That plea is what ends Penelope’s letter to Odysseus, as imagined by Ovid. But I’m still here, in this waiting room. Did I tell you I like artificial plants? Maybe I should buy one for the house, like a souvenir of this journey, a reminder, a Post-it note. I still haven’t left and something good has just happened, I’ve just found a magazine with a horoscope from three years ago.

Maybe it’s not about swimming diagonally. Maybe it’s about floating, parting my hair at the side, combing my fringe to the right and now the left, sweeping my hair back, pretending I’m moving forwards and ending up in the same place. If being here is so nice, why do I need to get there?

I’m restyling my hair while it’s wet. And I move my left shoulder up and then down again. I lift my right shoulder and lower it. I stretch out an arm, stretch out the other. One, two three. I move my arms up and down, one, two, three, one, two, three. It looks like I’m dancing.

The Wizard of Oz is so insipid behind his shower curtain. A real let-down. But then, isn’t the yellow-brick road what makes it all worthwhile? Are the blue lines of the notebook like the tiles of the blue-brick road? If so, you know what song David Bowie could sing at the end of this film.

And so, like the line in that Simone Weil book, seawater can be life-sustaining for fish and deadly for humans. That ambivalence makes the blue-brick road more appealing.

Oh, I just love being here. I’m not moving forwards, I’m floating. And floating is so different when you’ve lost your fear of drowning. Unhappy are those who remain within their grief, when the here and now is so good. Although, you know what? I could leave any minute, Jonás. But, look, here I am. It’s easier to do my hair when it’s wet. I’m going to part it in the middle to welcome you back, listen: ‘A hundred thousand welcomes! I could weep, and I could laugh; I am light, and heavy. Welcome!’

Suddenly I think about that Shakira song. Such a good reminder of the here and now.

I go from the office to the apartment, the study to the kitchen, the kitchen to the table, the chair to the armchair. These are more or less my routes, my routine. But it doesn’t feel like I’m here in the study, with the cat asleep in the armchair; it feels like I’m somewhere else.

From the right for a moment,

and from the left for a change.

Here on this page. But also here, without knowing what’s next, without it mattering what’s next.