As we lift the veil..
Dear readers,
Welcome to this warm edition of “The Weekly Shine”, the last one for this season. We all have been feeling sad, gloomy, and yet trying to embrace the vibes that the holiday season delivers to us. Not everyone has the same amount of warmth for Christmas and New Year’s, not everyone can be with their family, considering all that has happened in the second wave of Covid, especially in India. My heart goes out to all those who have been thinking of the same. Nothing can repair that loss. But we can do is to stick to artsy things, connecting with wise and beautiful souls, anything that can just inspire us to hang on..anything that can deliver the message of “This too shall pass”…I won’t lie but thinking of all the New Year’s resolution, etc..is too concealing for me. I believe it becomes overbearing and slowly acts like a compulsion to do a specific thing without feeling the energy for it. We can be slow and of course, do things that make us feel joyous and jovial.
As ever, I hope you find something in this issue that helps you approach your goal setting for 2022 in a more nuanced way, and that in turn helps 2022 be your best year yet.
Great things to look upon this winter-
1)Days off!!
2) New Year’s is just around the corner
3) Curling up with a book
5) Ugly Christmas Sweaters
6) Holiday Parties
7) Giving back
8)) Being grateful for what you have
9) Sweaters, scarves, and mittens
10) Ski and snowboard trips
11) Christmas carols
12)New Year’s kisses
13) Popcorn garland
14) The pace of life slowing down
15)Arts and crafts
art- Matthew Li
Year’s End- Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
Burning the Old year- Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Art- Rex Preston
Sunrise of this new year-Kumarmani Mahakul
Old year has passed with last night,
New year has arrived with shiny light.
Brightness is covered all over sky,
Weather has opened her twinkled eye.
Standing tall street light adores sun,
New morning walk has begun in new fun.
Men, women cross fly over bridge sure,
This sunrise whispers every thing pure.
Ensuring wisdom trees give us fresh air,
New year has arrived here to take care.
Fair we feel, fair we see, zeal is more,
To welcome new sun East has opened door.
God has given bless, bliss we sure feel,
Wheel of time and action improves our zeal.
Core of every heart beats seeing new sun,
Fun is unlimited again we run soon run.
It would be neat if with the New Year-Jimmy Santiago Baca
It would be neat if with the New Year
I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year.
My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots
my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws,
chews on for hours every day in my front yard—
rain, sun, snow, or wind
in bare feet, pondering my poem,
I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard.
But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots.
At the end of my day
while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido
I stare at my boots appreciating:
all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses
we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain,
I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice,
and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my
feet
keeping beat to the song, see how
my boots are scuffed, tooth-marked, worn-soled.
I keep wearing them because they fit so good
and I need them, especially when I love so hard,
where I go up those boulder strewn trails,
where flowers crack rocks in their defiant love for the light.
Links of the week-
In every moment, poetry is alive and well
10 tips- how to teach yourself anything
How to set goals for 2022- You can try it out, atleast.
Starting over life- How to bounce back from failure
Sharing an old issue my newsletter all about multitasking
The blue sheet- a poem by yours truly
This is the sky
it takes everything in-
a woman reading a pastoral poem
or a sister knitting a coral sweater,
things multiply and the sky watches through a singular astral telescope,
a full-grown child now a cobbler,
a disgust if it might think so,
the crystallized sheets of the Earth ferment it further,
on the balconies, plants often refuse to bloom,
salt- sweetness,
a motherly wallow.
A question of gazing at stars till infinity bothers the sky too.
It does not know why humans do that?
Why the toes point towards ‘it’—
a break from a monotony
a green sinewed eye of pearl
things happen too quickly
berries detach themselves-
Red, orange, mauve cardigans left outside to dry,
“Take me home”- the sky shouts,
“take me home”-
home, a point of semblance,
God’s temple. Prayers. Home- the sky shouts.
Where does it linger then?
I truly believe in the old saying, “Nature isn’t a place to visit. It is home.” More and more, we’re detached from nature, and like turning your back on your own elders, we miss out on a lot of important life lessons.
Spend time in nature. You may learn a few things. Here are some lessons you learn from nature.
1- Nature doesn’t hurry
2-Everything has a purpose
3- The best is yet to come
4-Good stuff always follow bad stuff
Thank you for reading all my newsletters and know that it means a lot to me. Sending you all big love, warmth, and happiness as we set in the new year. You do you. Slow and gracefully, That’s all.:)
Support me by leaving reviews or buying a copy of my poetry collection. It can be a great gift this Holiday!:))