3 months ago I moved to Barcelona and brought a box of books with me. Novels, short stories, academic papers, and the first-ever book of my roommate from New Yorker. I wanted to read them all, but instead I started to write.

I started to write letters—letters to old friends, and letters to a stranger I didn’t know before. I wrote hundreds of pages to various people and engaged with them (and myself) in the intensely direct written form. I reconnected with old mates and became friends with the stranger. I haven’t read a single page of the books in the box, but instead about the lives of the all these people that shaped my summer.

The following is an excerpt of one of those interactions.

—

I am walking down a plastered path. The air is shimmering, the vibrant skies reflected in the sea beneath. Seagulls go about their daily business, but have to share their presence with the sweet smells of the pine trees all around. We’re somewhere in the Mediterraneans, I figure. But how I got here, I don’t know.

I stop for a few seconds—my eyes are squinting together, can barely make out the waters right in front of me—but remember that I am here for serious business, and carry on. I’m here to meet my future self, and I don’t want to be late.

As I’m approaching the place where we will meet, a small café on the southern shore, I feel a sudden burst of anxiety rising up my chest. My arms become weak. I want to leave but don’t have the energy to move, am fixed to the ground and feel my pressing gut, an overwhelming urge to curl down and fall asleep. 

Finally a place where I could sleep in peace, so many realities to face when this is over. Can I ever come back? Can I ever see you again? The conscious world is calling ...

His responds, a knowing smile. It’s everything I ever think about. His calming trust, the gentle nod that is asking me to trust as well. Of all the people, he would know: My future self. And the little kid came up his older self to be hugged, and to be told that everything is going to be okay.

He was gone as quickly as he arrived, but where did he go? My eyes squinting together again, but he was gone. The sea though: Much more vibrant, much more clear. I could almost see the grounds beneath.

With every time that I come back, wandering these shores where conscious realities meet the grounds of the unconscious world in gushing foam, I stop thinking and start listening to the splashing sea, to what I already know; Start talking to my future self, the constance that keeps these waters calm and clear. Keeps my waters calm and clear, even though they should be shaking.

—

My future self. An encounter I first had about a year ago, with guidance of a person not so different to this older self. “One of the beautiful things about this place, Tobi, is that you can always return when you need to. You can always return and ask for advice. This place is yours now, and he will be here.”

Knowing that place gives me peace and makes me trust. It is the accumulation of my present-past and future, including the original bent of my soul. It is my intuition, leading a life of many bold choices, but a life in which I know that these are the choices to make, that they’ll work out. I know they will, because he’s already gone through all.