folgepaula — Write.as

GITA श्रीमद्भ

I got home, exhausted. Shower and straight to bed. Hair still wet, listening to some Raul’s old songs from my dad’s time.

I’ve walked all over the world looking for it. But in my case, it was precisely in this moment, with my ears still full of water and foam, that a voice told me:

“According to the tibetan monks, this has seven layers of interpretation. You will understand it in the level you can reach.

Sometimes you wonder why I am so quiet, I barely speak of love around you I barely smile by your side.
You think of me all the time, you eat me, you spit me, you leave me. Perhaps you don’t get it, but today, I’ll tell you.

I am the light of the stars, I am the color of the moon, I am all the things you love and I am your fear of loving them.

I am the fright of the weak, I’m the strength of your imagination, I’m the bluff of the players, I am, I was, and I will be.

I am your sacrifice, I am that wrong way sign on your path, I’m the blood in the vampire’s gaze, I’m all the curses from the one who hates you (obs: and I don’t know why they do, and they don’t know why they do, but they do)

I’m the candle you light up, I am the light you turned off. I am the edge of the cliff calling you, I am all these things and I am nothing at all.

Why do you wonder so much? Your questions will not bring you anywhere. Just like you, I am made of earth and fire, and air.
You have me all the time, but you never know if it is good or bad. You can feel me within you, but know you are not in me.

I am the roof of each tile, I’m fishing for the fisherman, Each word has my name on it, I am the love behind your dreams,

I am the guy going shopping with the discount stickers, I am the hand of your torturer, I’m shallow, I’m wide, I’m deep.

I am the fly on your soup I am the teeth of the shark I am the eyes of the blindman And I am the blindness of the ones who see,

I am the bitterness on your tears I am your mother, I am your father, I am your grandfather, I am your kid that has not yet arrived, I am the beginning, I am the end and I am everything in between”.

/Apr26

I found a moth inside my elevator. I scooped it up with my hands shaped like a bowl and brought it out to my balcony. Then I started imagining what it would tell its moth friends afterward. Like, how she (yes, I am calling her SHE) suddenly entered this brightly lit moving box and got trapped there, no water, no food, and every now and then a giant would appear, absolutely terrifying her.

Until one day or some hours, she cannot really precise, but it felt like an eternity, a giant with long hair and a weird looking white horse (that's Livi in case you missed the ref) showed up, grabbed her with giant hands, and everything went dark again. She was sure that was the end. But then the hands opened, and there she was, at the highest height she's ever been in life, she was back outside, but outside this time was so enormous, she could see all the buildings and the city from above, all this happening as if she’d been teleported to freedom. Her moth friends would probably call the whole thing an abduction.

She’d be invited onto moth podcasts to share her testimony. The hater moths would say, “Fake. She just wants attention, next thing you know, she’s auditioning for Too Hot to Handle”, etc. Eventually, she’d write a book compiling testimonies from other moths who claim to have been abducted, trying to find patterns. Some would say, “My giant had short hair.” Others: “Mine was bald.” Some would insist there was no giant at all, just a huge transparent glass thing, and at the bottom, something that looked like a piece of Spar flyers. Other moths would never swallow the theory of the giant jar with Spar flyers at the bottom. “This is obviously a marketing move from Spar!” they would say.

Damn it's so hard to be a believable moth.

/Apr26

You can call me crazy, or liar, or you just believe me.

I will never be able to prove anything I am saying, but some stuff for me are very real. And I only know that because I have felt them.

For instance, I didn’t really understand yoga until it came to me through meditation. I experienced it before I had a teacher. My first contact with involuntary movements happened when I was around 24 or 25. I was listening to mantras quite frequently and I'd meditate quite frequently. One day, it happened.

My body began to unfold into yoga poses and mudras (those hand positions) through completely involuntary movements, as if guided by an unseen hand. I assume that's how a flower feels when it's blooming, it opens not by movement, but by inner energy. It reminds me of a poem from Rumi that says: “What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest”. I understood it, Rumi. Thank you.

