I love autumn.

I was walking home due to a combination of the Ringbahn yet another time under repair and my loathing for buses, which forced me to look at the trees and their leaves turning yellow from the below perspective of my 1.69m height, slower than my usual bike-self. It feels like such a special time of the year, similarly to how sunsets and sunrises are special times of the day, but somehow it forces to enjoy a longer stretch of time as a fleeting one. It makes me think of being in love, how it is infinite in its perception, but often finite in time, at least when we talk of the unchosen part of the feeling.

This specific autumn felt difficult to process to my animal body due to my traveling to warmer countries, both at the end of September (I’m starting the diary only now, so you won’t know about this one) and in the middle of October. Something I find it’s not talked a lot about is the state of confusion of boarding a plane, this awfully uncomfortable liminal space, to then find yourself teleported after a mere hours in a place with different temperature, plants, sounds, daylight hours. I went to Greece for two weeks, exactly in the middle of the month, which meant leaving as cold was creeping in and a still green vegetation, and returning to the undressed branches of the trees outside my window.

My hope for this holiday was to rest, a recurring theme of my tired life, which I can’t say we succeeded at. It was a trip filled with love, caresses, nature, pomegranates, walking, a little bit of fighting (the right amount, I think), feta cheese, olive oil, and animal death. Being surrounded by nature is something I’ve been longing for my whole life, but ultimately that I’m not so accustomed to as a born city–person. I have been taking photos of dead animals around the city for years, a practice I’m sure can be seen as creepy by many, but that helps me remember that death exists and helps me feel that the animal has been witnessed. It makes complete sense that this is the Age of Plastic, seeing how we refuse death in our daily life. Being in Lefkada for a week, encountering different animals in a state of decay, some bones, made me think of how normal it actually is to die. It is also the right season to be thinking about such things.

In the meanwhile, this year I’ve started noticing my own body going from growing to aging. Like watching water flowing and falling throw the creeks of my hand, it’s falling into the void to notice one’s tits accepting gravity as an unstoppable force. Entropy touches everyone and everything and no amount of air sucked out of the Last Supper room will prevent it to die at some point. I find it fantastic that the enemy to the survival of one of the major works of art of human history is the creator himself.

Similarly, my phone camera broke (and then it was stolen, but I’ll talk about it later), and I could only take blurry photos, something that I actually quite enjoyed in terms of results and in the way it forced me to change my relationship to taking photos. I have used my analog camera more, first, but also took less photos, a practice I’ve splurged in since my first phone. Every flight I take I think of my friend Bianca, who is very smart and uses that time to catalogue her photos, while mine keep living in the equivalent of the chair where to throw the worn-but-not-dirty-enough-to-be-washed clothes.

It’s also been around two months that I haven’t doomscrolled (on instagram&co, vinted you’ll be next), which on one hand makes me feel much more rooted in reality and to the leaves and the trees, but also disconnected from people and events. It still feels important for me to avoid such digital spaces as this is a period of change (yes to autumn and to the tarot card of death) and outside this website and a coming-soon music video, I haven’t done much art and seeing the amount of creation displayed on Instagram makes my little heart and self esteem ache with shame. I’ll be back, I promise.

On top of that, my poor, broken phone was stolen on the last day, which forced me to be without one for nearly two weeks, which was an interesting experience.
First of all, life without a phone is both. bliss and a torture, but my sense of orientation is actually pretty ok.
Secondly, having to trust that people will be where and when we planned to is something I had forgotten about and it requires a certain fall into the void. At a specific time and place.
Lastly, it’s baffling the amount of services and organization that won’t believe I am myself without my phone. Digital existentialism, 2–step–damnation.

At this point, are we ourselves without a phone?