Bookmarks

I sit with my nephew as he listens to his nursery rhymes, and I begin listening to them, too. What else can you do? And as they play on, my heart gets lighter, losing all the tar and the dust it had gathered from all these years. The rhyme tells my nephew he can be anything he wants to be. He is too little to know anything about these matters; eventually, the world wants you to decide and be something. I envy his innocence as he laughs and smiles, but then, I listen and find a hope I probably left back in some speaker or some bench at school or some other place I could not name or draw even if my life depended on it. But that is the thing—my life did depend on it, on being hopeful that anything is possible. And I sit there as he, having recently learned to stand on his own two feet, gets up and stays there, trying to balance desperately.

What is the rush? I ask him softly and laugh. There will be enough time to stand, to be required to do so, to be called on. Sit for now; let the music play. He loses his balance and falls as I catch him and softly let him onto the bed.

But in that moment, it occurs to me that we lose a lot of what we started with: the joy of a simple song, the feeling of excitement for no reason but because there is sound, there are colours, and we can experience them, the hope that if we truly wanted, we could be anything we wanted to and that it is up to us. But then, before this can worry me and before I make this something to dwell over, to be morose over, he starts to laugh.

And there it is, another well-timed reminder. It is a privilege watching you grow, I think, and I begin laughing too. How infectious! There is no virus as potent as a child’s laughter. Then, we continue sitting. Well, he keeps trying to stand now and then, and then, he falls, and I catch him.

The rhymes continue playing on the speaker.

Alternative title: How to Read a Poem?

Slept early last night for a change and woke up fairly early, too. Rested in mind and body, but mind particularly, I sat to read a few poems, read some here and there, in subscriptions and magazines and picked up a few from a book of compilations among the many I own but have never fully covered.

As I wrapped this rare moment up, it occurred to me how there was a time I tried to understand poems, and I laughed over how wrong I was, how much I had missed all those years. Poems are not to be understood but felt. But if you are so keen on understanding poems, it would be prudent to learn about the world you live in instead—for which you need to read more than just poetry.

To understand a poem is to catch a clever pun, a little wordplay, which is unnecessary in reading a poem. It is like the glass of wine you choose to accompany the opera or your dinner. Sure, it adds something, but if you take it away, the experience will remain intact.

So, how does one read a poem if not for the attempt to understand it? It would compare to how one watches the sunset. I reckon no one looks at the gamut of hues and begins counting the different colours they see, and I have it on good authority that they would fail even if they tried.

When we look at the sunset, we look at not just the sky but everything under it. If you watch it from a hill in the mountains or one surrounding a cove, the soft light only makes everything pop better into the picture. You notice the sheep grazing in the distance if you are in the mountains, and if you were at the cove, you might see a solitary boat in the distance, and if not that, you might see a heron swoop in the water to catch a fish.

Now, these trivial examples have nothing to do with the sun, but they are things you notice once you sit down and take a breath—when you forget Physics and the scattering of light or the fact that there are time zones and how they prove to be problematic in the matters of love, or even the list of responsibilities you need to keep a list for.

All a sunset does, then, is that it makes you look.

A poem is pretty much the same.

There are many ways to measure the lived life. Many—not all, but a frighteningly large number of people I have met—do it with the amount of money someone made. All their toil and hours are totalled into their literal worth. The other ways, some more popular than others but none as popular as wealth, are happiness, helpfulness, satisfaction (which is often erroneously conflated with happiness), contributions to the world and history, and many others. Naturally, a parallel list exists with measures too heinous and hideous to list down, but I can assure you it is longer than the list of good measures. Since I woke up today, I have had many discussions which have danced around this, and as they often do, they have compelled me to think of my own.

How do I measure my life and my days? I could not care much about money besides the fact that it solely exists to be used, if not at the moment, then eventually. Perhaps the measure of my life will be these words, like some writer read and celebrated posthumously. They might praise these ramblings as some seminal body of work or appreciate the intricate web of connections peppered all over. Perhaps students will study the pieces for their classes, or maybe none of that will happen, and these words will die as I will—known only to few, appreciated by fewer. Perhaps the measure of my life will be the people I affected while I was here. And since I have made my share of mistakes, I assume it would not be all hunky dory. If they talk of my happiness, they will not know much about it, and so they will have to rely on these words once again. And if these are not enough, then the little they would remember from my ill-timed jokes, my confusing approach to most simple things, or my obsessiveness over all the wrong details should suffice.

