer made sense, she had a life to live and places to go! We would keep our coffee aside to say hello. She would occasionally stop by the kitchen window to see what mum was up to. One day, she took to hiding when she saw us, only appearing once we whistled for a while. She popped out of a corner when she saw us head back to the kitchen. Play with me, humans! Okay fine, bird. That phase ended as quickly as it started. There was a day I was working late and heard a loud chirp, it was Yobo demanding that one of us humans attend to her. I was happy to oblige. We have to keep on our toes, new ways to engage have to be found.
We don't feed Yobo. Fantails eat insects and it made no sense adding grains or any human food to her diet. She doesn't want anything from us. She merely comes to hang out.
Then came the day a cat was 'stuck' on our chajja. I suspect she was fake meowing for sympathy. She disappeared when we got someone to help her down. Yobo flew uncomfortably close to the cat. I gasped. Was she going to peck the cat? In every case of blind love there comes a point where one wonders if the being they love is evil. My love for cute animals is naive and I see no red flags, I only see big brown eyes looking back at me. What if Yobo was one of the raven pecking birds I talked about last month? Have I been gushing over a bully??? Thankfully Yobo inspected the cat and lost interest soon enough. There is a possibility Yobo may be evil when she isn't hanging out with us but I won't dwell on it.
Yobo has now learned to latch onto the bird proofing net on the living room window. She sat there patiently after my dad's yoga class. Every day comes with a new development with this bird.
It feels so good to engage with these birds and animals in whatever form I can. They have a life of their own, I have a life of my own but for these brief moments we can make life better for each other. I would like to think my inane conversation and whistling makes her day better. I want to pet her and love her. I am learning what it means to love a bird from afar. I want to give back to her what she gives to me. It must be nice to be a bird and not be so transactional.
I told Yobo the other day that I was feeling lonely. I didn’t think I could make it through the day. She looked at me, tilted her little head and hopped from branch to the other in what looked like her regular delight to see one of us. Clearly some cosmic forces are invested in my wellbeing. Anybody who thought to send this little fellow my way knew what they were doing.
This is Yobo. I'm not making her up -
📝 Chaos, the ultimate fuckboy
Have you ever randomly paused work to think about what you were doing only to feel...satisfied? I wrote about being 'satisfiable' in April and I must say I feel like I'm there. I think there is a tendency to want to judge happiness because being happy would imply settling or not moving towards something. When I say there is a tendency, I mean it used to be my dysfunctional tendency. I seem to have collected the absolute worst tendencies over the years and it might just be my life's work undoing that. I was 17 or so when I wrote a mildly depressing piece on Facebook which I thought was oh-so-deep and reflective of what a complex little snowflake I was. People loved it. (Thank you o encouraging people who I haven't spoken to in a decade) I then wrote some more melancholic sounding things about how life generally sucked and then some more. Artists were supposed to be interesting because they could turn the blues, a broken heart and the garbage heap that life can sometimes be into something beautiful(ish). Picasso had his blue phase. One would argue it was meeting his wife and not his art that made him happier but I'm trying to make a point here. There's nothing wrong with transforming your heartbreak into art. There is nothing wrong with putting your anger, your dissent, your numbness and your discomfort into art. All of my doodles and early artwork that I ever shared online which eventually led me to graphic design started from a heart shattering breakup. Art helps you make peace with parts of your life that you can't seem to accept otherwise. They feed each other. Writing, drawing and collaging things does that for me. Recently, I called myself out on perhaps overdoing the life is awful bit in my mind and in my art. (Covid and the house arrest-like sitch is truly awful and I make no apologies for calling it the heap of dung that it is although I do attempt to make peace with it later in this essay)
The challenge at hand is what art can I make when I am not unhappy? What if I wasn't dragging the carcass of my grumbles into everything I made? What does happy, satisfied and peaceful art look like? I talk about writing and art with respect to wellbeing because that is life for me. I take what I'm feeling and make something out of it. Be it an essay, a painting or a roast pumpkin soup. They aren't mutually exclusive, they never have been. So the real question is, can I savour the joy my life offers me every day instead of demanding that it offer me something else? And can my writing, art, and approach champion relishing the fullness and adequacy of my life as it is?
