It is eleven in the night. The fog has started to set in on the balcony outside. The spicy aroma of the tea in the mug wafts about this corner of the room where I sit with the blank page facing me. All days are different in how they eat you up, how they exhaust you. Today, I feel the most unfortunate weariness, the one of the mind, the one where you can read a sentence and know what words are written, but the meaning escapes you, the one when everything that falls out of your mouth falls wrongly, when it is all garbled and boggled, and in the end, all you can do is wait for your body to become tired enough so you could sleep. You could run a marathon, running and pacing yourself along the streets of the town, even in the dead of winter. You could do it and finish it and not grasp why they gave you the medal you now hold. This is the worst kind of exhaustion because it leaves nothing in you. This is also the most common kind of exhaustion for those of us who have to earn a living, so we can write a few words in the morning or sometimes in the night.
Music plays in the background—rhythm & blues, some song about making the right decisions, and I want to think it over. I want to listen to it and let it affect me in the worst possible way. But I am so tired. The words make no sense, and in this delirium, I sit here, enjoying it instead. So much truth in the gravelly voice, the world-weary lyrics, and to think it is merely playing as I sit and write here. One must have an even head even to enjoy a good song. Today, if all my wishes came true, I would not be able to accept the gift graciously, and what if just one came true? What if the phone rang and someone confessed their undying love for me? That, too, I would process with the hay in my head and say something wrong, or out of place, or worse, not say anything at all. On a day, or rather, a night like this, we must go to sleep as early as we can before we squander some opportunity. We must let the world live and pass us by. We must pull over and sit at the curb of the night. We must let the day end, so I will do just that.