I am not many things, and I have done annoyingly little for the age I have reached by my estimations, but I like to tell myself it has not all been for nought and that there has been some good here, like seeds sprinkled by the wind on some freshly ploughed plot of land in the most unintentional and disorderly manner.

At least, I like to think so. If nothing else, it will help me sleep tonight.

Oh, how I love the quiet, and by quiet, I do not mean silence, but the subtle, more personal quiet. The music plays; it is not a silent house, but it is a quiet moment still. The clouds outside get ready to pour once again, as they have for most of this year, and the moment remains quiet despite their talking under their breath. I spent the evening sitting in front of the TV, watching episode after episode of a comedy show I had missed when it first aired. I find the jokes and my own laughter echo through the flat, yet things are quiet. What a wonderful place to be in. What an incredibly soft net my life has landed into and settled in without any hints to bite on—not even a nibble.

Just an hour ago, I talked to a friend, and in my message, I wrote how I only exist in my corner of the world now. I used to be so involved and active with the others—I wrote further. Now, I keep most of myself to myself, and what is shared is shared carefully. I do not give myself away as hastily as I did before. I do not open the door as soon as there is a knock. I wait instead. I wait and take my time. Is this being reclusive? I cannot answer. I still meet people, and I do enjoy going outside as much as the next person. But then, if someone asks me about myself, I keep myself limited. It may be unjust to what they think of me and the image that forms in their head when they think of me next, but then, there are many things more unjust and urgent than a person wishing to be unbothered.

I must say I am delighted today! And that I was happy yesterday and the day before it. I look around this apartment as I cogitate my decision to change cities, and there is a hesitation in me, but then, there is always a hesitation when we think of change. The good thing is, foolish as I may be, I do not rush into things now. There is still time to decide, plan and have everything in order. There is enough time for everything if we quietly take things one at a time.

As we grow older, I notice a sudden urge for solidity in people. Now that life has shocked and awed us and, in some cases, humbled us, there is an obsession to stay in the familiar. This is not about carrying big dreams or holding onto your ideas with the clutch of a toddler but rather about the general day-to-day. People have now become so concrete around me that the cement has begun to leak into my life, and now, hastily, I am trying to move my feet not to be trapped, and then, when I manage to shake it off, I will try and find others like me. But for now, I must do my best to resist this rigidity. I want to live in a world where anything is possible, even if I cannot do it myself. It is the possibility of things that I want to believe in even if they are not possible for me, and for most things, I want to believe they are possible for me, too.

Is this an unfair expectation from life? I believe otherwise. I think this is how we are meant to live, if at all. The popular quote goes, “Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness,” suggesting (to me, at least) that most cages are built by the prisoners inside them. They build them one by one, brick by brick, bar by bar, and then, they sit quietly singing lamentations about being trapped, about things being as far away from their expectations as the setting sun. But what stops you, I ask? What prevents you from walking towards the sun anyway? How will you know if you can catch it before it disappears unless you try? There is so much to do in this life and not the intelligent stuff, but rather, invent a game, hop over a puddle, make stories of make-believe while walking on the sidewalk, listen to music—new music that you have never heard of, even if you do not enjoy it. Life’s pleasures are all hidden behind the walls of our minds—open them! What is the worst that can happen?

The train to disappearing forever is rushing with all its force; the pistons are working overtime, and we will all cease to be soon, like how we were never here. What are some sixty, seventy years in front of the history of this world, of civilisation? We might as well look ridiculous. No one will remember half of what we did.

It is not washed over me that I am not an exceptional person; it is something I accept with my arms wide open. I live my life like every other person. I wake up—usually later than planned—and begin my day, stumbling into tasks. It usually starts with a sort of foley of me making coffee—nothing but the sound of the different steps, divided only by pin-drop gaps. And then, it truly begins, and before it is even afternoon, it is already over because I know nothing can happen that will turn its tide.

