Unfolding inside out

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…

Read More

Our better world

If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change Michael Jackson, Man in the mirror If someone had told me that I would cite Michael Jackson… A few days ago I heard someone asking what would make the world a better place. I thought about…

Read More

Chained to here

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.…

Read More

One day

There comes a day when you are listening to music, alone, and you realise that you are where you have to be. That all the -isms are not for you. That you will follow your own path or no-path. That the desire for completion is just a not-here. A day when you realise you have…

Read More

The beggar

The shackle on one sideAnd your heart on the other, meanwhile, bleedsAnd the beggar always by your sideYour fellow travellerWhen the stars will fadeYou will come too Héroes del Silencio, The stranded mermaid I always saw the beggar, all beggars, as leeches trying to feed on others, on me. Trying to take what I had…

Read More

The truth in the pages

A few months ago, I had a dream in which I visited an old chapel. Two priests were arguing in a low voice and at some point, the high priest mentioned a sacred book that was somehow very dear to me. He went into a room in the back, and I followed him. There he…

Read More

Wanting and waiting

Why do we want what we want? One day we discover a new hole that wasn’t there before, a gap we need to fill, a want. It becomes a need we must satisfy. I don’t mean wanting water when one is thirsty, but the other things we want, the ones that look like choices. What…

Read More

Ping

Why do we write? I sometimes wonder whether reaching out to everybody through online platforms is the same as reaching out to no one. It must be the same with writing a book, I guess. The writer pours their heart on a few pages for all to see, for some to take in, to mean…

Read More

On the shore

Like so many people, I often feel like I miss the sea. Walking down the beach the other day, I thought that most of the time what we miss is not so much the sea but the shore. Not so much diving or sailing but being in front of it. Not in the distance, not…

Read More

Our little tribulations

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…

Read More

Those stars

In Tolkien’s world, the stars were the first thing the elves saw when they awoke. They were tossed on the sky by Varda, just so they wouldn’t be in the dark when they woke up. The unreachable light in the darkness. The stars are not farther awayThan the men I deal with Heroes del Silencio,…

Read More

Those songs

Aren’t all the songs the same song? Aren’t all the books the same book? What I find in them, isn’t it what I need each time? Doesn’t my unconscious project what my conscious ego needs to see? My brain carefully selects the words I need to hear and removes the rest, which are no longer…

Read More

Ninety degrees

We humans have this tendency, or obsession rather, to build houses in the shape of a rectangle or a square. I don’t believe there is any specific logic to this. We came out of caves and wanted to build ourselves some shelter. We could have used a triangle or even an hexagon, which makes much…

Read More

Death within

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…

Read More

Soundtrack to a farewell

To me, nothing symbolises the ephemeral life like music. We can frame light and colour in a photograph, in a painting, but we cannot retain a melody. Music comes to us, touches our soul and leaves. Like those subtle notes in Beethoven’s fifth piano concert. They come, float casually in the air and leave. Like…

Read More

The sea that unites all islands

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…

Read More

The wanderer

I am in a train. I can see the outside world changing. Day, night, rain, sun, clouds, trees, unending concrete cities, a mountain. A succession of images outside. Inside, I remain still. From my perspective, I do not move. I am not surprised that Man once thought that the planet where it dwells was the…

Read More

In the fall of ‘no’

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,…

Read More

Surrender

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…

Read More

A window

The music of Philip Glass makes me feel at home. Apparently flat but deeply mysterious. The nuances of repetition. Change in no change. Peaceful and yet disquiet. A tension of opposites. Quiet and yet so loud. An inbetweenness. I often dream of windows through which I get ‘to the other side’, usually some sort of…

Read More