Hello, friend. My laptop crashed last night and I typed up much of this on my phone. By some uncanny stroke of luck, I had the idea to start writing out this essay by hand, so I drafted it in an old journal before my computer died on me. It was kind of nice to try doing things old-school (I’ve always been fascinated with writers’ notebooks). Having said that, I will never take a functioning keyboard for granted ever again.
Here’s a poem, and some musings I’ve been mulling over this past week. Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t finished watching Shadow and Bone (So good! I binged it in under a week—and I’m terrible at sticking around when it comes to TV shows)
I hope you’re doing okay in your corner of the world.
<3 Niki
LOVE IS A LONELY ROOM
There comes a time
in every woman’s life
when heartbreak, I’m afraid
is the only answerWhen the ripest peaches glisten
with the shimmering juice
of the last good hour in
the melting sun’s raysWhen fireflies make their gentle descent
into the garden
Cascading like ladies down a staircase
in long gowns onto the ballroom below
Love is a lonely room
And I was in love with you,
With all of it
Heady romance come hurtling down the highway
like the blue convertible that would
drive us out into dusk
You had come, that winter,
to save my life.
And I think about it all,
our sweet summer days in the
glory of June
They did not have to be quite so long
and you, so tender and
so warmWhat were we doing?
Saving the best for last
A sanctuary in your heart
Lately, there’s been a phrase that’s been repeating itself over and over in my head, like last song syndrome over a catchy tune: Build a sanctuary for yourself in your heart. I first came across the notion some years ago, in one of Heather Havrilesky’s Ask Polly entries.
The letter-writer, who signed their name as “Numb,” wrote of circumstances that had led to stagnant, unhappy life. They were unaccepted in their own family home, and had given up on trying to win anyone over. A turbulent past and unstable present had left them with an aching loneliness they considered felt helpless, at the time, to escape. With not much by way of financial means or educational attainment, Numb shared that they were conflicted: painfully isolated and frustratingly dependent, stuck in life and unable to see a clear path ahead.
Heather Havrilesky wrote back:
Roam free. If you can’t do it today, build a sanctuary in your room, in your heart, and live there, knowing that this world loves you and that love blazes straight through the walls of (that) cold house.
How many of us, I wonder, must fight tooth and nail for self-acceptance, not to speak of self-love? How many of us are tulips trying to bloom in the snow, pine trees in the desert?
I’m remembering an exchange between two characters in Netflix’s Shadow and Bone — Baghra, a wizened sorceress, has the following exchange with Alina, her young apprentice and the series’ protagonist:
Baghra: You need to leave this place.
Alina: What? Why?
Baghra: Now, before it’s too late.
Alina: But, Baghra—
Baghra: I’m trying to save you from living the rest of your life as a slave.
Alina recalls the glittering jewels, the nightly feasts. The lavish room she has all to herself. The general’s lips on her throat. Shackles shrouded in opulence and glory.
Alina: He wanted to train me so I could get stronger.
Baghra: Did he? Or did he want you distracted by dreams of your future with him? Did he want you dependent on him, or his Fabrikator’s tricky little gloves?
You don’t need to have watched the series to understand what’s going on: the intricately sticky dynamics of needing, desperately, to leave a comfort zone that does you more harm than good. But when you know no other world, and have been led to believe that you are incapable of surviving outside of it, the simple act of walking out the door for good isn’t quite so simple.
In an essay aptly titled "A Bird Trapped in a Golden Cage,” an anonymous writer delves into personal accounts of a toxic home environment, although “On the outside, my world was a glittering array of debate trophies, academic titles, college scholarships and a picture-perfect family.” It bears noting that the essay’s unnamed author is on the autism spectrum, and faces emotional neglect and mental torment. Barely eighteen at the time of writing, our caged bird is too young to sustain themselves steadily enough to flee their situation completely.
Dependence tethers us to the source of a need, be it real or perceived. But sometimes you’re not going to get what you truly need from that source, even if you think it might be providing you with something of value. Sometimes people (or institutions) can convince you that you need them, but maybe you’re a lot more powerful than you think.
In Shadow and Bone, Alina gains the material comforts (and social currency) that come with living as a revered magic-maker in her kingdom’s Little Palace. But it comes at the cost of her liberty and agency. What good is the ability to make magic when your own abilities are yielded at another person’s command? Alina’s story arc explores the precipice of power, and what it might mean to acquire a version of it in exchange for a life you can’t really call your own. The “needs” provided by General Kirigan’s Little Palace are mostly material. What Alina truly needs is freedom. To be her own person, on her own terms. It is worth more than all the gold in the kingdom.
