I often listen to Max Richter while I write. In his music illustrating Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Richter captures the atmosphere with such majesty. The unyielding rhythm, the drama but also the compassion, the admiration and, above all, the flow. With Richter you never know whether you are dragged or suspended, but you do know…
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A few years ago, I decided to write a letter to my younger self, the child I was. I explained the difficulties he would face, encouraged him, gave advice… as if I actually had something to teach. Then, one day, with a very vivid image in my mind that I will remember for life, I…
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(continues from here; begins here) To come here in the mornings to sit before this Rothkian void. A filled void that contains everything. The narrator wonders, do I care? But there is nothing to care about or not, there is nothing to feel. That seems to belong to another reality. Here is everything that is.…
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There was a moment a few years ago when I stopped defending from the world. When I understood my aim was not to look for a more appropriate place, different from this one, but to fuse myself with this world to which I belong. To be one with it, accepting life as a permanently changing…
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In the old days we didn’t have so much information at hand. It was easier to have an opinion that was not necessarily supported by facts. It was the opinion we wanted to have, or rather the one we needed to have at the time. Now, with everything there is to know in our cell…
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Moral principles make a society cohesive. They provide a set of basic rules that are necessary for us to thrive as a group. I recently read a piece about the need to stand for our principles. But what does it mean to stand by my principles? It sounds as though they might be confronted; otherwise,…
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I remember the mixtapes (actual 20th century tapes) that we crafted for that special someone. They were full of thought, of effort, of emotion, of anticipation, of love. A compilation is a sort of creation. It is not a list, it is more than that. It is a language. A pile of words placed in…
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It’s interesting that the word universe, which integrates all the diversity that exists, etymologically means to pour/transform into one. Humans, at least in the West, have chosen a word that means ‘one’ to define that which contains everything. Poetic and powerful. Who am I? I remember asking myself this question so often. Maybe it is…
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When I am in a hurry with no reason, all I want to do is to be not-here. As if some other place would close the gap, fill the void. It is difficult to be here, not thinking about what I will need next or where will I have to be in a few minutes.…
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As I passed by the flat of one of my neighbours, I remembered that someone died alone there a few years ago and took weeks to be found. Months later, a young couple moved in. Now their toddler’s toys were spread in front of their door, illustrating our inevitable cycle of life and death with…
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We are used to think of a seed or a child in terms of potential. The seed holds in itself the potential to become a tree. The child holds the potential to become an adult human being. Do we carry death within us? From the moment we are born, from the beginning, an end is…
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I think about the public in a concert or a mob in the street. They act as One. People doing things they would never dare doing if they were alone. For a few moments they stop being individuals with an independent conscience and they become one with the group. They abandon themselves. They surrender to…
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I don’t know what the title means, it just came to my mind. ‘Yes’ seems so invasive, so active, so demanding. ‘No’ means to stay with myself, peace, nothingness. ‘Yes’ is outside. ‘No’ is inside. I have as a desktop image a photograph of a path in the forest, full of bluebells (here it is,…
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Sometimes we read an apparently harmless line, and we can hear the hammer hitting the nail inside us. ‘Whack!’. Then, silence. The small drop hits the lake and slowly, relentlessly, the wave it produces reaches all the corners of our being. A shiver. Our world has changed. A hard truth we always knew, possibly. I…
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I recently finished watching the fourth season of The Crown. Throughout the series, the characters explain how the Crown and the elected Government represent the two sides of power. One side that is changeable, works hands-on, gets dirty and suffers the blame, and another side that is eternal, idealised, immaculate, almost magical. There comes a…
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And who am I? This question fills me with a kind of emptiness, as if highlighting what’s missing, rather than what’s present. The void. The nothingness that accompanies the lack of answers. The void has been with me since my early childhood, draining energy, will, and light. I tried to escape from it, to bury…
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Am I unique? Am I not repeating the pattern of so many human beings before me? Haven’t I been ‘me’ before, in another one? Am I the first of my kind? Don’t I make the same mistakes as that who was like me? Won’t another come later who will be like ‘me’, with my same…
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I see all these people with strong opinions. As if they were experts in medicine, virology, immunology, biochemistry, statistics, politics, law, economy and football. I guess strong opinions give them some sense of control over the ever changing reality. A sense that they ‘know’ what is going on around them and hence they can predict…
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The other day, it occurred to me that maybe I’m not searching for, but ‘searching from’. I wonder if a search is not a flight. If it is not a statement, a recognition that I don’t want to be ‘here’. A void, silent and permanent. I wonder, once again, if a search is not an…
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When I was young and I heard about the scars that life leaves in you, I thought they were the result of events that had happened to you. But no. It’s your own sins that scar you the deepest. Over and again, last call for sinWhile everyone’s lost, the battle is wonWith all these things…
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The Introverted Tree 