At 7:18 a.m., I open my eyes. I’m still in bed, stretching my feet as if I were trying to break some kind of record.
My first thought is of that ray of light coming in at an angle through the curtain.
It lasts ten seconds and then disappears. Who knows where it goes, who knows if anyone else has seen it, who knows if it happens every morning for someone else…
Every morning, a little show that no one sees but me, or maybe not.
At 8:02 a.m., I go to the bar.
The bartenders always put too much milk in my coffee, but maybe he won’t?
“Do you remember?” I ask him.
He smiles: “Only the details that matter.”
I like that phrase. I steal it secretly, smiling at him with a complicity that not even a co-pilot in aviation would share… but it makes a difference, this thing, this moment.
At 9:51 a.m. at work, everyone is talking loudly, a lot, and without even finishing a meaningful sentence.
I focus on a glass full of water that I hold in my hand during my break.
Inside, there is a tiny bubble rising very slowly, in no hurry and silent amid all the chaos.
It’s ridiculous, I know, but it calms me down.
My colleague laughs: “Are you looking at the water?”
“Yes, it’s more interesting than it looks.”
I’d like to tell her, it’s more interesting than anything you say, but… I’d be very, very strange.
At 12:37 p.m., I go out for lunch and sit at my usual table, observing the people around me.
Yes, like the worst kind of voyeur. I admit it.
But as I do so, an elderly lady carefully adjusts her husband’s scarf.
She doesn’t say anything to him, she just pulls up his collar, as if it were something that had to be done and wasn’t asked for, as if it were something that filled her. So much.
That gesture stays with me more than the cold.
And it is cold. It’s about two degrees, and snow is falling outside the windows.
At 3:20 p.m., I’m on the subway, and a little boy is counting the tiles on the floor.
He’s very busy, and I’m busy with him, making sure he hasn’t missed a single one.
His father says to him, “What’s the point?
And he replies, ”No point, but I like it. ”
And I want to tell him he’s right. That not everything has to be done because it serves a purpose, but that there are things that have a reason to exist simply because we like them. That the world turns thanks to the useless things that do us good.
And I give him a mental high five, because it would be really weird to do it for real.
At 6:55 p.m., on my way home, I pass a bookstore.
I don’t go in, but I stop in front of the window. There is something magical about the sight of books.
The bookseller is arranging the volumes in order of color.
It’s an absurd detail, but it also orders my thoughts.
I feel at one with him and understand this sense of order that seems paranoid but is… essential.
At 8:22 p.m., I prepare a quick dinner.
A poorly cut tomato, slightly overcooked pasta.
The children and my husband are laughing heartily, and I spy on them, revelling in that noise, in all our imperfection, and then… the smell of garlic in oil… that is perfect.
It’s a detail I will remember and carry with me to remind me of this moment.
At 10:41 p.m., I lie down on the bed, exhausted and full of thoughts.
I replay the day like you replay a message you never sent.
And I think that maybe I don’t fall in love with the details too much, that maybe I give too much weight to a lot of unimportant things, maybe I take things too seriously.
Or maybe it’s others who no longer notice the little things that save the day, save the moment and sometimes… life.
I close my eyes.
And I wonder if seeing so much is a gift…
or just a way of not looking at what really hurts, but then in the end… who decides what really hurts?
“It’s the details that tell the truth. The rest is just noise.”
