Is, Is, Is

Hi there!

Here goes the big number one — just have to write it¹ , Luce!

1. Poem: Singularity by Marie Howe

I came across this poem late one night in 2022. I was in bed, and on Reddit, and I remember crying. Almost three years later, I saw Marie Howe read this poem aloud in NYC² . I didn’t even try to hide the tears.

Singularity

— Marie Howe

_{(after Stephen Hawking)}

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?
There was no   Nature.    No
 them.   No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
—when we were ocean    and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home

2. Quote: by Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian

3. Video: Make it Count by Casey Nesitat

4. Latin phrase: sub specie aeternitatis

Meaning: “from the point of view of eternity.”

(An unattainable perspective—yet one of expansion, and fertile ground, when attempted.)

5. Art: Illustrations by Hoi Chan

I discovered Hoi Chan (Instagram, website) in an art compilation book at my favorite Williamsburg coffee shop. I immediately fell in love with the first image below—in my view, a person patiently waiting to capture the fabric of reality.

Chan, an illustrator from Hong Kong, says that his work aims to “unravel and dissect the complex emotions that reside within the human mind." I feel like he gets at something personal, quiet, deep—yet positioned within the vastness. His illustrations have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vox, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.

That makes our first five. :)

Bye, ethereal beings.

1  A few nights ago, a thought kept me up: what if I include an artifact that doesn't actually feel artifact-worthy later on? What if I choose wrongly, and it feels phony, and it's there forever? Or what if people think that every single artifact shaped the very being of my existence, and that’s the bar?
Then I remembered it's not that serious. :)

2  She was doing a talk with one of my heroes—Maria Popova—who authors The Marginalian and reflects on the human experience in a way that resonates with me more than anyone I’ve ever encountered. (And who is, eerily, a Bulgarian immigrant like I am).

3  If you don’t know Casey, let me introduce you: he is the iconic, OG YouTuber who practically invented daily vlogging. He created and uploaded a daily video for 800 days in a row, setting the gold standard for storytelling on YouTube. He’s the classic underdog: he moved to NYC with no money and started making videos that captured raw, authentic moments of life (or what life can look like when you’re in community and action all day long). One of his early projects was bought by HBO, and his career skyrocketed from there. His scrappy, irreverent, heartfelt filmmaking style shakes me out of my seat.