Poetics & Politics

Cravings for solitude are supplemented by my realization this year that there has been a lack of salience within my relations with others. This has exacerbated feelings of existential nihilism within me. But there are ebbs & flows within this paradigm. It's certainly not conclusive, nor is it a replacement. It's like how when palm fronds become wet when beaten with pouring rain during a tropical storm, but that which the very next day are dried under a hot sun. 

"Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments."
—Jane Hirshfield, Vinegar and Oil

It's during these 'oily' moments where I discover, for example, that I want to sit under the sun for hours and watch Frida Kahlo paint while I swish around on her terrace in her one of her many maxi skirts. 

So the next best thing is to don a swishing maxi skirt. Channel my inner Frida Kahlo.

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do.

I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you." 

—Frida Kahlo

WHO WHAT WEAR?
pleated skirt, U0, $10
ruffled coral button-upshirt, Mintage, $6
sequinned vest, Mother's from the 80's
gold & green earrings, gifted, from Abu Dhabi

And in these moments you discover that poets are your long-lost friends. Each word is a reminder of this camaraderie, of this understanding.

loss.

-

"your email says

i feel like a loser a lot,
like i’ve lost.

i think about all the things i’ve lost
weight, lovers, memory, dignity, time, self respect and people 
most of all i lose people
to prison, to ghosts, to the ground
to a changed phone number
to a nothing that meant everything.
i start to count loss with my fingers
the summer we lost our home
and last year, 
my pride
my innocence and my milk teeth in the same winter
my father, my brother
my country, my accent.
the television tells us that we have to ’let go’and i do.

even my secrets   

i lose to poems."

—Warsan Shire

It is only natural to wear your feelings. Mine take the form of sequins, feathers, geometric prints, faux leather, gemstones, and colour. At once.

WHO WHAT WEAR?

blue sequinned chopped leotard, F As in Frank vintage sale, < $2

colourful geometric-print pleated skirt, thrifted, $6

feather earrings, Aldo, $7
faux-leather tights, Silence + Noise, $10
blue pumps, thrifted, $3
bag, UO, $10

Finally, twenty years of existence, and the last few under the influence of a certain set of politics and poetics, can only make one yearn for a "connection with someone that isn't predicated on aesthetic ideals."(https://disquietblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/you-cant-hurry-love/)

But then there is this wonderful reminder

"We mustn't be in love with the ritual of love."

—Vivian Gornick
As someone whom I deeply admire has put it, we instead "must cultivate healthy solitude & healthy love of self."

 ♥ ♥ ♥

Drop me a line, so I can add things to The Summer Reading List, lovers.

Formal Introduction

I don't do well with formalities but I'd say I do adequately enough with formal wear.

                                       

  

*These last two purple & yellow outfits were worn to my cousin's wedding shenanigans. The "who what wear" follows in a similar fashion to the hot pink & white outfit's one. 

{inspiration of the last little while}:

1. One of my favourite stanzas from one of my favourite poems from one of my favourite poets:

“...this thought keeps consoling me:/though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed/in rooms where lovers are destined to meet/they cannot snuff out the moon/so today/nor tomorrow/no tyranny will succeed/no poison of torture make me bitter/if just one evening in prison can be so strangely sweet/if just one moment anywhere on this earth.” 
- فیض احمد فیض (Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “A Prison Evening”)


2. This excerpt is always pertinent:

"There is no poetry in this / There are causes & effects / There are symbols & ideologies / Mad conspiracy here, & information we will never know / There is death here, & there are promises of more / There is life here / Anyone reading this is breathing, maybe hurting, but breathing for sure / If there is any light to come, it will shine from the eyes of those who look for peace & justice after the rubble and rhetoric are cleared & the phoenix has risen 
/ Affirm life
/ Affirm life
/ We got to carry each other now / You are either with life, or against it
Affirm life.”
- Suheir Hammad, 'First Writing Since'

3. The current playlist:


All in all, just living the twentieth year of life, in this 13th year of the new century.
xx

Frustration is bound to mount when at the ripe old age of twenty you come to the realization that you are incompetent at everything.

Artivism.

