Chembu🌺🧶

@chembarathi.bsky.social

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Autistic(she/they) ~Bangalore,India ~ Maker of beautiful things 🧶 Bedbound by #MECFS and Appreciate all kinds of Support through https://chembarathicrafts.dm2buy.com/ https://ko-fi.com/chembarathi/shop

The Wish to Be Generous Wendell Berry All that I serve will die, all my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man's evil, or dwindle in its own age. Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end, so I may bow to mystery, and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be, my life a patient willing descent into the grass.
Joy chose you Joy does not arrive with fanfare On a red carpet strewn With the flowers of a perfect life Joy sneaks in As you pour a cup of coffee Watching the sun Hit your favorite tree Just right And you usher joy away Because you are not ready for her Your house is not as it should be For such a distinguished guest But joy, you see Cares for nothing in your messy home Or your bank balance Or your waistline Joy is supposed to slither through The cracks of your imperfect life That's how joy works You cannot truly invite her You can only be ready When she appears And hug her with meaning Because in this very moment Joy chose you.
A crocheted doll of the football star Lionel Messi
Eternity by William Blake He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise
A collection of crocheted and knitted things - one knitted cat in black and white , a penguin wearing red scarf and a worry cat Charm and four sunflower coasters
RAPTURE by LINDA HOGAN Who knows the mysteries of the poppies when you look across the red fields, or hear the sound of long thunder, then the saving rain. Everything beautiful, the solitude of the single body or sometimes, too, when the body is kissed on the lips or hands or eyelids tender. Oh, for the pleasure of living in a body. It may be, it may one day be this is a world haunted by happiness, where people finally are loved in the light of leaves, the feel of bird wings passing by. Here it might be that no-one wants power. They don't want more. And so they are in the forest, old trees, or those small but grand. And when you sleep, rapture, beauty, may seek you out. Listen. There is secret joy, sweet dreams you may never forget. How worthy the being in the human body. If, when you are there, you see women wading on the water and clouds in the valley, the smell of rain, or a lotus blossom rises out of round green leaves, remember there is always something besides our own misery.
Breath When you see them tell them I am still here, that I stand on one leg while the other one dreams, that this is the only way, that the lies I tell them are different from the lies I tell myself, that by being both here and beyond I am becoming a horizon, that as the sun rises and sets I know my place, that breath is what saves me, that even the forced syllables of decline are breath, that if the body is a coffin it is also a closet of breath, that breath is a mirror clouded by words, that breath is all that survives the cry for help as it enters the stranger's ear and stays long after the world is gone, that breath is the beginning again, that from it all resistance falls away, as meaning falls away from life, or darkness fall from light, that breath is what I give them when I send my love
LIFE WHILE-YOU-WAIT by Wisława Szymborska Life While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play's all about. Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can't conceal my hayseed manners. My instincts are for happy histrionics. Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel. Words and impulses you can't take back, stars you'll never get counted, your character like a raincoat you button on the run the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness. If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen. Is it fair, I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage). You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.
Four crocheted sunflower coasters and one cup of tea on one of them
Green Koan That the mind can go wherever it wishes is a kindness we've come to rely on; that it returns unbidden to the soul it could not banish and learned to thrive there is life's stubborn mercy-given to soften or harden us, as we choose. Rita Dove
How to Live Depravity begins with thinking of love as a radical act. I quit loving with difficulty. I love easy now. Two parakeets on my shoulders. They'll fly away if I move. So I move. I love flight. I love cages left wide open. I am not a window. I could be a window. Open me, you'll find a dense wood, children wandering inside it. Not lost children. They know the way. They live the way horses run. If they each had a bird in hand they would open their hands.
