Log: Inspiration

From within one of Bath's most charming bookshops, I write the second half of my reflection on books read during the first half of 2025, perched on a wooden balcony laden with shelves, tables, books—overlooking even more books, as a well as smatterings of people chatting and enjoying each other's company. A reminder of what the world can be, at its best, even in the moments that feel heavy under the long shadow of violence. I conclude my overview in the company of books currently being read, wanting to be read, and those that inevitably I will never get the chance to read.

Some Surprises

One of the habits I have picked up on my travels is that of allowing chance and generosity to direct my reading list. I have come to learn that, in most places, readers have a tendency to set up little trading nooks of books. From the kaz à livres encountered while hitchhiking along one those steep winding Guadeloupean roads to the small stack of books sitting in the lobby of L'Alliance Française in Ipanema—new books often find me when I least expect it. Books that perhaps I imagined reading someday, others that I might have otherwise never made my way to.

One of this year's most interesting surprises came from the Joigny food market. Tucked into the side of one of the entrances, I noticed a bookshelf, improbable in a visual field peopled with the weekend's fresh produce and other agricultural products: leafy greens, cheeses, winter fruit, fish, honey, saucissons. The bookshelf was nonetheless a popular spot for the townspeople, many of whom paused there on their way in and out with their Saturday shopping. Intrigued, I leafed through all sorts of books, from cookbooks to thrillers, until something caught my eye: an early 20th century edition of Jean de La Fontaine's fables.

I was familiar with La Fontaine; his most well-known takes on classic fables, such as "The Hare and The Tortoise", are staples of French language classes. Which is to say, La Fontaine inhabited a corner of my brain associated clichés and easy moralism. Even so, the beauty of the little old book won over my prejudices, and I am glad it did.

Far from being the morality tales that I imagined them to me, La Fontaine's 17th century retelling of classic fables is riddled with contradiction, humor, rebellion, and more than a touch of existential angst. At times, the "protagonists" of the fable-poems can appear to embody straightforward moral principles, like the "hard-working" ant of the famous "The Grasshopper and The Ant". However, I found the ant to be portrayed as judgemental and almost cruel in its treatment of the grasshopper; an attitude that was explicitly condemned in some of the other fable-poems in the collection. I was left feeling unsure of La Fontaine's stances throughout. In one fable, craftiness is celebrated, in the next it is condemned as dishonest. I like to think that, perhaps, as La Fontaine re-read and re-imaged these classic fables, he was also intrigued by the contradictions that came to light. Perhaps, rather than handing out morals, his work actually highlights the fact that trying to extract straightforward lessons from life is impossible.

The biographical information provided in the book lets me entertain that hypothesis. La Fontaine lived during the reign of Louis XIV, the powerful Sun King, but led a life that feels uncannily modern. Exiled for going against the grain and having what was judged by the monarch to be a "dubious" morality, La Fontaine nonetheless succeeded as a poet and garnered enough support to live from his art. Almost atheistic before his time, but suddenly pious when faced with death, La Fontaine was self-disparaging, funny, lucid, and self-delusional in ways that feel very human. Rather than going around moralizing, I find that La Fontaine crafted beautiful poetry through which he reflected on what it means to live a good life. He also contributed to important discussions about power, art, governance, and education, but I'll stop myself here.

Thus far, there have been two more surprising reads this year. One also came from the Joigny market bookshelf, the play Athalie by Jean Racine. When I picked it up, my only expectation was to read a work by a "classic" French author that I had not read yet. I ended up enjoying a great play that posed some very pertinent questions about power, violence, and freedom (it was "softly" censored during Racine's lifetime, posthumously considered to be one of his greatest works). The second surprise thought-provoking book was a gift of sorts from a good friend, who suggested I read Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by the missionary-turned-linguist Daniel L. Everett.

Our Times

As it might be apparent from the last section, I cannot help but associate what I read with the challenges we face today—even if it's a poetry book about talking frogs and dogs from the 1700s. It is one of many reasons that I am particularly unreceptive to the assertions that studying literature is "useless".

As a result, I could have honestly featured many of the other books that I have read this year in this section: from Umberto Eco's depiction of socioeconomic inequality in The Name of the Rose to the questions raised by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro with In Praise of Shadows that foreshadow current debates on globalization and representation.

