I am thinking about the act of loving someone- how simple and ongoing it is- and how the best way for it to manifest is by beginning to place that love inside yourself, towards yourself.

—Srish

Then there’s the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It’s not love we don’t wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It’s a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

— Margaret Atwood, Variations On The Word Love

At last, my personal favorite:

Wake next to you
bring you coffee
listen to the radio together
welcome your head on my shoulder
stroke your fingers
Love as simple
as good morning

You are here
All is not lost

In front of you
I am ashamed of my despair

—Abdellatif Laâbi

Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. I say: I love, therefore I am.

— Mohammed Sebbagh, Candles on the road

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Before You Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

It is early February: sometimes bitter with defeated grey clouds, and other times a brief reminder of spring (hope). I cuddle up on the corner of my bed at 7 a.m., illuminated by sunlight, trying to assert stillness upon my mind.

I fail every 30 seconds, knowing (but never fully grasping) that stillness is found, not asserted. In the meantime, some poetry slips into my solitude, for which I am ever grateful.

—Srish

The book I’ve been reading
rests on my knee. You sleep.

It’s beautiful out there -
fields, little lakes and winter trees
in February sunlight,
every car park a shining mosaic.

Long radiant minutes,
your hand in my hand,
still warm, still warm.

— Wendy Cope, On A Train

i don't know how many times i've risen from the ashes, but i am stronger now than i was when you met me; you woke in me the dreaming when i thought the dreaming was dead & you taught me that our scars make us beautiful—i remember when you saw the scars from my gallbladder surgery, and you told me they looked like japanese flowers; i recall the trip to philly and dracula's ball, i remember seeing the producers, our walk in autumn around Edinboro, going to that gay bar with josh & cody, i remember meeting andy and leotie, i remember the ren faire and how you told me to be careful with the sangria wine which i became quite fond of, i remember drinking appletini's in erie, i remember being a part of your play, so many recollections i don't think i can name them all, i remember your little pink car, i remember the regret that came when i pushed you away because of both my confusion and rage, i remember the apology that wasn't enough, i remember that it was my fault that we were no longer friends; and i will forever be sorry for it—i saw a pink sunset and wept because you were all i could think of, and the memories may have forgotten you but i will forever remember that otherwordly girl that smelled of roses; you were unforgettable—& the only woman i ever loved.
— Linda M. Crate, pink sunsets are for weeping

It was like getting a love letter from a tree
Eyes closed forever to find you —
There is a life which
if I could have it
I would have chosen for myself from the beginning

— Franz Wright, The Poem

There’s a lot of noise on the internet, so if you’re looking for guided consumption on intentional art, here you go:

• Beautiful illustrations by Holly Warburton.

• This article on women’s knowledge of the darkest realms of experience and the sense of freedom and solidarity contained therein.

• This lovely album I stumbled upon from Palm Beach (2019)

P.S. If you feel like you didn’t/couldn’t ride the waves of the new year freshness, it’s okay, because:

Alternatively, you don’t have a new year; you have new moments, stages, realizations, and a soft sense of the day-to-day - and tbh, nothing sounds more delectable. Let me know how that’s going.

I am not quite sure when it happened (the disappearance of writing and its return), because all my points of reference - my address, my family, my goals - have been distorted.

I never stopped thinking about absence, though. Mostly my father’s - who I lost in the pandemic. His death left behind this absolute, irrefutable pain that took over any sense of inspiration, creativity, and hope I had left. That is how utter its hold was on me.

Today, some of my feelings about grief have amplified while other beliefs have dampened, but nothing seems to have an utter hold on me anymore. This tweet pretty much sums it up:

In her poem ‘Dear One Absent This Long While’, Lisa Olstein maps her grief into strange curiosities out of sight (the driveway, the staircase, the trees). Then she hinges them on months - but it never works, because that’s not how grief works.

And that’s the only answer I have about grief - at the end of many, many deleted calendar blocks dedicated to working on these newsletters - that it neither absolves nor dissolves, especially when you’re actively looking to do something about it.

Grief, quite like Olstein’s poem, blooms coldly. I found in retrospect that this inability to write anything meaningful was really a preoccupation with waiting for this emotional stalling to be over without a timeline.

So here I am - and if you’re here with me and think there’s still something here worth holding onto - then stay.

There is nobody else I’d rather give these words to, anyway.

xx,

Srish.

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Writing this to Scott James’ voice in Park Music, and the turn of his voice as he hums some of these words is heart-wrenching.

Currently, Reading this book by Mike Mariani’s book ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us’ on resilience and recovery. You can read an excerpt here.

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Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives … not looking for flaws, but for potential.

—Ellen Goodman

I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency. Out of the space around me, standing here, I shape your absent body against mine. You touch me as the giving air.

— Carol Ann Duffy, New Year in “Rapture”

Meet me under the spell of the world where we shimmer with the dust of stars. We are wounds, we are salve, we are hands reaching. Look how the sky fits in our palms. Look how lightly we touch clouds, cup the sun. Look how much we can hold, hand over, let go

— Amy Sage Webb-Baza, Meet Me

Yet to me this decaying landscape has its uses: 
To make me remember, who am always inclined to forget, 
That there is always a changing at the root, 

And a real world in which time really passes.

— Philip Larkin, New Year Poem

An empty tree is filled with stars
and we, tired of dreams
seek new forms
A constellation without name
is waiting to become
and light
flickers from a distant farm
  
There will be no coming back
to fill with objects
this longing for unknown things

— Dan Gerber, A Year’s Turning

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Taking a moment to look at my past self- her aspirations and hopes for the world- to remind her that the big picture is always good when your day to day is filled with kindness and peace <3

srish (@srish.jpeg) • Instagram photos and videos

For the last month and a half, living in New Hampshire has become synonymous with an ongoing sense of surrender. Surrendering to the mighty forest, the heaps of snow, the ever changing bus schedules and the resulting change in our itinerary.

What happens after you surrender? You belong. In this college town laden with frozen lakes and deers, there is a one mile stretch that houses bars, cafes and restaurants frequented by students who map time in quarters and semesters. There is this belief that no matter how many of us come and go - and have been coming and going since December 1769 - there will always be a warmer part of this city that will remain beyond our grasp.

Every once in a while, however, this feeling is interrupted by a whirlwind of music and lights. You feel the season’s spirit in all its eclectic, electric glory. You feel awestruck by the incandescent Christmas tree in the middle of a vast field, standing extravagantly amidst snowstorms and choir songs. But it isn’t just about the lights: warm corners by fireplaces, bursts of snow outside, warm cocoa and an uncontainable sense of illumination everywhere. And I don’t even celebrate Christmas.

A part of me misses Diwali — imagining a home lit up by the same joy that was often interrupted by work, college schedules and seasonal family feuds. Why didn’t I go home for Diwali that year? All I recall is my father’s hurt masked by anger, mine marked with defiance.

But this cheer around me reminds me of home in a deeper sense, too — the decadence of tiny organic fires and the noise of the neighborhood crackers — of how every time I rejected tradition with agnosticism, I remained in close quarters of it. I still couldn’t give up the inexhaustible warmth of my family coming together in front of a tiny mandir (temple) to recite hymns they never learnt. Those interruptions — our dog barking at my father smirking at my quips while my mother blasted bhajans (hymns) at 1.5x the speed to get it over with — were my incentive to stay in proximity to communal celebration, no matter how little I understood it. I see now that it wasn’t about comprehension; it was about not comprehending together.

I love the way agnosticism appears antithetical to wonder but, in fact, sits inside of it — even if just for an evening or a couple of hours — it finds you somewhere to put your heart down.

xx,

Srish

It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life. 

— Nick Hornby, About a Boy

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,   
can you pull me

into December?

— Denise Levertov, Everything That Acts is Actual

When I slip beneath the quilt and fold into your warmth, I think we are like the pages of a love letter written thirty years ago that some aging god still reads each day and then tucks back into its envelope.

