Good days
moving past the edge of something.
July and I think these are good days. Some morning hour,
planting rows of sunflower seeds in light soil. The feeling
of the sky bowing down. With the sloped back of the forgiving.
Good days. Years from now, I might not remember the details.
The slipping-away parts. Like today, running past the threshold
of the rain onto dry land. Somehow, behind me, it is still raining
and it feels as though I have run past the edge of something else,
perhaps belief. And isn’t that something? Good days. I am here.
Stirring soup and listening to music. Perched at the beginning
of the rest of time. Like a bird on a telephone wire, indifferent
to the danger. For I think good days are here, yes. Opening up
a window. Saying: the weather is nice today, isn’t it? And it is.
These are the slipping-away parts. Which will muddle into fog
and memory. Until then. Good days, I only ask that you carry me
up the stairs of the future. Over the thresholds between shadow
and light. Towards the edge of what cannot yet be known.
Hello, hello dear reader.
A happy poem today. My mornings have been slow and the days full of sudden bursts of sun and rain, which creates a peculiarly pleasant writing mood. As always, thinking about edges and thresholds. I had to kill many darlings (remove lines I felt attached to) with this one, but few things are as satisfying as a pared down poem. I love and hate when editing out a precious line brings the poem together. Why, why, why must good things require painful choices!
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading this week…
I finished reading Careless People by Sarah-Wynn Williams - a memoir about the author’s time working at a high position in Meta. It’s not a book I read for the prose, but it was a bleak look into the inner workings of how power both consolidates and corrupts. With a title that draws from the Great Gatsby, the book venture into the unfathomable callousness of one of the biggest tech corporations of our times.
This week I also finished reading Nabakov’s Pale Fire. It took me way more time to complete than I’m willing to admit - for a book that is just a little over 200 pages long. But in my defence, it is a staggeringly bizarre and rich book, where multiple intersecting plots emerge through various forms - a within-text foreword by the (unreliable narrator) protagonist, an epic poem by a fictional poet that the protagonist grew obsessed with, and the protagonist’s ‘commentary’ of the poem (which has more to do with his inner fixations than the true themes of the poem.) The book is also really really funny, and uses elements like the within-text ‘glossary’ to add more absurdity. A wild journey from start to finish.
Here’s what I’ve been exploring this week…
This cool (and free!) design course by Baseline HQ. The assignments in this course have been so fun and I can feel my brain working in that satisfying way to pick up a new skill.
What have you been reading / writing / exploring / thinking about? Let me know in the comments below!
I’ll be back with more writing next week. Until then, take care.
Love, Anagha.
It is so hard to remove the darlings in a poem to tighten the lines. Sometimes I don't see them!
I finished The Great Red, by Louise Erdrich. She is a writer from the US and lives in Minnesota (my state). She is a Native American, whose stories consider life from that point of view.
Ive just started The Mapmakers by John Noble Wilford. A history of cartography from early mankind to the present. It's very large & will take awhile to finish. But it's surprisingly interesting!
Oh, and I also love this poem! ❤️
lovely. “With the sloped back of the forgiving” stimulates a lot of thought around being able to move on, it’s brilliant.
and it would be sick to hear your thoughts on both books you touched on in more detail! ☺️
i saw that Careless People unpacks ‘lost idealism’ as well, and ironically, your poem feels like a leap over that sort of existential crisis, especially in the tech space (not that I’m entirely familiar with it).
1 000/1 000 🌟🌟🌟🌟