Today I started thinking if maybe I have a philia.

It’s just that today I was in a stationery store, I stayed there for about 45 minutes looking, touching, and smelling things, and I also filled a basket with useless items (thick cardboard and lots of colored pencils, pens, watercolors, even though I don’t know how to paint (yet).

I left there feverish, today I remembered this because of you and I just hope that tomorrow everything will have passed. You know, I like collecting stationery. And I like the smell of stationery, especially the smell of new paper and ink.

I have a very keen sense of smell. I was searching the internet to see if there was any description for this hobby, but I didn’t find anything except that I discovered I might have two philias:

Lexiconophilia and Logophilia

What I did realize is that I’m not the only one, and I thought maybe there’s even a club for stationery lovers (and maybe I’ll add it to my list).

Well, another thing I like to do (I don’t know if it’s a philia) is write letters, and although it almost always happens to me like in García Márquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel”, I keep writing them. I used to write letters to imaginary people. Sometimes to people I didn’t know. Sometimes to people who were no longer in this world and whom I knew. Once I thought about writing a novel made only of letters, but none of the letters had any connection, so nothing really happened.

I’ve always wanted to write a novel. I still haven’t managed to. When I started writing, I must have been about 13 years old, I thought about writing a novel about my family. I was going to title it “If My Grandfather Were Alive” or “When the Garden Had Begonias” (phrases I had heard back then in family conversations). But I only wrote about three pages that ended up as a teenage story that got lost. When I was 13, I thought that by the age of 25 I might have written one or two novels. I also thought that by 25 I would have traveled all over South America, including the Guyanas, which no one ever seems to care about.

At 25, I thought I couldn’t write anything anymore, at 27 I started writing again but only lasted two weeks.

At 40, I did it again, then accidentally lost what took me months to write.

So I think there’s no novel yet, but what I write here comes from the heart, which is even more important. If you want, don’t give it a name, but give it a purpose, to accompany you, to accompany me.

Speaking of the keen sense of smell, today I wrote this letter.

Love.

You know that during the year-end holidays, many people here tend to leave home and go on trips and such.

I’ve done it before, but I must confess, a bit out of inertia.
What I really wanted to do was stay home, rearrange all the furniture, wash absolutely all the dirty laundry, clean the windows, paint my room, throw away what I don’t use, and keep only the essentials.

Something like that. Leave everything sparkling clean and lighter. All in just a couple of days, and then I would set the clock forward, making myself older.

Yes, because the fact that I want to do these things during the holidays instead of something else shows that I’m getting a bit older.

Anyway.

I return to the trip.

I’ll spare you the details of the trip, as by now they are irrelevant, they serve no purpose. Although you never know.

I’m writing to you because I wanted to tell you, yes, something that happened to me on this year-end trip.

I visited a cabin that was under construction.

In that place, the constructions are all made of pure and young wood.

As soon as I entered there and saw a skein of red wool, that memory made me think of you.

Yes, I think of you, and it’s like a punch, it happens sometimes, a punch to my senses, like the smell of a skein of wool, which at that moment had no connection.

Now I think that inevitably that smell will make me think of you, maybe always.

I stepped out of that cabin for a while, not because the smell tired me, but because I felt a sudden sadness that hurt me.
I think those around me realized that something was happening to me.

Then outside, things got worse.

There was a bonfire burning with a long, orange flame, and then I remembered the flaws.

What I did was stand beside the bonfire, so I could justify why my eyes suddenly turned red.

“How much smoke”, I said and smiled. You know, sometimes I smile when I fear being discovered.

So I stayed there, inhaling the smell of smoke from the bonfire and only thought about something I had heard on the radio back in the ’90s, about the red thread, the one that ties two people together forever, that invisible red thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread can stretch or contract, but it never breaks, and I remember that even though I was with someone at that moment in my life, I didn’t feel that connection.

Then, little by little, the memories faded away, and things went on as usual. So now I think about that skein with that red thread unwinding, warning me about something that wasn’t going to arrive just yet.

So now I think that if I had stayed home, changing everything, maybe I wouldn’t have felt what I felt, preparing me for this moment.

Now, instead, I want to travel with you and carry that skein of red wool in the backpack.

Trips (even those taken out of inertia) always carry something within, some surprise, like realizing that you still have a lot to live for.

And as always, after writing all this, you will always find here in this piece of paper, that bear hug and today the wish for your speedy recovery.

Unconditionally yours.

J. M.

P.S. Shall we travel this year-end?