“Not even the silence pursues me.”
In the name of insomnia.
Everything around is so quiet, the silence rules this time. The day is still covered by darkness. There are just few birds singing outside. My body is slow yet. The motion I feel is showing a lack of coordination. There is an instant where I can identify the freedom of time, the lack of pressure. Take my slow body outside the bed. Make the intent of feeding the puppy, he is not eating of course, too early, too late, who knows. Decide to make a coffee, the first of the day. First smell of the day that return me to home is coffee. Prepare the Italian machine and wait for while. The coffee is ready. By this time the birdsongs outside are intensive. I can feel my senses awaken. I feel good.
Thoughts into written words.
Just as the mechanics behind of that feeling of wanting the things more real, touchables and accountable. Helping within the flow, making it easier. To get to know myself.
“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
— Joan Didion
Today I remember. 6 AM, making my first cup of coffee and the first thought I felt was the cold of this particular past day. Went to my film archives just to confirm that my memory was holding this view up, not less and not more. I was able to remember the cold air, I was able to feel the same peace and joy I felt that day, I was feeling the same excitement and I was feeling a deeper sentiment of hope. There were not borders, there were no wars, there was nothing but the magnificence of Mother Earth. Yesterday I asked about what give us hope and now I have my own answer, for me, the memory offers me a full sense of hope. I’m full. I’m good. Then my coffee was ready and I was pushed back to reality. That was my early morning. I’m well.
Mont Saint-Michel, 2018.
—-
L’homme et la mer
Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer !
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.
Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l’embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets
Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes;
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets !
Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables !
— Charles Baudelaire
One day at a time, stick on my head lately. Even when I wasn’t sure how this lockdown would change my routines and habits, I was meant to make it the most easier to me, trying to avoid self compromises that only would deliver stress and anxiety. I was open to be thankful for grace since the beginning. I was open to the idea of taking what our path has for us. There are days where I can only make it attached to the idea that this is just one day and it will pass soon.
Things I like from early mornings:
The sound of a silenced city, the darkness of early hours, the way the light starts falling trough my windows, the bird songs of each morning sounding different each time but remembering the same feeling of home, the first taste of coffee, the way I’m able to write and read without distractions, the pastel colour of the sky, if I’m lucky enough the way the clouds play their game, the sound of the people invading slowly the streets. The way I’m able to wake my senses up with the city. The feeling familiarity and simplicity. The way these ordinary things can do my path easier.
Common observations / appreciations.
Raw words, unedited.
There are easier days than others, there are moments that filling your emotions may give you the idea that everything is going well. There are other moments where the same emotions just offer nothing, makes you wonder what you are trying to do, trying to gain from that. And here is where perspective takes a relevant place, it’s the main point from where everything gets built, the basic point where the castle of emotions can shine or fell. Raising questions and doubts, changing emotions and trues in a single second, making everything more easy or more complex. Devastating doubts or gardening rivers of questions. Then, next day, you realised that everything is still there, all what you have thought is still shining, all what you have questioned seems very pretty logical and unnecessary of contrasts. Emotions are changing in every single minute. It’s a fact, it’s a reality. Recognition of those changes, understanding that it will keep changing, taking this just as a phase, visualising the coming perspective’ modification, listening our brains, trying to look for our very own and unique ways of keeping our peace. Giving the proper respect to yourself and to the personal changes you are facing. Giving the proper respect to the others around you, understanding that all we are into the same phase and everyone is trying to do our best.
Motion on emotions, the contrast.
Raw words, unedited.
—-
“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
— Joan Didion
Common, unnoticed and ordinary moments helping to bring sanity back to our minds during this tough times.
“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
— Joan Didion
There are simple routines to help mental sanity during this lockdown. There are also enough things causing disconnection and stressful moments. Letting the flow taking us trough all this, trying to accept that there are productive days but also flat days. Embracing the fact that each path is different. There are mountains and there are rivers. And it’s fine. There is light and dark. And it’s fine. Just let the motion of this flow take you trough all of this.
Call your loved ones and drink your coffee.
Raw words.
Was mean to be flying out to Paris right now.
What resilience means to me nowadays? How can I afford mental peace and emotional stability? What can I adopt to make it better? Or how can I just embrace the fact that we’re living unpredictable times where no matter the results everything is acceptable and the path that we could choose will let us growth on unexpected ways and formidable matters?
Keeping the trace on those impulses and trying to see objects from a different perspective deserve the merit out. Confined actions may result on self improved personal unknown methods. Created paths won’t fit these times, adjustments made on our very own matters may increase subconscious wonders.
Life is motion and sometimes it’s just about internal motion.
Raw words, unedited.
Perspective can change in a few second, what was commonly unappreciated can be turned into an unexplainable feeling of nostalgia. We add value to the things depending on perspective, accelerating, decreasing, adding or subtracting, empowering vision, converting visions on dreams, wishing for the best even we were already there. Not always perspective is real, but where is the limit between reality and perspective?
When times are sponsored by our own dreams, covered with personal desires and expectations, when the internal force gets stronger and we find peace on simple affections.
Journals filled with untold words, empty spaces were occupied by our memories, and bunch of list of things that we expect to do to maintain our mental balance in place.
Listening shaped interviews that may help us to expand our vision of things, that may encourage our perspective and that may help us to pass trough all this time.
Cadence of events.
Times of vulnerability and recurrent thinking of small things that may help to develop a better understanding of the situation that we currently living and that may drive us to a positive matter of actions, resulting in cooperation and union. Understanding that each path is unique and that’s ok and that is the unique path for each one. Respecting each other and trying to not minimise the other’s situation just by the fact of our very own side, empathy and honesty. Letting the flow of the natural personal thinking, taking the time to have enough time for introspective analysis, helping the other by respecting their perspective about all this situation. Stop trying to push other in to our same side. Stop pushing the others into privileged perspective of their side because association and bias of emotions. Do one day at time.
Unedited raw words.
Some days are easier than others,
some mornings we wake up with the light of new reasons inside,
some other mornings we spend the hours looking for those reasons,
some days we have the motion in place, running out trough our minds and senses,
some days we need to push the mechanism inside of us to try to see an impulse,
and all of this is fine.
We are humans on this life.
We have played with the time at our convenience,
we have marked the limits in our own horizon,
we have adjusted our feelings and our emotions,
we have started the fire where there was nothing but soft water,
we have made an effort to keep our real world as an unimaginable one,
we have created stories that only existed in our dreams,
we have made of this time our scape,
we have tried to keep us alive,
we have done everything to avoid insanity,
we have dreamt that our space was safe.
Even with all this, there still remain paths to be discovered and to be followed.
Life has been motion.
It will always be about motion.
I dreamt about freedom,
a world without fear,
a society united by love,
a very distant utopia nowadays.
What’s the difference between hope and utopia?
Vers d’amour
Tu gardes dans tes yeux la volupté des nuits,
O Joie inespérée au fond des solitudes !
Ton baiser est pareil à la saveur des fruits
Et ta voix fait songer aux merveilleux préludes
Murmurés par la mer à la beauté des nuits.
Tu portes sur ton front la langueur et l’ivresse,
Les serments éternels et les aveux d’amour,
Tu sembles évoquer la craintive caresse
Dont l’ardeur se dérobe à la clarté du jour
Et qui te laisse au front la langueur et l’ivresse.
— Renée Vivien, Cendres et Poussières, 1902.
“ Mirrors are ice which do not melt: what melts are those who admire themselves in them.”
— Paul Morand
“Someone had told him one day that you forget the voices of those whom you have been close to in the past very quickly.”
— Patrick Modiano
From dark to light with hope and love.