074: Nevertheless
1 Photography + 1 Poem + 1 Quote
1.
Humans — photography by Raphy Mendoza
From the Community
I came across the poem "Nevertheless: An Ecstatic Ode" (👇🏽) through
’s Substack in the early part of last week, and snippets of it kept re-emerging as I went about my business. It reminded me of how I used to walk around my hometown, as well as unfamiliar cities and just... people watch. I would sit outside a café, at the bus stop, on a train, on a park bench, etc. I would imagine what might be taking up their attention at that particular moment. What are they worried about? Or excited about? Or angry about? Are they bored of their life, or do they jump out of bed each morning?Now and again I would have my camera and I would take a photo. I had written 'I haven't really done this since the pandemic came and went', which is true. But I realised I haven't done this since before all of that. It would be easy to say that life got busy with lots to do - this would also be true. I have a full and rich schedule and I only sometimes complain about it. But that's not really the reason.
I still sit in traffic and look across to the car next to me, I still wait at train stations and airports and I still stop by cafés for lunch and coffee now and again.
But I stopped seeing. I stopped imagining. I stopped being curious about the human beings that I'm not directly in contact with.
Realising this was a kind of strange experience. It was uncomfortable for a while (that's why this is coming out on a Monday instead of Sunday - I was procrastinating). I thought I had 'let myself down' in some way... or that it was somehow 'something wrong' - that I'd spent half a decade being un-curious. It meant there was something wrong with me for not living up to my value of being curious.
But it doesn't mean anything at all. There was something I used to do, and then I didn't anymore, and now maybe I will again, or not.
And anyway, here's some photography I hope you'll enjoy :).
2.
Nevertheless: An Ecstatic Ode — a poem by Airea D. Mattheys
From Substack
Praise to the father holding his sleeping daughter on the 52nd Street trolley To the daughter sleeping through the pothole thrum Praise to the diabetic with shorn feet & sugarcane blood To the shooting nerve through her left hip & lower spine To those flying gods on their routes Praise to the red-headed Rasta & his ganja-laced T-shirt To the Vietnam vet at Cass Corridor holding his sign To the sign which reads: “Not homeless Just strugglin” Praise to the barbers calming the fatherless in their chairs To the mothers trying not to overhear this soothing To soothing Praise to razed skylines & ruins To whatever replaces the horizon To the lost toddler who refused to speak to strangers To the strangers who would not let him be lost Praise to sisters in love with whoever won’t love them To others in love with whoever won’t bother Praise to the lovers who left lessons the lovers who left scars To the memory of topography raised surface, smooth to touch To id’s fragile shards & ego’s fringed edge Praise to boys who make beeswax fingernails To little girls who wear fatigues & eye black Praise to the overlooked the overlooking Praise to Miss Toto, Bambi Banks, Pearl Harbour To bombs that never landed To satellites that couldn’t be coaxed to Earth To the dreams in bodies that won’t hold a lie Praise to beauty that doesn’t suffer rules To dollar store sheik & sleek vintage tins To Type 2 wave & Type 4 curl To wanting to be To being Praise to the hard-won win against Chronos To the stone wrapped in swaddling the neurotic eaglet safe in hiding the sirens fostering seafamilies the eye uncrossed, uncrowed Praise to love’s resurrection incising shame’s jugular To the seven ecstatic hallelujahs To the left hand counting 5 of them To le petit mort & headboard bang Praise to boot houses children running over frayed laces Praise to the old kitchen, half-gutted, its springtime gnats & winter flies its mice hugging sweet corners Praise to that which endures To old doors, layers of paint years of storm beating solid oak To the gable roof that is a ceiling, the coffered ceiling that is also a floor Praise to what shoulders weight To brackets & load-bearing walls beams & spindly skeletons sacred geometry & tangents To levees & pregnant summers the bullet-ridden body coilspring & wheel Praise to open wombs & caskets any mother who must decide either To the crown & seed lowering into the thorny or fertile soil Praise to the ground unfastening To every earthworm’s bristle & every seraph’s six wings entwined in songwaltz of welcome To the body relenting solely to dust the spirit ascending straightway to stars Praise to all who rejoice in becoming To all who transform in return
Our day-to-day experiences of being human are so mundane. And yet they are so the stuff of life, and are our life. And yet it is not who we are - we are our spirit. And yet we are of the earth, and our bodies are our home - it is what has us be alive.
We become and we transform, all day every day. Both spirit and matter.
"To the body relenting solely to dust, the spirit ascending straightway to stars. Praise to all who rejoice in becoming, to all who transform in return"
The original post on
is definitely worth a read too 👇🏽.
3.
On Kindness — a quote from Etienne de Grellet
From the Library
“I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
— Etienne de Grellet
And perhaps more important than mere curiosity, is kindness. In knowing the temporariness of human being, in seeing the stories that make up our lives, and in recognising ourselves in each other - we have the opportunity to be kind.
📆 MONDAY POSTS 📆
Quick poll…
You noticed that you had stopped noticing. That is a vivid symbol of the disconnect we have all experienced. I feel like this is an invitation to wake up and reconnect.
That poem..! I have goosebumps....