No Man is an Island
John Donne
On Devotions
Upon Emergent Occasions
XVII Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris
Trans. Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: thou must die
XVII Meditation
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were
Any man’s death diminishes me
Because I am involved in mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Continuations. [...] neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.
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We have entered the age of hyper-connectivity. This is where we can belong to countless communities while systemically alienating ourselves from genuine selfhood. There is something for you to name that manifests here: one cannot belong without mutual recognition, nor maintain authentic presence without visceral engagement. We represent the contemporary island condition— surrounded yet isolated.
“Community” has been redefined so often it has come loose from itself.
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$Community$ noun
1 a unified body of individuals
1.1 a person
1.2 a recognition of self through others
1.3 a body of bodies
2 a commonplace
2.1 environmental state
2.2 nature vs nurture
2.3 willing actively, wanting stagnantly
3 an evolution
3.1 offering, sharing
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To be someone
To be somewhere
In the body
A mouth that wants not
just to taste but
to be tasted back
Belonging is to sit at a table where every offering can also be a wound. Where the cut of the knife is inseparable from the slice of bread it makes possible.
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The community I found begins
In the steam rising off rice,
Fogging the doorway as I enter
Bodies pass close, but never collide
Someone lowers the flame beneath my pot—
I never had to ask
We are learning what our hands know
Before we do
They reach for knives, for plates,
Wipe on the same kitchen towel
Damp,
Stained
A spoon dips,
Tastes,
Adjusts,
In my palm, the weight of it
We begin
Our hands were never empty
We belong
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Note. I like to think I can put words into words if I try hard enough. But to write between the lines, is to write as honestly as I can.
This is a piece I left in pieces intentionally. It asks you to find community, in yourself first, and not in what the world promises to give you.
From August to April, these are the days I spent experimenting house recipes with matcha by the help of my willing taste testers.
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I make matcha here.