At first, I was a little.. surprised. I really really assumed it might be connected to having smoked a joint with a friend the night before and thought there was some lingering effect of THC. A few days later, I meditated again, this time completely sober, and it happened once more. The surprise was replaced by a sense of trust. The movements were slow and gentle, guiding me into stretches and positions I never imagined I could elaborate. Whatever was happening was beyond my understanding and control.

So I did what anyone would do: I googled it, hahaha. After digging through questionable forums (no chat GPT at the time), I eventually stumbled upon the word “kriya”. Turns out kriyas are involuntary movements said to happen when kundalini energy rises through the spine. Super common in India, especially in group practices. In my case? It was just me. Alone. No teacher. No vocabulary to express it (the closest was Rumi). No training, clueless. I did not know what a position even was, even less the purpose behind it, but somehow, yoga already knew me.

Two years later, I was dating a guy who had just started a Kundalini yoga teacher training. Yoga was hype then, you could see a wave of people interested, rushing to studios. I did not connect the kryias that happened to me years before to yoga at this time. Because in my mind all I was doing was meditating when movements happened. One day, he came to my flat with a thick book. That particular day, though, we’d had a little argument, so I retreated to the living room to meditate and let things cool down.

I put on some mantras to play and sat on the floor. Within seconds really, it started again. The spontaneous movements were back. He walked in and sat on the couch. I was aware of him, but I stayed immersed in what was happening. After about fifteen minutes, I stopped. When I looked at him, he asked, clearly surprised: “Where did you learn this?”

I tried to explain I knew it would sound crazy, but I honestly honestly did not know what I was doing, it would just happen to me. Stunned, he told me I had just gone through a full sequence of six different postures from the book he’d brought home, without ever opening it. I then saw the sequence laid out in detailed illustrations and precise instructions. They had names and all. Said to activate certain chakras. Anyone who has ever seen yoga material must know what I am talking about. It all made sense now. I told him what I could assume is this indian practitioner (I do not remember his name) went through the sequence of spontaneous movements and decided to reverse engineer it by drawing them down into a sequence and teach them to westerns under the name of “Kundalini yoga”. He did not even fake it, he called it exactly by the name I googled years before “kryias”. But westerns, going through it, will probably think a kryia is a sequence of postures you should follow, and not spontaneous movements.

I have very clear in my mind yoga is not a practice of the wise ones, or the experienced ones, it is just out there as a collective knowledge. If it can happen to me, believe me, it can really happen to anyone. I went to multiple yoga studios in São Paulo and a few in Vienna after that, always had nice classes, but very pragmatic too. Not even once the kryias happened to me during those classes.

My yoga class in India was a completely different experience. Absolutely no focus on postures, no books, no attention to details. All we were asked for was to feel. I told my indian teacher that day about what happened to me and how I appreciated his class because I understood his concept. He confirmed that the kryias were indeed completely normal, he would always see people having them during festivals, while in the western world they would be seen almost as a supernatural thing. But according to him, the highest states of consciousness will arise naturally when you are ready, when you purified your heart. It has nothing to do with willingness or performance, because it just reinforces the illusion of separate self. It's a mimimi. When that performative thought does not arise, then you are not there the same way, you are here. You just are.

Another completely different experience: sound baths. Went to two sessions of sound baths in Vienna with a friend because it was an option on my Myclubs signature. It wasn't bad. It was very relaxing. The person hosting the session had a collection of bowls, a gong, and other instruments. She explained all of them to us before starting.

Sound bath experience in India: you would enter the room in complete silence. The teacher, seated with the gentlest smile, greeted each person individually with a silent “namaste”. He had only one small bowl with him, nothing else.

The moment he began, I felt an immediate sensation at the top of my head, as if four different points were being touched. I didn’t hear the sound, I felt it. The experience was so physically real that at one point I really thought someone was lifting my legs and dragging my body across the floor in slow spirals. I slightly opened my eyes, convinced someone was actually holding me. There was nothing, just the decorated ceiling of the room. No one touching me. I smiled inwardly, surprised by my own arrogance in refusing to believe what was happening. I was so disconnected from myself that I doubted the experience, convinced it had to be some kind of trick. As westerns, our belief systems are fragile, we’re conditioned to distrust our own sensations, and only trust logic.

