An ideal notebook knows, above all, that it can’t be ideal because being ideal means always being just out of reach – and not right in front of you, Bic pen.

I searched for the Ideal notebook brand online, but I didn’t find anything. No photos, no stories. Nothing. Just a mention from a writer saying it exists, that it’s the Mexican Moleskine. And as an aside: ‘The Ideal brand doesn’t have a website.’ It’s true.

I considered investigating, asking in the old stationery shops around here about the history of Ideal notebooks. I also considered making that history up. A chronology, a chronicle, an oral tradition. Inventing it. Like the Iliad of notebooks, from the oral to the written. A long poem about notebooks. The war of the notebooks breaks out between two sides: squared versus lined. The Trojan horse is an HB pencil, and Helen is a beautiful white rubber. The story of Ideal notebooks contains all the elements of an epic poem.

Tonight we had dinner at the Japanese restaurant. He told me they’re going away on a family trip, he doesn’t know how long for. It will be the three of them: Jonás, his sister Marina and his father. They’re going to Spain. His mother was Spanish, she came to Mexico City just before she started her chemistry degree. ‘I really want to visit my mum’s family,’ he said. ‘She used to like going on her birthday and this year she couldn’t.’ It’s not The Iliad that’s beginning now, it’s The Odyssey. In this story, I’m Penelope. But does that bring me closer or push me further away?

Are these stairs going up or down?

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‘When will you be back, Jonás?’ ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered. I was about to get up. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back to bed, and yes, we did it in the morning. Not another line without saying it, I’m going to say it right now: last year I had an accident I almost didn’t come back from and not long afterwards I discovered sex with Jonás. Good sex, I mean. In that order.

Sex and love. That order. The death of Jonás’ mum. My non-death. That disorder.

I turned thirty. I came early to one thing, and late to another. And now here I am, writing grand words in this little notebook, words like death and sex. But there we go. Later I’ll probably explain in more detail. I’m announcing it now like the bell for the rubbish truck.

Shall I tell you something I haven’t told you yet? My handwriting is shrinking with time. And now the notebook has shrunk as well. This notebook is smaller than the last one. If there’s a miniature scale for people and for notebooks, is there a miniature scale for stories?