Ten years ago, I asked my teacher why he meditated as much as he did and if he missed how the chaos of life made things interesting. He looked me straight in the eye and said no. I asked him why and he said I wouldn't understand if he gave me all the answers because I justified kept chaos around and called it interesting. Our mind tricks us into creating mischief in the most peaceful of circumstances. It can creep up on you as the niggling feeling in your tummy asking you to do dumb things. It is what creates quarter/mid life crises. There are many spiritual schools of thought but most of them agree on one thing - peace is your natural state of being. You were born peaceful. Your monkey mind adds chaos to your life the way a weirdo thought of adding mint to chocolate chip ice cream. (It tastes like toothpaste!!!) As someone who has given in to the temptation of leaving a job, a relationship or a situation on a whim, I can say chaos isn't the answer. Chaos is the fuckboy I must rid myself of asap! My teacher was right, you have to experience peace, even for a moment, to not want to return to chaos again. I'm a slow learner when it comes to important things. I picked up trigonometry in a jiffy but not how to stay grounded.
In 2019, which was one of the worst years I have had the misfortune of encountering, I got a little sick of making my own life miserable and signed up for a Vipassana retreat. I had let the monkey mind talk me out of leaving a job and some people. On day 7/10 (I will never forget that day) in an hour long break between two sessions I stopped thinking. I was walking in a garden at the Vipassana center, fantasizing about how someone would swoop in and give me a dream job and relationship as soon as I walked out because I'd won some cosmic lottery. In the middle of fantasy about being in Amsterdam (not sure why Amsterdam) I felt that bubble pop. I had no thought for the remainder of the break. Nothing. For over 40 minutes I thought of nothing. If this is what peace feels like, sign me up. It didn't last long, but gosh was that an experience to remember. There is no joy greater than experiencing a moment as it is, without demanding it be anything other than what it is. TL;DR - Omg, I didn't fuck things up for fun. Give me a blue ribbon already because I just aced life.
(I had other interesting insight during the course which I'll write about in another newsletter because this one feels endless and I do want to spare you, dear reader. I felt a voice in my head lovingly call me out on some patterns with ways on how to live better.)
A month after I finished the course and wrongly assumed my life would be sorted because insight was delivered straight to my head like Chinese takeout, my mum told me that insight means nothing if I behave like a jerk outside the meditation hall. She was right but ouch. I was being a jerk, albeit a slightly enlightened one. The perfect practice means nothing if it doesn't leave my head and engage with the world. What they kept telling us in the course applies outside regardless of whether you meditate. You will deviate, your mind will wander but every moment is a chance for you to come back to center. Your mind will be tempted to wreak havoc but you must choose to come back. It is a practice. It is a choice every day and every minute offers you. Will you be here or will you be in an imaginary situation where you finally get to pick the crevices of Neil Gaiman's brain/ visit Japan/ go on a date with hot celebrity du jour? Enlightenment or Gosling? Tough choices.
Lately I've been choosing to be more loving with this wretched animal of a mind. I try to not get exasperated. I deserve to be happy. We all deserve to be happy. We can all use a little compassion from ourselves especially with regards to the life we've built for ourselves. If not the house or city we find ourselves in then our mental landscape. We have worked tirelessly to be where we are today whether we acknowledge it or not. Isn't wanting a better life a way to look after yourself? It can be done from a place of accepting where you are. Must it always be violent?