End of last year I joined an energy healing course, which pretty much uses only hands and postures to transmute energy. Yes, look at me, a complete hippie trippy, I know. Anyhow, since then, every time I do the practice, I need to place my hands and I swear I can feel the energy circling from one hand to the other as of an electric chain. My hands who are normally cold get extremely warm before I even start.

Some weeks ago I went to concert at Arena with a friend and in the middle of a song while I just closed my eyes it happened again, the sound was traveling through me and touching me exactly in the middle of my chest. It wasn't even a sound bathing session.

It turns out I still cannot explain many things I had experienced and continue to experience sometimes. And possibly I never will, but one thing I am sure is that this life force or however you rather call it, spills beyond our words and escapes the boundaries of physics.

/Apr2026

SPEAKING OF THE APOCALYPSE

I know we are cool and these are different times, but if the world was ending, you'd show up, right?

we'd heat up some coffee make a plan to survive, build a zombie defense, map out the city together figure out how to stay alive

and if the world was announced to go dark, wouldn't you drop by real quick, bring some candles to fight the night?

Let's say WW III is declared, would you rush to get me a Vergissmeinnicht bouquet?

Would you ring my door just to steal a kiss outdo that V-J Day Times Square picture?

And if a meteor was on its way to collide, and we've got only six hours left, wouldn't you bring me that book you never returned and I never lent just in case we forget?

I know there's no reason to panic and everything is fine, but let's be honest, if the world was ending, you'd come over, right?

/2026

ON FRIDGES AND PERSONAL FREEDOM

I'm just back from the pharmacy. Last night, right as I was drifting off, it hit me that I probably need some sort of cleaning/antibacterial solution for the playing wounds Livi might collect at the Hundezone. I checked my first aid kit and discovered I was not really prepared with a small antiseptic spray. Works as a final touch, but not useful for any actually eventful day.

So I walked two blocks to the nearest Apotheke, where a very sweet attendant started helping me. I asked for an antiseptic solution, and she showed me a tiny spray. I then suggested I was thinking of something with more volume, you know, something I could keep at home for truly ugly injuries. “Show me the biggest package you’ve got.” She came back with 500 ml of saline solution. Perfect. Since I was already there, I also asked for bandages, equally generous size. At that exact moment, one of her colleagues, who radiated strong pharmacy manager vibes, walked over and asked if everything was okay. I said yes.

He then asked what the saline solution was for, and I explained that I have a dog and myself, and I’m extremely talented at collecting injuries on a regular basis, so I wanted to be prepared at home. He then agreed that 500 ml was the best choice. I casually added that yes, I’d be keeping it in the fridge.

This visibly disturbed him. He asked why I would put saline solution in the fridge. I replied, “Why wouldn’t I?” He said that he had never heard of saline solution being kept in the fridge. I told him that I equally never in human history had I kept a big package anywhere else. He insisted it wasn’t something you should refrigerate. I said, “Well… I don't know.. but I’m still alive.” Reluctantly, he said he was going to check ChatGPT.

In the meantime my memory goes back to every fridge my parents ever had with this generous package of saline solution in it, next to the SuperBonder glue kept at the door. My brain keeps giving me that this is just a saline solution, there shouldn't be any issue keeping it in the fridge. Besides, it saves me some bathroom storage space.

After a few seconds, clearly upset by the research, he tells me that according to it, there are no MAJOR PROBLEMS with keeping saline solution in the fridge, BUT he personally would not recommend it. I ask, “Sorry, why wouldn't you recommend it?” (thinking: the source must be the voices in his head, there’s no other explanation). He replies that it’s because he’s never seen this done before and that there’s no recommendation to keep it in the fridge. I answer, “Right, but I’ve seen this done many times, I come from a tropical country and its a common thing there, besides there’s also no recommendation against keeping it in the fridge from what you checked, right?” Then he tells me that Austria is not a tropical country. I reply saying that although Austria is not a tropical country, a fridge in Austria has pretty much the same temperature as a fridge in Brazil. And the feeling of the cooling effect once you have a wound is pretty nice. Now if he wouldn't mind, he could please excuse us, since everything was fine with his colleague’s service from the beginning, and I was ready to pay it.

