tender contributions

I am a relative newbie to poetry. For some reason or another, I hadn’t been called into its mystical realm till relatively recently. Maybe it’s divine timing, that it came into my orbit when I needed it the most. As of lately, I have been trying to find one new poem to read every day. Throughout this pandemic, against the backdrop of all the noise, the heightened fear, the uncertainty, the violence, the flagrant hastiness of the internet, these poems have become a salve for these wild times. I read them out loud to myself, like a spell, I relish the slowness of the syllables dripping off my lips in this fast cruel world I can’t or don’t want to keep up with. More than ever, I appreciate poetry’s expression of truth, its elegiac intentionality and the meaning they give to things that often feel so hard to explain. I feel like reading poetry out loud, to myself, humbles me and makes me not just a better listener but a better human. As if every carefully chosen word helps me develop a different kind of sentience, as if each new stanza opens me up more to the world in a new way.

The poems that hit me the hardest are the ones that really try to get to the crux of the complexity of being alive. This last week especially, with so much pain and suffering in the air, with so many difficult realities and conflicting dualities to hold at the same time, this poem by Maya Angelou which she wrote for the 50th Anniversary of the formation of the United Nations, does just that. I read it and it broke me. With my heart feeling so heavy and my brain is feeling so tired, I’ve been struggling to write anything but I felt the deep need to share this. I am so very grateful for this poem, for Maya, for helping us try to make sense of the contradictory cataclysms of life here on this very earth.

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

We come to it.

Here is a clip of Maya Reading “A Brave and Startling Truth” at the UN's 50th Anniversary, in 1995. 

In love, care and tenderness,

Naomi xxx

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‘Continue’ by Maya Angelou

Into a world which needed youMy wish for youIs that you continue

Continue

To be who and how you areTo astonish a mean worldWith your acts of kindness

Continue

To allow humour to lighten the burdenof your tender heart

Continue

In a society dark with crueltyTo let the people hear the grandeurOf God in the peals of your laughter

Continue

To let your eloquenceElevate the people to heightsThey had only imagined

Continue

To remind the people thatEach is as good as the otherAnd that no one is beneathNor above you

Continue

To remember your own young yearsAnd look with favour upon the lostAnd the least and the lonely

Continue

To put the mantel of your protectionAround the bodies ofThe young and defenceless

Continue

To take the hand of the despisedAnd diseased and walk proudly with themIn the high streetSome might see you andBe encouraged to do likewise

Continue

To plant a public kiss of concernOn the cheek of the sickAnd the aged and infirmAnd count that as aNatural action to be expected

Continue

To let gratitude be the pillowUpon which you kneel toSay your nightly prayerAnd let faith be the bridgeYou build to overcome evilAnd welcome good

Continue

To ignore no visionWhich comes to enlarge your rangeAnd increase your spirit

Continue

To dare to love deeplyAnd risk everythingFor the good thing

Continue

To floatHappily in the sea of infinite substanceWhich set aside riches for youBefore you had a name

Continue

And by doing soYou and your workWill be able to continueEternally

In love, care and tenderness

naomi xxx

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Today on Valentine’s Day, I am thinking about the expansiveness of love.

This poem felt like the right one to share today.

Love, by Czeslaw Milosz

Love means to look at yourselfthe way one looks at distant thingsfor you are only one thing among many.And whoever sees that way heals his heart,without knowing it, from various ills–a bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and thingsso that they stand in the glow of ripeness.It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

in love, care and tenderness

naomi

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I’m having one of those weeks again where I’ve been having trouble being nice to myself. Nothing too terrible has happened. I lost/misplaced a few things, couldn’t make a personal deadline and have been dealing with my chronic pain rearing its head again, but as I said nothing majorly terrible, nothing I can’t handle. But these ‘things’ have still managed to throw me into momentary spirals of deep shame and utter self-loathing so quickly. Lately, I’ve really been trying to be more aware of the language and thoughts in which I think and talk to myself, because I know how much power they hold over me. Even after all the tools and practices I feel like I’ve garnered over the years, more often than I would like to admit to, the words I use to talk to myself are nowhere near as loving or as tender as I’d like to be with myself. 

It’s scary to be reminded that no matter how much I theoretically understand that I am not ‘how well I handled today’s to-do list’, how hard it is to actually detach my self-worth from narratives around productivity when we live under capitalism. We live under a system that benefits from us not loving ourselves as we are. The global economy is dependent on our chronic ‘not-enoughness’. We are socialised to believe we are always competing against each other. The cost of living is so high that we literally can’t afford to stop. Concepts and terminology around ‘self-love’ have become so buzzwordy and so hyper commoditized over the years that attempting to discuss (or actually practice) ‘self-love’, as in ‘the act or practice of loving oneself’ feels almost icky, embarrassing, self-indulgent or somehow narcissistic when at its core being able to truly love oneself against all odds seems like the key to not just surviving but thriving through this thing we call life. 