The day is set into its cast by afternoon. There is not much I can do to change that, nor do I ever try. And between that moment and now, which is way past midnight, it is a blink. The blink is filled with an abundance of little things noteworthy and otherwise alike, but it all passes so quickly that I often forget. I entertain myself enough—I watch enough television, read enough books (which is something I tell myself to continue being able to call myself a writer), and play enough games. As I said, it is not something unknown that this is a bland life with its mild exceptions now and then, but by no means do they make this life exceptional. This is all by design, of course. I do not desire extraordinary. Working, as long as I get to write and have a good time now and then, and sometimes, making time for a vacation, is as good as anything else.

These words, as I understand them, are not exceptional, too, not in themselves, naturally. But one day, they will serve as a writ to the kind of life I lived. And in their nothingness, they will be something. Banal as they are, they will become exceptional simply because I will not be here to write them anymore. That is probably what compels me to sit at this desk and continue this drudgery. Otherwise, there is no other reasonable explanation for this torture, and I do not recommend it. Moments I interrupt or outright skip so there are some words on the sheet will never happen again, and out of them, these words will have emerged. I will let whoever reads them in the days to come make whatever they make of it.

Lately, I have stumbled upon a second wind regarding the hope I have for this life and my place in it. There seems to be a rejuvenated obsession with the life I live. The raindrops have dropped all year, but only now have I felt them fall on my face. I have found myself pausing in awe at the smallest of things. Just the other day on the flight, I sat with my eyes half open and no clue of the time; my wits were around, but perhaps they had gotten up to take a walk along the aisle to stretch themselves, and I found myself in the common daze that one often finds themselves on journeys. Just then, the music in my ears appealed to me like it had not in ages, and until the wheels found their footing on the tarmac, did it leave me. And for all that time, I could only think of how much I enjoy music, of how grateful I am for it—life ebbs and flows, of course. I seem to have climbed slowly out of a trough. There, I see it; there is a peak, but I am not there yet. These are but days of climbing to ecstatic joy. I plan to take my time; I plan to stop to tighten my laces and look up at the view.

Little comes to mind today. There is no need for me to waste any more words. It was a day quite similar to the one I had yesterday, and that is something I have learned to live with for now. The city has remained beautiful. The hawks have soared across the scenic view of the hills. The rains have come and gone, wiping the town clean. There, I see it: the strokes and lines of the hills are clear even in the dark, starry cover of the night. I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh air. It is beautiful, isn’t it? There really is not much to it. I forgot about this for a while. Ha! For all the reminders I casually forget between the lines, I ought to read my words more.

I met a driver last night who lost his job in the pandemic. An English teacher was now driving a taxi, almost reluctantly. “It is not about the work, you know? We have to do something, and this pays well, but if I miss something from my old life, it is the dignity of labour, that people talk to me nicely, that I am not considered some bottom feeder.” I said I had some idea of what he meant and that I sympathise. I had seen many acquaintances and, sometimes, friends treating any job where people exist to serve us with contempt. The latter got berated and chided; with acquaintances, however, I have always avoided confrontations in general. But I did understand his plight. He was young and, dare I say, more talented than most people I met or talked to on the daily, but when the cards are stacked against you, talent rarely helps.

He did not shy away from showing off his proficiency with the language—which I appreciated—as we talked about all possible things. As we spoke, I could not help but think of how life has been reasonably kind to me despite being a handful time and again. It did not take me any time to count enough things to accept it had been rather generous. We talked about the city and how it had changed, and then I looked outside and saw that the street we drove on seemed entirely different from half a decade ago, but I had barely noticed it. We do not notice ongoing change. It is far common to visit a city after years and be shocked with the newness than live in a town and find wonder and awe in its evolution. Just then, I realised how it is always the problems of others that remind us of our blessings, as selfish as it sounds. It is how we are bound to think, after all. A sunny day makes us think of water. A windy day makes a cup of coffee look divine. We rarely focus on what we see, what is truly there; we only see what is not.