I chose to feature two works here that for different reasons touch on topics that are near and dear, Ce que c'est que l'exil by Victor Hugo and 10.000 horas en La Silla Vacía: Periodismo y poder en un nuevo mundo by Juanita León.

After reading Les Misérables during university, I developed a soft spot for Victor Hugo and his sense for over-blown grandiosity and drama. Hugo's style feels acutely that of another era, but many of his biggest concerns are timeless. The basic premise of Les Misérables, that of the injustice of condemning a man to forced labor for the hunger and misery he was born into, continues to resonate in global demands for greater equity and justice.

With Ce que c'est que l'exil, which roughly translates to The nature of exile, Hugo reveals the price that he had to pay for his activism as well as his opposition to the reign of Napoleon III. While I had been vaguely aware that Hugo had been, at some point, exiled to the islands in the English Channel, I initially processed this fact as historical trivia, without much thought. However, through this book, Hugo acutely transmits what it is like to be condemned to exile, persecution, spying, and harassment for 20 years. Beyond appreciating Hugo the literary legend, I felt that I approached Victor the man.

At the same time that I recognized and lamented the struggles Hugo described, reading Ce que c'est que l'exil ultimately gave me hope that the ideals for justice and peace that can feel hopelessly out of reach today could one day materialize. Among the "radical" ideas that Hugo was persecuted for in his time: his support for universal suffrage and public access to education, his opposition to slavery, domestic abuse, and tyranny. More than describing his own suffering, Hugo highlighted the importance of persistence in the fight for greater justice, and the key role of solidarity, even in moments that can feel so isolating.

There is a lot of talk of our contemporary collective disenchantment, of a vacuum left in the wake postmodernism that needs to be filled. It is a discussion that awakens all my skepticism, as it often leads to claims that as humans we essentially "need" religion. I won't go down this rabbit hole now, but I will recognize the need for a coming together that is constructive and empathetic. In my eyes, Hugo's romanesque writing (even with its flaws) shows a way. I was sad to find that there was no English translation for this text which, like with Carranza's poetry, made me once again entertain ideas of translation and dissemination.

Similarly, my other pick for this section is not available in English, as far as I know. 10.000 horas en La Silla Vacía: Periodismo y poder en un nuevo mundo is a reflection on contemporary journalism in Colombia written by Juanita León, the founder of one of the leading independent news outlets in the country, La Silla Vacía. In her book, León looks back on how it all started and how, despite all the challenges, La Silla has persisted as an independent outlet. This necessarily involves an overview of Colombia's recent economic and political history. Not only did I fill in some gaps in the understanding of our recent history, but León focuses a lot on identifying and describing the mechanics of power. Colombian society is incredibly conservative and hierarchical; Colombians have some of the worst prospects for social mobility in the Americas. From the outside, we all vaguely perceive the structures that keep power in place and concentrate it, but León allows the reader to peer within these machinations.

At the same time, León candidly reveals that to keep La Silla Vacía afloat she has to make use of all those social markers and contacts that are the key to getting anything done in Colombia. León must operate within the very system her outlet critiques, which generates tensions and difficult ethical dilemmas. I find her transparency around the logistic issues of keeping a media outlet running so important when thinking about how to create alternatives, as she did when she decided to launch an alternative to the big legacy media.

At a moment that violence is rising again in Colombia, in which it feels like the country is stuck in a hamster wheel of death, León's book provides precious understanding. This light that journalism, testimony, and research, all offer is vital to warding off the informational darkness that violence requires to thrive. One of the Colombian journalists that I admire the most, Javier Darío Restrepo, spoke widely about this during his lifetime. I reflected a bit on his writing last year while in Cyprus.

Other Interesting 2025 Reads

To conclude, some final books that prompted me to reflect on literary form and genre. From Sontag's essay in the form of a list to Shambroom's ekphrastic history-essay, these works serve as a reminder to imagine more.

• Duchamp's Last Day by Donald Shambroom
• L'exil et le royaume by Albert Camus
• L'homme qui plantait des arbres by Jean Giono
• Notes on 'Camp' by Susan Sontag

- Andrea

When I first posted the "August Reads" entry in 2024, I imagined ambitiously that every month I would upload a "review" of the books I read. Almost a year later, I would like to rescue that idea. There are so many interesting books that I have read and re-read since then, but I will restrict myself to some scattered reflections on the past half year of reading.

