There is a manner in which certain things ask to be written, not so that they may be found, but because to exist in silence, for too long, eventually becomes insufficient. It is not urgency. It is something closer to a necessity that makes no noise, waiting patiently until it discovers the proper form. This archive was born in such a way.
Not as a diary. Not as a blog. Not as something that is updated merely for the sake of appearing alive. It is a place where certain thoughts come to rest, those which do not dissolve, those which return, those which insist with the silent obstinacy of things that truly belong to you...
Photographs are terrible at preserving time and strangely good at preserving details I had forgotten mattered. # I opened old photograph folders tonight and disappeared. Dangerous activity. One image leads...
Dolly Parton before eight in the morning makes January significantly more civilised. # Country morning. Coffee, makeup, hair, boots, Dolly, then Carrie, then Shania while Yuri informed me that normal...
Slow Sunday began at an hour that technically made breakfast vulnerable to legal challenge. # Coffee near noon. Breakfast after that. Shower eventually. Country music while I folded laundry. Tea...
Amsterdam in winter has fewer colours and somehow more detail. # I needed outside today. Not escape, just air. We walked for hours, the kind of January walk that makes...
Some principles live quietly in the background until violence drags them into the centre of the room. # Today felt quieter than yesterday but not lighter. Work happened. Coffee happened....
Freedom becomes strangely visible on the days somebody tries to punish its use with violence. # Freedom of speech sounds clean when it is written as a principle and much...
I know Christmas is over. The lights have chosen not to acknowledge this information. # The lights are still on. Tree, window, little string I bought in December despite already...
The first Sunday behaved exactly like a Sunday, which I took as a good sign. # Late coffee, clean sheets, laundry, music, a walk, something sweet, tea at five, four...
I ate another oliebol while refusing to reinvent myself, which feels like a very promising beginning. # There are still oliebollen in this house, which means there is still powdered...
The first morning of the year arrived looking suspiciously like the morning after a very loud night. # I woke up late with one foot outside the duvet, my hair...
The year is changing outside the window and I have nothing to ask from it yet. # 2015. Welkom. I am not making a list. No ten promises written neatly...
Another year in a city I once thought I had to visit before I understood I could simply live here. # Amsterdam in 2014 was not an adventure every day....
Why?
Because every thought leaves a trace. If something moved you, disturbed you, softened you, or made you think, leave it here, quietly.