I wished him well as I got out of the taxi. The night was coming all over town. It looked like it would rain, but then, it did not. When I woke up, I was officially off my sabbatical; it was time for the banal again. Only, I began the day without looking at what wasn’t there; there were ample things around for me to count and keep busy.

What a wonderful blue sky outside! How can one not sit and write a few words? I had little to do today, so I went outside and had breakfast with a friend, as one should on a day as beautiful as this. Now, I am back, and I am inspired. It was while we had pancakes that I confessed that I, too, am human. That the reason I have not written enough after I had written for four hundred days is simply because we often think of numbers as milestones.

However, unlike how they are on the road, reaching milestones in life rarely brings you to a new place. On the four-hundred-first day, you wake up, make your coffee, and sit in front of the desk. Nothing has changed. Something does not fit right. And then and there, the charm is gone. It is phenomenally hard to keep doing something when it leads to something. It is but the realm of impossible to do something which never leads to anything. And I think that is what happened to me. It may not be the only thing, for there is seldom only one reason for things being the way they are, but it is a reason. And now that I have confessed this, out loud, to another person, I feel like a weight has lifted off my chest. We must always strive never to believe our myths about ourselves, and even if people continually tell you how insane any of your feats are, you must always know it is you who achieved whatever you achieved, which means it is believable and possible. That is true humility, and I reckon I have learned my lesson.

Now that I have spent time analysing and lamenting, there is nothing else to do but be better. Fortunately, I have my own example to follow now and to write even half as well as I had been doing until I lost my head and put it into my arse would be an achievement. There it is; there is my resolve for the days to come. I must get to the top of the peak again. The rock has rolled to the far end of the bottom.

I walked across the taupe steps, inadvertently scaring the flock of pigeons. As they flew away, colliding with one another, they created an impromptu orchestra, supported by the vocals from all the people sitting around the steps, with the obscenities, the murmurs, groans and the tsks. I bowed my head in apology and smiled sheepishly as I quickly jogged across. But if I am honest, I had completely missed seeing the pigeons. It seems I was too lost in my reverie. For every step I took, I also walked inside my head, trying to find an answer to what had caused a tumultuous feeling inside me all year.

I pondered over what stopped me from writing as much or what had reanimated the cynic in me. And I had no answers, of course, but it always helps to list the questions down when we find ourselves at a lack of immediate explanation. Often, just doing this finds the answers in a jiffy. And then, surrounded by art in every corner, in the museums, on the streets, the buildings, the people, and in the air, it occurred to me that it was precisely the cause of the apathy that had risen in me. To put it bluntly, I had been an idiot.

All year, without a plan or realisation, I had studied the works and lives of artists intensely, and now, their ghosts haunted me. It was not my first foray into this, but it was a year of unexpected immersion. It seems my overwhelm had created a hole in my heart. When you experience a work of art, you let it make a home in your heart, and then, the work informs you without permission, for it does not need permission. It stays forever with you. So we must be careful not to let too many tenants in at once to keep the mischief managed.

Naturally, comical as life is, I had reached my breakthrough right when I walked into the flock of pigeons. The explosion around me pulled me out of my deep interrogation. There I stood, having just caused an uproar for everyone sitting comfortably under the shade of a broken pillar, carrying nothing but mild embarrassment and a little bit of resolution in my heart.

Then, it began to rain, so I scurried into the nearby cafe, and said, “Ciao, un caffe, per favore?”

It was then that I realised I was smiling.

Having spent the better part of the last month walking along the paved cobblestone streets under the shadows of giants, myths and legends, I am only humbled by what I have seen, even if I knew about those things before. It is always different when you see something on your own. We must always try to see things for ourselves.

Now, I know that is not always possible, and I do not see it necessary to highlight the importance of simply knowing things, too. But for the things that I have seen recently, for the hours I have spent in admiration—which are not enough by a large margin, mind you, to truly internalise the grandeur of the genius of a few people not too far long ago from where the calendar has managed to land today—have stirred something in me.

