En el instante en que Eva mordió la manzana, la humanidad estaría destinada al pecado, o el infierno se creó, o algo así. Incluso en el paraíso, divertirse demasiado significaba irresponsabilidad, poca voluntad y un futuro truncado.

Este discurso, aunque ha cambiado de forma, se mantiene inalterable en su esencia. La diversión no se considera un pecado capital, pero sí es la archienemiga de un concepto todavía más temido, la productividad.

Incluso en la era victoriana, una vida dedicada al arte, al ocio y al placer, era considerada un desvío y un despropósito monumental. Que se lo digan a Benedict, que, aunque como segundo hijo, su destino productivo consistiera en convertir a una suitable lady en su esposa, el patrón social no difería demasiado del de hoy.

Y, sin embargo, la realidad contemporánea resquebraja este relato meritocrático. En una sociedad marcada por la precariedad laboral, la desigualdad estructural y la magnitud de los conflictos internacionales, y que, paradójicamente, está obsesionada con la hiperproductividad, se evidencia la fragilidad del orden global. De pronto, la moralización del ocio suena hueca y surge la pregunta de si es realmente irresponsable disfrutar del presente cuando el porvenir parece una promesa cada vez más abstracta.

Los datos sobre salud mental juvenil añaden otra capa a la reflexión. Las tasas de ansiedad, depresión y suicidio han aumentado en las últimas décadas y más que sorpresa, generan reconocimiento y una sensación de desorientación que es compartida por todos. No es extraño que una generación sin referencias claras sienta la necesidad de escapar, desconectar y, a la vez, reconectarse consigo misma. De poner los pies en la tierra y relativizar los problemas estructurales, ya sea a través del arte, la fiesta o la indulgencia.

Esta reacción no es nueva, tras el periodo de guerras del siglo XVIII, el arte europeo se caracteriza por una exaltación de lo humano y una renovada obsesión por el cuerpo, lo bello y lo vivo. Y después de la Primera Guerra Mundial y de la gripe de 1918, llegaron los Roaring Twenties, que describe a gente con una gran urgencia de salir, celebrar y vivir. En The Great Gatsby de F. Scott Fitzgerald, por ejemplo, las fiestas convivían con una profunda sensación de vacío, porque todo ese hedonismo era una respuesta a la conciencia reciente del desastre.

Esto parecería lo obvio después del Covid, sin embargo, la reacción fue más ambigua. Un deseo inicial de recuperar lo perdido se vio eclipsado por una especie de cautela colectiva. La moda ofrecía ropa cómoda, las relaciones sociales se volvieron contenidas y, en las redes sociales, se extendían arquetipos donde incluso el descanso parecía tener que justificarse o monetizarse. Así, de repente, la salud sustituyó a la diversión y se convirtió en el nuevo pilar de la vida.

Esta bruma de realidad se refleja en el arte, la cultura también en la moda. La tendencia post-covid no fue un estallido de glamour, sino un giro hacia la comodidad y la introspección. El auge del loungewear, el cottagecore, el lujo silencioso y el minimalismo japonés susurran un deseo de refugio y control y sin embargo, debajo de esta contención, se puede ver el anhelo latente por el placer y la pasión.

No es que la gente se tenga que volver “irresponsable” de repente, pero cuando el mundo demuestra que se puede romper en cualquier momento, la idea de aplazar la vida parece convertirse en el verdadero pecado.

Nothing tastes as good as the nineties feel. An oddly accurate diagnosis of the current cultural mood. What began as a historical drama has effectively opened the attic and allowed an entire era to spill back into view. The renewed fixation on John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy has quickly evolved into something closer to a doctrine, embedding itself so thoroughly in the cultural bloodstream that by now, missing Love Story would require active avoidance.

Ryan Murphy has crafted a visual universe that recreates and mythologizes a decade. With impecable timing too, as the appetite for its minimalism had already been simmering, particularly within fashion.

Carolyn embodies a particular fantasy, that elusive archetype of the fashion publicist whose life appeared to orbit New York, men and cigarette breaks. In other words, every girl’s dream.

