We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. -Jack Gilbert in A Brief for the Defence
Hello friends,
The days are finally lengthening. In London, winter has been entirely without sunshine, but I am now seeing signs of the approaching Spring everywhere I look. And perhaps I am noticing things that otherwise I easily miss.
Come every new year, I see loads of posts from people about taking a digital detox – I have never really made a claim that I could do that, because I work in tech and part of my job depends on it.
This is not a new revelation by any means for most people, but a few days ago I realised that I would wake up each morning and immediately start scrolling Twitter or Insta – my anxiety rising, and context collapsing, as I jump from one terrible world event to an advert for a designer bag.
I guess I am saying that I finally reached a point of saturation, and (for the past few days at least) have quit the habit. Surprisingly, I don’t miss it – I suddenly find myself calmer than I have felt in a long while. Time feels abundant and I am noticing the real world where normal ordinary humans live outside of the sensational or perfect lives of those online.
The ordinary, the calm, the commonplace is never going to be viral, but it exists and thrives everywhere if only you look up from your doom device.
Today I want to share with you a little poem by American poet and professor Lawrence Raab. I have only just discovered his work and am already a fan – like all of my favourite poets, his poetry feels easy to inhabit. I can imagine him on a calm walk, with private epiphanies unfolding in his mind. I love how generously he describes things that others would just walk past, truly holding his attention and all his senses in his environment. There are so many ways of reading this poem but the lines “The woods are a mangle/ of lines, yet delicate, yet precise/ when I take the time to look closely.” stand out to me. It puts the responsibility of seeing squarely on oneself. All this apparent mess is actually precise, and delicate, and it’s our job to really notice the generosity of nature.
Cold Spring
by Lawrence Raab
The last few gray sheets of snow are gone, winter’s scraps and leavings lowered to a common level. A sudden jolt of weather pushed us outside, and now this larger world once again belongs to us. I stand at the edge of it, beside the house, listening to the stream we haven’t heard since fall, and I imagine one day thinking back to this hour and blaming myself for my worries, my foolishness, today’s choices having become the accomplished facts of change, accepted or forgotten. The woods are a mangle of lines, yet delicate, yet precise, when I take the time to look closely. If I’m not happy it must be my own fault. At the edge of the lawn my wife bends down to uncover a flower, then another. The first splurge of crocuses. And for a moment the sweep and shudder of the wind seems indistinguishable from the steady furl of water just beyond her.
Things I have paid attention to this week
I finally managed to get some prints by Provençal-American photographer and artist Jamie Beck framed for my home. I have followed Jamie’s work for years and years. When the first wave of the pandemic hit, she began doing a series of still life photographs titled Isolation Creation every day of lockdown. To me she exemplifies noticing and unabashedly delighting in the abundance of nature like very few people I’ve seen.
Winters in the UK have always been hard for this tropical girl. I find this app called Solstice designed by Dan Eden so comforting after the winter solstice. Every single day it feels like we are being rewarded a little bit of light – it’s simple, and perhaps unnecessary as a utility, but it gives me just a little moment of joy.
Past weekend I re-visited one of my favourite places in London – a bookshop named Librería located in East London, designed after the mythical library of Babel. It is evident that there that no attention to detail has been spared in the conception of this place and what it stands for from the moment you step inside. With identity design by the Pentagram and interiors by SelgasCano (famed for his labyrinthine spaces) the whole space truly embodies the concept it springs from, by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges —
“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.”
I hope you take time today to notice the gifts and abundance all around us – in changing light, curated spaces, or overgrown shrubs right outside your door. And I hope you tell others about it.
Love,
Sana