There is now a craving for a fresh start, of a change in my perspective about how I look at myself, these words, art, and the world at large. I want now to unify the two sides of myself: where I want to go (which has had the reins all this time) and where I come from (which I do not acknowledge as often as I should). Only when I accept both sides and see myself as a whole will I be able to even think of comparing to the greatness I envision for these words. Not for myself, no. No one is great in himself—what we do measures whoever we were when our time is done, and whatever it was starts and ends with us.

I see these days of walking under the shining sun amidst the crowds, walking on the same walkways and galleries that once inspired people to create impossible things, as a soft reminder of how there is still time, of how long a life is, but most importantly, I see them as a respite from the mundane. It has enabled me to embrace the regularity of my life again.

Since I have been back, they have asked me to name the most important thing I saw, and I have told them, as earnestly as I can: my days as I live them.

I saw them from far away, and then, I heard them call.

I started the day with a long walk over the generously dew-sprayed grass in the woods. It was an exhilarating morning which, in more than one way, served as a reminder of how my sojourn was coming to an end and how envious I was of myself, of this pocket of time, of how a version of me will remain here forever, while I will live my regular days once again. With every step, I reminded myself not to get used to these days, but I flirted with the idea of spending my days reading, walking, eating, living, and then, if I found the time, the inspiration or the beverage for it, sitting down to write a few words. Perhaps that might be where I end up regardless, or maybe this is the last time I can live like this—no way to verify but to live. The dust has to settle somewhere. The trick is to accept and be happy with wherever it settles in the end, and if being happy is too big an ask, then tolerate it.

Over these days, I have felt a certain forgotten restfulness return to me, having found moments of immense excitement, of quiet comfort, of endless conversation, of never-ending silence, of long walks through forests and piazzas alike, of hours spent in bed since nothing called on me. In all, while there are some things left to see, they will be the dessert after all the meal courses. I believe I am fully satiated with the change in my days and surroundings, and now, I feel in my heart the familiar craving, the urge to go back to my days once again. Maybe it is a flaw, but there is little life can do to rend my days and their aftertaste off me permanently. Sure, there is a feeling of unease that creeps up sometimes, but before long, I find myself tracing my footsteps back home, back to what I know about who I am and what I do. But we must go far away to find our way back. It is easiest to lose track of where you are when you do not move at all.

Towards the end of my long walk through the woods, I thought I had found a new path, but when I hopped towards it, I could see the steps back to the villa. I had walked through and around the whole thing. But before this realisation, I was convinced there was something new there.

Perhaps there was; perhaps that is the point.

Moved from the city to a villa on the outskirts. This is not about the city because if I were talking about it, I would have to find the time to say it properly or stay mum about it forever. This is about the fact that there is nothing else I can think of except the sheer limitation of a person today. The age that came before whichever age we are in, and whichever age led to this one, was impossibly magnificent. Whatever we have built and managed has been on the shoulders of the few, who, despite the lack of resources, better judgement or fate, were continually fixated on the idea of exceptional work. Where did we falter, I wonder? What happened between Michelangelo’s obsession with fine detail and whatever passes for art today? What happened between Da Vinci and whatever an engineer builds today?

I have my ideas; if I mention them, they are either conjecture or idealism. Both of which do not fly well in the court of public opinion. But I reckon I do know what happened. I think the person, the individual, became too selfish, and thereby, in focusing only on his survival, on his money, on his success, managed to lose all his individuality. Or perhaps I am just a man sitting in a posh villa, sipping wine and writing words. It is also true that I have no skin in this game, and I admit my position and defeat.

In any case, I find myself stupefied at the genius that has left this world. I find myself shocked that people flock to a place and do not hold in awe the grand beauty that awaits them. They stand in front of monuments and get pictures clicked, never knowing what it took for it all to be the way it is, or to pause and think how lesser we are in comparison to the glorious giants who built whatever is left behind, who left their footsteps for us to trace and pretend as if we know the way, who set the building blocks to the puzzles we so effortlessly believe solved. Perhaps this all is just a letter from a fan. Or maybe it is an admission of my guilt. I have nothing but admiration for everything that has existed from long before we began whatever we consider normal. It is people who do marvellous things. We must remember this. We must not let it go.