New Favorites

So far, this year's grand revelation is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (along with Camus' Le mythe de Sisyphe, but I am still working on it). In one novel, Eco managed to speak to my childhood love for detective novels, my teenage nerdiness for learning as much as possible about anything and everything (including medieval Europe), and my present concerns about the nature of truth and living with truth in an ever-changing world of difficulties and possibilities. The prose was poetic and funny, page turning and almost inscrutable. Timeless and present with a 12th century setting, it is a transcendental book that I hope will always keep me company.

Before The Name of the Rose, I started the year off with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and it provoked a very different type of awe. While Eco (and Camus) read grandiose and monumental, in many ways, Invisible Cities is quiet, but powerfully so. It achieves timelessness in a very different way, too. Like Eco, Calvino places us in a historical past, that of the Silk Road, Marco Polo, and Kublai Khan. However, where Eco as a medievalist is relatively rigorous, Calvino writes loosely and a parallel dream world arises from the history he is inspired by. Fantastic city after fantastic city, I felt more and more drawn into the world Calvino pieced together, a world that uncannily drifted very close to home, every so often, especially in the moments that, at first glance, appeared to be the most dream-like.

I extend an "honorable mention" to In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki Jun'ichirou, which I read in the French translation (Éloge de l'ombre‌). The beautiful long-winding sentences unfurled quietly into piercing insights, not only about the development of Japanese culture up to the 20th century, but also with regard to what it means to attribute and develop value judgements within a cultural context. What is beauty? What is goodness? Tanizaki presents a calculatingly messy train of thought that waxes poetic. It is essay-poetry, in a sense. At the same time, I could not fully embrace Éloge de l'ombre due to the lingering taste of an essentialism that felt almost deterministic. At a moment of rising insularity and nationalisms, I find the quest for "essences" troubling. There is a fine line that shapes the difference between understanding how aesthetics and ways of doing arise from culture, and prescribing a certain way of doing as essentially "Japanese". And while Tanizaki displays a degree of self-consciousness as to the development of cultural norms within specific contexts and circumstances, he also does not hesitate to issue very clear-cut assertions that read too much like givens or truths about what a group people is "essentially" like. Nonetheless, a book I look forward to revisiting.

Illuminations

I have read two illustrated works during these first six months of 2025, Jungle Nama: A Story of the Sunderban by Amitav Ghosh and Salman Toor, and Looking for Luddites by John Hewitt. Both books made me reflect on the interplay between text and visual arts, which I think is very pertinent at a time that many predict (and/or lament) that both will be mechanized away.

This was my second reading of Jungle Nama, which I bought from Araku, a coffee shop we frequented during our stay in Bengalore. Looking for Luddites was found at a magazine and stationary shop I am fond of in Bristol: Rova. In a way, I encountered both books as artefacts that caught my passing eye.

For many decades, the predominant mode of thought has placed illustration as subservient to the written word. And in a way, illustration could even be considered as a "threat" to the seriousness of a book. Are picture books perhaps not "real books"? Jungle Nama and Looking for Luddites demonstrate that it is not so (as do so many other brilliantly illustrated books, such as the Alice books). Illustrations here prove to be not merely decorative, but rather are as essential to the storytelling as the text. The unique perspective or "eye" of the illustrator (even in the case of Hewitt, who is also the writer) cannot be subtracted away.

It is interesting to think about these books together, what does the retelling of a Bengali myth about the Sunderban mangrove forest have to do with the retelling of the Luddites' uprising against industrialization in Northern England? So much, it turns out, as both little books explore the nature of human greed as well as the complex relationships between human settlement and the natural world. In both works, authors and illustrators look to the past to raise timeless concerns that are among the most urgent today due the generalized use of AI and the destruction of our ecosystems. In both works, the "expendability" of human life mirrors the "expendability" of ecosystems, animals, and all other forms of life.

A parting thought related to pertinence, I read Jungle Nama at the same moment that both India and Pakistan were, once again, at the brink of war. Authored by an Indian writer and illuminated by a Pakistani illustrator, the book stands as a powerful contrast to war, illustrating what could be possible by coming together instead.

