Downstairs, the man announces that there are fruit popsicles, Oreo, chocolate popsicles, dulce de leche. I don't know why this matters, but when I listen to this speech, I establish a contrast with the infinity of things I have to do. Instead of resuming them, I decide to take a break, I decide to suspend time and not let myself be overwhelmed by the tasks.
During that week, organizing old papers, I found a notebook from about twelve, thirteen years ago, which functioned as a kind of diary. I began to read it trying to locate in my memory what exactly time it referred to. Before I knew it, I had completely set aside what I was doing—a grueling job of disposing and tidying up—and lost myself in the words of another version of myself. (This meeting of a past self with a present self is always intriguing).
I realized how much I like the idea of stopping a so-called necessary activity, something that imposes itself as a priority, to do something unnecessary, useless. Interrupting a work to read old diaries, randomly opening a book of poetry, hunting in a book for a passage that came to mind suddenly (or drinking a popsicle).
As I write this text, I found myself on the impulse to pick up three books that I remembered and that I would like to leaf through, look for words, phrases, to talk to what I try to express here. But the books are already boxed, compressed between sheets of cardboard. Stacked a few miles from here. Inaccessible. Distant, even if, to some extent, they are with me.
Their presence, in the piles I make — and which sometimes actually fall — gives me consistency, upholstery. I need my books close by, for inopportune breaches, inappropriate pauses, small gaps capable of assuring me an abundant existence, in a sweet rebellion.
