#38 Your bliss station where you have an appointment with life
On why you should create a bliss station
Artwork by Carson Ellis
Dearest,
I am not done talking about Austin Kleon’s, Keep Going. This book has played a crucial role in helping me develop a routine around my creative interests, and so I felt one edition was just not enough.
Once you accept the Sisyphean life that you must lead as a creator, something you and I discussed last time, Austin writes that you should build a bliss station for yourself.
Bliss Station was a concept shared by Joseph Campbell in, The Power of Myth. This station is where you step in after disconnecting from the outside world. This is where you do the work.
Your bliss station can be a place or a time where or when you practice your creative work. Remember, it is work and it needs to be done.
If you think your creative process is your life fuel, then you may call your bliss station “an appointment with life”, a phrase that Thich Nhat Hanh uses for morning meditation.
During this hour or when you are in this corner, you refuse distractions. No scrolling down the rabbit hole of social media, no responding to mails, no finding out the lyrics of the song stuck in your head. Everything can wait. The work needs to be done.
Source: Keep Going by Austin Kleon
If you think the news has been driving you nuts, but you cannot not watch it because you’ve got to stay informed, then too the bliss station can come in handy. Kleon writes, and I couldn’t agree more, “You can be woke, without waking up to the news.”
The bliss station will aid you in retaining your inner balance and sanity by offering you solitude and silence. It is not about being an ostrich with your head in the sand. You can always tune in to the news once the work at your bliss station is done. That shitstorm ain’t going anywhere!
Source: Keep Going by Austin Kleon
The Nook is my bliss station, dearest. It is the corner I find myself in every day trying to curate the gentlest, softest of wisdom for you from around the world while moving away from the world for a bit.
It keeps me sane, it keeps me creative, it keeps me grateful. As Anne Lamott said, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes—including you.”
Tell me about your bliss station, or if you want to build one, let me know if you need help. Write to me by responding to this mail. ❤️
Some verses:
#1
Source: thenookseeker
#2
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
- Excerpt from Jenny Joseph’s Warning
Some soft wisdom:
Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear.
When I really want to hear another person’s story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses.
Empathy is cognitive and emotional—to inhabit another person’s view of the world is to feel the world with them. But I also know that it’s okay if I don’t feel very much for them at all. I just need to feel safe enough to stay curious.
The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. As Hannah Arendt says, ‘One trains one’s imagination to go visiting.’ When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit.
- Documentary filmmaker Valarie Kaur on listening (Via James Clear's newsletter)
Art by Lora Zombie
Some tunes:
And then I went on a journey:
A movie:
"Meet Ralph. His job is to have cosmetics tested on him - a practice that's gross, archaic, and needs to stop."
Please watch this animation here.
Save animals like Ralph by signing @hsiglobal's petition to stop animal testing. I already did.
Down memory lane with Zaha Hadid
“Zaha Hadid was an Iraqi-born British architect known for her radical deconstructivist designs. In 2004, she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In 1983, Hadid gained international recognition with her competition-winning entry for The Peak, a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong.
The Peak Leisure Club (Proposal by Hadid)
This design, a “horizontal skyscraper” that moved at a dynamic diagonal down the hillside site, established her aesthetic: inspired by Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematists, her aggressive geometric designs are characterized by a sense of fragmentation, instability, and movement. This fragmented style led her to be grouped with architects known as “deconstructivists,” a classification made popular by the 1988 landmark exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.” (Source)
More on the legend:
Some of Hadid’s most-adored designs:
Ordrupgaard Extension, Copenhagen
Heydar Aliyev Center, Azerbaijan
Guangzhou Opera House, China
MAXXI National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome
Goodness to walk away with from the nook:
Artwork by Debby
Illustration by Useless Treasures
Parting poem by yours truly
I say my fever is brown,
mom says hers is blue,
and drenched in those colours,
we doze off next to each other.
We are natural hosts,
working hard to make anyone
feel at home, even a fever.
I imagine our toes touch every now and then,
a nudge when the guest makes
an audacious request.
(I said we are kind, not dull!)
We face each other at times
a relay of breaths shallow and warm,
she places her hand on my arm
and starts patting -
even in her sleep,
my mom is still my mom
when she could be anything else.
If my newsletter has brought you delight, then you may make a contribution via GPay or UPI to support me and show The Nook some love here: riya.roy6@axisbank
or,
you can buy me a book!
Riya Roy, the author of
Syllables in Exile
Subscribe to the nook here