By this point, the original attendant is following the conversation like she’s watching a ping pong match. She smiles and handles me the payment machine. He is visibly offended by the fact that I dared not follow his recommendation. So he hangs around back supervising her and the payment process. Just before leaving, with my purchase in hand, I turn to him one last time and say, “One more thing I have to tell you: I ALSO KEEP SUPER BONDER GLUE IN THE FRIDGE.” And then I ran away.

/Apr26

THE MOMENT HAS ARRIVED

I think it’s finally time to come out of the closet and make it very clear to my austrian friends that I am, in fact, deeply brazilian. They can be very innocent sometimes, and they love to romanticize things like, “Oh, but your Austrian ancestry…” Yes, I do have my 50% Austrian share, as well as many other % bits and pieces, which collectively inform me that I am 200% Brazilian. Somehow, the implications of that sometimes just don’t fully land to them.

For example, every week I have what could be described as “almost dinners” with three different friend groups. I contribute enthusiastically to plans that will absolutely never happen, but the intention behind them is immaculate. My Brazilian friends understand this perfectly. Our WhatsApp group is a very carefully curated list of things we will never do. Still, the relationship is always served. The cancellation memes? Hilarious. No one holds grudges. That’s the culture.

What really works for us are spontaneous events. A few weeks ago, I was having a tiring day and, at 7 PM I texted my Brazilian friend Elias: “Do you have a little one? Shitty day.” (“Little one” is our code for a joint.) I hadn’t texted Elias since October 2025, but I knew without a doubt that he’d understand. One minute later, he replied (and I quote): “Even if I didn’t, I’d find one for you. Love you. I can bring it to your place if you want. By the way, do you want to go to Oli’s concert at Kramladen?” I answered: “Relax. I can be at your place in five minutes. I’m not really in the mood though, but who’s Oli? And what time is the concert?” Turns out Oli is a Brazilian guitarist I somehow hadn’t met yet. And because Elias is my sweetheart friend and his partner, Julia, wasn’t in the mood to go either, there was no way I was going to let my friend go alone. Twenty minutes later, he shows up at U4 with my “little one” and a slice of cake Julia sent me. Love combo. We went to the concert. It was awesome. Of course we absolutely embarrassed Oli by wildly overdoing the applause.

Another lost in translation quality austrians do not get: bullying is a gesture of love for us. If a Brazilian doesn’t deliberately tease you, embarrass you on purpose or tenderly bully you just a bit, means their feelings are still warming up. Recently, a colleague who’s been dating a Brazilian guy for a few months came to talk to me. She asked if it means something the fact he was inviting her to join his friends this weekend for dinner. I had to be honest and tell her that not necessarily. Now, If he’s sarcastically agreeing with you, or playfully disagreeing just to tease you, or challenging you to do something embarrassing, that means something. An impossibility of stillness without slightly touching you or being close to you? A classic. And no it's not a strategy, we simply cannot contain it. Special kudos to my brazilian friend Gica, who told me the cutest story of how she disarmed her austrian boyfriend Andreas early on by repeatedly “discovering” imaginary things on his face for hours before their first kiss. Brazilian dribble.

Another thing you need to know, and I’m revealing our national weak spot here: you can get anything from us if you ask politely. I said anything. The biggest inconvenience of all. Because Brazilians hate saying no.

Now, the opposite is also true: be rude and you won’t get us to let you through. We were not born German shepherds to take angry commands or suggestions. Austrians deeply need to know this approach doesn’t work anywhere in the world, but especially, it won’t work with a Brazilian. It's a culture where kindness matters more than rules. Even if someone is breaking the “rules” or the expected behavior, it does not allow you to be rude. And if you are to approach the person to correct them, you better do it with a genuine open mind, because we give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

I'd go picking wild strawberries in the woods for you on my lunch break if you ask me nicely. I can also make your life a living hell because you were rude to me. I don’t mind either way. Just give me the plan.