— Ellen Bass, Getting Into Bed On A December Night

December. A desperate celebration of an end

— Chandrama Deshmukh, A Teaspoon of Stars

You say I shouldn’t mind/ how the world doesn’t end for us/ when it ends for others/ maybe, it’s for the best.

— Navigating a layered existence: a conversation between Srishti and Madeeha

Don't hate me but I never found anything extraordinary about the mountains, nothing about the ability to walk quietly through a forest, and live slowly for days at an end symbolized desirability for me. The pandemic changed this, and I found a newfound appreciation for my parental home.

My friends and I formed a book club and of course, we picked up a Jeanette Winterson book. In her memoir, she writes, "There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms." and it struck a chord in me. Evenings come early to the mountains, and I find myself predictably tired and blanking out. The beauty outside my window is dependable and has a way of seeping into your gaze like happiness finding a way in through tiny moments.

What do your tiny moments look like?

xx,

srish

Onto other things, I've had the opportunity to interview Hannah of (@hannecdotess), an excerpt is produced below:

Srish:There is no questioning the fact that savarna feminism has failed DBA women. Not only did we not incorporate a caste component in our learning, we now demand to be educated from the very community fighting for their own rights. Because any intersectional liberation movement that really gets the job done must think about, and consult the women on the margins, my question to you is- what does a context devoid of savarna feminism look like? Maybe you can describe the spaces you're in (with members of the savarna community), where the conversation on feminism doesn't revolve around savarna talking points.

Hannah: That’s a conversation we are still not ready to have to be very honest. A context devoid of Savarna feminism is a context where those who have climbed up the capitalist ladder are not our leaders. But it is the likes of Soni Sori and Hidme Markam, the ones working in Bastar, Chhattisgarh fighting for the rights of Adivasis who have been unfairly incarcerated. Those who have corner cabins and a view of the BKC wasteland don’t get to be our poster childs of feminism. It is my friend in Assam working to help trans women get access to ration and food during the lockdown who to me should be on a poster. It is the friend who is writing critical pieces questioning the way Brahmanism hurts all of us who is more important to the movement than the likes of Kavita Krishnan. These are not women we “consult”, these are women who lead from the very front.

I honestly avoid spaces with Savarna women because of the gaslighting that we receive and the excessive emotional labour expected out of us. But I am honestly hopeful for them to distance themselves from the supremacy that Brahmanism awards them. I am hopeful for a day when they begin to see that all of our womanhood is held with love and compassion in the hands of a Dalit / Adivasi / Muslim trans person’s hands better than in our own. And in their voice, we all have a hope for liberation.

you can find the full article up on our website

Also, side note, but this painting by Carson Ellis is oddly similar to my kitchen (sans the babushka):

A week back, I posted this on my story:

It was an examination of personal hypocrisies contained in disbalances between belief systems and actual relationships. Before I state my own two cents, I'd like to share some incredible stories I received in response to my ask:

The unique battle between crippling loneliness and shitty partners:

The pain of watching your friendships dissolve in emotional (and often misogynistic) abuse, and how outgrowing these friendships is inevitable to personal growth.

Knowing and forgiving the parts of you dissolved in abusive cycles, and coming back up for air.

Feeling judged for being a bad feminist, but remembering that the bad feminism is, infact, feminism.

Suffering as a result of the gap between supply and demand for feminist men.

I love the way these stories hold so many aspects of identity: the hypocritical feminist, the indifferent friend, the toxic girlfriend, the cautious-lovesick dater. We see ourselves grapple with the wrongness of our standpoints while reinforcing a belief system that teaches us better. We want to witness the entire spectrum of love even though it's riddled with gendered faults because ultimately, we want to be loved ...we want to be seen.

When I brought this conundrum up with my partner, we tried to graph the problem and noticed that heterosexual cosmopolitan women today are stuck between the 'mismatch gap' of high demand/low supply of feminist allyship in the dating pool.

Of course, it's unsurprising that the odds are stacked against us in a patriarchal society- but it is indeed interesting to see how various parts of our identity converge and collide to accommodate this gap. I remember wanting to be my truest self when I was dating around - and the cutting hurt of having to walk away from bad dates because something sexist was said or done. Why, when I was matching my principles, and living my beliefs, was the ride home spent crying? Why was I trying to be a good feminist and an emotionally full-filled woman, knowing I could never truly be either?

Looking back, it seems clear that I was hoping to illuminate a perfect balance, that sweet spot in the middle where my conscience remained unperturbed. I know now, that while relationships are indeed activism, neither is devoid of constant conversation. Both relationships and activism will shed light on your principled and vulnerable selves, at times together and at times in isolation. But the negotiation never stops, in fact, the negotiation is the whole point.

I spent my last relationship holding myself back from correcting sexist standpoints because I wanted to accommodate the love of a man. I played the cool girl, I chuckled at sexist jokes, I held back, I self-erased. And it worked ... until it didn't. If my ex insisted that all his exes were crazy - it was a clear premonition that one day- I too would be the crazy ex. It took years of conflict and loneliness to ultimately bring natural instincts like flinches, scorn, anger, and intolerance to the forefront of my relationships.

Writing this to you, as someone's crazy ex, the question of conflicting identities doesn't tantalize me anymore. Maybe we don't need to compartmentalize ourselves as much as we think we do. Maybe the gold standard is feminist, and the true crazy ex is the entitled product of patriarchy who hadn't an inkling of self-reflection or the audacity to be better.

The woman crying in the car after a bad date, she rightly walked away from, was more than a caricature of self-pity. I guess what I am saying is, that the conundrum of being a heterosexual feminist female in a patriarchal world is inevitable, and navigating it is riddled with hypocrisies. But hypocrisy is only ever a problem if you are trying to justify yourself.

Giving up the idea of absolution in the form of "sweet spots" also meant giving up on the potential a man claimed he had, and embracing the idea that being alone was better. I think we have to take men as they come, and when our gut says a man is trouble we listen to it. We tell ourselves, again and again, that we do not deserve to feel viscerally uncomfortable in places we ought to feel loved. But I hate the false imposition of righteousness on relationships when my own relationships - political, economic, and romantic - are riddled in chaos.

So yes, relationships are activism. Another thing they are is chaos. And both things can be true.

xx,

Srish

Speaking of activism,

1. I'd like you to listen to this podcast:

I think it’s high time we renegotiate the manner and tone (yes, tone) with which we conduct disagreements on the Internet. By we, I mean those it is supportive of liberal politics and allyship towards causes of gender, caste, etc.

My take away from this episode is that: respectful dialogue is key to fairer, more inclusive politics.

E.g., asking someone to kill themselves before explaining your point sure isn’t a productive conversation, and creates a cycle in which a legitimate desire for empathy and justice is convoluted with emotional/mental harm.

2. This PSA:

   

3. This existential realisation:
   

   

4. And this beautiful poem by Nandini Sen Mehra:

   

Hello, it's been ... what feels like an era.

A lot of the last year has felt like a time in which we strived to preserve our bodies and mental sanity. I remember the semblance of mornings and evenings slipping away from me in March of 2020, watching the world as we knew it turn on itself, from the safety and banality of my room. I remember my own self unable to grasp the information on my Instagram feed in the early days of contracting COVID, and how the promise of leaving my apartment in 20 days was the ultimate absolution of my plotline. It's been over a year since.

These days, with an emotional threshold that seems to expand with every headline, WhatsApp forward, Instagram story, and work emails titled 'sad demise', time (minutes, whiles, eras) itself feels subsumed by death - first my father's and now, every person that was loved and known by someone.

I didn't know then, how long this would be, or how entrenched my naiveties were in the belief that the worst was already present, and not yet to come. Now the world feels like a shadow of its previous self, and every day a new reckoning, an act of letting go of the same things over and over again: proximity, loved ones, precedented times.

