I have just moved, and for the first time, I don´t wake up desperately searching for something. So here I am. I finally made it!
Every relocation involves several moves, to the past and to the future. For a couple of weeks that felt like an eternity to me, I left my mostly digital life and became analog, even physical. I dealt with those I live with – they are three, but at some point, they seemed like a hundred – with more than five hundred boxes – they were actually more than five hundred – and with emotional attachments to objects – I can’t even count the number of emotions. I wished I were just my avatar and missed the constant digital stimulation that usually exhausts me. I fought the battle between the minimalist and the baroque within myself and with others.
The thought of a hand
I consider myself to be a minimalist, except when it comes to books. They are the physical manifestation of my love for stories and my thirst for knowledge. Given this, it’s no surprise that writing on paper is my preferred way to figure things out.
Studies have shown that the tactile sensation of paper pages under our fingertips provides our brains with context, leading to deeper understanding and better comprehension of the subject we’re reading about. The same is true for writing by hand, a process known as ‘embodied cognition,’ where the physical act of writing supports the brain’s ability to retrieve information. A hand gliding over the pages of a book or gripping a pen, making precise movements that transform into words… The human hand is the product of millions of years of evolutionary changes and has advanced in lockstep with the brain. When I read physical books or jot down notes on a piece of paper, I am thinking with my hands.
The map of the words
At this moment, I am surrounded by a million written words – others´, mine and something in between. They are drawing the map of my discoveries. My eyes are wide open with curiosity as I think about all the doors that they have opened and the ones that they have closed. Some doors are ajar, representing the things that I am still figuring out. Those are the books that I am keeping in paper, while the others will have a second life through my kids, my sister, my friends, and strangers – hello stranger! – whom I will wave to through them
The notebooks that I use for writing also involve movements. Literally. I get them from all over the world, always with blank pages without any type of grid or guide. The design of their covers is the first sign of the state of my mind. They keep me company. They are the me on the way. The ‘not yet’ me.
As I review them, I smile at the things that once worried me so much. I marvel at the many tasks I accomplish throughout the day. I empathize with myself – such a difficult thing to do – when I get stuck on something that comes back to haunt me through several pages. The ‘should do’, ‘would have to do’, or ‘could do’ that both encourage and scold me.
They are filled with value cases, positioning papers, learnings about new solutions, takeaways from my work meetings, schematics of new projects, all kinds of frameworks; all of which seamlessly and peacefully coexist with my children’s appointments, shopping lists, quotes and mantras, housekeeping tasks, and monthly expenses. They have seen me excited, struggling, and simply tired. Through them, I see again how a door opens when it is time to move on after a couple of notebooks of repetition. I just hate repeating myself.
As I turn their pages, I relive those moments when all my neurons ran away in a stampede. I follow the arrows that I usually draw – the ones that opened the way, entered a loop or didn’t go anywhere. I pause at all my ellipses and remember that, as Paul Valéry once said, everything begins with an interruption. Arrows, ellipses, and hearts are the only things you will see me ‘drawing.’ They summarize pretty well who I am.
The walls falling down
Through those words, my life continues as it actually is – without walls. At any given moment it always seems the same, but in the distance it is so different. The things that come and go; the ones I spend my life fighting with and for. I see how they change, even though it seems like I am in the same place…
I realize once again that what I see in the distance and with a critical eye is very different from what I thought at the moment. I face anew the things that I have overcome with more or less lightness and grace or simply with better or worse luck. I reaffirm myself on the paths that I no longer want to follow and, above all, grasp the ideas that keep coming back like signs of what is meant to be.
Overall, the notebooks provide a fundamental service: reminding me that everything -whatever it means at a moment in time- will eventually pass. However, even in some remote corner of my mind, it will manage to stay, saving me from the dangerous sport of jumping to conclusions.
I give those words the farewell they deserve and let them go. Every move is an exercise in nostalgia but more than anything, it is an exercise in hope.
I am starting a new notebook. I got it on my last trip to Vienna. It has a cover that speaks of independence and revolution. It begins with some ideas from previous notebooks that are ringing like bells just now. Every idea is preceded by an arrow and ends with ellipses. I whisper to myself ‘not yet.’ And those specific two words I am now writing are the tipping point to start over.
PRESENT CONTINUOUS 