Will the universe let me be a preachy wannabe Oogway and not have me practice what I preach? Hello no. I want to travel! I am dying to visit a gallery, go to a bar, latch on to a friend like a baby koala, meet someone for brunch or host game night in person. I find myself wanting to scream because of this almost house arrest like situation. HOW is this fair? How long are we expected to go on? WHEN will hot celebrity du jour realise that I am the person they should be talking to? The times I have managed to ask myself how I can thrive now, how I can make the best of this moment have been the ones I truly enjoyed. The more I do it, the easier it gets. Sometimes the answer is take a nap, sometimes it's making a card for someone, sometimes it's cleaning, sometimes it's doing nothing. The pace is glacial but the result is always rewarding.
Right now, I will choose better.
Every moment is a choice. It really is. I am figuring out how to sustain happiness and revel in it. I'm toying with happy-ish art and I'm enjoying it. I hope I have more joyous things to share with you in the months to come.
If you're an overthinking baboon like myself this is what helps me ground when + I feel a tsunami sized niggle to change what's happening around me because it's boring/ isn't good enough or + when it's just easier to hate the world but I'd rather not or + I need an ordinary pick-me-up -
🌱 I think of at least one thing or one person you love. Love in all caps kind of love. It helps bring the emotional charge down rather quickly.
🌱 I say out loud or in my mind to myself "I love you, I'm here for you. What can I do for you right now?" There is ALWAYS an answer. Try to listen.
🌱 Do that or something close to it. Whatever is accessible!
🌱 When a huge wave of dissatisfaction isn't around, I make sure I hype up little delightful things. Make it count. I have taken to making soups. I try a new one every day. I love cooking dinner...for now.
🌱 I keep telling myself how I'm enough. I now tell myself that what I have is enough. What I have to offer is more than enough. I have everything I need to be happy right now.
BOOKS
⭐️ Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity by Justin Baldoni - (This book talks mostly about cisgender men and women because it's a personal account. I use men and women in the way Baldoni does in the book)
Justin Baldoni is an actor-director-producer who has been diving into what it means to be a man in today's world and all the expectations that come with it. Reading this book was unexpectedly curative. I can't speak for others or give an objective review of this book without making it personal. This book isn't a manifesto on what men should/ shouldn't be. Justin doesn't promise to fix masculinity or our perceptions of it. He doesn't claim to be an expert in gender studies. What he does is share his experience with such vulnerability that you can't help but open yourself up to it. It is unbelievably rare to see a man be so vulnerable.
As a person who grew up in a patriarchal environment and read feminist material growing up, men were the root of our troubles. I tried to engage with them as equal peers who I loved while somehow balancing my constant rage. After years of nurturing that rage, I began to get curious about what happened at their end. What made this part of humanity the way they are? (Preferably through essays and not in academic sounding jargon that I'd quit after a few pages.)
I always knew things were hard for men too but how hard could it be really? Nobody was forcing them to get married, pressuring them to have children they didn't want, trapping them indoors when it got dark, depriving them of equal opportunities, policing what they wore or objectifying their bodies. Their loss of freedom is of a different kind, a kind I refused to acknowledge because the freedom women lost was so much more obvious and tangible. When does discussing gender stop becoming a contest of whose life is worse off?
I saw some ways in which it's hard for men to live authentically too. If family isn't beating the sensitivity out of them, it's their peers. Baldoni talks about expectations when it comes to their bodies, their confidence, how they are in bed, how much they earn, their ability to protect and provide and more. He also talks about the self destructive things men tend to do to fill the gap between who they are and being man enough, whatever that means. He doesn't know what it means either. Nobody does.
I remember seeing a boy in school mock another boy for not being masculine enough because he didn't do an arbitrary number of pull ups. I remember thinking that guy #2 was such a nice fellow, how does an odd number of pull ups determine anything about him? Guy #2 promptly did a few more pull ups, he had a reputation to protect. Guy #1 seemed pleased by the power he held over guy #1. It didn't seem right.
There is a lot of work men need to do when it comes to questioning what masculinity means to them. It is their job to question their beliefs, go to therapy and open up but that doesn't mean we can't support them wholeheartedly while they're at it. This book made me more open to listening and being there for more men should they want to work on themselves.