So, Calvin, here we go again…

While much of the conversation gravitates toward Carolyn and her wardrobe, she is not the only reason the series feels so magnetic. The real seduction is in the background. The Calvin Klein office, the assistants and publicists in pencil skirts, tailored vests in white, grey and black. Everything so chic one begins to suspect that this uniform may very well define 2026.

What intensifies the effect is that it is not purely fictional. A wave of women who worked in fashion during that era, particularly within Calvin Klein, have begun recounting their experiences on TikTok. Anecdotes and outfits that could easily pass for episodes of Sex And The City, minus the Mr. Big (for all we know) and with better tailoring.

The ‘90s are perpetually at the edge of being fashionable again, and 2026 appears to be their latest return. The more pressing question, however, is whether this is also the year of Calvin Klein.

Apple Martin might have been onto something when she wore her mother’s circa-1996 CK dress a couple months ago, originally worn by Gwyneth Paltrow to the NYC premiere of Emma. Bringing back the minimalist, undone, black attire to 2026 feels kind of right.

In truth, Calvin never stopped giving iconic. And recent campaigns, from the Portrait Series featuring Alexa Chung, Dakota Johnson and Jennie Ruby Jane to brand ambassadors such us Bad Bunny or Rosalia, prove just that.

Its runway collections rarely abandon the codes that made it iconic, a quiet confidence that reads as both corporate and undeniably sexy. Every one of those PR girls could find something to slay at the office in any collection.

Whether this is the result of strategic product placement or simply the most effective unpaid advertising in recent memory is almost irrelevant. If anything, with the series, Calvin Klein is on trend again, and surely it will be the it brand of 2026.

If instinct is anything to go by, now would be the moment to revisit the archives, before everyone else does and the prices are higher than the NYC skylines.

About the cigarettes

Has anyone else noticed a subtle shift in the cultural conversation around smoking? Accuracy aside, whether Love Story captures CBK habits with precision or not, what lingers is the image. And how good those cigarettes look…

Which is curious, considering the broader climate. According to recent Gallup poll, alcohol consumption in the United States has dropped to record lows. Only 54% percent of adults are drinking alcohol. In a sober atmosphere of “clean girls” and Hailey Bieber’s smoothies, health became aspirational and marketable.

Tobacco, too, has been in steady decline. The World Health Organization reports that cigarettes consumption has fallen significantly over the past decade, largely due to sustained public health campaigns and general conscience.

And yet, as “messy chic” infiltrates social feeds and department stores, the ferocity of the ‘90s resurfaces alongside pencil skirts and slip dresses.

Brands understand something we try to ignore, that aesthetics bypass reason. And how convincingly a character can make us crave a damn cigarette.

What a beautiful feeling, and an emptying one. How deeply visceral, raw and debilitating when one realizes that contrary to belief, it is not your birthright to be someone’s everything. We give love and expect it to mirror back, but when it doesn’t, we wonder if we have been giving it wrong all along.

Maybe, deep down, human nature really is selfish, and we only give love to feel its return. Perhaps, like a karmic law, by not being a truly selfless act, I must not get it back.

Then love becomes a big balloon full of hot air of which one looses the small red thread that tied it to you, and it drifts away, guided by the wind until it reaches space and bursts, and in this moment, all your love is not yours anymore, is someone else’s. And it falls back to earth like a thousand little water drops, as if it was from a crying cloud. And they fall and sink into the ground, pressing deep until they become fuel for the new flowers and trees and rivers.

And so you tell yourself to be better, a better person and a better friend and a better daughter; an understanding, compassionate and empathetic one. Yet a selfish creature finds it hard to be happy when your love lives in another body. Being always the watcher but never the chosen.

We are social creatures, destined to live in company, to love, to mate and keep the circle of life turning as our ancestors did, and I wonder if there’s some kind of curse upon certain souls, as if the mother of us all devised punishments for those who will always long for love. How cruel of her, to let others find in me what I can’t find in anyone else.

What might be the purpose of this silly life if it’s not to love, to let someone else’s love explode and rain down on you in those thousand little drops. And when it doesn’t, I wonder if I might be in a glass cell where the tears can’t penetrate.