Within my nostalgia sits the image of my friends dancing in a crowded club, my father taking my dog for a walk, travel that symbolized possibility (not fear). How much of this will I ever get back? How much of it is left to be had?

Each day, I peek into my loved one's lives through a screen, watching them sequestered in rooms and forming tiny planets of consciousness. The way ebbs and flows of friendship, romance, bodies, and intimacy have been interrupted by the pandemic resembles a heartbreak- a collective, unending heartbreak.

And then, there are parts of this pandemic that have etched themselves into these extremities: QR codes at restaurants, hand sanitizers in the doorway, the uselessness of face ID on my phone. Instagram itself becoming a boon and bane of representational realities, of incidents struggle to see but can't look away from. All this, in spite of the fact that we do not suffer equally - that infrastructural help and access to necessities still remain a distant reality for most in my country- obliviating the question of whether this pandemic's experience is collective or wildly singular.

Oh well, these are my thoughts and fears on the world that the internet is giving to me right now.

I have more, and hopefully this mountain quiet will ease them on paper.

Wishing you health, and safety.

Srish.

— Rae Armantrout, Money Shot

Now, a poem and piece of art dedicated to my screen time being out of control:

Turn off your phone.
Place it, face down,
on cold sandstone: that oxblood-red back-step she buffed for sixty years.
Look out
past the well-kept lawn, its marrow stripes
while radio waves walk through walls,
bark, bone and steel: congregate to a signal.
Rest your eyes beyond the fence
on the trunks of birch that ebb into the wood.
Feel those white trees breathe.
The entropy of branch and leaf may offer some relief.
Whether they do or don’t,
after a time you must pick up your phone,
face its empty screen: turn it on again.

— Subhadassi, Turn Off Your Phone

— Peter Brown Hon

On creativity and burnout in turbulent times, by Akshita Sinha:

Linking this helpful article on overcoming art paralysis, courtesy of my sister who's been pushing me to write lately:

https://subtlemaneuvers.substack.com/p/advice-on-art-paralysis-with-special

Also, this philosophy of roaming the Instagram universe in these difficult times:

These haunting thoughts on intimacy when intimacy is obscure:

❝It must be nice to wrap your arms around an unscathed body. It must be nice to wrap your tongue around every word in a song without also asking to bleed out on a sidewalk.❞— Hanif Abdurraqib, A Genealogy

❝Surely the world would be something to love / if it weren’t for us, insatiate, / our history of harm.❞— Stephen Dunn, Loves

❝I didn’t know how to look for courage inside myself. I didn’t know how to lean on my friends without either overwhelming them or pulling away from them. I didn’t know how to show myself to people slowly, building trust patiently. I wasn’t realistic about the fact that most people are pretty jumpy about being needed too much. I didn’t know how to believe in the future or in myself. I was very, very afraid, of everything.❞— ask polly

Catching up:

1. I made a Spotify playlist filled with love songs from another relationship (the songs are bomb! the man wasn't). It's called "ever ours" if you look it up on the app. It'll be authored by a srish.mp3.

2. Had a wonderful conversation on activism in relationships with incredible women, which I will talk about in the next newsletter.

P.S. Credible COVID relief related information here: http://oxygenblr.in/https://covid-resources-chi.vercel.app/https://covid19-twitter.in/

My partner and I have been on a donation spree. Linking some credible organizations and fundraisers here. Try donating the equivalent of your swiggy, uber, and amazon bills. If not, please do amplify.

https://pages.razorpay.com/OxygenForIndiaEmergencyAppeal

https://milaap.org/fundraisers/support-children-orphaned-in-covid-19-1

And lastly, this tweet:

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

At night , while half of the world is asleep, do you try to listen to the echo of the world?

There are people out there who are having their first kiss, there are some talking to the stars and there are people sleepless with thoughts that could change the world.

but only if you listen close enough.

— Naeema

It's difficult to speak of the night.

It is the other time . Not an absence of day ,

But where there are no flowers to turn away into.

There is only this dark and the familiar place of my body .

And the voices calling out of me for love.

This is not the night of the yonng:

Thier simple midnight of fear.

Not the later place to employ.

This dark is a major nation.

I turn to it at forty and find the night in flood.

Find the dark deployed in process.

Clotted in parts , in parts flowing with lights.

The voices still keen of the divorce we are born into.

But they are farther off, and do not interest me.

I am forty and it is different , suddenly in mid passage

I come into myself. I leaf gigantically .

An empire yields unexpectedly: cities, summer, forests, satrapies, horses.

A solitude : an enormity

Thankgod.

— Jack Gilbert, It's Difficult to Speak of the Night

I don't want you to love me because I'm good for you, because I say and do all the right things. Because I am everything you have been looking for. I want to be the one you didn't see coming. The one who gets under your skin. Who makes you unsteady. Who makes you question everything you have ever believed about love. I want to be the one who makes you feel reckless and out of control; the one you are infuriatingly and inexplicably drawn to. I don't want to be the one who tucks you into bed; I want to be the reason why you can't sleep at night.

— Lang Leav, The One

— Alexandra Dvornikova

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.

— Elie Wiesel, Dawn

— Kryushyon

Do you sometimes look at something you've never known and feel like you belong there ? Somehow I feel like this painting is calling out to me , maybe it's because I'm sitting and writting this in pure daylight when all I want is to be in the silence of the night.

The night never wants to end, to give itself over to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows. Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun we break open the watermelon and spit out black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

— Joseph Stroud, Night in Day

We sat in the car& the night dropped down until the only sounds were the crickets & the dance of our voices & for a moment the world became small enough to roll back & forth between us.

— Brian Andreas, Hearing Voices

— Vincent Van Gogh, Cafe Terrance at Night

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

— Vincent Van Gogh

There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then perform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon.

— Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

Some nights you will feel like there are a thousand galaxies exploding in every inch of you and you are burning too bright to ever be looked at directly, and some nights you will feel impossibly small, like your whole body, could slip through the spaces between atoms and never reappear in this world again, and some nights you will feel like a paper doll, carefully crafted and easily blown away, fragile, too delicate to ever be touched, and some nights you will feel like each cell in your body is made of the strength that holds the whole planet together, and that is okay, because you are made of stardust and minuscule atoms and breakable bones and the building blocks of everything in the universe, and you are too alive to never feel anything more than human.

— Kostandina Ganitis

" Does it ever drive you crazy, /

Just how fast the night changes? "

— Night changes, One Direction

LINKS:

Music: 

1. Lord Huron—The Night We Met

2. Troye Sivan—Strawberries & Cigarettes

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

We see each other as the landmarks of a day. History doesn’t see us. It doesn’t see us at all. From this we should draw one ounce of relief.

― Naomi Shihab Nye, Transfer

I say are you happy?       and you say no, 

not even slightly.       you’re watching

your life play out       from a foggy window,       too far away

      to laugh and joke and love.       I say do you

still want me?       do you love me any less?

don’t know the answer       so you flip the question.

— Wanda Deglane, Passenger

— Pablo Picasso

Happiness is a vague bliss. Sunny and sociable, it considers the well-being of family and friends, while ordinary pleasure is immediate and private. If you say, “I live for happiness,” no one will challenge you, since everyone is assured of the crumbs from your meal. The flaw of this philosophy, however, is that neither happiness nor pleasure can be put into reality directly. The pursuit of happiness has to enter occurrence, and raw occurrence can’t be saved or savored. Pleasure, like pain, will be unmemorable if it exists only as immediate sensation. Neither an orgasm nor the pains of childbirth can be recalled as feeling when you’re not undergoing them. So we learn to ask ourselves what it was like when the encounter or shock of sensation took place. You monitor the inward influence of occurrences as you undergo them, ruminating an interior object, something that can be brought up, later, to release a musty whiff of pleasure; or chewed again, to test if it’s “the real thing,” life; or digested some more to see if it will yield some elusive nutriment of happiness.

