Ephemeris 02/26: A Reflection on February
- Robbie Gonçalves
- Feb 28
- 3 min read
I spent the month of February with a feeling of emptiness in my chest and that anxiety whispering in my ear: "Your art isn't good; you should go back to your hole and drown into oblivion." It’s not a very nice thing to hear inside your own head, but unfortunately, it happens.
I spent weeks without entering my studio. I closed the door and sank deep down into the darkness of my heart once more.
Since I couldn't bring myself to draw, I committed myself to reading and revisited series that made me reflect on life. Then, I felt stupid. That’s right. And it made me so angry with myself. Because I knew exactly what the problem was and what caused it: an excess of social media. An excess of a poison called Instagram.
I felt such rage realizing I had been manipulated exactly as they planned—addicted to scrolling, watching short videos, losing my ability to concentrate and learn. I felt dumb and stupid. I’ve never been dumb. I was never good at math, of course, but I was never dumb with words, with reading comprehension, with philosophy... But I felt stupid for the first time.
And it devastated me.
I wanted to share this moment, and the journey back.
Reclaiming the Mind Through Pages
In January, I read Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol. February was the month I pushed myself to read more again, like I used to before social media... so I am moving slowly.
First, I worked up the courage to read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This book destroyed me, but every woman truly should read it.
After that, I read The Metamorphosis by Kafka. I had never read it before, and it surprised me.
Then it was time for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018. It is an ecological noir novel that explores the relationship between humans and nature, questioning human superiority and cruelty toward animals through a mystery plot involving deaths in a Polish village. It is narrated by an eccentric protagonist, a lover of astrology and the poetry of William Blake, who dedicates herself to defending animals, blending suspense, philosophy, and social critique.
"The Rest is Confetti"
Ever since the first time I watched the series The Haunting of Hill House, I’ve been obsessed with this masterpiece. At first, it seems like a horror story, full of ghosts, but if you look past the initial scares, you'll realize it is actually about family and trauma. The ghosts fade into the background, almost forgotten.
The true ghosts are the feelings we carry:
"Ghosts are guilt, ghosts are secrets, ghosts are regrets and failings. But most times... a ghost is a wish."
The series is based on the book of the same name by Shirley Jackson, but the story is not the same. They simply used the book's core premise, and for the first time, I preferred the series' story to the book's. However, Shirley Jackson wrote the most spectacular and sublime introduction of any book I have ever read:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
I revisited this series this February, and the feeling while watching it was even more intense. Knowing the whole story allowed me to notice just how much pain we carry through life. There is a monologue from one character that has never left my head:
"I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti."
This phrase means that, in the face of death or the end of life, only shared love matters, while all other memories, pains, and trivial experiences fall around us like confetti: fleeting, messy, and ultimately unimportant.
Sometimes we care too much about the noise around us and forget to pay attention to what truly matters.
That "Confetti" monologue by Nell Crain is one of the most heartbreaking moments in modern television. It’s a perfect metaphor for my struggle with social media: the "noise" and "scrolling" are just confetti, while my art and my inner peace are what truly matter.
Love,
Robbie.
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