It helped me move from 'you suck, leave me alone' to 'can we heal together and make the world a better place?' I don't want to live in a world where I am parading around all self-actualized and jubilant but men (or anyone else for that matter) are torn down in different ways every day. There is more than enough room for all of us to flourish and be happy.
Popisho by Leone Ross (Currently reading) - This book is a wild ride through a vibrant, juicy and colourful world. Popisho is an imaginary archipelago where every person is born with a special ability called a cors. Having a cors is common place. The entire novel takes place in the span of one day. Backstories are spun effortlessly to give you context about our complex characters with their unexpected powers. The writing is lush and all over the place in a good way. Screw minimalism. More is more when it comes to this novel. It takes a while to get into it but once you sink your teeth into this strange fruit of a novel you're going to want to hang around to see what happens.
I haven't finished yet but I'm enjoying what I'm reading.
Second Place by Rachel Cusk - This book was....weird. I have heard so much about Rachel Cusk and I wanted a small bite of her work before I decided to dive into her famous trilogy. I get why people love her writing. It is razor sharp and deeply insightful. But I didn't love this book very much. The plot is simple: a middle aged woman (M, yes her name is M) who is deeply conflicted about her place in life invites an enigmatic artist (L, yes his name is L) to live in another house on her property hoping his presence and his art can lift her out of her dissatisfaction. M is a little...nutty. The drama and the oscillation of tone takes place through her narration more than the actual circumstances. There were some parts of the writing that I loved and highlighted. I wouldn't recommend this unless you're in the mood for something odd yet deeply (and uncomfortably) reflective. How much of a literary risk are you in the mood for?
AUDIO GOODIES
⭐️ Christine Runyan - What's Happening in our Nervous Systems? on On Being - "The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing - yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation - what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead."
It helps to remind myself that my nerves feel frazzled for a reason. I feel crazy on some days for a reason. This house arrest like sitch isn't normal. Our bodies need our compassion more than ever. This is something we can take forward as we gear up for another wave and a longer period of staying at home. May we not go mad and kill each other in 2021. 🤦🏻♀️
+ Nicholas Christakis on How We're Wired for Goodness on On Being - what would happen if we believe in the better angels of our nature instead of what makes us terrible? What if we truly believed that all humans are inherently good?
++ Alex Elle on Self Care as Generational Healing on On Being
Matters of Time on 99% Invisible - Stories of old and close to unbelievable ways people kept track of time. I didn't think I took the convenience of standard time for granted until I heard this.
The Great Narrative Exchange on Invisibilia - A deep dive into Norwegian slow TV. Would you watch it?
ARTICLES/ ESSAYS
⭐️ Used 2 Love U - an essay by Kenny Ng featured on the Audacity by Roxane Gay.
What did COVID do to friendship?
COOL THINGS ON THE INTERNET
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Travel Remotely - do you want the ability to walk or travel by car/train in any city while listening to local radio channels to stop yourself from going completely insane from the lack of novelty in your life? THIS is the place to go. You're welcome.
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The other cool things -
⭐️ Bo Burnham's new Netflix special + album - I think it's a masterpiece. It gives me some hope for the feeling of imprisonment I will have to live with for the rest of the year. Maybe I will write a song, maybe I'll sing out loud till my neighbours complain.
Hayley Wall's very corporeal art that talks about being a queer and disabled artist.
Daniel Gray's book jacket design.
Milky Way Photographers of the Year
Shadow Puppetry of Japan's Edo period.
That's it for June! I hope you've all been well, whatever well means today. I hope you find reasons to get out of bed and find the strength the show up for life. Above all I hope that if you don't have the strength, people around you will bolster you when you need it.
May we all get the head scratches, belly rubs, back massages and cuddles that we deserve.
May you find peace and joy.
Warmly,
Sachi
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