An Ode to Looking Up and Within

What captivates me most, looking up at the treetops, is the phenomenon of Crown shyness. This natural occurrence, where certain tree species’ crowns do not touch, forms distinct, intricate patterns in the canopy. Crown shyness is also the title of my yet-to-be-manifested debut poetry collection. There’s something deeply moving about these branches that respect each other’s space, growing side by side yet apart, much like how I enjoy growing at my own pace, in solitude, towards ever-changing goals. Watching treetops sway on lazy Sundays, with sunlight streaming through the gaps, feels like witnessing a dance of quiet companionship.

Mary Oliver captures this serene connection in her poem, When I Am Among the Trees:

Another equally fascinating phenomenon that tree lovers like myself are fascinated by is the Wood Wide Web, a complex network through which trees communicate,sharing messages, resources, and warnings. This hidden web of connectivity reminds us that beneath their quiet exteriors, trees are deeply interconnected—much like our own subtle, unseen bonds with the world around us.

In the mirror, the gray strands I choose not to dye remind me of the tangled branches and intertwined paths that have brought me to this moment, 33 years into my journey, surrounded by blooming blue pea flowers and the quiet company of trees.

Just as trees nourish each other through an unseen network beneath the forest floor, humans nurture one another through quiet gestures of love.

In our fast-paced world, rituals ground us, reminding us of our primal bonds with community and the beauty of being connected to something larger than ourselves.

This ritual of sharing life’s wonders and beauty has also found its way into The Alipore Post, a digital garden of poetry and art I’ve tended since 2015. It’s a dreamscape where seeds of thoughts and ideas are scattered freely, allowed to grow and bloom wildly in their own time. It’s a garden of cultivated curiosities that keeps on giving, with something new always waiting to be found.

My mind is a wild forest, and I have grown to enjoy walking through its untamed terrain. To embrace the spirit of anti-fragility, where things emerge more resilient in the wake of inevitable chaos. The forests I wander, both in my mind and the world, are far from orderly, yet in their tangled branches and scattered paths, I find a sense of rootedness and freedom. I have grown rather fond of meandering, leaving room for serendipitous encounters.

I despise planned itineraries while traveling. Instead of curated recommendations from social media, I let my feet (and locals) take me to undiscovered places. It’s a journey of exploration, where the destination is never quite as important as the discoveries along the way.

Until my late 20s, mental health, therapy, and the concept of boundaries were foreign to me. I sought refuge in the quiet embrace of nature, unable to conform to the rigid expectations of career paths and relationships dictated by society. My late ADHD changed life as I knew it, inviting me to explore my mind with a newfound vulnerability and curiosity.

Years of therapy and medication have helped me embrace my neurodivergent brain—a mind that weaves connections and uncovers patterns invisible to others, discovering the universal within the personal and poetry within fragility. Art and image-making have become integral to my self-expression, a playful medium of therapy that shapes my identity as an artist.

Being someone with a rather unreliable short-term memory, I find solace in the controlled chaos of collages, where I deconstruct to reclaim. Armed with my scissors and glue-stick, I can spend hours poring over old newspapers, borrowing strangers’ words to create new worlds of my own.

Photography, particularly double exposures and the medium of cyanotypes, allows me to layer memories and create ephemeral art that free me from the weight of remembering.

Grief has taught me to carve out spaces and to go without.

The loss of my beloved cat, Haiku, left a gaping void—her absence a reminder of the fragility of life and love. Her arrival made life complete, allowing joy and a newfound vulnerability to envelop me. And then in a seemingly ordinary instant, she was gone. I would never feel her tender feline heart beating against mine.

In the depths of loss, literature was my lifeboat. Poetry has always been my refuge, filling the void with words. Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods is a salve for any existential malady: 

And so, I continue to dance to the music of the shifting seasons, learning when to hold on and when to let go.