The new object is called “experience,” in the word’s most modern sense. Experience is directly attainable. It is definite and cumulative, when happiness is ambiguous and pleasure evanescent.
— Mark Grief, The Concept Of Experience

— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

— Felice Casorati

The needles fell. The pinecones
dropped every hour
on my porch, a constant

irritation. It is enough
that we crave objects,
that we are always

looking for a way
out of pain. What is beyond
task and future sits right

before us, endlessly
worthy. I have planted
a linden, with its delicate

clean angles, on a plot
one tenth the size. Some change
is too great.

Somewhere there is a field,
white and quiet, where a tree
like this one stands,

made entirely of
hovering. Nothing will
hold me up like that again.

— Joanna Klink, On Falling (Blue Spruce)

— Hervé Lenouvel

There is a certain chaos in this painting , some unexplainable emotion lingering within the strokes of it , maybe those infinite unexplained emotion's the beauty of it.

“Grief is an ambush. You’re walking along feeling fine, look down, see a leaf, and begin to weep.”

― Naomi Shihab Nye

— Elena Yushina

“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it –

books, bricks, grief –it’s all in the way

you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,

put it down.”

— Mary Oliver, Heavy

— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

It is when you are asking about something that you realize you yourself have survived it, and so you must carry it, or fashion it into a thing that carries itself.

— Anne Carson, Nox

—Kim Cogan

When she was dying, it was impossible to see forward to the next minute. What was happening—for whole weeks—was all that was happening and happening and happening. Months before that, I got the dumb soup wrong. How awful. It was all she wanted and I had gotten it wrong. Then, in the airless days when it was really happening, we started to power panic that we didn’t know enough. What should we do with her ashes? Water or dirt. Water or dirt. Once, she asked to just be thrown into the river where we used to go, still alive, but not living anymore. After it was done, I couldn’t go back to my life. You understand, right? It wasn’t the same. I couldn’t tell if I loved myself more or less. It wasn’t until later, when I moved in with him and stood outside on our patchy imperfect lawn, that I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying. What do we do with grief? Lug it, lug it. I would do it again.
— Ada Limón, After You Toss Around the Ashes

I'm not afraid of hate anymore.

—Ada Limón, The Good Fight

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such
rush?
We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves
birds and animals and the ants--
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in
your mother's womb.
Is it logical you would be walking around entirely
orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
and decided to go into the dark alone.
Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten
what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird
failure in it.

— Kabir, Untitled [I talk to my inner lover]

— Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov 

I wish you a tongue scalded by tea.

A hangover. Burnt toast. Stubbed toes. A lost job.

I wish you weeping in the shower. Salt in the sugar bowl.

A wish list of sorrows. Grief, not guilt.

— Jeanann Verlee, Grief, Not Guilt

— Claude Monet

For some moments in life there are simply no words to describe the pain within us.

— Narin Grewal

— Alexander Zavarin

I am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

— Antonio Lopéz García

I’m not sure it is possible to articulate grief through language. You can say, I was so sad I thought my bones would collapse. I thought I would die. But language always falls short of the body when it comes to the intensity of corporeal experience. The best we can do is bring language in relationship to corporeal experience—bring words close to the body—as close as possible. Close enough to shatter them. Or close enough to knock a body out. To bring language close to the intensity of experiences like love or death or grief or pain is to push on the affect of language. Its sounds and grunts and ecstatic noises. The ritual sense of language. Or the cry.

— Lidia Yuknavitch, from The Chronology of Water

— Edward Hopper, Moonlight Interior, 1923

I’d tell you I’ve gone to museums 52 times this year, but I only go when I’m lonely.

I’d tell you I’m not always sure being alone is worse than allowing someone to splinter me.

I’d tell you I’ve never seen a relationship that wasn’t barter or been in one that wasn’t outright robbery, but vicarious living isn’t enough anymore

— Laura Villareal, If I Invited You to Love Me,The Cartography of Sleep

— Geoffrey Johnson

"It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so deeply "

This is a quote I've held closely for a long time now , I've realised how important it is to let yourself feel, happiness and sorrow always comes hand in hand, It might be easier to hide these emotions

But we are human , take it from the quote.

break down once in a while or laugh your hearts out ,let yourself feel.

— Naeema

LINKS:

Music: Dean Lewis—Waves, Coldplay—Fix You

Movies: The Bucket List (2007), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Articles: Mapping a Journey Through Grief with Picasso

This newsletter was curated by Naeema Kamal. You can find her on her Instagram.
As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Snigdha

— Jim Darling

where is the name no one answered to

gone off to live by itself

beneath the pine trees separating the houses

without a friend or a bed

without a father to tell it stories

how hard was the path it walked on

all those years belonging to none

of our struggles drifting under

the calendar page elusive as

residue when someone said

how have you been it was

strangely that name that tried

to answer

— Naomi Shihab Nye, Dusk

— Malwa Grabowska

I think I believe this.

Sunset the word holds more than a photo could.

Since it announces the sun then puts it away.

I watched your face, just out of reach.

The flowers are diminished by the lens.

The woman tries and tries to make it right

bending her knees, tilting back.

I take a photo of a sunset, with flash.

I who think I have something

to learn from anything learned nothing from the streetlight

that shines obnoxiously into my bedroom.

This is my photo of a tree in bloom.

A thought unfolding

across somebody’s face.

— Ari Banias, A Sunset

Anjali Maurya

Doing the dishes after she died, he was

struck by the weight of the butter knives.

Their cold handles pressed into his palm

as he lifted them from the drying rack

and carried them to the silverware drawer,

where he placed them in their narrow bed.

But it was the spoons.

It was the spoons that made him weep.
— Robert Grant, Silverware (after Donald Hall)

— Rene Wiley, High Clouds Over The Emerald

I will die, just as you will–you and I

unknown to ourselves and to each other,

when ears can’t hear or tongue make sounds.

Even a young poet who longs to lay a girl

as I did you will in time lack everything.

All shapes will disappear from my mind,

even the ghost of you lingering there,

your voice coming down the stairwell,

“Is that you, Richard?” “It’s me.”

Memories, versions, voices come to an end,

the stairs, rooms, buildings all gone too,

you on the third floor buzzing me in.

— Richard J. Fein, To a Woman Remembered

“the years go by, we find our doors and windows. Some are always open, some never were.”

― Naomi Shihab Nye, Transfer

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering, western star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming

Of a little love.

— Carl Sandburg, At A Window

—Aenami, Last Light

Did you expect this violet black

soft edge to outer space, fragile as blown ash

and shuddering like oil, or the reddish

orange that flows into

your lungs and through your fingers?

The waves smooth mouthpink light

over your eyes, fold after fold.

This is the sun you breathe in,

pale blue. Did you

expect it to be this warm?

— Margaret Atwood, Sunset II

“One day,' you said, 'I watched the sunset forty-three times!'

And a little later you added:

'You know, when one is that sad, one can get to love the sunset.'

'Were you that sad, then, on the day of the forty-three sunset?'

But the prince made no answer.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The sky takes on shades of orange during sunrise and sunset, the colour that gives you hope that the sun will set only to rise again.”

— Ram Charan

LINKS:

Music: 

1. Truce by 21 Pilots

2. Colors by Halsey

3. Sunset Lover by Petit Biscuit

This newsletter was curated by Snigdha Bansal. You can find her on her Instagram.

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Ann Foster, Bedroom Interior

It's the feeling of finding a home in someone, to look past everything materialistic into someone's soul. Love ain't gonna be cheesy conversations and fast heartbeats every day, it's gonna slow down eventually .its going to take effort and work but wanting to spend your life with someone despite it all, is love.

If so there is nothing more beautiful than growing old together.