Another front: a tangled genetic code leads to confusion in one’s biological rhythm. My body is craves for a daily siesta (the Spanish speaking side). Another part is convinced this is wildly unproductive, guaranteed to cause a headache, and the right thing to do is waking up at 6 AM, maintaining relentless momentum until it's 5PM when I should be at the gym training for the marathon at Wörthersee in September (Austrian genes, obviously). By 2PM, the urge for dolce far niente and espresso sets in (Italian instincts), especially since I skipped lunch. My thoughts were lingering on that croissant from the fassade I saw in the morning (the French part is extremely laissez‑faire, laissez‑passer), so I invite my colleague sitting next to me (what is his name again?) to join me spontaneously in a croissant mission. (Brazil always wins.)

The advantages? Man, I am adaptable. My friends and acquantainces? Not a single commonality between them. I like young people, I like old people, cool people, boring people, funny people, quiet people. Friends with kids, friends with cats, friends with nothing at all but complaints about life. I find them all funny somehow.

I also don't take myself too seriously, if someone has a beef with me, it's very likely I will forget the reason why it started. That drives my mom, for instance, a bit crazy. She lingers in resentment quite long, maybe because she is 100% austrian (hahaha). The other day I messaged her: “Can we briefly pause the regular resentment programming so I can share photos of my friend’s baby that I visited this weekend?” It worked. Because my mom does not resist baby pictures and I basically have a brazilian post doc in breaking the ice.

Watching a concert while sitting down? So hard. At the very least, my feet will be tapping. Also, I fully blame my “““brazilianness”“” for taking more showers than is common around here. And for a certain obsession with brushing my teeth. And for my self deprecating humor, since we extend the bullying to ourselves, but behind it, there’s a hilarious kind of unshakable confidence and the ability to laugh at oneself. And that strange habit of having faith in life. Since it’s coming to an end and the credits are about to roll on the screen, yes, they all go to Brazil.

/Apr26

We often confuse life with civilization. We think life is about buying things, paying bills, getting dressed, collecting likes on social media, going to cafes and ordering cups. But all of that is just part of the civilian game. Living, however, is more than merely existing: it’s being aware that you are alive. And once you become aware of living, it becomes impossible not to see your own finitude. Those who don’t understand death, who don’t carry a sense of its clarity, aren’t truly alive, they’re just distracted by the civilizational process designed to make us forget about life itself.

Sometimes we outsource life to civilization. We believe we are suffering because of a break up, or losing a job. And both things are painful. But the pain behind it is death itself. That's the erotic force of life. Civilization masks the potential to face this force with mediocre events.

Erotism has everything to do with this presence, with one knowing itself as alive, and therefore, finite. Erotism is what makes us humans. I like to think humanity started by the time men stopped grabbing women by their back. Sex, that before was a natural manifestation of the animus with the purpose of reproduction or immediate pleasure, now develops to be eye to eye, the union of two subjectivities into wholeness. That's erotism itself.

For psychoanalysis, to be human is to dwell in a permanent state of incompletion. As if finitude or death is the ultimate proof we can never reach integrity, completion. Who am I to disagree, but also, who am I not to challenge it. Others tried too. Bataille, for instance, talks a lot about erotism, and therefore, believes in wholeness. He says there is a place in which to arrive, a state, a posture, in which everything comes into completion. That yes, there is a place, a joy, where there are no longer words, where everything are hands that reach for one another, where all there is hugs one another, and there is no longer cold in the soul, only the heat of what is sacred, the ecstatic love that dissolves separations.

