Mexican artist Luigi Amara reflects on the magic of objects in "Ordinary Fetishes."

How to place a chair to sit or order a quesadilla with or without cheese are everyday acts that define character or mood , according to Mexican writer Luigi Amara in his essay Ordinary Fetishes , a collection of reflections on the almost fantastic objects that accompany us every day.

"There's something very important about corporeality . All the reflections I'm making are about the connection between objects and our habits . We invest objects with powers as if they were almost magical, which is why I wanted to call them extraordinary, because there's something that transcends mere materiality," Amara emphasizes in an interview.

To create this text with philosophical overtones , Amara tried to make the elements or pieces in this essay published by Random House universal, so that they could be found in Spain or Italy, where he has family.

Although the list includes very Mexican objects like the molcajete, a traditional stone mortar and pestle, the essayist tries not to make it his "eccentric" selection, because "you can have strange things in your house."

These bodies, "clothed in passion and phantasmagoria," are capable of completely changing people's attitudes or defining how their day will be, because they ultimately become "habits and customs."

"A chair is a behavior that determines our relationship with space: How are we going to spend the day in a place without chairs? It disconcerts us if we enter a conference room and there are none. We think something strange is going on there (...) This determines, in a way, even instantaneously, the future of human relationships," the writer maintains.

Although the cartoonist also highlights the importance of the physical, he recognizes that wireless devices, gadgets, and small things that in reality "don't exist, they're a utopia" are increasingly infiltrating people's routines .

For example, he explains, replacing books with an electronic tablet means that "there is no friction or interaction, and passion ultimately remains a disembodied dream , an illusion."

The loss of contact with material things is increasingly evident, argues Amara, who observes how young people don't own objects and live in a "minimalism and clean aesthetic," in a "stripness" that she considers somewhat "fiction."

This relationship with books is part of his second passion, as on weekends the essayist works in a secondhand bookstore in Mexico City , where he collects and organizes thoughts and works that have defined today's society, a space where he has plenty of time to spend with the objects that surround him.

"(Reflection) comes from the moment of pause, when you're even unprepared, not from using, for example, a table," he adds about his creative process regarding objects and his musings.

That background and ideas that appear in an essay are "never concluded," he confesses, "because a reader is always interpreting ."

Therefore, for Luigi Amara his works do not attempt to reach a conclusion , but rather the mere "process of thinking."

Regarding the rise of the literary genre he practices, the bookseller with object fetishes points out to readers: "They're a little annoyed with the fact that everything is like a light novel that you soon forget about" and the resulting boredom that fiction can provoke .