For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight. The light in the mind becomes dim. Things you could take in your stride before Now become laborsome events of will. Weariness invades your spirit. Gravity begins falling inside you, Dragging down every bone. The tide you never valued has gone out. And you are marooned on unsure ground. Something within you has closed down; And you cannot push yourself back to life. You have been forced to enter empty time. The desire that drove you has relinquished. There is nothing else to do now but rest And patiently learn to receive the self You have forsaken in the race of days. John O'Donohue
A collection of amigurumis - one red fox, one chubby cat holding an ice cream and a sleeping baby dragon
Rudyard Kipling "The Power of the Dog" "GARM -- A HOSTAGE" -- ACTIONS AND REACTIONS There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; And when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie Perfect passion and worship fed By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. Nevertheless it is hardly fair To risk your heart for a dog to tear. When the fourteen years which Nature permits Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, And the vet's unspoken prescription runs To lethal chambers or loaded guns, Then you will find -- find -- it's your own affair --But... you've given your heart to a dog to tear. When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!) When the spirit hat answered your every mood Is gone -- wherever it goes -- for good, You will discover how much you care, And will give your heart to a dog to tear. We've sorrow enough in the natural way, When it comes to burying Christian clay. Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent. Though it is not always the case, I believe, That the longer we've kept'em, the more do we grieve; For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, A short-time loan is as bad as a long --So why in -- Heaven (before we are there) Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
The Dark Hours of My Being I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood. Then the knowing comes: I can open to another life that's wide and timeless. So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace: a dream once lost among sorrows and songs. Rilke
A pair of handknitted socks on my foot with blue stripes
Imaginary Conversation Linda Pastan, 1932 You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead-that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it were the first-all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing her eyes awake that first morning, the sun coming up like an ingénue in the east? You grind the coffee with the small roar of a mind trying to clear itself. I set the table, glance out the window where dew has baptized every living surface.
Front view of an amigurumi of Charizard - from Pokemon
A hand holding a tweezer and some crocheted pieces in the background
Coda Octavio Paz Perhaps to love is to learn to walk through this world. To learn to be silent like the oak and the linden of the fable. To learn to see. Your glance scattered seeds. It planted a tree. I talk because you shake its leaves.
Telescope by Louise Glück There is a moment after you move your eye away when you forget where you are because you've been living, it seems, somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky. You've stopped being here in the world. You're in a different place, a place where human life has no meaning. You're not a creature in a body. You exist as the stars exist, participating in their stillness, their immensity. Then you're in the world again. At night, on a cold hill, taking the telescope apart. You realize afterward not that the image is false but the relation is false. You see again how far away each thing is from every other thing.
A pair of handknitted socks in light blue mc which has bee motifs all over
The Whole of It By Helen Meneilly But eventually, you are cross-legged on your own sofa, in your own little apartment, eating a piece of cake topped with sugared peach and you're drenched in the wet orange joy of it. Every time you touch your fingertips to your soft pale belly, you realise: you are living. What a dream you could be wishing for in some other, darker, life: to be here, now. Bathtub full of tea, cotton bedspread speckled with a hundred blue flowers, a thrift store ceramic planter with a sunlit basil plant forming itself right before your eyes. You have come so far to love your little life so much that you would not trade a single scar. Love it so much, that the empty side of the bed is already full.
A crocheted penguin with red ear muffs and scraf
Inside the Ache What breaks your heart contains everything you need to awaken. Yet you have a choice, to stay inside the ache as it rises up like the first pale green blade of a daffodil slicing through half-frozen soil-or to simply turn away and pretend your world didn't just end. Within every pain is infinite wisdom and love, though it seems as unlikely as a yellow trumpet-shaped blossom tucked inside the ragged and scarred bulb that guarded its spark all winter. -James Crews
A crocheted ladybug that is shaped like a heart
Snow Geese Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One fall day I heard above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was a flock of snow geese, winging it faster than the ones we usually see, and, being the color of snow, catching the sun so they were, in part at least, golden. I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us as with a match, which is lit, and bright, but does not hurt in the common way, but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt. The geese flew on, I have never seen them again. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly. Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won't. It doesn't matter.
