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[hosannas]

On Making Peace

I absolutely fucking hate making peace with things. It doesn't come naturally, not even a tiny bit. If you need someone in your life who makes everything a brawl and has to go down kicking and screaming every step of the way, hit me up.

Certain currents have shifted a little recently, which Prettiest Girl Shalini attributes to the retrograde (I mean, what else could it be?) – which means I have to now adjust to seeing people differently and contending with lingering resentment. I've never sat well with unfairness, even when it's one of those things where you shouldn't really think in terms of fair.

[hosannas]

On 'Without Egg'

I worry a lot. Last year I got tired of it — the 3AM spirals, the crushing pressure of now, the looming void of forever. I messaged my best friend (who also worries a lot) asking her "how do I stop worrying?"

"I don't," she wrote back cheerfully. "This is how I will die: of worry."

These days I worry a lot about writing. I left journalism in 2021, not quite for good but definitively enough that I wasn't writing daily. I have worried on and off since then that I was forgetting how to write. I notice sentences becoming clunkier and clunkier, less romantic, less tidy. The worry has worsened since I began working, tangentially, on climate finance: there's nothing romantic in carbon markets (quite the opposite) and nature-based solutions, not unless you're drilling down to the people involved and that's different because people are always romantic.

I was reading leGuin's Without Egg today and it was so full of charm, detail, intention. It's the last thing that gets me. Writing with intention while maintaining romance is the hardest thing, because one's goal can oftentimes eclipse the natural desire of your words.

And why can't we just write exacting, precise descriptions of the most banal things? OK, we can, nobody is stopping us. But I worry about the candification of our diet. I used to read the most lovely things, or at least they felt like the loveliest things I could lay eyes upon, and now it's become increasingly difficult to find something lovely. Is this how time makes us redundant, though? We worry about what is being done rather than doing what we think should be done?

I don't think any greatness comes from worry.

[hosannas]

If talent is pursued interest then may I run after the matter like a creature half-dead from love, my ends at odds with my wits and my pace quicker each day.

[hosannas]

Don't fall for it, you can go further.

The flowers are pretty and the windowsills inviting, the grass is like the lushest of carpets but just recognise that you'd have to sweep your dreams under it before your feet are properly warmed.

The wheat is a cliché trapped in amber and the stones are older than angels, but what would you have to give up?

There is more, there is so much more. Don't fall for it. You're far from home now but if you linger here you won't be far from home in a year, you'll just be home again.

You can go further.

[hosannas]

My dream is to see fewer people aspiring to become humanitarian aid workers, and more people who wake up each day with a burning anger towards the injustices that create humanitarian crises, and who are genuinely willing to do everything they can to eradicate such injustices.

Nhial Deng

[hosannas]

in the lonely hour

oh no, i am writing again. 

but today was so full of love. love from my sisters, love from people who chose to protect me, love from strangers who were willing to trust me, love from something i haven’t quite figured out except for it needs flame, love from a decade ago that still feels giddy (and not seeing this earlier is one of the few mistakes that will always hurt), love from my parents (surviving death and to eternity). 

i am exhausted in every way, it’s been breakneck for the last 72 hours. and tomorrow we start again. because fears are from fatigue and there is always work to be done. we go again.

[hosannas]

higher and higher

i wouldn’t describe my father as the smartest or strongest or bravest; none of the superlatives that daughters are meant to say. he was good at many things and bad at equally many, he had a happy-go-lucky attitude that wasn’t always sustainable in the face of responsibility, he couldn’t hold things together despite being able to fix almost anything. 

but he did teach me valuable lessons that i only now realise i learned from him: to laugh at everything that hurts you. to feel for the outsider, giving what you have without asking too many questions. to believe in the underdog and happy endings and heroism: not everyday heroism but the stuff of myth and legend, of epic battles between good and evil, of being able to hold back the forces of darkness with sheer will. he loved tales of superheroes and swashbuckling archaeologists and demon hunters in ripped jeans driving mustangs. he made me think that with a good enough soundtrack you could handle most of what life throws at you.

hosuk once tweeted that we are only adults when we lose our parents. i am now halfway to adulthood but i still believe in heroes and villains and that here we are, born to be kings.

[hosannas]

threshold

“Not everything is a competition,” he chides

As the night wears on, eyes

Fire-blown, words glass-lit

“But if the body keeps the score,” she argued

“Surely I can as well?”

[hosannas]

now the days are getting hotter

sitting in my silly little living room reading my silly little fantasy novel and casting occasional glances over at my silly little cats (tehanu sprawled on her side under the coffee table, gorbash in his fuzzy pyramid cleaning his silly little toes, delphyne curled up like a silly little comma, silly little atreyu crouched under a dining chair) 

wondering what you’re up to where you are, 

these are new friday nights for me, cloistered and holy, more but also less silent: life is less silent with cats. i took to this very quickly, surprisingly well, the last two years have been all growth and glory - kleos - and now we see another turn in the labyrinth. “the years run like rabbits,” a certain someone once quoted (because he could still quote poetry to impress women) but i’m not thinking so far ahead: for now may the months steal by like cats and then slow down enough for me to taste everything good.

[inland-delta]

Kay Nielsen, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, 1914

[guooey]

Being the person that needs to nap after every big meal is so embarrassing. I apologize for being a 1 week old

[guooey]

Actually you are so right.......

[harmalade]

“Run into a cave and break your ankle so that people have to come find you and they see you lying at the bottom of this beautiful cave and maybe there’s a waterfall and the light from the crystals makes you look really beautiful and they say “Are you okay?” and you say “I think so” and they say “oh my God have you been here alone this whole time with a broken ankle” and you say “it’s okay” and they say “you’re so brave” and you are brave and you look so beautiful surrounded by cave crystals and everyone stands over you and says “oh wow” and “you poor beautiful thing” and “I’m so sorry we let you run into the cave but I’m so glad we found you” and let them carry you home and promise to be your best friends forever and that everything’s their fault and also they named the cave after you and you’re prettier than all of your enemies and your enemies all died of jealousy while you were in the cave.”

— Daniel M. Lavery, How To Respond To Criticism (via boringoldraphael)

[pawcakes]

this bitch gets it

[hosannas]

On hoarding property

Me: I guess it's maybe slightly more acceptable if you have, like, a kid and need to send them overseas to study? Maybe? Kinda?

Ash: I think these parents are probably overthinking how intelligent their child is.

[hosannas]

It's the doing of it that matters. Do it for the love of it. That's all there is.

Richard Williams

[hosannas]

is tom waits okay?

that’s what i asked him - and i was actually surprised someone so vanilla would like tom waits. but people always surprise you. so we listened to tom waits in the car on the way home, and when he left his footsteps were heavy and grieving.

one of my favourite tom waits songs is i hope that i don’t fall in love with you (yes the most tashny song ever it’s true) and i always thought that i first heard it proper in 2013. but many years later i realised that i’d actually first heard it in this cheesy but wonderful 2004 romcom called the prince and me - i had this on vcd and watched it to death because julia stiles!! and that period was honestly the golden age of teenage romcoms (everything lindsay lohan and amanda bynes, a rotating roster of blandly handsome just-a-little-bad leading men who probably could never rock boots from p. lal) - but i digress

isn’t it funny how quickly we get older?

[hosannas]

there’s something in your voice

i know they say smell is the most powerful trigger for memory but i’ve always felt it’s the auditory: snippets from songs, opening notes, a bridge, an inflection, a tone. there’s something about things read and spoken and sung that bring me all the way back viscerally. 

i’m watching one of my favourite toxic romcoms - how to lose a guy in ten days - and it’s aged as you’d expect except now it brings me more glee because i have the context of age and experience. and i totally forgot until this moment that feels like home - the chantal kreviazuk cover - was in this movie. and the funny thing is i used to hate this song (i first heard it on the oprah show! what random memories we retain) because of chantal’s headtone and how meaningless the lyrics seemed -

and now at 31 (but the 10-year-olds from block b thought i was 19) it’s on my list of most romantic songs ever written, how things change. and i listen to it and i think of just one person and it makes me smile. love really doesn’t hurt, you know? not when it’s true. it endures. imagine having a best friend, falling in love with him, falling out of love with each other but still loving each other, being best friends til whenever. what fortune, what grace. 

but this is a segue, this is all over the place: i am thinking thoughts and trying to understand and unpack and unpeel and unreel. i am a tightly-wound ball of want.

[hosannas]

If we give our love, love will come our way.

Emma Townshend