Many things can happen to you in the city of Florence. And, sure, I am wildly aware I have mentioned a place by name. I am boldly reluctant, too. But then, some things do not work if you strip them of their identity. People, as I am learning slowly, cannot be without an identity, too. The whole narrative of my life so far has been that I reject every label life throws at me, and yet, I find there is indeed the label of being without a label, which comes at the cost of acknowledging that everything I reject indeed exists. I can deny and omit the name of the city I come from, but it barely affects the fact that I am almost five thousand kilometres away. To cut it short, if sharing more detail makes me a hypocrite, well, so be it. There are far bigger crimes than simply changing your mind. People far more evil commit them every day.

You can find yourself at a pizzeria in the midday heat and ask a bartender for an espresso still, and he can deny it to you because you did not get any pizza and not because it is hot outside. And you can ask him for a slice instead of a full pizza because you just had lunch, and he can deny you it as well simply because you are in Italy and no one has pizza by the slice. Of course, I reckon you then ask for an espresso martini, which will surprise him and shock him in the way someone is shocked when they suddenly find some bills of cash in their old jeans, and he will tell you, “You better watch out for that one, I can do an espresso martini like none other.” And he will be honest. It will do precisely what you expected, even if you were unsure what you expected. And it will be an afternoon well spent as you read your copy of Rilke. Until the breeze starts to pick up, and the sun begins to hide behind the galleries and the duomos and the towers. There it is, you will think. There is the moment you’ve been waiting for all day, but then, this will indeed be Firenze still, and as I said, it will be impossible to put it all in one piece, especially when one has a habit of wasting words. It will surprise you.

No sun I have walked under has changed me like this one today. This has been, for the lack of better phrasing, a pleasant surprise.

I opened my eyes to see my suitcase and backpack resting on the hotel room floor. What was I doing here? I looked at the time: quarter to four. But the bus was supposed to leave at three, I thought. It was just a quarter to three a second ago. What happened? I dozed off, of course. What else could happen? Barely a second passed, and I rushed into the the hotel lobby, my suitcase following behind. But for all my haste, I was too late regardless. I had been left behind. What followed was a series of phone calls, and somehow, I found myself in the front seat of a pickup truck, travelling through the countryside with a man who surely did not like wasting his words. We moved on through a village and then another, and when we had travelled for a little over an hour, he stopped the truck, parked it in a perfect spot and said, “Break time.”

Break it was. I pulled a medium-sized paper cup from the dispenser and poured myself a cup of coffee. I paid for my coffee and offered to pay for the large-sized cup and the burger in his hands as a thank you or an apology. I was unsure which it was. My mind was still hazy from the cocktail of all the booze from the night before and the adrenaline of waking up into the nightmarish scenario everyone dreads when they are far away from home. No matter my intention, he declined, laughed and said, “It’s okay. I paid already.” And then, we sat in the booth and had our fill each and left once again on our way to the airport. A reel of colourful houses, lush green pastures around them, picket fences in all colours you could imagine them in played by as I watched outside the window. “You are not driving, my friend,” said the gentle giant, “Go to sleep.” I obliged. When I woke up, we were already making our way through the city, which had only begun to rise and shine.

When we reached the airport, he swerved into a parking spot and said, “We need to be quick; the bus will want this spot.” I got out the door with the same reaction speed I had shown when I first opened my eyes earlier that night. I got my suitcase from the back and thanked him.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, pointing his finger at my face, “But from now sleep on time, yes?”

“Of course,” I laughed, dragging my suitcase behind me.

All year I have waited for things to happen, and now that they are happening, I have a soft hesitation in my heart. I sit by myself, paralysed, with the suitcase still unpacked, the piles of clothes surrounding it like an audience around a stage. I know I will get off this chair and do it eventually. But if it were truly up to me, I would stay in the same place forever despite my deep wish for continual change. I am glad that is not the case, though, that it is not entirely up to me, no.

