The Goon Line 005: Small Kindnesses

A lovely, warm recco for what I hope will be a lovely, warm Friday for everyone. It’s a short poem, “Small Kindnesses,” by Danusha Laméris.

I learned about this piece via a recommendation from Saeed Jones on Vibe Check a year or two back. I cannot endorse that creator or that podcast more heartily, so please check them both out, too. Jones is a beautiful reader-out-louder/performer, and shared this on an episode I am too lazy and dumb to locate right now, so I guess you’ll just have to listen to the entire back catalog to find it.

Anyway, back to the internet at hand. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need or want or crave this type of gesture, now or ever. And this is a beautiful and brief articulation of why it matters and why we should try to extend them. I am a horn-honker, a finger-giver and a both-sides-out-of-my-mouth-talker when it comes to being gentle with our fellow human animals, because I am a sensitive person with a rage problem. Consuming work like this reminds me to turn down my baser instincts at least a little bit.

MOREOVER, rereading this so I could recommend it here led me to this — a collaborative version of the poem, written by teenagers, curated by the author. I really did get choked up at the coffee shop when I stumbled into this, despite having known about and returning to the source material for quite some time now. The internet remains nice in places, the world can be good.

Thank you for extending your own small kindness by indulging me — some of you for the second or fifth or eleventh or millionth time — in another farty little creative project. One week down; thanks for being here, and we’ll see each other on Monday.