Reconsiderations

I have recently re-read two books of Latin American poetry, the Chilean poet Alejandro Zambra's Mudanza and María Mercedes Carranza's El oficio de vivir, the latter of which I wrote about for the original August Reads entry. I bought both books at the Bogotá Book Fair (FILBO) in 2024, and I picked them up again when I was feeling nostalgic about not being at FILBO this year.

First, I realized that I enjoyed both books more on the second read, which confirms by experience the well-known adage that good poetry must be re-read. In a sense, this reencounter with Zambra and Carranza is part of a multi-year reconciliation with poetry that first begun with Louise Glück. I had initially failed to connect with poetry, despite my love for reading, and I then struggled with it as a university student after the "Poetry 101" teaching assistant took great pleasure in announcing that the course was meant to "weed out" students from the English major. I survived the course, but ultimately chose not to major in English.

I had already appreciated Carranza's work on my first read, however, I couldn't quite count it among my favorites because I found the collection's bleakness to weigh too heavy. Carranza masterfully conveyed the hollow feelings of depression, and it was almost too much to bear. On a second read, however, my initial reticence has given way. The shock of encountering Carranza's profound listlessness and melancholy has subsided, and I felt like this time I could better perceive the beauty she crafted from the shadows. Despite of everything, glimmers of life shone through the despair and with the despair. It is a special book, compiled by Carranza's daughter with a lot of thought and care. I wish Carranza's poetry could be better known outside of Colombia. (And I wish I could translate it.)

My thoughts have strayed far, as usual, so I will continue my 2025 book reflection in a second entry.

Other Interesting 2025 Reads

• "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"
• "Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture"

- Andrea

Around the time we first began to build Comma Directory, I acquired a little notebook which I wrote about in my very first post: "The Small Bibliographic Log" from the independent Colombian press, Rey Naranjo. Almost eight months later, the log is now filled to the brim with the readings and thoughts that have accompanied me from Colombia to Cyprus to Sweden to France, and finally, to England.

To commemorate the completion of my first pequeña bitácora bibliográfica, I have picked out a selection of quotes, some of them I have had to dig out of the tight corners that I stuffed them into as I ran out of space on the page. And so, ...

"Recuerdo que [...] escribía sobre toda la superficie del papel, sin respetar ningún margen. Eso me daba la sensación de llenar completamente un vacío".
– Mario Bellatin, El libro uruguayo de los muertos

"At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books."
– Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

« Nous voyons ces filets, leur beauté, leur appartenance tout à la fois à la liberté et à la capacité de capturer, oui capturer. »
– Franklin Arellano & Julia Bejarano López, Entretierras

"Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long."
– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

"What is the consciousness of guilt but the arena floor rushing up to meet the falling trapeze artist? Without it, a bullet becomes a tourist flying without responsibility through the air."
– Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate

« Est-il aucun moment
Qui vous puisse assurer d'un second seulement ? »
– Jean de La Fontaine, Fables Choisies

« Il faut sinon se moquer, en tout cas se méfier de bâtisseurs d'avenir. Surtout quand pour bâtir l'avenir des hommes à naître, ils ont besoin de faire mourir les hommes vivants. L'homme n'est la matière première que de sa propre vie. »
– Jean Gino, Refus d'obéissance

"Whatever he did allowed him to be told [...] that he indeed existed, that he was not, as he had always dreaded, a figment of his own imagination, or of God's imagination, who disappeared when the lights went out."
– Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate

"¡Morir, Dios mío, morir así tísica a los veintitrés años, al comenzar a vivir, sin haber conocido el amor [...] morir sin haber realizado la obra soñada, que salvará el nombre del olvido; morir dejando al mundo sin haber satisfecho las millones de curiosidades, de deseos, de ambiciones [...]"
– José Asunción Silva, De sobremesa

"Pienso, antes de ponerme polvos
que aún no he comenzado
y ya estoy por terminar".
– María Mercedes Carranza, El oficio de vivir

« Elle rêvait aux palmiers droits et flexibles, et à la jeune fille qu'elle avait été. »
– Albert Camus, L'exile et le royaume

"I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem
there is no perfect ending.
Indeed, there are infinite endings.
Or perhaps, once on begins,
there are only endings."
– Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night

"I shall soon enter this broad desert, perfectly level and boundless, where the truly pious heart succumbs in bliss. I shall sink into the divine shadow, in a dumb silence and an ineffable union. And in this sinking, all equality and all inequality shall be lost [...] I shall fall into the silent and uninhabited divinity, where there is no work and no image."
– Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

"In the midst of the word he was trying to say;
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."
– Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

- Andrea

After spending my first few days at Selgars Mill, I have begun to notice a new small pleasure that brightens my days. Whenever I finish cooking and begin to serve a plate, thoughts pop into my head about adding a garnish here, perhaps, or layering some mushrooms there. I have gotten into the habit of spending a few minutes playing with the colors and textures of the food on the plate before sitting down to eat it.