A small white lily once precious and bright and fragrant, with a dusk-pink heart and ready to freely give away to the wind every single grain of pollen to hopefully grow on someone else’s yard. But mine must be worthless, because the petals are falling and the winter is coming and there’s not one single new flower in sight. The sun is gone and all that’s left is a big hole where the center used to be and it’s so empty that it must weigh less.

And it dawns on me that if someone exists but no one desires them, then it may not really breathe. I wonder if that’s my case and what should I do with the horrible burden of love.

With love,

Alba

Not long ago, during one of these sobremesas, a selection of alcoholic drinks were brought to the table, some so strong they resembled cologne and others that actually had a taste and were even pleasant. One of the latter was quickly labeled as “a woman’s drink”. A remark that I found kind of dismissive, considering that it was a man who had requested it and another man who coined the term. The label itself is revealing since the drink in question was simply lighter, with less alcohol, yet still very popular. Why, then, must it be gendered? I wondered.

It would be easy to let it by as a harmless banter, but it exposes the hidden (or not so hidden) sexism that coexists with us even in our most banal choices, like drink orders. Were it not so, bartenders would not so easily predict the “rightful” owner of a cocktail versus a beer. It may seem trivial, but strength continues to be coded as masculine and lightness as feminine.

This implicit hierarchy is hardly new, drinks, like clothing or social interactions have long been expected to fall into two categories. We must remember how trousers were once considered exclusively male, worn inside the cigar-filled clubs where they debated politics, art and privilege, while women were confined to their separate salons to have their own sobremesas because those topics where off limits.

Even a simple question like “Why is that a woman’s drink?” or the one that Linda Nochlin posed in 1971, “Why have there been no great women artists?” creates a sort of chain, not only refusing the assumptions of the genders, but questioning the root of them. Her answer reveals that the question itself was flawed, because women were systematically denied access to the education, institutions and opportunities that allowed that “greatness”. To expect them to achieve what they were prohibited from pursuing was absurd.

For her, then, to actually answer this question, one must shift the ground and assert that there’s a different kind of greatness for women’s art (actually, for women’s periodt) than for men’s, thereby postulating the existence of a distinctive and recognizable “feminine” style.

Whenever women did succeed, their work was assessed through this gendered lens, expected to carry a “feminine” quality. But then again, by those benchmarks, there is nothing “feminine” in Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur, or at least not more than it is in The Water Lilies by Monet. By feminine if judged in terms of the binary scale of “femininity” versus “masculinity”, I wonder if Renoir paintings would have been considered by a different standard if she’d been Augusta.

The same mechanism extends beyond art. In the workplace, for instance, women often are paid less than men for equivalent positions. In everyday culture as well, women have different criteria regarding the care of a family compared to men. This perspective creates the standards in a way where it seems that the act of “lightening” or “weakening”, somehow “less”, is what institutes the feminine side. Therefore, by this, it’s not incidental for the so called “woman’s drink” to be more dainty, delicate and soft.

Paradoxically, even in fields perceived as inherently feminine, such as fashion, the great names appear to remain overwhelmingly male. As if when men step into their not so used “feminine” side, society rewards them disproportionately. Their “privilege”; that thing that they inevitably hold onto, whether they are a proclaimed feminist or not, prohibits them to acquire certain behaviors like crying or even having a cocktail.

Then, the actual medium has absolutely nothing to do with the conviction of this “greatness” but rather, just the lens with which we, as a society; that as C. Wright Mills pressed, “is ruled by norms of whats usual being seen as the natural form”, look at them and absorbe them. No wonder that “good for a woman” is still engraved in our vocabulary.

Thus, to question why an espresso martini is gendered is to begin investigating the interrogative of women’s equality, and why in art and as in any other realm, lingers on the nature of our institutional structures and the view of reality which they impose on the humans who are a part of them. The gendering of cocktails reveals that choices as trivial-seeming as a drink can both reflect and reinforce gendered power relations and acknowledging this, opens a place for everyday feminist practice.

I share too much, too soon, in social situations, with friends, with lovers. I feel so deeply that I can’t help but speak deeply too.

