It starts with a piece of paper.

It could be anything you find around you: a creased-up receipt, a loyalty card, a bookmark or a book page. Something you can write on with a pen or a pencil. 

This exercise won’t work on a phone. You need to feel the grab of the pencil, the pressure you apply on the piece of paper and the mark it’s leaving on it.

Suddenly, words start to appear. Your handwriting might not be recognisable to you that day and there’ll probably be grammar mistakes. The sentence’s structure might not make sense either, you’ll even mix different languages without realising. 

Maybe what you’re writing isn’t exactly what you had in mind and it surprises you. 

The contents of what you’re writing don’t really matter though. What matters is the act of materialising an intangible part of you.

That mark you leave on the paper becomes proof of your existence and a reminder that you’re also a body that takes space in the world. You start to remember you’re not just your confused mind space and gradually, begin to disperse the fog inside of you.

Every once in a while, I find a lost note in a back pocket, inside a book or in a drawer. I don’t remember when I wrote it, or where I was, but I recognise it as an extension of myself and sometimes, previous selves.


Published on the publication of the project
No More (Cruel) Optimism, May 2023.