As much as I have enjoyed cooking for many years now, beautiful plating has never felt as natural and pleasurable as it does now. In fact, I am relishing being able to cook for myself again after weeks of communal cooking. At the same time, however, working alongside some pretty amazing chefs at Feÿ has altered my relationship with cooking in a way that is reflected in my newfound instinct to plate with care.

I have started to catalogue my imperfectly pretty plates, and I think back fondly to chefs Elena and Giuseppe, and a few other talented cooks I met at the château.

- Andrea

It has been a while since I last read and wrote. Work has been overwhelming, and the time I had to spare went into exploring the fundamentals of Linux.

But today, I finally managed to read a bit again. When I was younger I used to hate Swedish literature, perhaps because of traumatic recall to school. However, reading in a language other than English–especially in a Swedish from a time when the world carried less universal cultural references–is interesting. And thus, I have discovered a newfound love for Swedish literature.

I have begun to read Willy Kyrklund's Solange. It kicks off with a poem and an intro I want to share:

Where does all song go, that becomes suffocated and trapped?
Where does all hope go, that reaches nothing?
Could be that it abounds in the earth and water.
Could be that it whistles in the wind all around.
– Karin Boye

Or in Swedish:

Vart går all sång, som blir kvävd och innestängd?
Vart går all längtan, som når ingenting?
Kanhända den i mullen och vattnet ligger mängd.
Kanhända den viner i vinden omkring.
– Karin Boye

Followed by this intro:

This story shall tell the tale of Solange and Hugo. It carries, thus, not both names–Solange and Hugo. It carries only the name of the loved one: Solange.

- Marc

When the world appears to be pregnant with possibility, I take it as an invitation to embark upon a journey. Or, when I embark on a new journey, the world often appears to suddenly be pregnant with possibility, such as it appears to me now, after some recent day trips to Paris. But even after returning to the rolling muddy hills of the Yonne, I continue to be restless, yearning to visit and revisit as I have just done at the Palais-Royal, the courtyard of the Louvre, the narrow roads from Opera to Châtelet and the Centre Pompidou.

Wandering up and down the streets of a beloved city brings me a quiet but intense joy, akin to the feelings evoked by my favorite books, films, images, music. And so, I decided to embark on another journey, but this time through my memory, the internet, and some ink.

It has resulted in maps and constellations of those special works of art that move me and renew my gaze. Perhaps these are the transcendental feelings that others find in religion, ritual, patriotism, and/or mind-altering substances. I guess this could be a creative ritual of sorts, but I find the language around ritual and transcendence to have become so tired lately.

So, here is a brief inventory of my eclectic mental re-collections of sights, sounds, and feelings.

Books

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Le Diable au corps by Raymond Radiguet
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
La muerte de Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück

Music

"The Wuthering Heights" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"Amore" and "Solitude" by Sakamoto Ryuichi
"The Girl - Theme" by Trevor Duncan
"Yumeji's Theme" by Umebayashi Shigeru
"Romeo and Juliet" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
"Overture" and "Metempsychosis" by Zhao Jiping
"Blackstar" and "Station to Station" by David Bowie

Film

Les Quatre Cents Coups by François Truffaut
Raise the Red Lantern by Zhang Yimou
Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov
2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrik
La jetée by Chris Marker
In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai
L'Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Louis Malle
Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman

And More

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by Simon Flesser & Simongo

- Andrea

« [...] nous nous sommes avisés à nouveau de la douceur et de la chaleur, que nous avons pour un temps oubliées, propres à cette substance qui a nom 'papier' [...] » – Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Éloge de l'ombre (p. 24)

After the first half of December, I have not sat down to write again. This is a lie, of course. I write all the time—for work, in my journal, agenda, out of obligation, obligations that I have engaged in voluntarily (as a form of self-torture). There is also a cloud of ideas and texts yet to be written that every so often haunts me. This entry, for instance, which I have been imagining for some time now.

