Small and imperfectly formed

On past lives, Japanese art and fleeting love.

Look at that beak, so small and imperfect.

When I published my first newsletter in February, I did so with the promise of sending you something once a week.

Then I began an intensive breathwork training. It took me almost a month to tell you about that time I went to Space and the subsequent piece followed another three weeks later. That was a fortnight ago.

While I’m not berating myself for the sporadic schedule – I’ve been on the move and occupied with other things and excuses, excuses – there’s a glimmer of I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. I doubt you noticed though, and no-one was paying to read my content so it didn’t feel like I was letting anyone down in that sense.

However, on 12th April I received an email with the subject 'New paid subscriber to The Connected Self!’

Thank you, kind family member, for now I feel accountable. It reminded me of something else I want to do here and that is experiment with other forms of writing besides long prose. I write little and often but sometimes the short stuff doesn’t feel newsletter-worthy – too brief or unpolished – but that’s my own-worst-enemy perspective. The phrase ‘short and sweet’ exists for a reason (English proverb est. 1539) and it will help me hit a weekly cadence. I’ve also been writing small things, and mostly small things, throughout my career. Let me explain.

Learning through luxury

Since graduating in 2012, I’ve worked with words professionally: lots of editing (books, magazines and websites) and plenty of writing but often the little bits like titles, captions, descriptions, body copy and so on. Long-form writing still feels like a new sofa, the small stuff a well-loved armchair.

A whistle-stop CV for context:

2012 - 2015: print publishing (Slightly Foxed)

2015 - 2017: digital copywriting (Harrods, AllSaints)

2017 – 2020: print publishing (Hoxton Mini Press) + yoga joined the party in 2018

*2020 – present: writing, copy-editing, brand storytelling, content strategy, book editing, consulting (various companies and individuals) + yoga, sound healing and breathwork

*In July 2020 I made the decision to prioritise my flexibility and freedom by going freelance.

I hopped between print and digital publishing because a) I crave variety and b) even though it doesn’t pay well, I adore print. I’m sure you too would rather be holding a beautifully produced book right now, feeling its weight, turning its silky pages. (How my weakness for collecting books fits in with an increasingly nomadic lifestyle is a puzzle yet to be solved.)

Concise craft wasn’t easy at first. When I joined Harrods as a junior e-commerce copywriter in 2015, I had to learn to write quickly, quickly. Each writer was assigned 30 products per day in a conveyor-belt-style system: I’d received a product, write a description including specific keywords and details (there were a lot of rules including a list of banned words – anything that sounded cheap, basically), then I’d pass the Manolo mules or McQueen gowns to hair and make-up (styling and photography) before the merchandising team put the items live, ripe for the rich to add to their gilded baskets. It was fast, challenging and too stressful for a £20k salary.

I weeped in the toilets multiple times during the first three months before I broke through, became speedy and learnt a lot about just getting on with it when there’s no time for perfectionism. It was a steep learning curve, for which I’m grateful. I even enjoyed it at times, especially the weirdly thrilling sensation of my fingers typing so fast it felt like they were controlled by mini brains of their own.

After that job I vowed never to work somewhere again that didn’t allow me to wear trainers to the office. Eventually I stopped going to offices altogether.

I do wonder if my comfort in crafting small-and-imperfectly-formed things made writing longer prose more challenging. This newsletter pushes me; each issue takes hours to write due to my editing chops (a blessing and a curse but mainly a blessing I think). I find it very satisfying in the end. I’ll keep going.

Hello short stuff

You know I just said short-form text was my thing? I didn’t mean creative writing. That’s a different kettle of fish. In fact, I’m a novice in what I’m about to share and that’s part of the fun.

Let me introduce the haiku, my latest short-form love. For those unfamiliar, a haiku is a Japanese poem of 17 syllables:

Five syllables.
Seven syllables.
Five syllables.

Three lines. That’s it. That’s the poem. These are great for people who get bored easily and don’t know much about poetry.

My initial introduction to haiku was in November 2018 during an evening hosted by a (now folded) creative residency startup. Cosy and candlelit in a Spitalfields townhouse, it was back when one could afford to turn the heating on for an entire evening. I recall an impressive cheeseboard which I took full advantage of while sipping a glass of red. We moved into one of at least two lounges (sorry, drawing rooms) where the haiku part of the evening unfolded. Each guest was given a Conversation Menu: a piece of thick cream card printed with discussion questions in tasteful font. I don’t know if anyone paid to be there. It was pretentious but not in a Saltburn sense, more understated, quite lovely actually.

The second affair with haiku began last month in Goa while I was having coffee with someone I’d met in the same café a month or so earlier.

During our initial encounter E had given me a small (almost perfectly formed) origami bird. Sweet, and well crafted, I thought – and nothing much more. As time went by I realised he was giving out these paper cranes to multiple people daily and it was only later that I learnt there was a deeper intention behind them. As well as spreading beauty and joy to strangers, the paper creations are linked with fundraising effort for a little girl and her family who E had met some months before in Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India. You can read about this touching project here.

As I watched my creative companion drawing something colourful opposite me, I started thinking about other Japanese art forms and remembered the haiku. I took a scrap of E’s origami paper and started to write. The theme of fleeting love emerged.

Thank you for folding 
A little piece of my heart
Into yours, briefly

Love like sakura 
The seconds before sunset 
There, then gone, for now

There are things I’ll miss 
Like plucking strands of stray hair
From our mouths to kiss

I wrote some more haikus last week while I was on a silent meditation retreat. The theme that came from this set was, quite predictably, the mind:

Isn’t it heavy
A mind so full of thinking
No room at the inn

Like a Buddhist text
Much of you makes sense to me
Yet I know nothing

If you only knew
How much mental space it took
Not to message you

These small, imperfectly formed poems are fun experiments. I invite you to have a go and see if a theme presents itself. 5-7-5. Order some origami paper while you’re at it too. Legend has it that when you fold 1,000 birds, a wish comes true. I’ve folded about five to date and a wish already came true on 12th April.

Thanks, Aunt Aileen, now I actually have to write this damn thing. Whether long and luxurious or short and sweet, I can promise you it will be imperfectly formed.