<\/p>\n
\u201cComplete stillness of the air\u201d\u2014that is how the Royal Spanish Academy defines calma<\/em> in one of its latest entries. The word comes from Greek and refers to sailing: those windless days when the sea lies tranquil. From Polyphemus to Aeolus, classical tradition reminds us of the power of the winds\u2014they can bring you home or drive you far from it, but they always stir you.<\/p>\n The wind itself is nothing new; it has always blown, with greater or lesser force. What seems different now is the way it shakes us. Political instability, distrust in institutions, the erosion of community bonds, information overload, uncertainty, relentless self-demand, the absence of leisure\u2026 These new winds push us closer, drive us apart\u2014they unsettle us. How do we resist such agitation? What can we cling to when nothing feels stable, when everything shifts, when\u2014let\u2019s face it\u2014we\u2019re no longer in Kansas?<\/p>\n Spaces of total stillness are rare. The wind wears out the body\u2014travel, work, obligations, family visits, distance, exhaustion\u2014but it batters the mind even more: that email, the doctor\u2019s appointment, we\u2019re out of milk, I\u2019m running late, the cardboard for school, improve your English, I haven\u2019t gone to the gym, is Dad taking his pill?<\/em><\/p>\n In storm season, seeking refuges of calm becomes urgent. Beyond collective solutions\u2014which do exist and must not be dismissed\u2014there are few individual ways to resist this restlessness. Only one comes to mind, and Alonso Quijano foresaw it: \u201cBelieve me, and as I\u2019ve told you before, read these books, and you\u2019ll see how they drive away melancholy and improve your disposition, if by chance it\u2019s bad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Reading is a kind of captivity. One must remain still\u2014at most, a gentle sway, like a hammock, a child\u2019s rocking. The eyes cannot wander; they must stay stitched, like a shadow to a heel, to the page. The brain suffers the hardest sentence: there\u2019s no reading while thinking of something else; you either think, or you read\u2014you can\u2019t do both.<\/p>\n In a whirlwind world, sitting down to read grants that complete stillness of air. No easterly, trade, mistral, or north wind can compete with the calm of an open book and all it entails: a body at rest, eyes settled, a mind\u2014almost\u2014quiet.<\/p>\n The best part? It doesn\u2019t matter what one reads\u2014it\u2019s pure magic. The trick works with a bestseller, a medieval codex, essays on fluid mechanics, or a comic book. The process, at the risk of echoing Tip and Coll\u2019s \u201cglass of water\u201d sketch, goes like this: find a book that calls to you, make yourself comfortable, open it, and start reading. It sounds simple, but it isn\u2019t. The wind knows how to blow\u2014a timid breeze, a phone notification, an intrusive thought. Don\u2019t give in, for behind that breeze the hurricane often hides.<\/p>\n Every so often, the fruitless debate resurfaces about whether reading makes us better people, as if suggesting a direct link between the width of one\u2019s bookshelf and the depth of one\u2019s moral fibre. Reading doesn\u2019t make us better, but it helps us inhabit calm\u2014to take shelter from the wind so that we might row again with renewed strength, to sail, like Paris\u2014a city of great epic and little sea\u2014on the swell of the waves, without sinking.<\/p>\n \n \u201cBecause you sweep me along and I go,<\/em> Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca<\/strong>, Bodas de sangre<\/em><\/p>\n \n By Raquel Cernuda<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cComplete stillness of the air\u201d\u2014that is how the Royal Spanish Academy defines calma in one of its latest entries. The word comes from Greek and refers to sailing: those windless days when the sea lies tranquil. From Polyphemus to Aeolus, classical tradition reminds us of the power of the winds\u2014they can bring you home or…","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":4968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-pecera"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
and you tell me to turn back,<\/em>
and I follow you through the air<\/em>
like a blade of grass.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n