It is this way with kindness: someone plants in someone else a bit of beauty. a kind word, perhaps, or a touch, the gift of their time or their smile. And years later, in that inner soil, that beauty emerges again, pushing aside the dead leaves, insisting on loveliness, a celebration of the one who planted it, the one who perceives it, and the fertile place where it has grown. -Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
WEATHERING Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well: that was a metropolitan vanity, wanting to look young for ever, to pass. But now that I am in love with a place which doesn't care how I look, or if I'm happy, happy is how I look, and that's all. my soul may wear over its new complexion. I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy men who need to be seen with passable women. My hair will grow grey in any case, my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken, and the years work all their usual changes. If my face is to be weather-beaten as well that's little enough lost, a fair bargain for a year among the lakes and fells, when simply to look out of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what My soul may wear over its new complexion -Fleur Adcock
WILLIAM STAFFORD SENDING THESE MESSAGES Over these writings I bent my head. Now you are considering them. If you turn away I will look up: a bridge that was there will be gone. For the rest of your life I will stand here, reaching across. If these writings can bring a turn or an echo that touches you-maybe a face, a slant, a tune-you will stop too and bend over them. When you look up, your thought will reach wherever I am. I know it is strange. And there's no measure for this. The only connection we make is like a twinge when sometimes they change the beat in music, and we sprawl with it and hear another world for a minute that is almost there.
I Am Offering this Poem BY JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give. Keep it like a warm coat when winter comes to cover you, or like a pair of thick socks the cold cannot bite through, I love you, I have nothing else to give you, so it is a pot full of yellow corn to warm your belly in winter, it is a scarf for your head, to wear over your hair, to tie up around your face, I love you, Keep it, treasure this as you would if you were lost, needing direction, in the wilderness life becomes when mature; and in the corner of your drawer, tucked away like a cabin or hogan in dense trees, come knocking, and I will answer, give you directions, and let you warm yourself by this fire,
An old photo of mine making faces lying down beside my furry friend
A pair of handknitted socks with three colour stripes and a dip stitch texture on the cuff
Keeping Things Whole BY MARK STRAND In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
The Art of Disappearing When they say Don't I know you? say no. When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering. Someone is telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then reply. If they say We should get together say why? It's not that you don't love them anymore. You're trying to remember something too important to forget. Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished. Trees. The monastery bell at twilight. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store nod briefly and become a cabbage. When someone you haven't seen in ten years appears at the door, don't start singing him all your new songs. You will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.
The Obligation to Be Happy BY LINDA PASTAN It is more onerous than the rites of beauty or housework, harder than love. But you expect it of me casually, the way you expect the sun to come up, not in spite of rain or clouds but because of them. And so I smile, as if my own fidelity to sadness were a hidden vice-that downward tug on my mouth, my old suspicion that health and love are brief irrelevancies, no more than laughter in the warm dark strangled at dawn. Happiness. I try to hoist it on my narrow shoulders again-a knapsack heavy with gold coins. I stumble around the house, bump into things. Only Midas himself would understand.
A pair of handknitted socks with cables that look like little owls on my foot
FLOWERS I like it when people brake for squirrels. When they scoop bugs onto napkins and gently set them outside. I like it when people put their shopping carts back and smile at strangers and hold open doors. I like the awkward run, the breathless thank you. I like it when people share appetizers and good news and book recommendations. When they get so excited that their hands become actors and their story comes out as a spark. I like it when people offer these bright, little flowers. These tender, yellow bursts. L.E. Bowman
KNOW YOURSELF Know yourself they say and don't be led astray but how can I know who I am when I'm different every day? Some days I am the smart one with the answers people need and some days I'm the strong one standing up to take the lead. On other days I'm sure that if the wind blew me too hard I would shatter like a glass into a million tiny shards. And on those days I cower and I hide out from the world waiting on my inner child to blossom and unfurl. And each day I'm surprised by the newness that I see the things I'm finding out the complexity of me. So how to know yourself when you're all things rolled in one? you simply must decide to love whatever you become.