And still, since December I have not sat down to write—

that which I want to write the most. Those texts that are like a pond or the rain, beautiful and completely lacking in any mission or argument (which is not to say disengaged, but that is a topic for another entry).

For much of last year, I have tweaked, re-written, and elongated pieces of flash fiction, satire, the possible first chapter of a longer story. I have reworked the same texts over and over, and I have gone back to old writing that I had given up on, only to re-discover its potential. And of the new writing that I did do, most came from ideas long present in my mind. Perhaps this was the result of having thought so long about writing without actually doing any writing (of this kind).

In any case, there came a moment in which I felt the urge to sit down and begin to write again. Really write. And while a part of me was excited to jump back in and take a look at last year's writing with fresh eyes, I also felt like starting off the year with something new. So I opened up my journal and my agenda (I have fresh pages in both) and I sat down to think about what to write about.

Nothing came to mind.

The white winter light glowed on the vaguely yellow textured paper. My mind felt as blank as the page, and I discovered that I liked that feeling. This was no writer's block. There was no anxiety, fear or frustration. Instead, I felt as illuminated as the blank page by the windowpane, which seemed to promise so much in all its emptiness. As if anything could happen now.

- Andrea

Only 24 hours ago we were there: tucked away in the tight valleys of the Troodos (Τρόοδος) mountains, traversing twists and turns under a brilliant blue sky and the gaze of tall pines. Villages hung from the mountainside, and one of these was Kalopanagiotis (Καλοπαναγιώτης).

Of the high highs and low lows that have characterized my first few days on Cyprus, Kalopanagiotis is literally and figuratively a very high high. The drive up from the southern coast into the mountains offers views that words do little justice to. Near Mount Olympus, the highest peak of the island, the view of the northern coast appears, and Cyprus suddenly feels small again, like when seen on a map for the first time. It is a unique feeling to reach a mountain peak and to be able see the physical constraints that the sea places on land. It’s so different from the huge, continental places I grew up in that felt boundless.

I first discovered this feeling of "boundedness" in Guadeloupe, which despite its very small size on the map felt bigger than Cyprus. I think it probably is, given the way maps distort landmasses. In any case, I still remember that feeling, on my first visit to Terre-de-Haut in the archipelago of Les Saintes, when I climbed up to the highest peak and realized that I could see the entire island from there, all around me. A few months later, I re-encountered "boundedness" in Saint Cloud. From the slopes of the Soufrière volcano, I looked out and down onto the coast on which I lived, walked, and worked everyday. While the view of the sea provides a sense of vastness that is familiar to me, seeing the long but limited coast so perfectly drawn out made the feeling of boundary visceral.

But back to Kalopanagiotis, which meant to dive back down into the earth after circling the peak of Mount Olympus. Kalopanagiotis hugs the curve of a valley that cradles a small creek lush with vegetation. Now, instead of looking down, I found myself looking up a lot, at the peaks, the sky, the buildings and streets above us. The awe of the mountain peak had given way to the intimacy of the valley.

Despite the smallness of the village, it felt like there were not enough hours in the day to stroll through its narrow roads and river paths, once, twice, thrice. Kalopanagiotis is penetrated by history, with its Byzantine artwork and archaeological remains of monasteries, baths, and water mills. At the same time, local businesses are vibrant and include a winery, artisanal stores, fusion restaurants and more. Nature, archaeology, art, and the culinary arts—I couldn’t ask for more.

But when I try to capture the wonderment that I felt, I am reminded how insufficient words often are. There is no list of attraction detailed enough to really capture that feeling.

I would have to resort to art, rather than a log entry (What’s the difference? Can’t anything be art? But there is a difference, I can feel that there is.), to piece together that joy of discovering someplace beautiful, new, and already nostalgic.

- Andrea

As of today, I have publications forthcoming in Hypertext Review, The Good Life Review and The Madrid Review. In the past two years, I have published at Americas Quarterly, Periódico de Libros, Pie de Página, and for Artists at Risk Connection.

It was difficult for me to write that paragraph. It is even more difficult still to post it and keep it on this website. The feeling that I am bragging really gets under my skin, which is why I tend to struggle with self-recognition. But, my aversion to listing "accomplishments" is not even fully based on humility, it is also a bit of cowardice. It takes courage to stand publicly behind a piece of writing (especially some pieces of writing that I now find could be so much better, if only I could pick them apart and put them back together), it is safer to sink into anonymity.