When two bodies encounter each other, each carrying their own sense of individuality, the boundaries of self begin to blur, and it becomes difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. Together, they leap into an ethereal, abstract space where the self loosens its grip and observes itself from outside, free from identity. The return from this state brings a sense of completion, full of meaning, not logical, but whole. I really like the concept of “la petit mort” because most people connect erotism with release and provocation, rather than transformation or death. Isn't it beautiful that allowing your individuality to die on someone's eye is nothing but a door to live within it? Erotism starts with the lost of the “self”. If ones allow the erotic play, control is gone, but so is fear. Fear is the threshold of it. Because one has already lived it and known it, it might fear it. But the self is really just the peel of it, as what we are is everything else below it we don't know. And this everything else wants to come up. That's why humanity is so afraid of erotism.

/Apr26

For this is the best thing anyone has ever gifted me:

Paula, my granddaughter, was seven years old when what I’m about to tell happened. She had always been very clever and lively since she was little. She observed everything around her quietly, with those honey colored eyes of hers, absorbing everything.

She calls me “Li,” since she was a baby, a short for “groseli,” an affectionate variation from the swiss-german word for grandmother. The word entered into our family since my father Lorenz came from Zurich. Her name “Paula” honors my father’s favorite sister, who went to war as a nurse and never came back.

Paula and I always get along very well. We share so many affinities. We talk a lot about what happens in her world and in mine, things that, in one way or another, matter to us both.

I have fun with her quick thinking and her ability to understand things so easily, which often leaves me astonished. For weeks she had been reminding me: — “Li, it’s been so long since we’ve been to great grandma’s cemetery. Not even once since Christmas!”

I used to take her there to decorate her great grandparents’ grave, because she loves bringing them flowers and arranging them on the small plot. — “That’s true,” I replied, surprised by her memory. “But I think you mean ‘grave,’ not ‘cemetery,’ right?” — “Yes, Li. Are we going to decorate it or not?”

Since an important date for her great grandparents was coming up and it had been raining nonstop for days, I told her we should wait a little longer so we could prepare everything nicely for my parents, so their grave would look beautiful on their day. She agreed.

As we live far from each other, Paula asked me to let her know when the day came and “not forget to take her with me!”.

Her contact with my mother had been very brief. She never met her great grandfather, and when she was just four, my mother passed away. Yet, from that short time of occasional visits, Paula kept affectionate and respectful memories of a very old, fragile great grandmother to whom we devoted so much care and tenderness.

Paula loves her mother, my daughter Julia, very much, and she respects everything she is taught.

I remember the day when my daughter and I came back from my mother’s burial.

Paula offered me her bedroom so I could “rest.” She had noticed my sadness, that I was crying and withdrawn. She came close to me, gently, wanting to comfort me, telling me not to be sad because her mother had told her that great grandma had gone to join great grandpa in heaven. She stroked my hair and kissed me, trying to console me in her delicate way.

Her sensitivity amazed me. In her young mind, she must have imagined how painful it is to lose your mother. She understood my pain and tried to ease it with her innocent affection, so pure and sincere. Since then, she goes to the cemetery with me whenever possible.

Interestingly, my daughter never joins us on these “visits.” She cannot accept the tradition, somehow, it brings her distress. She refuses to follow it but does not impose her feelings on her children. I realized how difficult it was for her even to come to my mother’s burial. She is very sensitive, and I respect her way of feeling. Paula knows it too, yet she simply follows her own nature.

On the promised day, I went to pick her up, already carrying a bouquet of flowers. Paula immediately asked: — “Can I carry the flowers?” And off we went. She sat in the back seat, holding the bouquet tightly in both little hands, completely focused. After a while she asked: — “Great‑grandma will like them, right?” — “Yes, she will love them,” I replied.

As we approached the cemetery, she wanted to know in which section the graves were in. Surprised, I answered that I had actually never paid attention. And she, in a scolding tone, said: — “But Li… YOU don’t know?”

We arrived. As soon as I opened the car door, she ran off with the flowers toward the grave. The place is beautiful, slightly elevated, surrounded by large leafy trees. I let her arrange the flowers, because she feels very important doing so. She placed them carefully, perfectly, and then watered them. She always knows exactly what to do.

During one of her trips back and forth with the watering can, she found the sign marking the cemetery sections and came to tell me: — “Look, Li, your mother is in section C. Have you learned it now?” Then I asked her: — “I’ve learned. And do you think it looks nice?”