A yellow coloured beanie with cables all over it
I go in and out, don't you? Into flow and gratitude, and out of it again. Into grief and hopelessness, and out of it again. Into routine; cooking, walks, connection And then into bed, the bath, my head, my tears. These days call for the ability to sway, sway into reality, sway into empathy, and back again. Dip toes into fear, anxiety, awareness and rest in creativity, distraction, comfort. We go in and out, like tides creating our own slow rhythms-finding the pulse of survival. -Alix Klingenberg
A pair of handknitted socks that resembles fish scales on a person's feet
Good Girl & The Sea Sometimes I want to throw good girl in the fire but instead I walk her to the sea. We sidestep broken conch shells, she pretends they don't prick her feet. Seeing her so small, I can't believe I ever thought to watch her burn. I tell her the water can save us; it's saved me many times before. I tell her she was good long before she learned not to flinch. We sit for hours, good girl and me. The tide rises and reaches our feet. She wades to the second sandbar, the water rocks her back and forth. Wave by wave, words leave her lungs. Wave by wave, she starts to hum. Wave by wave, she lets herself be held. The whitehorses ride in, one by one, and drag the shame of a thousand women out with the tide. Wave by wave, she no longer repents for her own blood. Tyndal E. Schreiner
We Have Enough Dead Friends BY LENA OLEANDERSON Come over. The doors are open, my flat's a mess and so is my heart but the doors are always open. Come over. I will make soup, probably from frozen but the important thing is we will both eat. You don't have to be dying, but if you are, or you feel like you are, or if living's been hard, call me, and I will show up. It doesn't have to be that bad, it doesn't have to be bad at all, but if it is, please call. Do you want me to do the groceries? Do you want me to mop the floors? Do you need to be held; you don't have to be dying to be held. If you want me to be there, I want to. I'm on the bathroom floor again, and breathing is hard, and eating's been hard, and sleeping, the world is a laden thing rolling around on my chest lately. Just being alive is heavy tonight, but we have enough dead friends. Come over.
A foot with handknitted sock in blue color and covered with bee motif
A pair of handknitted socks with mock cables on the foot and leg
Li-Young Lee TO HOLD So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet, we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight, measuring by eye as it falls into alignment between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky, she'll remember a recent dream and tell me. One day we'll lie down and not get up. One day, all we guard will be surrendered. Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize what we love, and what it takes to tend what isn't for our having. So often, fear has led me to abandon what I know I must relinquish in time. But for the moment, I'll listen to her dream, and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling more and more detail into the light of a joint and fragile keeping.
A pair of handknitted socks with black as mc and multicolour stripes shaped like squares around heel - Pattern is Squircle by General Hogbuffer
Within Me Albert Camus (1913-1960) In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that... In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger something better, pushing right back. -
A pair of handknitted socks with cables on the foot part and pink toe on a person's feet
I Choose Myself Like It's Sacred I used to treat my needs as small, As inconveniences to all. I'd push my boundaries to the side, To keep the peace, to run and hide. But now I choose myself with grace, With reverence for my inner space. I guard my peace like holy ground, A place where truest love is found. I honor what my spirit speaks, The rest it needs, the truth it seeks. My self is not a passing guest-It is a sacred place of rest. Choosing me in every breath-Feels like rebirth, defying death. The PastLife
A handknitted socks with sunflower motif on the cuff on my foot
Dream Variations Langston Hughes To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me-That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening... A tall, slim tree... Night coming tenderly Black like me.
THE BEAUTY OF LESS We think to get what we want is our destiny. But to reach and miss lets us land where we are. This is the maturing of our destiny. And landing there lets the light in each moment emanate like the sun. Holding stones and pain and each other in this light turns ambition into being. The beauty of less lets the seed of everything sprout within us.
A pair of handknitted lace socks on a person's feet - left one is in green with an orange cuff, right one is in a bright pink
A wip socks on the needles - the main colour is blue and there are many bees with black and yellow stripes with pink wim
A Girl The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast Downward, -The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child -so high you are, And all this is folly to the world. Ezra Pound
A view from my window - a bunch of white flowers dancing in the wind
Picture of a chips package where they mention the process - vaccum cooked, de oiled and packed air tight Jackfruit chips
Going There BY JACK GILBERT Of course it was a disaster. That unbearable, dearest secret has always been a disaster. The danger when we try to leave. Going over and over afterward what we should have done instead of what we did. But for those short times we seemed to be alive. Misled, misused, lied to and cheated, certainly. Still, for that little while, we visited our possible life.