The writers who let you watch them write
Werber’s cathedral of strings, Auster’s blue notebook, Tesson’s cabin on the Baikal. On the books that put the writing desk inside the frame, and on what it would take to sit down at one.
By Malak Yacoubi
PowerPoint Slides and Other Small Absurdities
A meditation on kittens, capitalism and the bluish colour of veins, and what is left when life stops being a list of milestones.
By Ghita Benhayoune
2 August 2026
Ghita Benhayoune.
I often think about how peculiar my view of the world is and consequently, of how peculiar I am. When I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night, I struggle to feel driven by the pace of life. My mind drifts to the sensation of the pillow brushing against my cheek, to questioning the purpose of waking up daily, just to repeat the same things I have been doing every day of half of my finite life. My mind then wanders to the kitten who has never had to justify her morning, and ultimately, to the absurdity of my own thoughts.
I wonder, am I the one dissociating from the world? Or is the world dissociating from the reality of humanity?
I think about how often humans make plans, for success, for careers, for money. I wonder if, like me, the rest of the world thinks about the very incomprehensible nature of crafting PowerPoint slides, while sitting with the awareness that every minute counts. “They forget,” I think. It is human nature: the ability to ignore, to box inevitable truths too painful to bear. We are constantly carrying emotional luggage filled with the sorrow that our mortality and fragility represent. And consciously, or unconsciously, we act accordingly. The concept of “success”, to me at least, represents one of the darkest forms of that sorrow; the illusion of a path to happiness and achievement, in a world defined by its impermanence and the meaninglessness of the steps we take to move forward.
We are ants. We are small little ants, on a small little planet, in a small little solar system, in a great galaxy scaling through a universe with no end. Yet, we spend our unique lifetimes pretending we are something bigger than just that, pretending that our actions and the things we build mark a world we will not even witness.
I think about the evil of arrogance, and why religious traditions consider it sinful, when I look at the world surrounding me, and I see single individuals who have harnessed enough power, enough sense of self-importance, that they willingly go out to destroy generations. Men only separate from the rest of us by how they view themselves in relation to others, by how their perception of their relative “greatness” has driven them to madness, to bloodshed and war.
In less extreme terms (nonetheless extreme by the extent to which it has been normalized), capitalism has become a value system. Individuals run towards optimization, as if our output is our sole real value. I do not think anyone is innocent; I do not think anyone is guilty either. But when life is not about a succession of milestones and goals, what is it about?
The answer, frankly, rests in the very hands that are frantically typing on my keyboard. When I look at the bluish color of my veins, at the soft shadow of the light, I sit with the feeling of my breath and my hair caressing the edges of my shoulders. My body is a vessel, a gift that carries the essence of who I am: the soul and the light I carry within. I attempt to see life as feeding the kindling of my own small fire. I attempt to cherish moments of love and tenderness with others, to actively seek nourishment of my soul as the truest embodiment of my purpose. And even in my failures, in moments of arrogance, annoyance, and ego, the tide always turns.
Life is an endless battle that ego and soul fight. When you pursue love and light, you shelter your essence and make it grow through the tides of life. When you pursue ego, you spend a lifetime fighting the very DNA of your existence, simply seeking distraction because you have strayed away from who you are truly meant to be.
And so I ask you: whenever you choose your next step, your next friend, your next job, your next adventure, will you be nourishing the light within?