She quietly stepped back about five steps, hands on her little hips, examined it with great conviction, and answered: — “It looks very beautiful, Li.”

With her eyes turned toward the sky, as if looking for something, in a mix of worry and anticipation, she whispered facing up: — “Great‑grandma, are you seeing us from up there? We took so long to come… You were waiting for us, weren’t you? But now I know you’ll be happy.”

Marianne Fouquet Horwatitsch

BECAUSE OF WHAT WE HAVE

My friend D. told me she had some updates. Apparently, she’s now trying what she calls a “Monogamic open relationship”. So I immediately asked, “Meaning he’s not allowed to fall in love with anyone else?” She replied she can’t forbid him from falling in love I said, “Great, I’m still with you so far. So…?” Then she explained: they’re together, but she wants to have sex with other people sometimes. I told her I wondered how she would deal with the possibility of falling in love while having her ONS with other people. She said that this would be the moment to have a conversation, an exchange to figure out what comes next, though she finds that very unlikely. And that alone is precisely the beauty of the open relationship, according to her.

That's the moment I told her that sure, I was trying to follow it up as someone that is by her side and adores her. Maybe would be nice to reframe the model to something like “a monogamous open relationship as of today April 2nd, 2026”, because invariably one of them will fall in love for someone else, especially if they are actively having encounters.

Then she explained it wasn’t quite how I was imagining it. In their model, they weren’t planning to go on dates with other people or cultivate an emotional connection with anyone else. But “if” by any chance, they happen to be somewhere, and in the heat of the moment, they felt like having sex, that would be ok. She just wouldn't want to know. To that I said that “right, I got the model”. Still, I just did not understand what is the update, then, because to me that sounds like classic monogamy: it’s fine if you hook up with someone else, just “please don’t tell me”. She burst out laughing and said this was the day she finally disagreed with me. I laughed even harder, because I love being disagreed with. Please, disagree with me.

She said the key difference was that, if she happened to know, it wouldn’t be a problem, since it was technically part of the agreement. And then I told her that interesting, but the model she created in my point of view is a hierarchy of affections. There's the core couple (her partner and her) as an institution, and then there is the rest of the universe. The “gamos” is untouched. So if her boyfriend wants to cuddle, or pay the rent, or binge watch series, or travel somewhere on vacation, that is for her a “only with me” thing. But he can still hook up with someone else he meets on the way. Well, that just sounds very 1950s to me. That's pretty much the life my grandma had. And I am not saying this model is wrong or judging it, I am just trying to provoke thoughts. I give to D. an important point, she claimed: “but your grandma wouldn’t be able to hook up with whoever she wanted, only he was allowed”. I said this was a very good point, but when you zoom out, what I believe is that somewhere between total relational anarchy and traditional relationship models, we’re all just trying to navigate and figure out where, exactly, we belong under the sun.

But fundamentally, (in my perspective) the history of relationships is, since always, the history of trying to control the other person’s pleasure. How it’s defined, where it’s allowed to exist, and when it suddenly becomes unacceptable. That’s why it’s so tricky: because everything is about sex, but sex itself. Sex itself is about power. So what happens when your partner discovers a form of pleasure that no longer works for you? How do you react when their desire moves outside the boundaries of what you can share, tolerate, or even witness? Imagine your partner comes home expressing a desire you don’t want to participate in, you don’t want to observe, or you don’t want to make room for in the relationship. What do you do then? That's the kind of question that interests me, rather than the “new” models we are creating many times believing they are super modern. Formally employed or freelancer, the contract changes, but by the end of the day you are an employee nevertheless. Maybe we should be more love class conscious, if that makes any sense.

She then told me she understood my point, but she was exactly on this place of looking for whatever model it is in which her affection to that man and her freedom could coexist. Which honestly, I get it. I get where she was coming from, and the intention behind it. The irony is, in my point of view, that when we start to aim for constructions like “freedom”, we barely get to conceptualize what it means for ourselves alone. By experiencing life in this time cut we live in, normally what we call freedom reads most of the time as power of choice, normally consumption choice, like having as many options of cereal in the market to choose as possible.

