Hello dearest reader,
I am so grateful that you have decided to join me here.
It is Sunday the 26th of February and today is my first time reaching out to you. I’m excited about it, and I simply wish to begin by thanking you for embarking upon this journey with me. It is wonderful to meet each other here.
Perhaps you are wondering what or where “here” is exactly, and what it is about.
Well, “here” is simply a space that is about little more than the joy of sharing.
I have come to this place to learn more about what it means to be open with my words, and allow them to leave the small worlds of writing desk and notebook. To explore how my offerings may grow and change as a result of showing up for myself and a small readership on a regular basis. Meanwhile, you are here simply to keep me company and enjoy some restful contemplation along the way, and I thank you for that.
And so we begin. Each week I will be sharing a hodgepodge of poems, books, films, songs, thoughts, and creative meanderings. Anything that feels right. Newsletters are offered as a fun and freewheeling space in which to share the thread of thought and feeling, and will be centred around the intention of creating an inspiring and nurturing space, with bits and pieces that fit the feeling of a perfect Sunday. A Sunday where, with any luck, you have ample time to follow the path of your day with plenty of room for rest, ease, and consideration in a place that feels safe. Hopefully, whatever day you come to these pages, you will enjoy a sense of nourishment whilst perusing the week’s newsletter.
Each piece of weekly correspondence will likely follow a ramshackle, scrapbook-esque pattern which, unless I see fit to change things around, will remain the general shape of things in each newsletter to come. As the weeks go by, I hope to gradually weave these pieces of correspondence into a sacred calendar that follows the ebb and flow of the seasons, with offerings that reflect the inspiration that I draw from the natural world, and the paths of great artists.
Today’s newsletter is really just a simple hello, along with some little bits and pieces to accompany your Sunday rituals. Below you will find a playlist that I have put together, a very Sunday-ish movie, and a couple of favoured poems. All offerings are carefully selected for that gentle Sunday feeling.
I do hope you enjoy this first little piece of correspondence, and thank you again for being here and sharing your time with me so generously.
Wishing you a restful Sunday,
Anna Margarita
x
A playlist: 01. Hello
Just a few songs that feel like Sunday. This playlist is best served with a pot of fresh coffee on the side. I hope you enjoy.
a film | Paterson
directed by Jim Jarmusch (2016).
It was difficult for me to decide on a film to include here, seeing as though the list of movies I could recommend that have a certain Sunday feeling is quite endless. I settled for Paterson, safe in the knowledge that there are many Sundays still yet to come, and many offerings still yet to make.
Those who know me well will know that I have a particular penchant for movies where nothing in particular really happens. Paterson, directed by the excellent Jim Jarmusch, is most certainly one of those movies.
This is a beautifully simple and paired-back film, with a narrative that plays out over the course of a week in the life of Paterson, a bus driver (played by Adam Driver, no less) from, well, the city of Paterson in New Jersey. Although he is a bus driver to earn his daily bread, Paterson is also a poet, working in a city that earned its name, in part, through the poets it produced, most notably William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg. We follow Paterson as he goes about his daily routines, penning poems in his head and in his notebook along the way. Little happens, really, and we are free to rest in the calm and comforting embrace of life playing out day by day.
If you are looking for something gentle to watch as you bathe in the warm glow of your Sunday, this movie could certainly be it.
a poem | There Is a Place Beyond Ambition by Mary Oliver
from Red Bird (2008).
Mary Oliver spoke for gentleness, always, and for that I will forever love her. So many of her poems are so straightforward in their form and content, yet they hold so much weight and are so beautifully expressed.
A great deal of her work seeks to point us towards simpler and more expansive joys that often become lost and obscured by the loud cries of more growth and more progress, in a world that increasingly seeks to define us by our status and salary. You may, too, feel that these motivations sometimes come at great cost to our hearts and our planet. Mary was certainly, in many ways, trying to teach us about the quieter joys of the heart.
The sentiment of this poem in particular is a great balm to the frenzy of the modern world, wherein we are so often encouraged towards a preoccupation with what we ought to want from our lives materially, and how we want to be perceived, that we tend to forget that there is, indeed, a place beyond ambition. Those who know how it feels to dwell in this place will know that very little, beyond the provision of our basic needs, could rival the peace we experience when we learn to put our worldly ambitions to one side and simply be, at least for a little while.
another poem | Song by Allen Ginsberg
from Howl (1956).
Seeing as though I have offered the movie Paterson in today’s newsletter, I feel it’s right to include a second poem here, this time by Allen Ginsberg, who was himself raised in Paterson, New Jersey.
How to speak of Allen Ginsberg in merely a handful of lines? There is so much to say, and perhaps I shall save it all for another time. For now, I hope you enjoy this incredibly tender poem gifted to us by the radically tender poet. A poem that speaks for itself, exploring our most basic and necessary motivation: love.