Splash No. 159 - Ordinary
Ordinary
A bird woke me up the other day at 5:30AM and all of my love for the class of vertebrates was nowhere to be found. Even if I had the brain cells to identify what sounded like a ticking time bomb announcing its presence, I was too annoyed by the interruption from my journeys in la la land to find the beauty in it. On this morning, the bird was just a noise, just a nuisance.
“I've come back to Earth full of desires. The air tastes good.
This is what the Japanese reporter said when he came back from the space station.”
(Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill)
It’s been a little over a month since I came back to San Francisco and the taste of the air is going from good to normal. I’ve spent my time fulfilling my desires for friendship, walks through the park, good food, and everything else you could want from living in a city after time away. And in the process, the extraordinary nature of my experiences has started to wane, as these things start to become mundane once again — no longer novel, just parts of my life again. I knew it would happen, but it doesn’t make it any less sad that the shine that made even the small things lovely is starting to fade. But now that I know what the alternative looks like, there are ways to figure it all out.
Whenever the way I perceive the world, I have an army of robots to let me know what’s going on: Screen Time notification: You averaged 6 hours a day on your phone, up 36% from last week, Goodreads feed: everyone in the world is reading except for you, LinkedIn: here’s an job opportunity that you’re not interested in nor qualified for. Maybe the system is imperfect, but realizing how much of my time is being sucked into my phone instead of reading or living is an important thing. As I started to get more jazzed about meeting people again, I thought that re-downloading social media would be help aid in my adventures. Instead, it made it hard to enjoy them, by sapping my attention away, pulling me from the world.
“The Zen master Ikkyu was once asked to write a distillation of the highest wisdom. He wrote only one word: Attention”
(Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill)
I deleted social media off of my phone again, for the millionth time. I hope that I can re-claim my attention, not just so I can appreciate what still gleams but also to discover new ways of seeing. And more than ever, reading has been showing me new ways of seeing, shining a light on the world in ways I had never thought of before. I’ve really enjoyed writing my last few letters, in part because they were inspired by my reading, which inspired new ways of seeing. Crying in H Mart shined a light on mortality, Dept. Of Speculation shines a light on everything, and even random articles and videos I consume offer new colors and shapes of light in ways I never imagined.
I’ve been spending time watching videos and podcasts about a school of Hindu philosophy known as Vedanta, and I recently heard a great quote that’s been changing how I interact with people. It said that, “Vedanta is about humanizing your relationship with the divine and divinizing your relationship with humans.” In other words, it focuses on finding the divine in others, and seeing God as a being to have a relationship with, like a mother or father or brother or friend. And without this quote, I’m not sure that I’d still be smiling about the conversation about kombucha with a stranger in the grocery line while I waited behind someone with three weeks worth of groceries. I’m not sure I would have even had that conversation instead of just staring at my phone.
It’s been a little over a month since I came back to San Francisco and the taste of the air is going from good to normal. But I’m still finding new ways of seeing and breathing and thinking and blinking. So normal may become bizarre or incredible tomorrow, or normal might stay normal, but I sure hope it doesn’t.
Drops of the Week
PLAYLIST - june 21 - fun month: shoegaze, indie rock, Skrillex, and more!
ARTICLE - "The Anxiety of Influencers" by Barrett Swanson - the influencers are not okay. It's weird because I wonder if I'd be wanting to be these dudes if I were the right age. I remember thinking about how cool the lives of Viners seemed back in the day.
POEM - "Summer Night" by Yena Sharma Purmasir - a lovely poem about a lot of things, but summer, mainly.
With each day, we can move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Donate to Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta Mutual Aid Networks
Anti-racism resources
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Vividly,
Nikhil