— Naeema

we wished when we were younger
that we might retire in time
you would read books on religion
I would write poetry full time

how impossible in Singapore
although we hunt for time
you read over lunches or late at night
I write when my boss isn’t looking

in that real dream of our past
we had nothing but time
you watched your documentaries
I dreamt of poems on your lap

in a quickening dream of now
we turn away from the fringes of time
you read while stroking my nape
I slow your hand in my poem’s last line

— Cyril Wong, Last Line

— Ambera Wellmann, Now Now

This work beautifully shows the intimacy between two people , the way the bodies are entangled showing a calm embrace yet in a very intense manner. The abstraction used here leaves the feeling of it up to the minds of the viewer.

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”

—Robert Browning

The most beautiful relationship comes from understanding each other and growing together not just in life but in love. The poet says this through the line "the best is yet to be".

— Helena Janecic, City Gals 3

Let me love you,

and I will never cease.

I will never gaze upon you with regret,

only ever growing desire and fulfilment.

Let me love you,

and I will only ever ask one thing :

Grow old with me.

— B.Devine

— Clare Elsaesser

One day my hair will turn grey.

this dark, wild mass that smothers you and covers you when we make love.

Like the frost that creeps

along the window in winter, my dark tendrils

will dress themselves in silver.

"Your life is changing seasons"

It hums , and death

Stalks me ever closer. Will you still love me then?

— Willow Teagan

— Ashlee Trchka

Wanting to grow old with someone is knowing that you can be your most vulnerable self and being okay with it, Because sometimes all you need is, to be able to sit in a room full of silence with that someone and feel happy you have someone you can share it with.

— Naeema

— Pascal Campion

LINKS:

Music: 

1. Ed Sheeran—Thinking out Loud

2. Lana del Ray—Young and Beautiful

Movies: 

1. Up

2. The Notebook

Project: 

1. The Minor Project—A public dialogue initiative to help end violence against children by Leher.

This newsletter was curated by Naeema Kamal. You can find her on her Instagram.

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Snigdha

"Scattered on the walls are stencils, human hands outlined against a background of red paint. Though faded, they are stark and evocative, a thrilling message from the distant past... hands are lined up in two horizontal tracks, all with fingers pointing to the left. Elsewhere there are hands with slender, pointed digits possibly created by overlapping one stencil with another; with painted palm lines; and with fingers that are bent or missing."
— Jo Marchant, A Journey to the Oldest Cave Paintings in the World, Smithsonian Magazine

— Anette Hermann

It's that day. Hands really take on a special meaning on Valentine's Day, don't they? You might have the most fulfilling glass of wine in one hand but all that seems to matter is whether or not the other one has someone else's hand in it. But all that truly matters is that your hands are strong enough to hold you up. So knock back that wine, wrap those arms around yourself, and give yourself a big self hug. Happy Valentine's Day.

— Snigdha

— Ilenia Tesoro

— Susan Sontag

— Elisa Moro, You are made by all the hands that touched you

“You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.”

― David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

— Atonement (2007)

“Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.”

― Sarah Kay

— @sarashakeel, Collage art based on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam

I'd told you I was going to commit your face to memory, map it with my palms, take notes in such intricate detail that I'd know it better than the back of my hand.

My palms are leaking your memories now. I can't seem to look at my own hands without being forced into the time you taught me how to hold yours without the fear of being trapped in them. But now I am.

— Snigdha

LINKS:

Songs: 

1. I Want To Hold Your Hand, The Beatles; 

2. Be My Only, FM Radio

Reading: 

1. Why I Want A Degree In My Hand Before A Ring On My Finger
   

Aesthetics: 

1. Azra Khamissa, preserving the art of adorning your hands with henna

Small Business:

1. The Black Canvas, handcrafted leather products made in Bombay. (10/10 would recommend buying!)

This newsletter was curated by Snigdha Bansal. You can find her on her Instagram.

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Women Are Beautiful series, Garry Winogrand, circa 1970

In this series, 'Women Are Beautiful' Winogrand brings together the pieces of a revolution. The photographs were taken during the rise of the second wave of feminism; It clearly reflected in the women throughout America. The freedom that came upon them could be seen in their attitude, their dressing, their postures and in all the little details the photographer was able to capture.

Garry Winogrand’s style is closely related to abstract expressionism, his unique angles and visual representation with sharp diagonals closely represent unbalanced yet intriguing images. In the book of photos, the photos are arranged in a way that it tells a story, it's more like watching a movie.

Looking at each of these images I sense strength and freedom in the eyes of these women. The photographs showed women from different races and backgrounds, he conveyed to the world that the beauty of women did not exist in anything else but themselves. Winogrand dedicated around a decade of his life into capturing this series, he roamed around the United States turning the city into his beautiful frames, he captured the attitude, strength, happiness and beauty in casual daily activities of women in the streets. Winogrand was called the master of moments, there was an unbalanced accuracy and aesthetics to his photographs, the beauty of his photographs were in capturing a moment so perfectly, he used a 35mm Leica camera for the photographs so as to take quick shots. during the decade he captured more than 300,000 photographs for the series where more than half of it remains unedited after his death, the dedication he gave in to it gave birth to one of the best series of photographs of all time.

Mind was a prison, ruby lined
in its lipstick noir—everything woman
I was expected to be, trapped between
papered walls. What they said to do, I did not
but only levitated at the burning,

the body a water in which I drowned, the life
a windshield dirty with love. What they
said to think, I thought not but instead made
my mind into a birdcage with wings

— Everyone In Me Is A Bird, Melissa Studdard

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

— Her Kind, Anne Sexton

Women are fierce. They are powerful. No matter what language they speak, how they dress or the work they choose to do. What matters is they have a choice, and the freedom to carve out a life for themselves. As long as we know women, who are strong resilient,we must respect them, carry them forward, lift them up. for they are the product of all our selves, the women we were, the ones we strive to be, the collective struggle of our mothers, our sisters, our daughters .our salvation will only come if we stand together

— Women's Anthem, Lang Leav

The photograph is defined by the beauty of the frame, the light rays and the confident young women gaining the eyes of the viewers. But the way I see it is rather metaphorical, the women walking through the light rays; the light rays being the future of feminism.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard 'cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame, I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

— Still I Rise, Maya Angelou

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours."

— Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004)

Sometimes I wonder,

what the women who died fighting for us,

thinks about the events down here; Are they angry we don’t do enough?

Or do they understand the struggle?

Do they pity us for not being able to fight stronger?

Or do they empathise with us? What do they feel about women who pull women down,

Women;

who are blind to their own scars,

Oblivious to their own sufferings? Will there be a day when the women in heaven

And the women on earth, can rest knowing that the battle has been won?

That there is no longer people who want us on our knees

And no longer do we need to lower our voice or our heads?

Will there ever be a day,

where we will not be forced to put a veil on our dreams and identities for the sake of others?

— Hiba Ashraf

Women are not meant to compromise, as I say this I'm angry and I want each of you to be! There are still people out there and its not just men I'm talking about, but all the women who are soo blinded by patriarchy they try to put it on you. Its the unprivileged girls out there I'm scared for, for me personally social media has had a huge impact on how I see feminism, there are girls out there who are so brainwashed they can't recognize their own worth; feminism has to reach every corner of the world, and I know, it wouldn't just change the life of women but the world.

— Naeema Kamal

LINKS:

1. Small Business: The Enthu Cutlets— A sister-duo who want to reach out to try and make this world fall in love with EXTRA! .They design invites, virtual games, logos, wedding stationery, CVs, and anything else. If it means adding an extra flavour to your event, we're in. ( Fair warning: We are not design experts, just enthusiasts who have a bunch of amazing ideas and are absolutely open to brainstorming to create magic. At The Enthu Cutlets, we operate on a pay-as-you-please model.)The idea is to find clients who share our level of enthusiasm, and are eager to go an extra mile to for that dash of zing!

2. Songs: Scars to your beautiful, Alessia Cara; Women, Kesha

3. Series and Movies: Unorthodox, The Great Indian Kitchen

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Marcel Rieder, Jeune Femme Songeuse

Note from Srish:

Among my screenshots compiled in 2019 is one of a tweet by singer Halsey: “I will be lonely a lot forever and this brings me peace”.

The phrase reads like an urgent reckoning, complete with lowercase honesty and dismissed punctuation. I will be lonely, but there will be immense good in it; a lot forever, it may entail prolonged periods of unsustainable solitude, no husband, no friends; and this, my longing, my awareness, my appetite for emotional consumption; brings me peace, I have come to terms with the world and its harsh imaginations. I have attained the true anticlimax of salvation: being alone.

After a bad breakup, I took to being single for about 2.5 years. Those years made me see being alone not for its depressing multitudes, but for its potential to provide quiet relief, a relief that merits preservation and examination amongst dates to be gone on and romantic connotations to be delved into. All this without anything materially piercing through my foundation of blissful solitude. Which begs the question, what is blissful solitude?

To Beauvoir, blissful solitude was a space for singularity un-obviated by the constraints placed upon women in having to justify their existence by loving others or needing external validation to confirm a state of meaningful existence. To me, blissful solitude was standing in my balcony at 6 am, looking at sections of the city's merged streetlights, with the ghost of existential perfection vanishing before me. It looked like the possibility of stability before and beyond a partner.

If I am to look at my present life- shared time and space and decisions with someone I love- it is mostly filled with the daily humdrum of TV shows and ordering groceries. But every now and then, examination turns up strange delights of memory. The dailiness of work, and love. Avocado toasts and orange juice while checking our meetings for the day. The anxiety of a body riddled with intense PCOS. The insecurity of being left behind because of the shape of your body. At times, the desire to forsake it all and be alone forever takes over me, but I do not want to run away from this fear anymore. I want to sit in its company. I want to be present. I want to embrace the grief of a lost father, and a family grappling with its identity. I want to wear these lessons like hard-won epiphanies of a woman who had to learn to be still.

Writing about this is like eating cake batter whilst baking a cake- I doubt I’ve made any revelation here but somehow, both the process and its outcome are rewarding. There are a million articles on grief and moving on, some offer respite, some offer tearful indulgence. None of them surprise you. They may or may not fix anything. Lives rebuilt in the aftermath of wreckage still carry wounds of alienation. But I believe in the magic of time as the perfect antidote. I believe that love is, and should be a core desire, and that being in love is first and foremost a singular activity you perform towards yourself, even while carrying that ribbon of loneliness inside.

I think about that big bad break up from the past, and how small it seems now. I have not revisited remnants of that broken relationship in years. I know that what I found in being in love … I’ll never find in anything or anyone else. But that’s alright- I found other things … and these things are beautiful beyond my imagination.

I will be

lonely

a lot

forever

and this

brings me peace

xx,

Srish

— Charlotte Ager

— Jenny Slate

— Sharyn Bursic

“You come home, make some tea, sit down in your armchair, and all around there’s silence. Everyone decides for themselves whether that’s loneliness or freedom.”
— Unknown

— Beya Rebaï

— Sean Thomas Dougherty

— May Sarton

...so I wait for you like a lonely house

till you will see me again and live in me.

Till then my windows ache.

— Pablo Neruda

I know Neruda penned these lines as he yearned for his beloved. But in my mind, all the houses I couldn't quite make into homes call out to me through his words; their windows clattering, the four walls sheltering nothing and no one but emptiness. No one to keep the wind from echoing by filling up the void with mirrors, books, and crooked frames. No one to beat the darkness with vanilla-scented candles, to light the nights up in smoke, and make each crevice dance to the music. When I think of them, they're not lonely anymore, I am a lonely house too; and in these brief moments, I see them, I live in them, and the ache feels sweeter.

Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom

Still never had any friends because I hated everyone, for they were so phony.
 — Kurt Cobain

— Mike Mellia

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone

— Edgar Allan Poe, Alone

— Noor Unnahar

Note from Snigdha:

Over extended periods of being alone, I tend to retract into my own shell, giving up the company of others for my own. When I was first about to leave home to live on my own, this had me worried. What if I liked being alone so much I disappeared into a chasm of self-hugs, only to resurface weeks later when the world had forgotten my mere existence?

It's been two years now; I've realised these bouts of collapsing into my own self are necessary. I needn't fear them. For when people do try to forget me, as they will, be it out of their selfishness or their own need to be alone, or even isolation mandated by science, I will know how to fall back into my own arms.

— Snigdha

LINKS:

1. Music: On My Way, Meri Dastaan, Chidiya

2. Article: Indian Women Are Never Taught How To Be Alone

— Kim DeGooyer

When they talk about drugs, they don't talk about all of them. They never mention coffee. The low end of the speed spectrum, I grant you, but there are coffee freaks. And they're walking around, nobody worrying about it.— George Carlin

Lovely curves undisturbed,

Black caffeine and words
Tight lips part to sip,

And pause to take in,

The clicks of soft tips,

Against computer keys.
How intimacy is shared,

With a smudged mug,

Of red painted lips and

A writer's shaky hands.
Savoring the temporary stains,

Left on a middle-aged smile,

And the white blouse it defiled.
An aroma of temporary ease,

The loneliness of coffee beans,

Sift to frizz, pulled back grays,

And flyaways...

— Cheyenne Rhon; The Intimacy of Coffee Beans

— Martyn Byrnat

"That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow."

— Anne Sexton

If I could wish for anything, 

It would be to have you here with me.
But I know that'll never 

happen and that's what destroys me.
I only have the memory 

of you to keep me company.
As I sit here without you.
Sipping my coffee.

— Jon London

— John Singer Sargent

Side Note: What interests me in this painting was on how well little details have been explored by the eye of the artist.

How much better is silence;

the coffee cup, the table.

How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake.

Let me sit here for ever

With bare things

this coffee cup,

this knife ,this fork ,

things in themselves,

myself being myself.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

—Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)

I barely know you, she says, voice heavy with sleep. I don't know your favourite colour or how you like your coffee. What keeps you up at night or the lullabies that sing you to sleep. I don't know a thing about the first girl you loved, why you stopped loving her or why you still do. I don't know how many millions of cells you are made of and if they have any idea they are part of something so beautiful and unimaginably perfect.

I may not have a clue about any of these things but this — she places her hand on his chest — this , I know.

— Lang Leav, Lullabies

— Clare Elsaesser

to claim a morning

to forget our worries, our yesterdays

soak in the moment, stay in the present

if we want, we can take a whole day

lose track of time

disconnect from the rest of the world,

focus on ours

to share this beautiful memory in silence

the only necessity, coffee

nothing more, nothing less

we could add a few more ingredients

warm laughter and playful kisses

fulfilling our heartswhile we melt in the sheets

body to body, soul to soulgiving into what we desire most

even if it’s just for the moment

or we flow naturally into tomorrow

more has been gained than lost

with a simple gesture,

coffee in bed

— H.M. Gautsch, Coffee in Bed

Have you ever thought of the warmth that fills your heart when you have that very first cup of coffee in morning?

Or the warmth that covers you inside out when you feel the tenderness of his lips against yours after a long day at work?

Or the happiness of waking upto snow falling outside your window and be happy about it being a sunday as you can lay all warm and cozy snugged under your quilt for as long as you want ?

Or the contentment in your soul when you hear one of your favourite songs after ages?

If you haven't ,

I'm sure you have now.

