Grand Wedding or Great Funeral

For you, I will make it to both.

Jul 25, 2024

I feel very standoffish. There is a world out there and yet I remain in the secret closets of my life, in suits and boots, preparing for a grand wedding or a great funeral, only god knows.

Lately, I have been thinking about my father. He was a very able man; he could laugh, cry, demean, demoralize, love, get loud, get quiet, cook, fix the electricity, fix the broken tables, manufacture, and demolish. He was charming too, and foolish beyond his own doing. In moments, I looked at him very attentively, especially during nights after the end of long days, and it almost always nudged towards a feeling that makes you go like - “Oh.”

“Oh” is a very sad word and a sadder feeling. Some things only make me go like - “Oh.”

When I looked at him, I felt I was looking at a very sad face. I’d question myself - Is it okay for a son to walk up to his father and say, ‘How are you?’; I didn’t know better and a decade passed by. I still question myself - Is it okay for a son to walk up to his father and say, ‘How are you?’; I took too long and he’s gone.

Sometimes I wonder how many questions a human heart dies with. Questions that take a lifetime of convincing oneself that yes, yes, it is okay to ask. It is okay to walk up to someone and ask - How are you? I know we share different lives altogether but if there’s anything you need from me, you can just ask, like really, you can just ask.

“I'm sorry I keep saying, How are you? when I really mean, Are you happy?”

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

I have been grieving for a long time. The boy in me is still a boy and the bug in me is still a bug. But when you’ve hurt your hands, you will always find someone to fold the cuff of your shirt; when you’re out with friends you will always find someone to click a picture so no misses out; when your umbrella cannot withstand the wind and breaks, you will always find someone making space for you under their own or say, I might as well enjoy the rain; Danusha Laméris would call these small kindnesses, but they are also Good Grief Companions.

Do you know?

In an indigenous village in northern Australia, community members bear witness to grief.
The night someone dies, villagers move a piece of furniture or other belongings into their yard. When the bereaved family wakes up the next morning, they see immediately that the world has changed. Not just for them, but for everyone around them.
This story, shared by grief expert David Kessler in Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, is about a community that gets the needs of the bereaved.

It is to say that I am moving a piece of furniture for all of you, for any loss that you might or might not have experienced, or any feeling that is leaving or lingering.

Very few people ever really are alive and those that are never die; no matter if they are gone. No one you love is ever dead.
Ernest Hemingway
Letter to Gerald and Sara Murphy
29th March 1935

I am at a point in life where awards and achievements and success and sell-outs give me a real ick. It does not move me one bit. I am moved by feelings and emotions and tenderness and bodies and smiles and safety and spaces and communities and love and grief and someone doing something for someone with their own hands or someone expanding their language to make you feel included or someone considering how you must feel on certain festivals and why you must feel the way you feel.

We're in a world where
there's famine and hunger and
people are dodging bullets
and having their nails pulled
out in dungeons so it's very
hard for me to place any high e
value on the work that I do to
write a song. Yeah, I work
hard but compared to what?
Leonard Cohen

I look at old pictures and feel that life was once lived and is now a part of secret human history. We are all part of secret human history. Even when we were miserable, we made memories.
Even saints are auditioning for heaven, but I think my friends will make it first.
I still visit my childhood home and stand on the balcony. Not much has changed. I still get the morbid urge to jump.
I thought time would be the measure of my life, but it is not. It is the people you love. S, I will now look at life in two ways; before I loved you and after I loved you.
I have broken wrists, hunched back, and swollen ribs. I have moved in a thousand different directions but none that took me to happiness. Loneliness is the mapmaking of my heart.
If I had a house of my own, I would fill the walls with pictures of all the people I’ve ever loved. I don’t have a house of my own. I don’t have pictures of all the people I’ve ever loved.
Life is not always a rescue mission. There are some days where you only have to stay inside and eat, Julem told him. Julem, who had gone out of her way to learn cooking and make him something that would feel easy in his mouth. Julem, who was trying to rescue him from himself.
Even in my house, I try to find the farthest corner. Alone in my house, I try to be more alone.
In the pocket, I found the ticket to your city, the letters of which are now washed out. Doing laundry alone, I have always found out to be a world moving backward and there is water and water and water everywhere, and grief spins in circles.
It is the end of July. I have a fever which is the same fever from my childhood. I can recognize it by its warmth. My mother is about to hug me. The month has been hard on me.
Helping hands?
I am struggling with a lot of health issues currently and in a terrible financial slump. I have quit my current job and my salary has been withheld for two months. I need support to get me through the coming month and pay the utility bills and everything. If you like my writing, please consider making a one-time donation or G-Paying at 9872450995. Any amount that is comfortably affordable works. Even if you are not in the capacity to help financially, do share my newsletter with those who you think might fancy it. I am sending you love and gentle pats regardless.
I am still not comfortable with the thought of monetizing my writing. It almost puts me to shame. A similar situation occurred last year when this beautiful community helped me out. All I want and wish for is stable mental health and a stable financial life, even if only for a little while.
Some poems for you: