i won’t be able to write from the grave

...so let me tell you what i love.

I won’t be able to write from the grave

so let me tell you what I love:

oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,

cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,

the children nearby, poems and songs,

a friend sleeping in my bed—

and the short northern nights.

—Fanny Howe

This poem is a favourite of mine. I think it’s beautiful in its simplicity—the quiet documentation of the little joys in life. Unassuming. Unpretentious. The understated allure of the mundane.

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, caught within the Sisyphean blur of the rat race, I think it’s especially important to appreciate the uniquely human facets of life.

Let me tell you what I love. Here are the little things that keep me alive.

Rice—good rice, separated, but not overly so; sweet, but only slightly; fluffy in the way one dips into a cloud. Pale, glistening, slightly pearly. If the steam cradling my face from the rice cooker isn’t the closest thing to the holy, I don’t know what is.

Paper touched by time. Brown chemical stains on my old Chemistry notes, black ink marginalia spilling out a kaleidoscope of colour from assaults of rain, the blotches of tea and tears on my diary pages. The yellowing pages of my Great Expectations paperback, sticky-tabbed and pencilled in; the pages wavy from humidity, the spine bent till its final breath. Pages worn and torn and loved until they’re soft and fragile at the edges. To be loved is to be changed.

Friends and a romp through the rain. No umbrellas and no shame. There’s no need for either when you have that magical, unapologetic rambunctiousness that overcomes you when you’re with your favourite people. There’s something primal about wet hair and the way it sticks to a smile.

When the sky surprises us. Rainbows. Sunsets. A full moon. The soft grey peaks of dawn. How everyone reacts—neck craned to the heavens, gait slowing into something more leisurely—in awe. It’s intrinsically human, this longing for beauty. The push and pull of it. I can imagine our ancestors and predecessors doing the same. It’s a lovely thought: Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Woolf, Liszt, turning their head to the same sky and its rich offerings; immortalising it, in words or oils or the languorous stretch of a violin.

A nighttime routine. The sort that leads you gently into sleep. Body cream that smells like vanilla and woodsmoke. The bite of mint toothpaste. Colour-coordinated pyjamas. A chapter of something gentle and softly philosophical, then a quietly reflective journal entry. A cup of hot water or chamomile. Lights out.

Sounds that soothe. I’ve gotten into audiobooks for when I need rest from the world. My current favourites are a Wind in the Willows adaptation, or an abridged version of The Secret History (as narrated by Robert Sean Leonard—my recommendation is to set it at 0.75x speed). Songs are good too—I find Mazzy Star’s Among My Swan as somewhere soft to land after days where life has struck me hard. Sometimes it’s just rain, or the murmur of conversation, or the jubilant melody of local birdsong; anything that feels like home.

Library loan cards. The paper ones that fit on the front page of the book, stamped and signed to oblivion, dating from the early aughts. It’s beautiful to see years and years of names who have loved a book as well as you; history in worn paper and nomenclature. They’re slowly being phased out now, but I love them dearly.

Long, sweeping bildungsromans. Books that contain entire lives. I feel an odd maternalism towards its protagonists; in a young man spiralling into ruin, I see a boy straining to reach the breakfast table. I’ve watched them grow up; my eager passivity in their development feels almost like support. Perhaps this is the closest I will get to motherhood. Great Expectations, The Goldfinch, Maurice. Sometimes I take these novels out of their resting places and ponder how one whole life could possibly be contained in a yellowed paper volume.

Trinkets. Physical memory collection. I have a little plastic insert in my journal with lots and lots of pockets; it contains receipts from museum gift shops, an old pound coin (the round sort that can’t be used anymore), gift tags, polaroids, and a scrap of poetry to live by, among others. When I was little, I used to bring along a little ceramic owl as a lucky charm to my exams, although I believe it got lost in transit somewhere along my cross-continent move at twelve. I still think of it fondly.

Love. I love love. I love my love for all these things. To live is to love; to fall madly for scraps of whatever life gives you: people, places, things. No one exists on purpose; we’re all little specks of stardust on a floating rock in space. The best we can do is to love the things on it while we’re there.