To attend to, to tend to

The other day, my friend and I were waiting for the train sharing notes on flowers. To me, all poetry is about attentiveness, as is all love. How do we look at something? One of my teachers gifted John Berger’s Ways of Seeing to me as a graduation gift, and I need to properly revisit the book but I was reminded of this particular quote: “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.” In that sense, to pay attention also demands a close examination of our relationship with the world, the creases on its contours, the settling of our myriad selves within/out those creases. As I heard him share his musings on flowers and spring’s varied silhouettes, my attention, once again, was called to the act of being attentive. What a delicious joy it is to be able to have things in our lives that we want to be attentive to in a world where there is constantly some task or another that demands our limited attention, or that tricks us into thinking that it demands our attention.

I want to try, as often as I can, to ask myself these two questions:

1. What demands my attention?

2. What would I like to give my attention to?

I think what I am striving towards is a partial convergence of the answers to these questions. I would perhaps change the verb demand to something softer. I struggle deeply to be present, whether it is in conversation with loved ones or work-related tasks because I am almost always thinking of something else. Praying changes that radically for me, because it demands attention in the gentlest manner — I am still susceptible to distraction, but at least I am attentive to the fact of distraction, which in itself feels like an accomplishment. Anyhow, as I try to minimize my usage of social media and obsession with high-productivity culture, I am trying to build habits that enable being attentive. Initially, I thought that maybe deactivating social media was the key, or ensuring that my day was interspersed with periods of rest would help me be more balanced but experimenting with habit-building seems to be working better for me. I started with resuming running, trying to make sure that I run at least thrice a week and it has worked just fine so far! I’d go so far as to say it feels like poetry. Blogging has also immensely helped.

A photo of me post-run at my beloved Hirosegawa

Yesterday, my grandma drove us through Yamagata, and I was introduced to a mountain vegetable called urui, a luscious leaf that I should have definitely bought in retrospect but we decided to settle for cabbage instead. Sometimes, we are intrigued by new possibilities but because of how we are wired to be skeptical, we choose something that’s tried-and-tested. While the potential for discovery excites me, more often than not, I feel content with what I already know, not wanting to put in the effort to try something new. But over the past year, life has surprised me in more ways than I could imagine and led me to realize how there’s so little I know and to feel content would be, squarely put, stupid.

For now, I’m happy to bid goodbye to April sharing a plate of spicy bhindi and roti with my roommate. For the final roti, I spread generous amounts of ghee and sugar on it, trying to replicate Pani Cook, something papa would always make for us at home.