Going into 2025
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Oh, hello there.
As the new year approaches, I find myself setting a goal to step out of my comfort zone by writing for a broader audience. While I’m accustomed to producing academic papers and analytical governmental reports, I’ve come to realize that brevity is the essence of rigor, relevance, and brilliance. Writing for the public in short form is a skill I aim to master, and what better way to embark on this journey than through the lens of books? After all, books have always been my companions as I navigate life, helping me make sense of the world.
This Substack is where I intend to explore society, the world, and its affairs—all through the written word. Don’t worry about spoilers; I’m mindful not to reveal too much about the books I discuss. So, please make sure to get your own copies. My aim is to use literature as a bridge between the realities of our society, the world, our affairs, and our inner selves—for the purposes of sense-making.
For instance, in my recent little piece on Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, I delved into her concept of a “planetary flag”—a symbol that challenges the exclusionary nature of national flags and ultranationalist ideologies. It prompts us to reflect on the interconnectedness and shared responsibility for the future generations and our planet. If we had been more compassionate, tender, and graceful towards each other, perhaps that’s what would have saved us. Harvey’s book, in which she explores this question and offers a broader perspective, deeply resonated with me. Aaaaand just as any (academic) writer, I usually get to the gist of things towards the end of my little pieces (guilty, I know). So bear with me, dear reader. 😬🥴
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Anywho… As we prepare to welcome the year 2025, I just wanted to jump in here to ask you something, dear reader. Have you ever tried entering the Long Black Branches? If not, here’s a piece of Mary Oliver to accompany you into this new year, so that you may not merely exist, but truly breathe and live.
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Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
Mary Oliver
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives—
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left—
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!*
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.*
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.*
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!*
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.*
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
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Stay with care, dear reader.