DAY 574

in {and out} Week 12: Books

Books have been with me since I can remember and reading is no doubt, one of my favorite activities ever. Indeed, once I learned how to do it, I haven´t stopped. Regardless of life circumstances, hectic schedules or overwhelming responsibilities,  I always have books at hand.

I read poetry, essays and novels of different types or on different subjects (just as a hobby) and I guess I have many habits and peculiarities that are typical of avid readers: I am truly faithful to some authors and I think of some characters as they were real persons. I am prone to imagine alternative situations to those which are part of the plot. I adore reading series of books with the same main protagonists and expect anxiously every new installment. I remember their stories, suffer with their conflicts and feel pleased with their successes. I often question the author (or characters) decisions along a novel and I usually discover myself being reluctant to accept some endings or to read the final chapter... in particular, when I have fallen in love with the story.

I could go on and on and on, but I´ll only mention one last thing: when it comes to books themselves, I feel a strong attachment to them as physical objects. The reason why this happens is not only because they allow me to go inside a parallel universe just opening them (this is captivating per se!), but because I find them extremely beautiful. I adore their appearance, their smell, their presence and as a result I love having them around me.

In fact, apart from ejoying the pleasures of reading, I also enjoy very much arranging and rearranging my books in beautiful -yet practical- ways, making them part of the decoration of my house, mixing and matching them creatively. I don´t like the traditional libraries where books seem to be inanimate items put in alphabetical order. On the contrary, I love to display them, creating little altars or still lifes.

Books have been (still are) an important part of my existence, of who I am. I have discovered, laughed and cryed much with them, they have been my wings and my roots, my friends, my solace in sorrow and an endless source of joy... so I cannot help but honor this relationship by making them visible.


This entry is part of a project I am developing with my friend Montse Gallardo. We´ll share a photo every week during 2015. Her photos will be always taken outside and my photos will be indoor shots only. We have created a Facebook page: In and Out. 52 weeks where you can see all the photos of the project. 

DAY 508

Impatiens at home

Since a few months ago I am being able to grow plants at my house again. I always liked them, but except when I was a young student, all my attempts have ended up not very well. I remember having big plants in my first apartment and taking time to transplant and fertilize them. I had grown up surrounded by plants, so when I left my mom´s house it seemed natural to me to have pot-plants and they were also a cheap way to add a personal touch to the most boring places.

When I got my first job and later on, when I became an university teacher, little by little plants stopped being part of my habitat. Hectic schedules, my work´s demands and a long list of goals and pending achievements (not to talk about the rough waters of my emotional pains) made me dismissed many creative activities that I adored previously.

It was a progressive process, and of course, many of my passions and interests stayed with me, but not all or not in the same intense way, thus when I turned 40 I had grown apart from all things creative and many habits that used to infuse my everydayness with joy. This included artistic tasks, crafts, personal writings; having plants, sewing or cooking. 

However, when I began my inner work somehow I recovered many of those things. It made blockages vanished and this marked the start of a new stage. It was a real turning point. I understood that we all have to take ownership of our own awakening by creating our own rituals and practices. And I thought that –in my case- they could be partly made of all those things that I had abandoned (plus all the new things I was encountering), not only because they could be useful to develop it, but because they always had been important to me.

Thanks to this my level of mindfulness has experienced an exponential growth. You may ask what changed. Probably, it has been my determination to take time to evolve and emerge. To cultivate what I love. To explore what can make me happy using new tools and newly learned capacities but also those that I already had. 

This is turning every day into a true epiphany regarding the simplest things. So last November when  I found myself longing for some plants, I decided to follow my heart. I knew that I had the right state of mind to take care of them and was sure they will provide me with the connection to nature that I was looking for.

It can sound irrelevant, but not to me. This path is about the returning of my own true identity... that’s why every little sign (a simple plant growing and blooming and shinning) is extra special.

PS:  Impatiens is a genus of about 850 to 1000 species of flowering plants. Here they are commonly named the joy of the house.