Where would I like to head? That was her lingering question for me too. I told her I have a glimpse. Foucault talks about friendship as a way of life. For me, a predisposition toward friendship is what changes everything. As friendship is what legitimates any form of relationship. Speaking of foundation. Seems silly, but I am sure most relationships don't have it. Then comes admiration, cause admiration makes the whole thing so very very different. And I promise you, you only understand it when you date someone you truly admire and one day you realize that, and you think back on people you used to date because you simply liked them, but this was the missing piece, and it's really life changing. You then understand they are their own person before having a role in your life. And you think: wow, that person alone without me is amazing, and I don't want to change a thing about them. In fact, how cool is life that I get to experience it by their side? That at some point of the day we get together and it has gravity.

In this sense, “freedom” is a very limited concept. What I wish for perhaps is more than that and does not yet have a name. The closest I can get to it is a sense of “complicity”.
In fact, I like the idea of a love connection where my admiration for someone and the dynamic between us is solid enough that even if my partner were to hook up with someone else, knowing it wouldn’t make me want to drop the bone and walk away from our shared life. Sure I’d get upset initially, 100%. SPOILERS. Perhaps I'd make a small indoors scene, cry in the shower, buy things with his credit card, hahaha, I don't know. But perhaps leaving would feel pointless in face of what we have. Understanding that, not in the name of “freedom”, not because it “fits” a pre-walked agreement, not because it is a “game” and the rules allow it, no no, fuck all of that. But because of wisdom. Wisdom of what both parties know they have. This sort of recognition means everything, and will be always modern, because it's always on time.

/Apr26

The simplicity of complex things.

A dear friend invited me for a coffee as she wanted to get my take on the fact she was not following her excitement on her professional life anymore. And little she noticed she wasn’t then following her excitement on other points of her life, and as funny as it seems, she couldn’t immediately see the connection. So now she was on a crossroads moment asked to choose between options and wondering which path should she take. I asked her if the reason behind her question was the case she could not recognize the difference between what excites her or not. She said she could. So I very quickly asked her back where was then the difficulty? To which she kept leading me into the direction of “well but there’s a lot of things”. At this point, all I could reply was that nononono, there aren’t. I know and no offense, but there aren’t.

And what I told her just came to me as something I was elaborating and processing at the same time. Forgive my chaos.

Cause see, we tend to create a lot of reasons, a lot of seeming things we believe we need to consider but the truth is… no, we don’t. Because once you understand what excitement is you realize why you don’t have to always dissect every single little detail in order to know what to do. Acting towards your joy should be at any given moment on anything, it does not even have to be a career thing, although it’s all connected.

So if right now, out of all the options you have available to you of things you could choose to do, either if it is taking a walk or drawing something or calling a friend, the thing that brings you joy, that’s the thing to do. Just because.

You don’t need a reason why. It’s the excitement itself that tells you that’s the thing you should do. And I am very sure the excitement for simple things somehow inform you of bigger things that excite you too.

By following the excitement you recalculate your route to the shortest, fastest, straightest path. And then you should do it just once more. And again. As soon as you are done with the most exciting thing, choose the next exciting thing, even if they might not seem connected, because joy will reveal how they all fit together.

And once you get into that pattern, something funny happens: you sensitize yourself to the idea of joy, and you naturally become a better sensor of what truly excites you and what does not. And soon you will not create so many things to consider before you get willing to take action. The process becomes self‑contained, like a drive engine. Each joyful experience carries within it everything you need to know. Anything that doesn’t arrive with that feeling simply isn’t part of your path, and doesn’t deserve space in your life.

While we all want to experience life with passion, with synchronicity, feeling the vibration of our true, natural self the way we were actually created. But how many of us are willing to move towards it? Because that would mean moving towards ourselves.

BIG BUT: if those things don’t come up, you do not have to deny them, but to recognize they are there for a reason, so you can understand what they bring you to process, they will tell you more about who you are and you can continue to act more and more on your joy.

/mar26