— Naeema Kamal

— Madame Lolina

LINKS:

1. Humans of Safe Places—Empathy Ambassadors: A program curated by Humans of Safe Places, Empathy Ambassadors is a program that aims to empower young individuals to break stigmas and initiate conversations around the most pressing issues of our times. As a part of the program, they select individuals and provide empathy training and stigma awareness workshops with other resources for a period of 5 months, if you want to make a difference? (Apply here)

2. Music: Powfu - Death Bed (Coffee for your Head) ft. beabadoobee; Billie Eilish - Come Out and Play

3. Crisis (coffee!): https://www.instagram.com/tv/CKVo2DNlNul/

This week's newsletter is curated by Naeema Kamal.

Naeema Kamal is a freelance artist and writer who's finishing her second year in architecture. You can find her on Instagram @naeemakamal

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Edgar Degas, Combing The Hair

Long, black waves

Flow down and down and down.

Waves part with the teeth of a comb,

But come together again

Like the diasporic separation of my own

Identity

I watch the black and brown

Fall to the ground

Like leaves fall from their

Branches, from their

Roots, calling it quits before the

Winter and the world freeze over

Feeling the strength within each hair

The collective strength of my hair

My kes

Rolling it together, folding it inwards

Making it stronger and more resistant

To the questions we will face

The challenges we will overcome

My roots

My hair wrapped up

Lovingly

In layers of fabric

Each a representative for the sacrifices made

For me

For you

For Sikhs

The mirror shows a friend

And a stranger

Someone unknown to you

Perhaps one you should fear

The dastaar I see as fabric of my identity

You have been taught to fear as a turban of resistance

A symbol of terror

A sign of pain

My keski has made you fear me

Knock me down and keep me down

Denying my lineage

And yet, I still rise

— Kes(ki):Resilience, Harleen Kaur

— Harnoor Suri

When we were younger // We thought everyone was on our side // Then we grew a little // And romanticized the time I saw // Flowers in your hair

See it takes a boy to live // Takes a man to pretend he was there

— The Lumineer, Flowers In Your Hair

Desi parents don’t say I love you, they express love through awkward gestures, and I think that’s beautiful. My father’s love language is a champi. Emptying half a bottle of hair oil in my head and massaging it until the lines on my forehead have smoothened out, and all my worries have vanished. I walk away, my hair slick with oil, complaining he always uses way too much. But how I truly feel, I will never let him know. For this emotionally restrictive love language, I have learnt from no one but him. Instead, I will be there again next week, with a bottle of hair oil and a head full of worries.

— Snigdha Bansal

— Xinyi Cheng

Who knows how to make love stay?

Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

you ever look at a thing

you ain’t make, but become

a mother in the looking?

our blood is a thread tied

around my finger, tied

around her finger, that helps

me love. when her knees

swell, when her joints rust,

when her hair thins & flees

making a small continent

of skin on the side of her head,

i am witnessing her in whatever

state her body will allow.

Bismillah to the brain that

put my name next to her name

and said look at this girl your

whole life and know some kind

of peace. littlest bald spot, that no one

expected or knew how to love

you remind me of us.

i know Dalya’s thinking, how ugly

what a shame, but i wanna

build a mosque right then

& there. make an annual

hajj to that brown meadow.

slick as a coin. little planet

uncolonized. flagless.

her awful, but her own.

— Angel Nafis, excerpt from Ode to Dalya's Bald Spot

"Not everything about my hair is a political statement. Sometimes I just want to have fun with it."

— Lebohang Lang Motaung (@lebohanglang)

When we asked women what female rage looks like to them, it was always Medusa, the snaky-haired monster of myth, who came to mind ... In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth.

— Mary Valentis and Anne Devane, Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power

"Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"

At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.

Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.

Of course I told him about you," Liesel said."

— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

— Itay Magen, Woman With Abstract Hair

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murderèd,

Doting like me, and like me banishèd,

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,

Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

— William Shakespeare, Act 3 Scene 3, Romeo and Juliet

His hair tells a story.

You see a little brown boy with long hair and you say it’s “just hair.”

...

He sees Native boys get their hair cut by their teachers in front of the class because “boys have short hair.”

He sees his all white baseball team pull him out of the boy’s bathroom and throw him in the gravel.

He sees them laughing and calling him a girl.

He sees none of the adults do anything about it.

He sees the grown men accost his family at a restaurant to tell them their “daughter” doesn’t belong in the men’s room.

He sees the grown men get mad and confused when they walk into the men’s room, too.

He sees the racism directed at him by children and adults alike.

He sees their words cut into a wound that is 500 years old.

He sees his ancestors.

He sees those who fought invasion and colonization.

...

He sees resilience.

He sees strength.

He sees resistance.

...

You look at him and you see “just hair.” He sees ALL of that.

— Kelly Tudor, Excerpts from His Hair Tells a Story

LINKS:

Introducing a section of recommendations and suggestions, where we plug a local artist, business, and piece of writing/music/anything we think you might like.

1. Fun New Project: Museum of Material Memory is attempting to keep the vanishing elements of the material culture of the Indian subcontinent alive by tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectables and objects of antiquity. They're accepting your contributions of tangible and intangible forms of untold stories of women and queer identities until January 17 via this form.

2. Small Business: https://www.instagram.com/gloriouslyhandmade/?ref=lbb

3. Music: Good as Hell, Sar Jo Tera Chakraye, Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair

4. Event: The Hound of the Baskervilles

5. Article: A Visit to the Head Spa

This week's newsletter is curated by our new team member, Snighda Bansal!

She's a journalist and writer with a keen interest in art. You can find more of her work on her website and twitter.

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

Marina Abramović - Art must be beautiful...

— Frederic Hutter

This week, I bid goodbye to my sister, who will be embarking an important journey in her life from a continent away. Although we've travelled all our lives, and hardly ever lived together, I am making this newsletter to remind her that home is a corner of her heart, that homes ache and feel like people do, and to let her know that I miss her.

xx,

Srish

P.S. We have a new team member, Naeema on board, and she's added some thoughts to the curations of this newsletter. Say Hello!

— Paul Balmer

People are homes for each other.

Homes reassure each other that they are homes.

Some people do not need homes. For them, any room or floor

will do. They live in travel. their hearts are rivers.

— People Are Looking For Homes, Cyril Wong

— Naomi Shihab Nye

There are places you live
in and there are places you
inhabit. At home the silence kills
where no one is at home with
themselves. Someone tries a whistle
attempting to bring just a little bird-
song into the atmosphere. Lights
flicker on-off steadily but nothing
will change. The computer blinks
Hello! with excitement
but I am forever hiding.

— Identify, Michelle Tan

Either way we call it love because we want to believe that there is a force larger than us that makes us capable of caring about something more than ourselves. A force untouched by the exterior world. The closest thing we have to permanence. The closest thing we have to home.

— And The Walls Come Crumbling Down, Tania De Rozario

The earth is bright with beauty,

And the distant sky is fair;

Over hill and o'er the meadow,

In the sunlight and the air.

How bright and how enchanting,

Is each object as we roam,

And how sweet is life's contentment,

With the happiness of home.

— Septimus Winner, The Happiness of Home

— Cressida Campbell

"The pain I don't say builds a home inside me."

— Life of the Party, Olivia Garwood

Somedays walking past my neighbours, I see their doors open and little children shouting "goodbyes" and blowing kisses to their parents going to work, and in those moments a part of me slows down from the life I'm running after, and I miss home... I miss the smell of sabji cooking in the kitchen in the morning, the birds chirping in the yard where my mom leaves little crumbs of bread for them. I miss my dog who pounces on me every 15 minutes to remind me he misses me after I went into the other room, my dad sips chai and reads his newspaper aloud and these are the little things that make my home a home... and then as I get back to work, all these thoughts clear away and the timely schedules begin.. but I know anytime I see something that reminds me of home I'm gonna crave to breathe the air inside my room and feel the calm wind blowing in through my window.

