three.
This newsletter is here to connect you to your five senses and your grief at times when life and death make no sense. Consider it an imperfect “grounding exercise” for the month.
My thirty-year-old friend, my-thirty-years-long friend, has died. The chemo shrinking her tumor also shrank her body. She was hopeful and tired. Her mother says her fight to live taught her the strength to die.
I feel a lot and nothing at all. I see the life I have and get to keep living and consider what it means to live better. I smell the warm, freshly washed fur of my dog. I hear a stranger’s too-loud music bleed from his headphones. I taste the static of mineral water against Arizona heat. And I grieve, and I forget to grieve, and I remember her love.
FEEL - 26 rue Saint-Fargeau
A vertical journey through Parisian social housing. From dawn to dusk, floor after floor, the film depicts, with humor and poetry, different ways of life. It’s a glimpse into an ecosystem, to the rhythms coexisting from person to person, in a single place.
SEE - The Amateur Cloud Society
Someone told me that the simple, physical action of looking up creates a feeling of ease. Whether that’s true for you or not, this article puts a new spin on cloud gazing, ether, and “looking towards the heavens.”
SMELL - Why I Start My Work Days with Scent
A co-counselor at the Trevor Project (a suicide hotline for LGBTQ youth) always washed her hands between calls. It was her way of creating a gesture of transition: release one situation, open herself to another. Tracy Wan similarly uses scent to benchmark and transition through her day and through the world.
HEAR - New Song Rising // Marina Allen
The line “release the death of what you know” hits hard but is softened by Marina Allen’s voice. Let yourself float on this song’s beautiful surface, dip bellow the lyrics if you like.
TASTE - Omelette
Something delightful to round out the month. A dog sees his human scraping by and takes matters into his own hands (paws). Being cooked dinner after a long day is a special comfort — a small treat for the giver and receiver.
GRIEVE - Beyond the Blues: Poet Mary Ruefle’s Color Spectrum of Sadness
Mary Ruefle is balanced. Her language is precise without being icy or self important, it’s beautiful but still “of this world.” In this book she offers a color study of sadness, and it does all the things.