♥ "I started to write about how when I was in college, I had one group of friends who were ARTISTS and another group who were ACTIVISTS, and the two didn’t mix at all. If you loved art, then you were frivolous and wild and funny and irreverent and provocative but in a way that was solely about the making and creating and consuming of art; and if you were an activist, you were serious and angry and you liked reading boring, constipated, jargon-y academic books about ISSUES like RACISM and SEXISM and QUEERNESS and OPPRESSION, and there was no time for the frivolous, superficial world of art; even though in my heart, I knew that the two had to go together, that  it’s impossible to make meaningful art without being interested in the world beyond the one you know, and part of wanting more humanity in the world is deciding that art is meaningful and that all people should have the right to access and create it."

- from {http://rookiemag.com/2012/10/literally-the-best-thing-ever-m-i-a/}

I love this quotation. It's not too hard to see that that art and activism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I was introduced to the latter through the former; specifically, anti-war/occupation activism through spoken word. As such, this resonates with me tremendously. 

It makes my anti-oppression heart go vroom-vroom.

20 Acts of Groovy

                                                                         - Guillaume Apollinaire, from “Zone”; trans. Samuel Beckett

It was after my parents threw me a relatively grandiose high school graduation party when I decided I would never like to receive gifts on my birthday again. Upon first glance of this sentiment you may presume that I hoard unchecked privilege and was thus supremely dissatisfied with the presents I had received. 

Not quite so.

Sure, I was now the primary care-taker of a few too many satchels that I would later pass on to my mother and grandmother; and sure, guests felt it an ethical decision to buy me jewelry sported by most of everyone else (heh); but for the most part I held little animosity towards what I had actually received. Rather, I felt like an instigator of gluttony. In short, the presents were superfluous. I think that at the age of seventeen I had my first genuine brush with altruism - I did not need all those material goods. They'd be cycled into the crevices of my daily life, and submerged in routine, their novelty would wear off very quickly.

Like Marshall Sahlins says in his 1972 essay "The Original Affluent Society", there are two possible courses to affluence: a) producing much or b) desiring little.
He also said:

It is not that hunters and gatherers have curbed their materialistic 'impulses': they simply never made an institution of them....We are inclined to think of [them] as poor because they don't have anything: better to think of them for that reason as free. 

I am radically far from desiring little; be it known I desire everything from meaty burritos at 4 am for no good reason, to q-tips when I feel ear wax tormenting my auditory cavities in the middle of something important. Still, this resistance of sorts carried through to this year and hovered in my mind as it came time to plan a celebration of sorts for my twentieth birthday. It wasn't till I watched this video, though, that "Urooba's 20 Acts of Groovy" became a conception.

I definitely don't cry easily but, man, my tear ducts were in overdrive when I first watched this about a month ago on a regular September evening. "20 Act's of Groovy", then, became a list of 20 things I vowed to do on my 20th birthday. With the vital input of friends, The List was: 

1. Write a thank-you note to my floor's janitor. 
2. Write a letter to someone I haven't talked to in over a year. 
3. Buy food for the person behind me in line. 
4. Go to the UBC Hospital & give someone flowers/chocolate. 
5. Bake cupcakes & give them to random workers, etc. 
6. Leave interesting facts/warm fuzzies around campus/transit/lecture halls/hoods of parked cars. 
7. Donate blood. 
8. Plant a tree.
9. Buy a meal/clothing for a homeless person and sit with them and talk to them. 
10. Donate to Landesa http://www.landesa.org/ Or maybe Kiva.org? 
11. Write a letter to my future self. Perhaps 40th self?
12. Buy flowers/write a card for a parent waiting at the Children's Hospital.
13. Write a thrifty-fashion-love-yo'-self manifesto to share with peepz. 
14. Go to a restaurant, find a person who is eating alone, sit in front of them and go "Sorry I'm late, but you look amazing tonight." 
15. {on the weekend} make a meal/bake treats for the famjam.
16. Get flowers delivered for Mummy.
17. Go to the public library and slip notes in all my favourite books. 
18. Write a letter to my future significant other. (hahahaha) 
19. Tell a professor I really enjoyed their lecture. 
20. Write poetry at Wreck Beach.

