Synesthesia.

What a beautiful picture of Sam’s granddaughter carefree, running straight towards a scent so much richer than any perfume could create. Nature’s breath.

Some children live and breathe the outdoors.

Some with wild imaginations or difficult childhoods create fantasy worlds which keep them safe. And nothing wrong with that.

Times like these, we do not lose our innocence. We become children who are mature enough, yet, to understand the pains of other people. We resolve the paradoxes between the real and the imaginary knowing they both contain magic.

When great evil is upon us all, we must hold on to anything that fills us with the goodness in the world. We must find a cosy place within us to keep ourselves safe.

We are reminded of every colour at the mention of one colour. We are reminded of aromas. We are reminded of the very air we breathe. As I write this, I can feel all of you feel the air close in around you and suffocate you.

We have emotional AIDS, and it won’t go away on its own until a long time has passed. We can only fill our world, and our worlds, with goodness.

As the song goes in The Sound of Music, “I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad.”

Everyone has something special that fills their hearts with a fireplace.

I make each color remind me of something or someone safe. The colors, they change depending on mood. Each color can also mean more than one thing.

I take the things I love and wrap it around each colour until no colour is unsafe to me any longer.

Live outside the Internet a little each day, Zoomers.

Look into your parents’ faces. Remember each line and etch, each wrinkle of laughter, each wrinkle of sadness, each wrinkle of worry.

Look out of your window, go for a walk. The trees? Don’t they look completely bizarre? How did we go from a split amoeba to this? Look at them again and you’ll see what I mean.

Look at your friends and their clothes. Their handbags. The exact shade of their lips, the way their eyes light up when they see you. The way you feel your eyes light up when you see them.

“Though most of them resent the structure that is imposed on them, and successfully push its limits, they greet each other with barely suppressed gaiety, delighting in the absurdity that their limitless minds can be stuffed into such quaint loved bodies.” — Connie Kronlokken, on The Years by Virginia Woolf

Look at the rain. It smells different from the ocean. The salt.

There’s something called synesthesia, where you experience one sense through another.

You may look at an envelope and taste nutmeg.

You may hear bird song and see a colour.

I wrote this down in my journal one day.

The water was crispy and hungry to be helpful.

A far more elegant one.

“The carpet of snow glistened, it was sweet, like gingerbread in the fables.” — Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers, by Boris Pasternak

It’s very common. Our brains a complex phenomenon and we never know why we associate anything with anything.

An emotional virus cannot take that away from us.

Our vast abilities to move the things we love closer to each other.

“I am endlessly sensual,” Don said. Sensual, the word for paying attention to and loving each thing with all our senses.

Look at the colours on the streets. Paint on houses, doors to restaurants, billboards above shops, all the vibrant clothes.

And each other.

We will have individual hearts, already at the task of beginning from the beginning.

The world is large. Life is big.

And this is what I woke up with today.

Strawberries washed up, beached on land; rich men talking to a sphere in Chinese, too busy to notice. Sear in me the knowledge that does not fit within a single teardrop.

Who knows why we think the things we do?

Breathe. This land is our land, this air is our air.

Cook, and eat. I once wrote about hearth in recipes.

In olden times, recipes were jealously guarded secrets of women, who only shared them with other women they love and trust. Family recipes were passed down generation by generation, shared within little villages.

Now, we share recipes with complete strangers. The world has become our village when it comes to food. Try not to eat alone. A hot meal is best shared with other people.

And put your phones away.

Pay attention to every flavour, every texture, every lingering taste in your mouth.

Learn to cook, Zs. Trust me, it will fill you with such pride and joy.

Cook up a cauldron full of mystery, coincidence, intimacy, individuality, and domesticity.

We are in war. We are also gentle.

We live in surrealistic times. And in these surrealistic times, we are endowed with exceptional powers of freedom, an adventure of hope.

Let the world touch you. And touch it back.