Habits, little rituals, the magic of everyday things
Some thoughts and memories gathered this week
It’s pouring yet again as I sit to re-read what I’ve written for this week’s newsletter.
I’m thinking about the books I want to read in the coming months, the books I’ve recently read as September comes to an end, about the cups of coffee I’m not having on this National Coffee Day because I’m not facing the rain if I can avoid it.
The harsh sounds of water on concrete and stone come through the window and cut through Tom Jobin’s Wave, an album I’ve had on and off on my Spotify for several weeks now.
I’ve just finished reading Nona Fernández’s Space Invaders, a short novella that is both about and constructed around the fragmentary nature of memory. I was trying to make sense of the scattered notes I had compiled throughout the week when I realized that maybe we don’t always need cohesive, emplotted sense. Sometimes, they are a little messy, one thread pulling the next as they unravel over a week or over a second.
Sometimes memories and thoughts are shared better this way.
For most of my young adult life, I used to say that I didn’t quite care for routines. It’s true that, in ten years, I lived in three different cities, five different apartments, my mom got married, Life Associate and I moved in together, and, through all of that, it felt quite easy to pack up, pick up, and start anew.
I want to say that it was only in late 2020 that something began to click differently, but that might be a bit of auto-fiction. I don’t really know when that changed, if at all, or when exactly I began to realize that it had changed.
Whenever that was, what is undeniable is that I’ve realized I actually like routines. I just happen to adapt fast to when they change for any given reason. Perhaps that is why I picture it happening somewhere in the hazy months of lockdown, when so much was changing yet my environment stayed radically the same: our small apartment without a view.
But those were the months when I grew to appreciate having breakfast rather than rushing through it. In the fall of 2021, still mostly confined to our (then) new apartment, our schedule changed. I saw myself waking up much earlier than I would like to and spending a couple of hours in a zombie-like state before I could be something close to productive. It was the semester of starting my day reading, spending an hour or so with a cup of coffee and a non-research book, noticing the morning getting brighter and my brain getting readier for the day ahead.
One thing I always miss from back home is my mom’s rice. I miss it so much, I’ve talked about it even to professors. It’s silly, and she probably would say that there’s nothing special about her rice. Maybe she’s right.
But the everyday stuff is the first you miss, and the one you miss the most intensively.
It has taken me over ten years of living away from home to get to a point where I can say I make a decent pot of rice.
It never comes close to my mom’s, though.
A lot has changed since the fall of 2021 (including the apartment), but my morning routine remains the same. This week, the scale I use to weigh coffee before brewing stopped working, and I had to eyeball everything. I think my hand has learned some of it by now, as it wasn’t half-bad all things considered. Muscle memory, I suppose.
Growing up, I was not into coffee. I know people who got into the habit of drinking it from a young age, but that was not me. As a teenager, I would have a cup of coffee every now and then, an espresso after lunches out on occasion, a sugary mix with lots of whipped cream from the not-Starbucks chain that opened around 2002. Coffee was just a thing that existed, in the back of my head, with an amazing smell and a taste that never quite delivered on that promise.
It started in 2011. I went from not drinking much coffee at all, to having one cup every day in the middle of the afternoon. By 2013, I was downing 5-6 espressos a day—or, more precisely, during the 8 hours a day I spent in the library doing research work and writing. I’ll be the first to admit, not the healthiest of habits. Before the summer of that year, I had managed myself down to 2-3 espressos.
It wasn’t just about the coffee. The tiny cups became a way of marking time inside a building with very little natural light, a way to warm myself away from a cold room, a good excuse to step away from my computer and the books and stretch my legs, eat a little cookie.
A little ritual, spread throughout the workday.
It’s earlier this week, I am taking the subway to make my way to midtown, to meet a friend for lunch.
Until mid-July, I would make this bit of commuting every weekday (give or take a few days throughout the year), and I was a little surprised—though not a whole lot—to realize that my body still remembers every bit of it. Coming to the platform, I walk mindlessly towards the tail end of it, hop into one of the last cars, sit down with my book and instinctively know when to look up to check that my station is the next one. Then, it’s one quick turn to the left, up and then down the stairs, and I find the perfect column next to which I stand waiting for the shuttle.
It’s only when I come up to the street level that my active brain takes over again to remind me to go to the park, rather than down the avenue.
Midtown is bustling, packed as always, noisy as ever, but it remains familiar.
In her latest newsletter, Gabriela, from Livros & Lámen (in Portuguese), shared a reminder that writing is a muscle that requires constant training. Mine are lazy from idleness, I suppose.
I need to remember to stretch it more often.
And to drink more water.
September round-up:
Mrs. Palfrey at The Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor
Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami (trans. Sam Bett and David Boyd)
Memorial de Aires, by Machado de Assis (available in English as Counselor Ayres’ Memorial, trans. Helen Caldwell)
Mister N., by Najwa Barakat (trans. Luke Leafgren)
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enríquez (trans. Megan McDowell)
Space Invaders, by Nona Fernández (trans. Natasha Wimmer)
I love your musings, and the way you braid themes together ❤