A fish stuck inside a disposable glove
2021 is 2020 and worse: 19 fAVOURITE sUBS
In his poem "Ghost," Robert Lowell wrote, "You cannot turn your back upon a dream, / for phantoms have their reasons when they come." The same could be said of images that haunt us, especially those which we work hardest to repress and that return to us unwanted and unbidden…. Like all around us. 2021 is 2020 and worse.
*Cafe to Cuba* is interrupted by a sudden wash-over of DREAMS. DIRE is how I sum up everything around me.
It is like a look in the light, shot in the dark.
I wake up with a churning feeling every time I do indeed, ostensibly wake up. …..Many aren’t waking up. There is so much sadness, pain, and helplessness around me that all the cynical adverbs and transitional verbs aren’t going to help in discovering the new feelings which loom over and above the Images in newspapers, on TV, on my mobile. Images are the rendering of your bodily experience in the world. There's a line at the end of Norman Dubie's "The Funeral," about the death of an aunt, that has always haunted us: "Cancer ate her like horse piss eats deep snow." Now, can I just paraphrase this by breaking the rule of paraphrasing by substituting cancer for COVID-19? We all understand grief as heaviness; and in fact, the word for grief comes from the Latin gravis, meaning weighty, sad.
Grief, you there?
I think I carried you home
and my home is the open sky - This is how I wrote about grief when I first decided to write about it, a day ago.
Here is a poem I really enjoyed from the poet’s companion, a necessary guide for every poet who is trying to make. a mark on this world.
MICHIKO DEAD
He manages like somebody carrying a box that is too heavy,
first with his arms underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them on the corners,
pulling the weight against his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly when the fingers begin to tire,
and it makes different muscles take over. Afterward, he carries it on his shoulder,
until the blood drains out of the arm that is stretched up to steady the box and the arm goes numb.
But now the man can hold underneath again, so that he can go on without ever putting the box down.
I sometimes can’t sleep if I do an activity for too long… like studying or writing or then wanting to help people I don’t know but I would like to or I would like to associate with. I would be lying if I said that I like that feeling when I can’t sleep before 3 am and at times when I do want to, I can’t because there are things I had rather do than go sleep. I walk out into the 3 am balcony where the mosquitoes bite. they bite like they dig deep. they dig into your veins. I can feel the sting hours after the impact of these restless impatient creatures. I love the sting nowadays, and I sometimes feel that I would rather stand for hours on the balcony(I usually tend to read faster in the dim light and nocturnal nature) than go to sleep at all. Is this feeling a continuance of a dream which I have been in, where I am in a boot BDSM and I am enjoying the pain which is inflicted on me, this dream carries me on till either I reach orgasm or am dead? Now, when these innocuous mosquitoes bite me, I walk towards them with an air of pride, like I do understand their need to be this violent or reckless in their being.
I try to be what these mosquitoes could not be in their previous lives. they say that a cat has nine lives but I believe that a mosquito has many more.
I am trying to save the only good headphones I have got, to survive this pandemic. The thought that what if they can’t manufacture anymore and I won’t be able to listen to good music thrice if I want to, without disturbing the remnants around me. I wish I was able to hoard more. Hoarding has always been my USP. In a city where I can hardly breathe and where citizens are scrambling, hoarding is exquisite. There is a difference between rolling a joint and realizing after smoking it halfway through that it is the last filter of the day or weeks even (with the lockdown end not in sight) and in hindsight, my extremity is always about smoking up when I want to, however much I want to but I have no single bone of contention(read addiction) in my body to wilt and fade till I reuse and reuse the filter or can’t live without stocking up on smoking trays and 12 different kinds of flavored papers and fancy cones.
I never reused a filter. (not even the activated charcoal one!) But I accidentally stocked up! Read how? - (psst… You can get 15% off on all smoking supplies from Panda rolling by suing BELLA15 )
I stumbled upon https://stories.substack.com/
This is a pure goldmine which is equivalent to all the listed heavyweight Articles I share from time to time in my newsletter.
I really liked what people are doing with substack these days, take for example- Florence with a sexy Yorkshire accent who also has a pod embedded in her newsletters.
NEWSLETTERS I LOOK UPTO:
If you enjoyed this piece, could you please let me know and give the heart below a tap?This newsletter is free, but if you’re feeling generous you can support my work by the following buttons which you can press….
Worth reading! More Power to you girl!!!
Loved the list. Thank you! ❤️