In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem, since communication is the foundation of every relationship, romantic or not. But the reality is that we live in a hyperconnected society that fears emotions.

If we think about communication, both verbal and not verbal, the latter involving expressions and gestures, we begin to understand the “sluttiness” of emotions. It isn’t just about talking too much, things like the way we look can be just as revealing. After all, eyes are the doorway to the soul, aren’t they? Isn’t that one of the most sluttiest things we can do? To look at someone adoringly?

Touch, the way you rest your hand on someone’s shoulder, hold hands or how you can feel each other hearts when you hug. Even the tenderness with which a person handles an object they are atttached to, like a ring your grandmother gave you.

There’s also passion, you can tell everything about someone by their passions, the way their voice softens, their face lights up or they body shifts when they see, talk or even think about it. They say your pupils extend when you think about someone you love, so sexy.

Music too, shamelessly slutty. It has the power of evoking emotions. Musicians are one of the coolest people in the world. How they can put their feelings in words or melodies in such manner that makes you feel against your will, will always make me emotional.

Even posting on social media, slutty! Most of the time, we don’t post to show off how amazing we are or what we’re doing. We post because we crave to share our happiness, “look at this moment, it made me feel so alive.” Photography then, it’s even erotic. The way someone captures a moment or a feeling as a still image, letting us see life through their eyes (soul).

Art is the epitome of emotion sluttiness. Writing even more so. Right now, I’m opening my heart and my thoughts to you, a complete stranger. And chances are you relate, because even though we love to believe we are super individualistic, we are not, we all long for intimacy and understanding.

We often dismiss emotional people because they make us uncomfortable. It’s violent to see someone cry or be sad. And I can see how too much, too soon, isn’t everyone cup of tea. But we must remember, without intense people we wouldn’t have Pride and Prejudice, Frances Ha or Iris.

I wish we weren’t so afraid of being sluts, that the dynamic was different, where if life were speed dating, we’d swipe right to oversharing and swipe left to the nonchalant.

With love,

Alba

I’m aware that it sounds rather selfish, to know you have someone to spend time with, yet prefer not to. It’s ironic too.

I believe loneliness, then, falls under the concept of possessing people, you know, to have someone to “tell you what to eat, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to.”

Watching the latest episode of And Just Like That, I realized that whether you are a Carrie, a Charlotte, a Miranda or a Samantha, loneliness has probably visited you in some form. But, sometimes, it turns out to be the exact company we need.

Throught the series we can see Carrie’s multiple love interests, with nothing in common except the inevitable break up. And yet, we can agree with the producers: she thrives on her own, and she always did. It is when she isn’t with a significant other that she writes a book, gets published in Vogue or pens a new and innovative novel. A tough concept for us hopeless romantics to swallow.

This summer, I found myself in Paris on a solo trip to learn the language of love, ironically spent reading Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City. Reading about loneliness in the most scintillating city in the world, so me.

But now I think it makes sense. Isn’t the art of speaking different languages a way to live more lifes? And therefore, to be less lonely?

While sitting alone in a café, the man at the table across from me asked me about the book I was reading. What was it about? What did I think? Did I recommend it? A small interaction that felt like belonging, like validation of my being alone not as a fearful and shameful thing, but rather as an admirable quality.

Exactly what Laing writes about: loneliness as an element of being human, as “much part of one’s person as laughing easily or as having red hair.”

The author explores this concept through artist’s paintings, framing loneliness as an art form. I was specially drawn to Edward Hopper’s paintings and her interpretation of them. She notes, and I agree, that we ascribe loneliness to his work because they tend to have people alone or isolated. You know it’s a masterpiece when you can actually feel it through the paint.

Take Automat for instance, a woman with a heavy presence, as if the weight of loneliness were pressing on her, almost suffocating. She still has one glove on, so it’s just a quick stop, as if she’s ashamed of being there. The café is loud and noisy; you can hear the clicking of silverware and conversations that almost feel like an indecipherable language, piercing her like needles of this supposed loneliness.

