DAY 23: WAITER, CHAMPAGNE!

Andrea 23– I’ve become neat, almost in a maniacal way. I feel that having only the domestic microcosm to manage, I can make it work better. It’s always been a characteristic of mine: wanting to control things, mostly those within sight. And today I poured this side of my character onto the house and the way of working: I won’t turn on my laptop if first I haven’t made up my bed, had breakfast, tided up and put the few dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I don’t like making calls if all around me I have scattered objects on the table. The only few things I allow myself to “keep me company” are my notebook, the mouse, my headphones, a pen that I keep in the notebook, my laptop, my phone and the iPad. Stop. Everything else is boring. Since I’ve been in lockdown, I’ve started cataloguing things even more. I take notes on three different notebooks: one for work, one for the blog, one for the new house we need to decorate. I think I need tidiness around me to help me make some room in my head: I’m not used not having the outlet of social relationships, so I fill my head with projects, ideas, books I need to read, videos, mixing up work, formation and personal projects in a mix I hope to detonate from DAY 1 onwards, like opening a bottle of champagne. This is why I often look up to China: this morning I spoke with an Italian colleague living in Shanghai, he made a beautiful, 7 minutes long, video of himself going out on the first days after the end of the quarantine. He recommended us to be united, strong and active. I do: I fix the living room chairs, I tidy up the couch, then I start exercising. Meanwhile, I think of when I’ll open that bottle. Waiter, champagne please.

Miriam 23– It happens to me too, dear Andre, to try to keep the “outside” tidiness impeccable. But I do it, I guess, mostly not to lose my inner tidiness.

These days I always feel as I’m trying to balance a huge pyramid of crystals. Who knows, maybe they’re for your champagne.

I wish I could say, once this is over, that I managed not to break even one.

I wish I could say, when I’m sitting at the table of any restaurant – in fact, no, yesterday I was mesmerized by a trebuchet, so I want it to be there, one of this structure surrounded by the sea and ready to sink but that never do – with my family, my friends, you, while we raise our glasses, I wish I could say that I didn’t lose anything, that I kept the fragile things, beautiful and precious, the same way I did a month ago. I wish I could say that I preserved them, tided them up, removed the dust from them every single day without affecting them at all. And that I came out of it unscathed. On the outside, but mostly on the inside. And that I didn’t let the people I love, those I live 24/7 with, get scratched, grazed, wasted away, during these strange, tiring days made of waiting, of apprehension.

I wish I could say we are still a whole.

On the outside but mostly, believe me, on the inside.