However, if I were to retreat, I would be incapable of truly understanding where I am at as a writer. And, despite of everything, I also marvel at it all still, that the texts that I spent hours drafting and tweaking and dialoguing with others about are out there, whatever that means. In a sense, I still don't really truly believe it.

From childhood, language and writing have always been a safe haven. I gravitated towards storytelling in the moments of most uncertainty. It was fun. Libraries were there no matter how many times we had to pack up and move. I always knew I wanted to write, to be able to share images, thoughts, impressions, and feelings with others.

However, a writing career never seemed like an option. Of course, a career involving writing, yes. But it was out of the question that I would just write. That wasn’t a real career, and most importantly, it was unsustainable for someone like me. Even when I majored in languages, literature, and the humanities—I imagined I needed to enter academia or do something else. And I did, I did do something else, and I found many additional passions in the social sciences, in anthropology, in film, and in science.

I continued to write, but for myself. Other responsibilities quickly took up my time, responsibilities that I genuinely enjoyed tackling and that were within the fixed path laid out by my studies (which involved academic writing). But when the studies ended, or paused (who knows), and I had to think closely about what I really wanted to do, the urge to write, creatively, made itself known. But about what? And who would read it?

It turns out that I had published before, as a student. But I never took those achievements seriously. I downplayed the writing itself, for some reason, “it didn’t count”. In some sense, I feel that still, like the publications I have listed at the top of this entry "don't count", incomprehensively.

The first creative text that I published appeared a decade ago in the quarterly magazine, Just Poetry!!! This poem, “Fruit Salad is Heterogenous”, was just a faint memory in the back of my mind until I rediscovered the printed issue earlier this year. I didn’t even remember it had been printed. I certainly didn’t remember it had been one of the nominees for best of issue. And when I re-read it, I realized it was not half-bad for a high school student publishing and writing poetry for the first time. I surprised myself with those words, and they evoked feelings and memories latent with meaning.

Exactly ten years later, my first creative English narrative pieces and Spanish-language poetry pieces are forthcoming.

I am well aware of all the ethical issues with the publishing industry, as with any industry, especially as journalism and print struggle financially. There are very good reasons the reject the notion of traditional publishing all together. And yet, the efforts of small presses that I see here in Bogotá and online internationally are exciting (Hypertext and The Good Life, are non-for-profits; The Madrid Review is a volunteer effort). And even in more traditional media, there are people passionate about storytelling. I can discern (or a better word, vislumbrar) a way of breaking through and sharing stories and histories with a variety of people. That prospect excites me.

Not to say I haven’t been discouraged by rejection (part and parcel of the process) or by a perceived shortage of time or disappointment in myself (self-doubt, or perfectionism). It has felt impossible at times. That feeling of failing to communicate something important, essential or the essential nature of that which I am trying to communicate. The hegemony of English also makes publishing in Spanish challenging—and I don’t want to feel pressured to write in English because of it. I want to write in English because I feel like it. And I want to be able to write in Spanish (or any other language) when I feel like it too.

In those times of self-doubt, my friends and family have been essential, as well as the kind words of the readers who have found something worthwhile in my writing. But also, diving into the written works of others has been so important. Those books, poems, and articles that speak to me motivate me and give me courage.

- Andrea

Today, Andrea and I designed the Concepts page. Looking around at other personal wikis, our shared sentiment was that there is a lot of amazing content, but that it can be hard to navigate because of the overwhelming amount of information served in a rather flat layout.

By using a hierarchical structure, we are able to better break it down into sub-categories that are easier to navigate. The top has:

• Concepts
• Media
• Travel

And under them there is a subcategory and finally the topic. Each log entry uses a tag underneath, so we are still able to display the same log entry in multiple topics, if necessary.

To design the layout, Andrea and I started to look for inspiration. I am rather infatuated by the old lisp machines, and especially the Genera Symbolics lisp.

I love the portrait aspect ratio and the black and white look. So, I wanted the design to make an homage to its beauty.

Searching for its design elements, we came across this.

Andrea and I both find it beautiful. If you head over to the Concepts section, you can see how that served as inspiration for the design. We are very happy with the result.

- Marc