Last week I listened to a conversation on Krista Tippett’s inimitable podcast ‘On Being’, between the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, (known to most of the world through her mega-successful book/film ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ who’s voice and presence I really cherish in the world!) and the author Pico Iyer on ‘The Future of Hope’ where she spoke with him about her daily practice of ‘writing to Love asking Love to write back’. A practice she says was born out of a time of emergency, 20 years ago which she describes as “a time of great despair and loneliness.” “I don’t know where the inspiration came from, but I thought, what would happen if I could generate somebody who would say to me the things that I’ve always needed to have somebody say to me, what would those things be? And I grabbed a notebook, and I wrote a letter to myself from that”, she explains. 

She goes on to list some examples of the things she felt she needed to hear and thus would write to herself (from Love) here:

“I love you. 

I am with you.

I will never leave you. 

You are not alone. 

I’ve got you. 

You are my precious. 

You are my beloved.

You are my child. 

There’s nothing you can do or not do that could cost you this great love that I have for you. 

I don’t need anything from you in return. 

I don’t need you to provide anything for me; I don’t need you to prove anything to me. 

You don’t have to feel better, for me to love you. 

You don’t have to stop crying, for me to love you. 

You don’t have to be successful at anything, for me to love you. 

Nothing is owed, nothing is earned, nothing is asked.”

Even though she is obviously the one technically writing the words, she explains that “writing them down was powerful enough to settle my nervous system. I don’t think the fear part of my brain was sophisticated enough to notice that I was the one writing it. All it heard was, You are safe, you are loved, you are mine. You can’t fail. You can’t disappoint me”.

Listening to Elizabeth speak, I was reminded that I had also been doing aspects of this practice intermittently in my life albeit slightly differently. Ever since I can remember, whenever I’ve done or said something I felt extremely embarrassed about or so very ashamed of I would whisper or mutter loving words to myself under my breathe like, “I love you”, “it’s okay Naomi” or “forgive yourself, Naomi. These outbursts were always so mysterious and mystical to me because they truly didn’t feel like they were controlled by me but they somehow had the power to calm me down even if only ever so slightly. Later on, I used to tell myself that they were messages from my Dad (who passed away when I was 9), that it was his voice speaking, his way of communicating with me, of picking me up off the floor when he was no longer physically around to. Despite not really understanding how or why it happened, it gave me a sense of comfort and made me feel less alone. It felt like a divine act of love when I needed it the most. Whether I imagined these messages to be from my father or in Elizabeth’s practice to ‘Divine Love’, or both because to me they feel interchangeable, it feels like a powerful practice of self-forgiveness, mercy and true tenderness towards oneself. All virtues that often feel so hard to come by in modern life, that feel more important to practice than ever. 

This Valentine’s day instead of falling for the many suffocating, reductive, dizzying myths about ‘Love’ and getting lured into the commodification of it, let us commit to doing the work of re-imagining loving ourselves so deeply as something so beautiful and so sacred instead of as something embarrassing and self-indulgent, because to me right now, it feels like the most radical thing we can do. 

I’ll go first:

Naomi, I love you. 

There’s nothing you could do to sever the love I have for you. 

My love for you is both eternal and infinite, I will continue to love you in this lifetime as well as all the others. 

You don’t need to be ‘successful’, or to be ‘heralded’ by others as some kind of ‘anything’ to be worthy of my love. 

You could never disappoint me.

I will always be here with you, no matter what because my love for you is infallible. 

I love you as you are today, in your exact form. 

You are already enough just as you are. 

Love, 

Love. XOXO

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Hello friends,

Happy Gregorian New Year <3

How are you doing out there? Are you still breathing? Sleeping? Eating? Are you okay? These are serious questions for serious times…..

I have started this first week of this year in a deep funk that I am struggling to shake. I think there’s just something about beginning another new year into what feels like the now never-ending pandemic with numbers and transmissions sky-rocketing everywhere (with state governing bodies and corporations that are continuing to prioritize profit over people!) that just feels extra doom-y.

Every morning I wake up and try to coax myself out of it: “Today Naomi,  you are going to be grateful AF for all your blessings and you are going to snap TF out of it and see your cup as even MORE than half full! You are going to turn this s**t around!” but until today nothing felt like it was even mildly lifting. This funk feels like it’s in my bones like it’s sucking the life out of me as we speak.

As a cancer sun-sign, I am definitely already sitting on the sensi side of life but it’s becoming almost unbearable, the smallest thing has the capacity to tip me over the edge into a deep mood I struggle to swim out of. Any kind of share has me in tears, everything feels so emotional like the tears are just part of speaking now. I don’t mean to be dramatic, I really don’t but it just is what it is right now and I just can’t seem to help myself. 

I tried to write out some intentions for this new year but somehow they all feel out of date. They feel somewhat frivolous and flippant like they belong to an old version of myself that’s not really here anymore. Like my old yearnings aren’t cohesive to who I am now except I’m not sure what I want any more going forward. I feel as though a stripping down of myself is in order. I want to tear everything apart and start again.

