The Circle of the Cosmos

Dear Crew,

I find things on the street. A vase. A book. A blouse. Sometimes something I didn't even know I needed until five minutes ago.

I'll take it with me. And that's exactly how I put things outside the door when I don't need them anymore. Someone else takes them.

I don't know who. I don't know where. I don't know what will come of it.

I've always liked that. Things don't just disappear simply because they're gone from my life. They move on. Maybe they're a few streets away in another apartment. Maybe someone there is happy every morning to see the vase that sat in my closet for years.

I hadn't thought about it in a long time . Until, at some point, I realized: I don't just do this with things. I do it with stories, too.

In 2020, I began editing my great-grandmother’s handwritten memoirs. Four books full of life. A woman who was born in 1900 and had lived through nearly an entire century.

I didn't just want to preserve her story. I wanted us to be able to read it again. I wanted my mother to be able to read it. I wanted family members and people born long after my great-grandmother to suddenly be sitting next to her again and hear what she had to say.

Years later, I encountered the symbols of the Mapuche, the indigenous culture of my Chilean heritage. Once again, I began my search.

What do these symbols mean? Where do they come from? And above all: What still lives within them?

Because I don't want to simply repeat old forms. I want to understand what they convey—what aspects are tied to a specific time, and what is so human that it can transcend centuries, continents, and cultures.

This search gave rise to The Circle of the Cosmos.

For a long time, I thought I had created a set of cards. Now I believe that I have given form to a principle that I have been living by for much longer.

The circle. Something comes to us. We receive it. We get to know it. We live with it. It changes us. And eventually, we pass something on. Not necessarily the same thing. Maybe even something completely different.

Recently, another part of my family history has begun to unfold for me once again: my father's side of the family. The Baltic States. Estonia. Lasva.

People whose names I'm only just beginning to learn. Suddenly, a great-great-grandfather from the past reappears and becomes someone I want to know more about.

I’m interested in questions other than dates and places. What does a life tell us about belonging? About home? About loss and new beginnings? And where do we encounter these same questions today, even though our lives look completely different?

Maybe that's why I'm not a guardian of the past. I think I'm a translator.

I don't want to put things on display in the "museums" of my life and say, " Look, that's how it was back then."

I want to bring them back to the fire. To a table. Into a body. Into a book. Onto a map. Into everyday life. And ask: What does this have to do with us?

Sometimes I imagine my ancestors gathered around a big campfire. Quite a diverse group. People from different countries and different eras. German ancestors on my mother’s side. Baltic ancestors on my father’s side. Chile.

I imagine this group is surprisingly cheerful. I think they have a lot to talk about. And probably quite a bit to celebrate, too.

Perhaps our connection to those who came before us isn't just about the hardships. Perhaps they also passed on their courage to us. Their quirkiness. Their creativity. Their ability to set out on new journeys, to love, to start over, and to laugh at this crazy life.

Perhaps there are far more people inside us than we realize.

For a long time, I thought I came from nowhere. Today, I see roots everywhere.

In my heritage. In Germany, the Baltic states, Chile, and Brazil. In the family histories I’m slowly getting to know. And also in the roots that have grown into my life over time. My partner and his Bavarian family. People and places that have welcomed me. Friendships. Countries where a part of me came to life.

I don't have to choose one of these roots. I am not a single trunk with a straight line extending downward. I am an ecosystem.

Perhaps that, too, is a circle. We do not come from nothing. We receive an infinite amount—from people we know, from people whose names we have forgotten, and from landscapes, cultures, relationships, and stories into which we grow as we live our lives.

And eventually, there comes a moment when some part of it wants to flow through us and back out into the world. In a new form. First, we understand it. Then we live it, transform it, and pass it on.

So that someone else can pick it up again.

I don't know where the vase went that I put out on the street at some point. Nor do I know where all the stories that are currently making their way through my life will end up.

But maybe I don't need to know that at all.

The circle does not preserve everything. The circle keeps things alive.

With love and a rather mischievous group of ancestors,
Jeannette