Perhaps the most difficult thing in this period of my life – including, of course, the year 2023 – was to remember what I learned when I went to New York for a master’s degree in writing, or writing. Today, at the end of this year, which has been cruel for my country and the world in too many ways, I try to evoke those teachings…

The passing year

1.- Of all human feelings, compassion is the one that most deeply enables us to have a high sense of awareness of who we are. Compassion allows us to compromise and avoid escalation. Be generous to the world. Reconciliations that happen in time. And of all possible sympathies, the most difficult and most necessary is the one that we must be able to feel ourselves, with which we have the most difficulty.

2.- We are fragile bodies whose character has hardened, sometimes dulled, in our struggle for survival. The certainty of fragility enables a high degree of political awareness of reality. When the fragile unite in collective struggles, they can transform society into something better, but they risk forgetting that we are also individual struggles.

3.- We are short. So we tried to survive in a world where we are just leaves in the wind. We believe that we are more, that our names, our prestige, our works offer us a certain solid status. But it’s not like that, because time is fluid. Our inevitable destiny is oblivion, and that is the most pleasant of all possible destinations.

Cities are full of books. But above all, they are full of stories. Each person lives their own epic…

3.- It is easier to explore the colossal city if you wake up early and take advantage of the daylight hours in winter. But you also have to learn to deal with the darkness of big cities, because life is full of light and shadows, and everything is worth learning. Conquering every unfathomable city is a chance to find yourself.

4.- Writing is not a race of speed but of endurance. The rest is of little importance when the main opponent is in front of the mirror. You can only improve yourself in writing. Although there may be a dissolution of a person who, thanks to language and its signs, becomes part of the whole, he is lost in the infinity of tradition or its collapse, in the silence of what was created and irretrievably lost. Writing is a breeze, sometimes terrifying, generally refreshing. Writing is a machine for remembering and forgetting.

5.- There is nothing wrong with dreaming. Love probably consists of offering ourselves as an instrument so that the loved one can fulfill their dreams. Stop being to be more.

Old Year

6.- Cities are full of books. But above all, they are full of stories. Each person lives his own epic, at work, at home, in consciousness. Sometimes we find books that save our lives. Sometimes that salvation has other forms.

7.- Everything ends. Big cities also end, sometimes at the last subway stop. And so, you realize that one day you will lose everything. Even the most beloved. But you can always remember what Kafka said: love will always return in another way. (OR)