But then, there is Morning Sun. A woman bathed in sunlight, gazing at the city. Like Carrie, she is on her own. She has just woken up in her apartment in a big city (which, for all we know, could be Paris.) Her solitude feels warm like the sun itself, like a hug. They are both alone, so how come there is such a huge difference in how that aloneness is framed?

This brings me back to Laing’s idea that loneliness can “run deep in the fabric of a person.” So it’s not a variable in the equation, not simply the state, but a personal and non-transferable quality. Can you do something about loneliness? Can’t you help it?

While in Paris, although I was physically alone, I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t have to be anyone because no one had any preconceived perception of me. Like Morning Sun, I was the watcher. It was the perfect “uneasy combination of separation and exposure” as Laing describes.

Also, social media often makes you feel like you belong to something when, and only when, you fit into a certain aesthetic or trend. But when you don’t, the isolation is sharper. Loneliness, in that sense, is almost built into the system. And yet, we’ve normalized “solo dates” as something necessary for a woman’s well being. Because deep down it isn’t we who turn being alone into a disease defined as “sadness because one has no friends or company.” Sometimes, it is simply “the state or situation of being alone”.

Clearly, this stigma comes from the way society excludes different behaviours or desires. “They can’t figure you out” when you are single (alone). SATC taught us that. And Laing channels this same frustration: how difficult emotions like loneliness or rage are so often dismissed as unstable chemistry, something quickly “fixed” by finding someone and falling in love.

I think that’s why Sex And The City and its characters have always sparked so much debate, they refused to be defined by pairing, even Charlotte.

It’s fine to long for intimacy and it’s just as fine to not. And it’s more than fine to feel lonely sometimes. We don’t need our Mr. Big but we can look for him. What matters is deciding which side of the coin we’re on, which woman in Hopper’s paintings we want to embody.

(Carrie) After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is realize that loneliness isn’t so bad.

Is this it? Has JW ended the influencer era in fashion?

After years of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s maximalist Dior shows, with grand venues and a parade of influencers from every corner of the globe, this one felt intimate, focused and intentional.

That’s not to say the guest list was lacking in cultural weight, quite the opposite, Jonathan is very in tune with our generation and he made the right move to include figures like Luca Guadagnino, Rihanna, Robert Pattinson and Josh O’Connor (because who doesn’t like to see Josh in a Dior shirt) along with fashion experts and industry leading voices. He could have filled the room with influencers, but he chose not to.

We’ve recently seen similar gestures, like The Row’s famously phone-free show, and I’m sure we will begin to see it more often, but in this case, it aligned seamlessly with the show’s historical references, in the 18th century the influencers were the actual experts (as it should!)

The show unfolded in a space inspired by Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, a museum devoted to old masters, this almost scholarly tone carried through the collection. It featured two paintings by the artist Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, as the collection notes read “At a time when art was often concerned with excess and spectacle, Charden revered the everyday, trading grandeur for sincerity and empathy” Maybe a metaphor for today’s fashion landscape, where every brand wants to make the most noise.

“There’s a modernity in history” Anderson says, and shows, with archival reverberations, reimagining the iconic Dior’s mille-feuille folds from 1948 into a series of cargo pants. The garments reshaped 18th century attires, inspired by iconic silhouettes of Dior earliest collections but with a bit of a tease of his cheeky personality: inside out ties, daisy rings and Dracula book bags and capes. I smell a sneak peek of Dior resurgence, and it’s not just the logo.

JW Anderson is an intellectual provocateur, and, in a way, his own best influencer. From the moment he teased us with the frog-shaped pin cushion on Instagram, it was clear he was working on something deliberately desirable. So desirable, in fact, that uninvited influencers hosted a “Dior Watch Party” in Paris. It seems like no one was invited but nobody wanted to miss it.

His debut filled with stripped button-up shirts, the kind that William Thacker will wear in Notting Hill, gorgeous bags and extremely intricate silhouettes, was a collection made to be admired in a museum-like moment of fashion and it marks the first time a single creative is in charge of menswear, womenswear and haute couture. As former creative director of Loewe and founder of JW Anderson, we can confidently say that he has the fashion industry by the balls, or rather, by the eggs, as his invitation suggests.

