Handwriting

I have a quest book.

I consider the questbook one of my better ideas. It’s a small green moleskin (shout out to the best notebooks on the market). When I meet interesting people I want to remember I have them write a quest, something they think I should do one day, inside followed by a signature and occasionally contact info. Some of my favorite quests have been doing 10 public cartwheels in a day, visiting a random statue, and hopefully running a marathon unprepared if I am ever in Germany.

My favorite quest is written in the best handwriting I have ever seen by a french man working at a hostel in bucharest: go somewhere pretty with someone you are comfortable with and watch the stars.

The little stars drawn around the prettiest handwriting I have ever seen helps, but what makes it my favorite is how much it describes the man who wrote it. Reading the quest won’t put an image of Salvadore in your head, but it will put the essence of who he is in the theater of thought. 

Also known as Toto Blue on spotify, Salvadore is heavily tattooed, bafflingly lean considering he is an incredible and prolific cook, and tall with big holes in his ears where hoops used to sit. He is a person who knows everyone’s names with creepy accuracy and talks in a manner so genuine you wonder how he escaped the blunt force personality arrangements that shaped our childhoods.

Of course he specifies someone I am comfortable with. Obviously he doesn’t make me feel bad by specifying what type of person (friend, family, so, etc) in case I don’t have them in my life. And obviously he wouldn’t specify a type of place I might not be able to go to. He specifies comfort, beauty, and a night sky. 

I am fascinated by the idea of finding joy through minimizing expectations and interacting with salvadore brought a new perspective to this idea. I think he has found joy by looking for it everywhere. His joys are not minimal, but massive like a billion particles of water joining together to become a typhoon.

I have been blessed with several evening excursions with friends, some of whom I feel more comfortable with than my own skin, but it hasn’t ever felt like the right time to consider the quest completed. I don’t know when that time will be or what the difference is. A perfect moment is organic, impossible to force. I’ve fantasized that it would be a moment when I realized I was comfortable with a partner, or a deliberate test.

As will probably become the norm, this is a ramble. If anyone is reading this, first off I want to hear from you because I am excited to have a readership, but also I would love thoughts. I don’t know what to think or say but that seems to be the point. Figuring out what to think and say.

By

-the 42ndB