— Naeema

— Richard Faust

“Loving someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”
― A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

— Kim English

Naeema Kamal is a freelance artist and writer who's finishing her second year in architecture. You can find her on Instagram @naeemakamal

As always, you can find more art & poetry on our website ~ unographymag.com

— Richa Kashelkar, Night of the Other Dimension

Reflections vs Intentions:

Personally, this is too heavy a year to recapitulate. At the beginning of 2020, I sat at a table surrounded by people reciting their intentions for the coming year. What came was grief, debilitation, and isolation at a scale nobody comprehended, and I am pretty sure all of this will spill over to the coming year. I apologize for not writing about hope. I do not feel hopeful about anything right now (my father is gone, and he continues to be). But there is something to be said about time, endings, beginnings, and the daily hum of days that takes us along. This newsletter will be dedicated to all those things.

I will not, however, lay down any intentions for 2021, may it be the year we let be.

— Henni Alftan

As for 2020, here are some things I learnt:

1. Ultimately, the goal is to love someone without need or panic.

2. Art will not solve the problems public policy should. Fuck toxic positivity, peace is not attained with spiritual liberation, it is attained with decent money and control over one's time. It's unhealthy to solely depend on art and artists to solve for mental health. That is the job of public policy (better work hours, benefits, availability of medical help), therapy, and most importantly access to resources.

3. Women must dedicate their life to wholehearted, radical, fundamental, and essential liberation in every facet of their life. However, this liberation once attained, may look nothing like how it was advertised to us by capitalist systems. That's Ok.

4. We need to stop investing in beauty the way we do. Beauty is not an empowered feeling, it's the social capital we were raised to acquire. We need a healthy degree of separation from the pursuit of 'beautiful'. The most pointless thing to happen to us is this cycle of body dysmorphia and unhappiness and insecurity. What the fuck is it and who the fuck is it for? When it comes to pursuing beauty via clothes, and exercise, and makeup, we can own our money and choices all we want - but as long as this performance of beauty is mandatory, we cannot be liberated.

5. Love is a complicated, wonderful cocktail of patience and haste. Everything in between is a love story.

6. In all political conversations, be it race, gender, caste, or the performance of a political party, someone will use an exceptional example to counter your position of factual/statistical reality. Tell them, "pointing out the exceptions means that the rule holds true".

7. When it comes to friendship, love & gifting— you have to give it the way the other person wants to receive it, not what you think is the best way for them to have it. It's a leap of faith, but a worthwhile one.

8. We must invest in our capacity to unlearn. And sometimes, unlearning looks a lot like outgrowing - things, people, concepts- that were once fundamental comforts. More often than not, you arrive on the other end with a softer, kinder heart.

9. Most of us will walk through life with a "ribbon" of loneliness inside us and that might be the most beautiful thing.

10. Number 10, this quote by Frank Ohara

xx,

Srish

On time passing by:

— Félix Vallotton

“In my last letter, I told her that the clock now chimes twice for each hour that it counts. The noise from the clock-tower would bother her, especially on Sundays; she would escape the bed before noon, stand in her bright yellow t-shirt, looking more beautiful than the sun. Inside her was a universe of collapsing stars – something broken and fuzzy, something that even she did not completely comprehend. She called it untreated trauma, I told her she was just fine. Now I realize how wrong we both were.

In quick succession, she left – this city, her scent in my closet, and then, me.

I writhed in bed for many days, watching TV shows, eating cereal for dinner and skipping breakfast. Misery became a friend. I asked myself all the whys and what ifs. Like acid, thoughts of her with someone new seared the insides of my mind. Sometimes I could push these thoughts away. Other times I let them take me down; I embraced them, but I could not cry.

The hardest part was not walking the streets that once lay beneath her feet. It was not the jewellery-shop where I picked the wrong necklace; it was not the ice-cream booth or the city fair or the long walk home. The hardest part then was lying alone in a small green bed, at 11:55 pm, dreading and bracing against the upcoming chimes.”

— Akhil Raina; Clocks, Chimes, or Why Does it Always Rain on Me?

On Endings & Beginnings:

— Ekua Holmes

On Memory:

“All memory is individual, unreproducible—it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened […]”

— Susan Sontag; Regarding the Pain of Others (Picador Modern Classics,2017)

“The defeated memory gracious as flowers And therefore also permanent in its way-- I mean they endure, are always around, And even when they are not, their names are”

— John Ashbery; Ostensibly, April Galleons: Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999)

On Hope:

— Seonna Hong

— Nikki Giovanni; an interview with Cynthia Adina Kirkwood for Los Angeles Times, Dec 4, 1985

— Laurent Parcelier

On a parting note, I leave you with this song— Country, by Kelly McFarling

The lyrics are so beautiful, I want you to read them:

Maybe when it's all said and done

I find the only thing I want

Is a place in the country

Maybe when it's all done and said

Belly stove and a feather bed

In my place in the country

Don't you want to find a place to stay with me

Don't you want to find a way to stay

We'll have a porch for sleeping on

When all the cooler nights are gone

And the dogs come out to greet me

And in the kitchen light comes through

For all the growing up we'll do

If you come here to meet me

Don't you want to find a place for sinking in

Don't you want to sit and watch the rain begin

Cause I'm getting tired of the speed of things these days

And I want to take my time and not give it all away

My distance from the fire's what I've earned

And I think that a slow burn is what will be keep me warm

We can fill it with instruments

The legacy of time we spent

All the places in this country

Desert varnish on the stars

Love songs and passing cars

All the places in this country

Don't you want to find a place to stay with me

Don't you want to find a way

— Kelly Lauren Mcfarling

— Etienne-Jules Marey, Flight of a Heron, c. 1883

As always, you can find more art & poetry on unographymag.com

Cover art by Richa Kashelkar. You can find more of her work on her Instagram, and her website where she’s selling some lovely prints!

Earlier in March this year, I wrote the following excerpt about Edward Hopper's paintings for a MOB Journal piece:

The beginning of the global pandemic saw art twitter swimming with Michael Tisserand's tweet remarking how "we are all Edward Hopper paintings right now". It fit the bill. Hopper painted people seated at the edges of the scene, somewhat resigned to their tasks but not quite committed to it. His art is poetic and creased with sadness reminiscent of social distancing.

Ever since the C-word popped up on the internet, its fear and statistics have become an inmate in my head. I am constantly washing hands, and measuring the appropriateness of my social distancing. But social distancing isn't linear, its a wave of allied emotions, of which the most prominent seems to be loneliness. What moves me about the Hopper paintings, beyond the paintings themselves, is the seventy thousand promptly retweeting it in acknowledgment of an incoming bout of loneliness.

Under the layers of work from homes and sweeping and cooking during a pandemic, is an underlying pandemic of loneliness itself. Hopper once remarked that the lack of communication between the people in his paintings was a reflection of his own loneliness. "I don't know. It could be the whole human condition."

Right now I imagine all of us sitting by the window, collectively making up the dim-lit-equidistant-squares of the rectangle building, swimming in a sea of buildings. We are all Edward Hopper paintings. We are all asking the same questions, dwelling in the same fears. How long will this last? How do we bring intimacy into our isolation?

Now, towards the end of the year, I attempt to answer these questions, starting with this poem by Ocean Vuong:

— Ocean Vuong, from “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong”

— Aracelis Girmay, “Elegy”

—Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, Rien ne va plus

“It’s so effortless to let my loneliness defeat me, make me mold myself to whatever would (in some way - but not wholly) relieve it. I must never forget it… I want sensuality and sensitivity, both… Let me never deny that… I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments.”

— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“Loneliness deepened by being a loner. Everyone else must be asleep for me to feel that I am not asleep.”

—Marina Tsvetaeva, from Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke

— May Sarton, from Cantickle 6

—Tomas Tranströmer, tr. by Robert Bly, from a poem titled “Track,”

And finally, this particular excerpt,

“I remembered the scent of loneliness / in my coat left draped over the chair. / I had fallen in love with its cut, / how it made me walk straighter.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa, from The Chameleon Couch

and this particular song,

As always, you can find more art & poetry on unographymag.com