There is no debating the genius of Miuccia Prada. She doesn’t just make clothes; she transforms society itself into beautifully crafted garments.

“Do we need femininity in this difficult moment to lift us up? The question is, what do we retain of femininity? Does it help in this really dangerous moment? In war time? Miucca Prada said when presenting her last FW25 collection.

Of course we do, we always need femininity. Over the past few years, fashion trends have been guiding us back to our feminine essence. For so long, we were conditioned to believe that success in a male dominated world required us to mirror its traits. And while that may have been true in the past, when our role was often relegated to looking pretty behind a man, things are different now. Or so we want to believe.

Women are reclaiming their femininity, recognizing it as a source of strenght rather than a limitation, and fashion has reflected this shift. Particularly Miuccia, who has always had this approach.

Miu Miu’s latest collection was as breathtaking as the one before, embodying the “typical accessories of femininity: the bra, the brooches, the fur”, as Miuccia herself described. The knee-high socks, delicate color palette, and effortlessly undone aesthetic made the show, though I did miss the messy hair from last season.

It’s described as “a contemplation of femininity. It examines the meaning of womanhood through garments designed to provoke thought and discussion.”

And it did, as I admired the collection, I couldn’t help but reflect on its connection to the world we live in today.

It’s fascinating to observe the shift from soft silk skirts, unmade hair, and sheer t-shirts that let the nipples peek through, the effortless, chaotic aesthetic to this almost demure essence.

We’ve lived through the free the nipple movement, then the skims built-in nipple bra trend, to now these triangular bras, and each of them reflected something of the latest happenings in society, just like the hemline.

It seemed, at last, that our collective efforts to break down the standards of female beauty were being acknowledged. We saw that messy girl, that had fun, woke up late and didn’t have time to style her hair but that with her tights and polka dots, and without a bra, she went out to slay the day.

Womanhood was everywhere this year. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. But is it real? Are we still rooting for women, or is this just another fleeting TikTok trend?

Miuccia Prada is not just a designer; she is a style dictator. She understands what is happening in culture and reflects it masterfully.

So, what does this return to 1950’s inspired cone bras mean? I love a touch of drama in my everyday fashion, but I can’t look at those Marylin Monroe bras without wondering what they say about our future.

I see certain books being banned, women being forced to cover themselves again, I see social media being more misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic and everything-phobic than ever. Reproductive rights being stripped away just when it seemed like we were finally gaining some control.

And now, seeing this and watching Nara Smith’s videos, I am sure that we are witnessing a revival of an entire era. It’s not just the cone bras making a return, but the hint at the constraints being subtly placed upon us once again.

My guess? I don’t know if the cone bra will become another trend. But what it really means is that Miuccia knows best, and fashion has always been a reflection of the times, and if history is any indication, this trend carries more weight than meets the eye.

I can never read all the books I want, I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physycal experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

Sylvia Plath

I want to be everything, I do.

This desire has haunted me for as long as I can remember. Throughout the years, I’ve been drawn to countless pursuits that, while initially the recipients of my full fascination, inevitably became victims of my eventual boredom.

The pattern repeats itself in every area of my life. I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and then a hip-hop dancer, then a gymnast—and I did. I trained and I accomplished great things, even if I didn’t make a living out of them.

It happened again when choosing my career path: I wanted to be a fashion designer, and a marketing girlie and a journalist—and I did. I studied all of them.

I wanted to paint, and design, and write. And I did.

I pour all my passion into whatever I hyper-fixate on, so intensely that I eventually burn out of feeling it too much. I don’t just want something, I crave it with every fiber of my being. Until I don’t.

I will not be able to articulate this feeling better than Sylvia Plath did, but I felt like sharing my take on this experience.

I do pursue my passions, and I am proud of my accomplishments, but I’ve also been a victim of impostor syndrome far too many times. And sometimes, it’s not only just in my head—it’s others questioning why I changed paths when I was so determined about that other thing that meant so much to me.

I stand there with not much to say except “because I felt like it”. Because I like everything.

It’s an answer that rarely satisfies people, which makes me wonder: why do I have to want all of it? Why am I so restless?

