For all the due attention I pay to things on the daily, I forgot to notice or even acknowledge how this is the last week of the year. December was here, and now December is leaving. Little you can do about it, of course, except watch. I woke up early today and stood on the balcony for a change. I stood there for a long time, an hour or so, sipping from the cup, which might as well have frozen over given how cold it got, and of course, the coffee agreed with it, but to break the moment would have cost me dearly so, I continued sipping the coffee, colder as it was, bitter as it had become. I stood there and watched the morning.
An entire year has passed me by, and so much has happened; why, then, does it feel so empty? As if I spent the whole thing sitting with my hands tied, no agency, nothing to show for it in the end. So many words written and no piece stands out to me with even an ounce of greatness. All the places I have visited are tucked into my memory. What we do not share, after all, disappears. If you did not tell someone about it, did it even happen? By that measure, most of my life has not happened. I might as well have just sat and imagined it.
All the little things that never swim up and out of my mind when someone asks what I am up to remain there. Then, they are forgotten, like the many instances of small talk you have with strangers as you go about the city.
A friend at work asked me if I knew what the half-life of coffee was, and I did not know it. He told me it was five hours. I wonder if he knows the half-life of memory, not of the largest heartbreak or the greatest joy but the mundane. I reckon it is about a day. A day or two is all you get to share an anecdote. I do not remember any anecdotes. I regurgitate the few I have gotten a chance to share.
I look back at this year and feel as if nothing has mattered as much as it should have. Perhaps I need new stories, but more importantly, I reckon I need someone to tell them to. I have changed in ways I cannot define, but more importantly, I have changed in ways I cannot remember.
And now, December is over, and it stirred me, but this, too, I will forget by the time January rolls around.