The Assemblage Newsletter #66
Welcome to this week’s newsletter from Assemblage. These newsletters usually go out every Friday to highlight some of the top works from the past week, but this week we were too Friday-tired, so here it is. We hope these links (all friend links, so anyone can view them) find you wading in a pond of self-love this weekend, in whatever form suits you.
“Forgiveness isn’t just the absence of anger. I think it’s also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself.” — Tara Westover
Forgive yourself. Life’s too short to continue beating yourself up for things that are in the past. Every day is a chance to practice self-care and self-love.
Featured Writer
Each week we feature one of our writers and up to six of their essays or poems on the homepage underneath the Featured Essays and Featured Poems sections. This week our Featured Writer is Jonathan Greene. Jonathan is a father, poet, writer, real estate investor/team leader, certified life coach, and sociable introvert. He is busy curating a meaningful life. He is also the founder of Assemblage and all of its sub-publications.
Collection
Collections are groupings of stories or poems with an overall theme. You can find Collections on the home page underneath the Featured Stories, Featured Poetry, and Featured Writer sections.
On Books features 10 different essays from 10 different writers all speaking on our collective obsession with books. This section is a great way to get acquainted with multiple works around one theme, as well as to find writers you haven’t read before or ones you shouldn’t miss. Take a look at our Collection this week and see what you may have missed.
On Books features one work each from Lance Baker, Em Unravelling, Jessica Lee McMillan, Jonathan Greene, Pamela J. Nikodem, M.S.Ed, Daria Krauzo, The Rewired Soul, Adeline Dimond, Megan Minutillo, and Maribel Martinez.
Essays and Poems From Last Week
“Humpbacks glide,
tremendous ghosts,
weightless as canoes
creating slipstreams
like dream sequence,”
Only Focus On the World You Wish To Live In by Lance Baker
“Our technocratic overlords are the ultimate beneficiaries of our depleted vitality. The more we surrender our vitality to another show binge, arguing online, or passively consuming whatever happens to be served up in front of us; the more they get to decide what world we live in, what we see, how we engage with one another, and what narratives we operate within.”
I Step Out Into Dusk by Kara B. Imle
“Depending on how you see things
the road is either a strip of mud
or a silver ribbon in muted moonlight
and poetry streams behind me in the wind”
Why I No Longer Aim To Be Agreeable, And You Shouldn’t Either by Melissa Kerman
“You’ll spend your whole life agreeing if you’re not careful. When your brain nudges you to say “no” and you have the option, choose it. You’re not defiant, difficult, stubborn, or any other adjective your opposition might gaslight you to believe. There is no nobility in agreeing to something that doesn’t serve you, because your happiness is equally as important to that of the person you aim to fulfill.”
On the Virtual Ramparts by Greg Frankson
“the shamelessly craven’s debauched instigations
as substitutions for amplification of true knowledge
and all that it’s precipitated like Icarus in freefall is
endless victimhood revealed as exhibitionist self-flagellation
that defies any sensible explanation”
On Just Existing by Estrella Ramirez
“Stuck between what I know
life can be when I manage
my emotions, and how it feels
to let everything go.”
East London Horror Story by Lauretta Alonge
“Her son was gone and her entire body alight. She roared the untimely loss of her youngest son. I replayed supercuts of the day we said goodbye to Arunn. Her wails as fresh as the first night they haunted my dreams. I now knew the sound of pain in its purest form.”
A Giant’s Dance Upon Paralytic Skies by Bradley J Nordell
“now you sit upon the firmament
envious of our silent fall
quiet in our demise,
a brew worth numbing rage,
and a dream too tall.”
Broken Hearts Are Not Fragile by Megan Minutillo
“For one day, you will love again,
and this heartbreak that you hold will only be a memory,
a scar deep within your chest,
a reminder that you are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
Weekly Note
“This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.” — Voltaire
Our self-love is for us. When our self-love becomes about how we show others how much we love ourselves, the entire act is defeated. Be at one with yourself. Be honest with yourself. Love yourself.