And also, why can’t I just enjoy other lives as a spectator? Why, when I watch a movie about a ballerina, do I immediately want to become one? And far worse, why do I actually try?

If I am content with something, why do I still crave more?

It feels like nothing is ever enough. Each new passion suddenly becomes the most important thing in the entire world, leaving once-important things behind.

I want to be a writer, a designer, a dancer, an artist, a creative director, an editor-in-chief of a magazine.

I want to live in Paris, in Lisbon, Japan, in London.

I want to form a family but I want to be free.

I want to read all of Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Jane Austen, Joan Didion.

I want to speak all languages.

I want to do everything, explore everything, see everything, study everything.

I want to be so many people and none at all.

I wish I could try a demo of every possible life. Or better yet, live them all at once. All of this figs, and I have to choose one, because not choosing is still a choice, and leaving it all to the universe and the fate of my already written destiny is too much for an anxious girl like me.

Maybe it has to do with being a creative person, no? We have this inherent need to create, to exist in materialized thoughts that, like energy, keep transforming into different things.

And maybe it’s even worse now. Social media has shattered our sense of direction, molding us into fleeting archetypes: clean girl, office siren, black cat energy. One moment I want to embrace my feminine side and have a family. The next, I want to climb the corporate ladder and become a CEO. And almost always, I just want to be happy and feel fulfilled. This is part of my one and only birthday wish, recycled every year.

So, perhaps, what I truly crave most is the feeling of fulfillment itself, that sense of wholeness. But it’s exhausting to always be reaching.

And maybe the key isn’t focusing on the impossibility of tasting every fig, but on reaching for as many as I can, savoring each one and understanding that my inability to settle isn’t a curse but a blessing in disguise.

Maybe we should just celebrate the richness of experiences accumulated in that constant seeking, no?

Something in me wants more. I can’t rest.

Sylvia Plath

Recently, as I was watching it, I couldn’t help but wonder: Is it true? Do memories never end?

This summer, I created the memory of what could be a great love, two souls meeting far from home in a gorgeous setting with the ocean and the light of early September.

As the waves rocked the small boat we were on, I realized how difficult it is to really connect with someone and as the night went by and our ice cream melted I could see how this time it was something special.

That most romantic night unfolded and the very next morning I found myself on a plane, heading back to reality with Adele playing on repeat and reminiscing about our exciting conversation about female authors, Hemingway and journalism. How he said goodbye with a small kiss and how his hand felt holding mine on the way to my hotel.

Even though it has been months since that night, I still can listen to him calling me nice as we watched the small town lit by night. He could have used any word, yet the fact that he chose that one is still curious to me.

After that night and the post rambling to my friend with whom I was traveling, I had the urge to write down this little love story. I guess I could hardly believe it had happened, and I loved the idea of having it forever, to never forget about it and have the opportunity to go back to that good memory one random day twenty years later and smile about the silliness of my pisces heart. And yet, I never did write it down.

We began texting, and after long conversations about feelings, good and bad, I gathered even more stories to share with friends who still hadn’t heard about the trip.

What’s fascinating is how my feelings about that night shifted with what followed. When our conversations were deep and heartfelt, I remembered the evening with profound love. But on days when I felt his responses fell short, even recounting it to friends, the magic seemed to fade.

A few months later, like on the second movie, we met again in Paris, so the story continued to gather new memories.

That initial night that was a little souvenir of my trip had escalated into a full rom com novel, so I guess it’s true, a memory never ends, it just grows richer.

Even now, I still wish I had written about it from the fresh eyes of the morning after. I remember the night as something extraordinary, yet it now feels like it’s somehow slightly blurred by everything that happened after, as if the later memories have cast a gentle fog over its reality.

Imagine how wonderful it would have been if I had documented every moment, from our first gaze to our first date, leaving behind pages of my life plastered for me to re-live whenever I want.

In that way, every day becomes a work-in-progress memory. No matter the details, memories are never static, and relying solely on our minds to hold onto every moment is a challenge.

I believe that is why people keep diaries or journals, it’s important to write the beautiful moments that this little life offers, so we never lose sight of the beauty of it.