This contains a lot of those late-night-kind-of-words, at least compared to previous newsletters, but I can't quite bring myself to apologise (and likely don't need to, because you're already here).
I've been thinking a lot this week about our self-imposed human entrapments, the ways in which we have become so practiced at ignoring them, and the ways in which they are now beginning to bite us. It's ironic—I don't suppose that any other species feels the need to escape quite as strongly as we do, to try and step out of their bodily clay, straining to better and perfect while at the same time ruthlessly subjecting themselves to an ever-increasing distance from their natural environment. I think that what I'm trying and failing to put plainly is my astonishment at how humanity can dare to be surprised with how things currently are, with the view of destruction we have, with the chaos we are solely responsible for.
This subject, of course, needs far more digging than is advisable for just here, just now, but it's always important to try and drag oneself (usually on hands and knees) a small amount closer to the resolution of a thought, whatever that may look like.
AN EXTRACT, FROM A LECTURE I DID NOT GIVE:
Someone I know was told as a child: don’t get cross too often, because you will only have to get pleased again. It has been one of the most useful and true things I’ve ever remembered, simple in theory but immensely difficult for most people in practice. The transition from calm to incandescent is silk, yet it can take monumental effort to return to soft and generous again. I believe this is why so many people go around angry and vengeful and hurting—it is easier. Being gentle is often the exhausting, tiresome option, but this is where we need to be; kind beyond the shadows of doubt, sitting in the company of unfinished, graceful storylines.
THIS WEEK I FELL IN SAD LOVE WITH:
These all at once beautiful and tragic photographs documenting the declining health of The Ganges river by Giulio de Sturco. (There is an overview of this project and further photographs to be found here.)
I don't know whether this is a fleeting or more permanent pressing, and there are certainly in-the-first-place reasons for it, dull ones, but in the midst of my own personal time-pressing I've been struck once again by the ludicrousness of hurry, of people insisting that there isn't enough time for them in which to do all of their things—I just don't think that being in a hurry has ever led anyone to anything particularly exceptional, but we get to this point with a breathtaking ease presumably because when enough individuals move quickly, all of the others feel pressured into adjusting their own speed to keep up, and so on and so on, until we are all running about madly trying to wrap our tired arms around things that aren't there.
The end.
Copyright © 2018 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.