As of today, I've been only able to do a fraction of these, however fear not, this means good cheer will spread over the course of more than one day! To keep the momentum going, I had also created "pledge" forms - slips of paper given to those I had done acts of kindness to, involving the promise of a good deed to be passed on to someone else. The sustainability of this initiative can also be exemplified by friends telling me they want to do this for their birthday, yeeeehaw!

Many delightful things occurred on the anniversary of the day I came out of my mother's womb, including:

1) A midnight visit by approximately 1483498 people, who crammed into my teeny chambers:

2) A friend who pulled me out of class to surprise me with cake and a rose, with as much vigour and pomp (re: swag) that my now-20-year-old body frame could take.

3) The pleasantly-surprised reaction of this bus driver who I presented a tulip to & which was captured SO PERFECTLY & unbeknownst to me by a friend:

For all other happenings of the day, there is no photographic evidence; they shall be etched in my 20-year-old brain, howevs. 

The most profound moment of the day however, had to be when I attempted to complete #4 on The List: Go to the UBC Hospital & give someone flowers/chocolate. 

At promptly 4 pm, I staggered over to the florist on campus & bought about half a dozen tulips. I attached notes & quotes to them, like so:

With a friend in tow, I ventured over to the campus hospital. Upon discovery that there aren't many patients there during the day, we decided to head to closest hospital in the city. Choosing a specific unit was a process, but we decided to hand out our flowers at the cancer agency. We learned, though, that that building had been closed off due to the spread of a contagious gastro-intestinal illness. 

We then headed towards the main building, vouching for the input of the lady at Information. [word-for-word accuracy is not guaranteed]

"Hi, we were wondering if we could deliver flowers to patients?" I inquired.

"Sure. What patient are you looking for?" she asked.

"Oh, no one in particular. We have several flowers and notes we'd like to hand out."

"Oh wow, that is so nice! Um...hold on, um...let me check where you should go."

After a phone call, she turned to us, "The sixteenth floor would be the best place!" She gave us directions of how to reach there. 

"Good luck and thank you!" she called after us.

We arrived on the sixteenth floor. We had forgotten to ask what kind of patients this floor held, but after having attempted to do this deed several times, we were eager to begin. We walked up to the receptionist, told her our purpose, and asked her what room we should begin with.

"Uhhh, this floor? Um. Well, let me think. Uh. Well, you can give them to Eileen just over to your left there. But, uh, I think that would be it on this floor."

We were a little confused at this point; the act of handing out flowers to strangers is generally perceived as something positive. Why had the receptionist's tone been so...unenthusiastic?

We walked towards Eileen's room. Naturally, I was frightened by the tiny dog that lay at her feet, who we learned was named Cookie. After chatting with Eileen for a bit, we handed her a tulip. She told us she was able to go home next week; we shared in her elation.  

After having said goodbye, we proceeded to walk down the hallway again and stumbled upon a nurse. We wanted to continue delivering flowers on this floor after such a great first experience with Eileen, and thus prompted her to tell us where we could go next.

She had the same cautious tone as the receptionist. 

"Uh, on this floor? Um. Let me see. Uh, perhaps this room to your right? You could see if she'd like that. But she may not be able to respond."

"Oh, okay, we could certainly try", said my friend Aysha.

As we were beginning to head into the direction of her room, the nurse asked us, "You ladies do know what floor this is?"

"Yes, the palliative one; we saw the sign when we got here," I answered.

"Okay. Do you know what that means?"

Me and Aysha shook our heads. A moment of silence passed.

"What does it mean?" Aysha inquired.

"Palliative...It essentially refers to those who are...waiting to die."

My and Aysha looked at one another, wells of tears forming in both our eyes. My thoughts immediately traced themselves back to Eileen. Eileen, who was excited to go home in a week. 

We left the floor immediately thereafter and continued to hand out our tulips to hospital staff: volunteers, nurses, doctors. 

***

On the twentieth anniversary of the day of my birth, I had witnessed what lies diametrical to birth: death. Rather than ruminate over the implications of this, I was instilled with the cognizance of why 20 Acts of Groovy was so important to me.  It couldn't have come at a more appropriate time in my life, where with the advent of so many perspectives, one entertains different philosophies each day and night.

I can already tell my twenties will be an epoch of epic [self-/]discovery.