I’m speaking, of course, in very abstract conjecture. Freedom and financial independence are luxuries only certain circumstances can afford. Privilege plays a role, of course. Under particularly complicated conditions, an immediate escape is not always viable.
So sometimes, you have to tough it out from inside your cage. The other day, I read this piece of advice on the online magazine By Messy:
“Taking care of your body is taking care of your mind. Create a plan for yourself to get outside everyday, even if it’s just to take a walk around your block. Try to separate yourself from subjectivity when it comes to looking at yourself - especially your physicality. Surround yourself with people that love and support you.”
When Covid cases worsened here, I stopped going outside altogether. Weeks passed by without so much as a step past my front door. But I heeded the advice the other day, and took a walk while listening to Aly & AJ’s new album. I delighted in feeling the sun on my skin, playing with my own shadow, stepping over the crinkled orange silk of fallen petals. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself that there’s a world outside of all of this. A future beyond what’s happening right now.
To build a sanctuary inside your heart begins with being kind to yourself. The realization that you deserve good things is the first step, and an act of grace all on its own. Maybe it starts with asking yourself what you really want, in the big picture. And being honest about what you’re willing to sacrifice to get it. What comforts you are willing to relinquish, what injuries you are willing to risk. When you can build a sanctuary in your heart, home is wherever you go.
Sometimes it starts with setting up a cozy fort in the corner with all the things you like in it. Getting in touch with what you like, what’s good in the world. The good in you that comes alive to it. I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in Rina Sawayama’s 2020 album, Sawayama, which discusses themes of alienation, remorse, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Also Diana Wynne Jones’ 1975 novel Dogsbody, which I finished this morning in tears. In its introduction, Neil Gaiman writes of the unconditional love between its two protagonists, a love that remains fiercely resolute in cruel circumstances. Even in stark conditions, good things can exist.
The Poog podcast explores this concept in the episode “The Interior Chamber.” I’ve transcribed a snippet of the conversation between hosts Jacqueline Novak (JN) and Kate Berlant (KB):
JN: What if someone said, “I hate you!” Is there a shield? Or like, (what if you were to experience) great pains, like (if) someone I love (were to die). Is there a place where I can go like, “But I’m safe.”
KB: Yes, I think we can cultivate that.
JN: But I don’t think it’s wrong, I think it might be the healthy version of dissociation—
KB: It’s the life’s work! I don’t see it as spiritual bypassing or some kind of thing of like, avoiding pain. The pain is inevitable. The suffering is inevitable. We’re not put on this earth to not have pain. And so it’s like, how can you accept pain, feel pain, embrace pain, walk towards the pain, and yet still have some kind of an inner fortress or inner world where you’re able to safely have pain?
JN: It’s like, classic meditation stuff: there’s your thoughts, there’s your body, there’s your emotions, whatever… who’s experiencing all those? Who’s the thinker behind the thoughts, who’s seeing it all?
KB: There’s so much—I will say the word joy—there’s so much there. And it’s like, again, going back to our life’s work is to become ourselves… What would it be to actually become myself, or to extend myself to the furthest reachers of my desires, or my own neuroses or whatever? The soul! All of this. And by having a little puppet show in your desk, that is a way to honor that and to act it.
JN: Well, it is kind of between you and God in this way. It’s you and you, or you can say it’s you and the Universe. I do exist when alone. And for some reason, for me, school and other people felt like this brutal cold wind. Like, the second you’re in school, it’s the wind of everything and everyone. (Having a little puppet show in my desk) was a way of creating a little space.
You know what it was? It was almost like a secret, or doing anything that you’re not talking about or you’re not sharing with other people, literally creates space that they are not aware of, and thus creates more space for yourself to exist. Because you’ve created a bigger world that they can’t enter. Like… that’s wild.
Last week, I picked up an illustrated children’s book called The Wolf, The Duck, and The Mouse. It’s been a comforting bedtime read. A mouse’s largest lifelong fear comes true as he is hunted and swallowed by a wolf. In the dark depths of the wolf’s belly, the mouse finds a duck, sleeping cozily in a warm bed. They feast and dance and cook and rest. When the mouse exclaims surprise at the duck’s comfortable living conditions, the duck says, “I live well. I may have been swallowed, but I have no intention of being eaten.”
Throwing it back to Voice Note #5, a song called “Consolation Prize”. I recorded this a few months ago, but it feels apt for this newsletter today.