I am currently 1 month into a Kundalini Yoga teacher training program and every month we are given a kriya (a kriya is a series of postures, breath, and sound that work toward a specific outcome: here it’s transformation) and mantra to work with. This past month we were given a Kriya called ‘Param Karam Dharam’. It’s a kriya designed to aid in the process of transformation, to help align yourself with your life’s purpose, which feels so appropriate to end/start a new year and for where I am right now.  It’s a beautiful routine consisting of 4 simple yet powerful standing postures that symbolize: being open to whatever is coming, finding balance, taking action, and feeling deep gratitude for the things that have come. I am attaching the video for the kriya here.

The accompanying mantra is from a collection of sacred writings from the Sikh Siri Guru Granth Sahib is ‘Aap Sahaee Hoa’, which roughly translates to ‘walking into the unknown without fear. That line to me is everything I want to embrace and hold at this moment in time. It’s so simple, but feels so powerful, try and say it out loud to yourself with me:

I walk into the unknown without fear 

I walk into the unknown without fear 

I walk into the unknown without fear 

I walk into the unknown without fear 

I walk into the unknown without fear 

So this year, I am simplifying my intentions down to this. All I want and yearn for is to walk into the unknown of this next year and the years that follow without fear. Whether it’s truly possible or not this is the intention I am holding in my heart. If love is procured to be the opposite of fear, may this walk into the unknown be illuminated by the light of love, for me, for you, for all of us.

Happy new year, blessings to all <3

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hear them cry

the long dead

the long gone

speak to us

from beyond the grave

guide us

that we may learn

all the ways

to hold tender this land

- bell hooks (appalachian elegy 1-6

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I love the word tender so much.

I love how it rolls off the tongue, (*Come on! try it* teeeeeeenderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr). 

I love how when I say it, it leaves my mouth feeling all soft and sweet. 

It’s truly a word that is felt when spoken, that invites us to embody it, to live in it. 

I love how powerful it is when practiced, a literal virtue for future world-building.

BUT it’s been harder and harder to stay tender as of late. The overwhelmingly depressing 24-hour news cycle holds us captive and between the impending doom of our dying planet, the never-ending pandemic, and the everyday violence created by living under a system that puts profit over the earth and its people means that practicing tenderness as a form of resistance with ourselves and the world around us, has become absolutely imperative for our collective survival. 

The word tender from the old French word tendre first recorded in the 11th century for “soft, delicate, young” derives from the Latin word ten/tendere meaning “to stretch, to extend”. I want to use this space to work through how we think about what tenderness is. To me, being able to cultivate tenderness allows us to become stronger, more flexible, ‘to stretch’, to be able to not only endure but (because we must dare to imagine!) even thrive! Pain in life is inescapable, but tenderness is a teacher that shows us how to move through the wild ebbs and flows with love, care, and deep compassion. In this way, tenderness is so personal yet so political, small and giant, delicate and ferocious, all at once. 

To create this space of inquiry I felt the newsletter format worked best as even though I have built so much of my life and ‘career’ up to this point through the use of apps like Instagram, I have become pretty disillusioned with what they have become. (I co-wrote a book about this disillusionment in 2019 called ‘Mixed Feelings - Exploring the emotional impact of our digital habits’ - which you can read about more here :) ) I think sharing knowledge, stories, and tools have become more important than ever especially when we can no longer share physical space but I have come to detest how these apps have been engineered to exploit the most human parts of us that deeply crave love, community, and connection. So instead of letting my frustrations continue to be a paralysis, I am trying something new and setting the intention to practice what the early days of the internet felt like for me as well as for so many of us; intimate, sweet, curious, and earnest! 

I’m setting up a paid subscription for those who want to pay me for this work. For the time being everything I post on here will be accessible to all but the paid subscriptions help me stay accountable to this process as well as can start to give me a lifeline to new income streams as I navigate shifts and changes in my work life that allow me to build intimacy with an audience that is truly mine. 

With TC I’m also trying to practice expressing myself amidst a moment of deep shifts and inner change, so I'm seeing this project as a live archive to document my process of transformation while also trying to see how being forced to cultivate and uphold a creative practice during this time can be the medicine I need right now. 

After a whole year of living in chronic pain that led to a disability that left me unable to write (which I am still in the process of recovering from) I am also thinking a lot about accessibility, so whatever I write will also be available as an audio version and the posts will be a mix of formats, sometimes me thinking out loud, a video, photographs, music, recipes….etc so please bear with me while I experiment! 

To close, this thing is my humble attempt at a living practice of reaching and stretching out to you and I’m waiting for you to reach back and grab my hand so we can move through it together. I’m always open to musings and replies, the moon is a mere reflection of her sun, so what you see in me is already in you. 

In love and tenderness, 

naomi xxx

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