What I Noticed This Week

(Week 7, 2024)

Maybe I’m pointing to the ubiquitous this morning? But this short animated film about knitting is so touching, I don’t know what to do with it except see it as a sign to (finally) give another go at learning the skill. I’ve never been one for omens… they take too long to come to fruition. However -

I’ve been struggling with brain fog and an inability to concentrate. And I’ve been complicating things myself through a habit of splitting focus. I multitask in the most absurd ways: ie, listening to podcasts while scrolling Instagram. I’ve even caught myself in a self-deception of “forest bathing” while listening to music. I would blame cancer or even aging as the reason for this kind of self-distraction, but it’s really nothing new.

I want to untether from electronics - to get my nikon down off the shelf and take it to the woods. Or maybe find the little, lightweight digital camera I bought a decade ago and used only a handful of times. It fits in my running belt.

Funny how quickly I can circle back to this and that.

But letting go of the “phone” is more than a matter of discipline and focus. It takes courage, I think.

It takes courage to be alone with my thoughts - even after years of scripted meditation: what monsters may come?

And it is difficult to trust that an “urgent” call or message really isn’t that urgent. I have lived my whole life wanting to get it all in, as fast as possible. It cost me a marriage, among other things. I’m someone who has always been impulsive. It’s as though the last two decades have been written in a way that puts me firmly at the center of a tragic narrative, in a world filled with neon signs: “Now or Never”.

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In the film, an artist talks about giving up on the demand for perfection - about the making and the giving thats involved in her knitting practice; a retired professor talks about how he things about the people he is making gifts for, as he is knitting.

Isn’t this a form of Metta meditation?

Or is that two things at once?

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And, speaking of making: Isn’t this 2 minute film about working with clay as much about working with words?

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And a very different short film. Directed by Reema Sengupta, Counterfeit Kunkoo is both beautiful and painful. Kunkoo refers to vermillion powder: the red powder worn by married women along the part in their hair.

“No bachelors or pets,” says the landlord.

I’m in no position to extrapolate on the subject(s) of the film itself, but it reminded me that we are wrong to think that equality moves along a linear path.

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And finally, Jon Fosse’s Nobel Prize Lecture. You can read the transcript in translation - but do listen to the music in his chosen language (Nynorsk), which is more than a variation of the most popular language in Norway (Bokmål).

English transcript: here.

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Have a great week!
And if you stumbled on something you want to share with me, please do!