#18

on cultivating warmth in the cold months

dear you,

i hope you are being kind to yourself. i’ve linked a playlist of mine below to accompany this piece — the best way i can describe it is the warm feeling in your tummy after you eat a hearty meal on a chilly winter evening and when your eyes start to feel heavy and sleepy.

after winter, when spring comes :)

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i watched little forest (2018) recently. it was bonfire night, i had just finished making banana bread with my mum + grandma with the moon shining into the kitchen and the fireworks were going off outside. if you haven’t watched it yet, it’s a story about song hye-won (kim taeri my beloved), who returns to her childhood home in a traditional korean village, after leaving for seoul and finds peace with herself. the film reveals ways in which her mother loved her before she left, shown through beautiful scenes of food preparation and farming.

little forest (2018)

it’s a really warm, heartfelt, and beautiful film that spans four seasons, starting and ending in winter. love is present in many moments, with her rekindling with childhood friends who also abandoned their dreams in the city, her begrudging love for a dog, and her memories of her mother’s food. i’ve been feeling uncertain about things in my life and so it was quite healing. the simplicity of it and the ending were quite comforting to me, with the idea of a ‘little forest’ — a set of rituals / a state of mind that nurtures her rather than her chasing a supposed sense of happiness in a particular place.

little forest (2018)

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at the beginning of the film, hye-won is struggling — she has a distant and difficult relationship with her mother who leaves her in her final year of high school, she fails the final exam that would have given her the credentials to be a teacher, she is left ‘hungry’ by the instant food in seoul, etc. this means she is stagnant, torn between her countryside life and city life — she is unable to leave the city completely like one of her friends since she has to earn money somehow but doesn’t want to / can’t find work locally like her other friend.

the relationship she has with her mother and home is complicated by her simultaneous love and resentment toward them. the film shows her journey to understanding and acceptance of her mother’s situation — she married without experiencing anything for herself and had no reason to stay in the village after she got divorced. she stayed in the village until hye-won grew up and was able to look after herself so that hye-won would have somewhere (a little forest) to root herself to when things were rough. it is revealed that she left so she could find answers just like hye-won continually attempts to do throughout the film.

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what i loved the most about the film is that it didn’t reduce her struggles or change anything about her but simply allowed her to see through a new perspective. her feelings of hurt and abandonment about her mother leaving were acknowledged, but through the rituals of cooking and food with seasonal vegetables, the love from her mother was conveyed, allowing her to understand the humanity of her mother and her place in life to a larger extent.

it reminded me of this excerpt:

“you have no idea / what kind of light you’ll let in / when you drop the bowl, no idea / what you will make full”

maggie nelson, the canal diaries

and this one:

“god created us with absence / in our hands, but we will not return that way. / not now, when we are both so capable of growing / full

natalie diaz, i lean out the window and she nods off in bed, the needle gently rocking on the bedside table

i think whenever you are placed in situations where you feel abandoned, or you do not fit in / belong, or you just feel uncomfortable, you automatically think it’s due to a lack on your part, or that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you. you forget that this takes place outside of you, and therefore does not signal deficiency or insufficiency in you. you are enough. you are trying your best and it shows :)

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little forest (2018)

i thoroughly enjoyed watching the scenes of preparing food throughout the film. especially in relation to the seasons. i love the little rituals people have when they cook and the way they show love in the act of preparing food. i am currently living with my grandma and it’s lovely to see similarities in how both my mum and my grandma do things in the kitchen. my grandma showed me her recipe book recently, which she has had since the eighties/nineties - it’s discolored and written in gujarati but it’s been an observer of messy kitchen worktops since my mum was growing up. it reminds me of something i’ve read that hasn’t left my mind - a kitchen is a research lab for new ways to say i love you.

mahmoud darwish, think of others

little forest (2018)

the weather is getting colder and i’m finding myself increasingly wanting a warm home-cooked meal. to sit around a table and talk. to feel safe and content. to phone someone i love and let them know i am thinking of them. to read and write.

“winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home”

edith sitwell

little forest (2018)

“never voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day”

virginia woolf, night and day

little forest (2018)

winter can be hard — mornings are so cold that you don’t want to leave your bed and it gets dark early. but there’s a strange comfort within all of that. like when you’re walking through the city on an evening and there’s all the lights and bustle. like eating hot food with people you love. like frosty morning walks and baking. like drinking a mug of hot chocolate and watching a film snuggled under blankets. there’s always something to hold on to, even when things are hard.

“many people think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. and it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, 'what do i care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now: yes, evil often seems to surpass good. but then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. one morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. and so i must still have hope"

van gogh

the film was truly comforting, especially as the season changes from autumn to winter now. it’s a celebration of friendship, food, love, and the pleasures of daily life - i would definitely recommend it :-) i’ve been watching quite a few things like it this year (a gentle breeze in the village, when the weather is nice, only yesterday, summer strike, my neighbour totoro and hometown cha cha cha) that give the same healing, studio ghibli-esque vibe. this slice of japanese coming-of-age cinema truly leaves me so peaceful and nostalgic, and i am now left yearning for a life in the countryside and to do things with my hands.

little forest (2018)

“a single green sprouting thing / would restore me…”

jane kenyon, february: thinking of flowers

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i reached three hundred subscribers this month and that is truly crazy to me — i’m just thinking about how many people that actually is and i’m going a bit insane. i can’t thank you enough for consistently reading my silly little thoughts and i truly appreciate every little comment or message you send me.

i am wishing you tenderness this winter. i hope can find warmth as the weather gets colder. i hope you can eat warm meals and sleep in a warm bed. i hope you can find love in the simplicity of life. i wish you tasty cups of tea and good music. you deserve good things now <3

p.s. here’s some media i have heard of that has similar themes: bread of happiness, mio on the shore, blue hour, the green green grass of home, permament nobara, a summer at grandpa’s, our little sister, something in the rain, reply 1988 and one spring night :-)