We like to pretend we are in charge of what happens to us. But I would not blame the match for lighting a forest on fire. Many words for it, I believe: fate, god, the universe, or (dumb) luck. But then, people are no matches. They are free agents, free to choose from the limited choices placed before them, but choices nonetheless. Now, what the choices are, and what limits them is a series of questions, a train of thought which leads nowhere. But I know I am still free to choose where my life goes. It is not up to us if we can do everything in this life, but we can all do something.

In many ways, this life has been a blessing. Thoughts I had when I was a child, and dreams I had more than a decade ago, are now coming to fruition; many have already become part and parcel of the life I live. What else can you ask for? In about five days, I will be in a city I have wished to see for more years than I can remember.

Bah, all this hullabaloo to inspire myself to get up and pack a suitcase. The hyperbole of the writerly life is not washed over me. We make things larger than they are and pretend to know a thing or two while we go about our lives like a bunch of Bumbling Smees, barely managing to be a people. So many in history we consider great could have just been regular Joes simply blowing things out of proportion, waiting for a paycheck or procrastinating. Genius could very well be a mere slide on the microscope of time.

Perhaps, it is about disconnecting. Surely, they had to be cut from a different cloth; we tell ourselves to save ourselves from the burden of knowing that we, too, could achieve unimaginable things.

We must all feel a certain way each day, and today, I feel lonely. I do not mean this in the way that I am distraught. It is not as if my heart is bleeding on this grey rug. But this loneliness is akin to that of a pebble on the sidewalk. Today, I am here, remembering all the people I have ever come across and spent years talking to, only to fall out of touch due to life and the powers that be, hoping in my heart that I still have their number, that one day I will reach out and it will all be as it was, that the coffee will be warm and the meal will be served, and we will catch up and talk about things as if nothing had changed, only to realise that at some point they changed their numbers, the lot of them, and never did they consider sharing it with me. So many people I have lost this way, for no fault of my own, only the natural process of fading into irrelevance. A part of me is agonised by this and is angry at having wasted my time, but then, another tells me to give them the benefit of the doubt, to remember them with the kindness of having sat together, talking about everything that mattered when it did. But I do feel lonely, and there is not much I can do about it tonight, so I sit here, wearing this feeling like a blanket, watching the TV.

My life has begun to feel like it is going through some extensive cleanse, where everything I remember about it has slowly started to change, and every little loose end is slowly getting tied or snipped off. All people I knew any bit about have slowly faded into a highlight reel of memory. Only a handful have remained. All the pain I once carried seems more distant than the dullest star in the sky, and all my regret is left in some drawer of an apartment whose lease ended years ago. There is nothing to go back to anymore. I remember no way of life to be right. I feel lonely because I feel unfamiliar. I believe every person comes across a day or a week like this, where it is not the end of the sentence, and it is not the beginning. It is but a semicolon.

It has begun raining outside once again. I think I will get up and make a cup of tea.

I reckon there is nothing but the forward to look forward to.

I sit under the warm glow of the lamp, listening to a song a girl sent me earlier tonight. Suddenly, from nowhere I can put a finger on, a question flies into my mind and starts to flap its wings around like the pigeons who will soon be on the balcony—it is past midnight, after all. How would I have turned out if I never became a writer, had never written the terrible poems I began with, had never picked the pen up to write something other than whatever was required of me? I don’t have a proper answer. Who could? Something tells me it would have been a life as great as this one I have, but differently.

I think we tend to think in extremes. If a happy person imagines another life, it is not uncommon for them to imagine one where they were not as happy, and vice versa. But I have always seen it differently. It would have been a different life, but why paint it in any colour?

Perhaps, another me sits contemplating the same question with the same neutrality as I have extended him. A fool’s inquiry, I reckon. There is little I can say or think of that would rest this case and push the question back into a pile. All I can be absolutely sure of is that I would have looked at life, at people, at everything else very differently. All these occupational hazards, this sensitivity for the arts, this highly opinionated self, would have been absent. On some days, like the one I had today, I wish this were the case. I wish I could turn it all off and be like the others.

The music would play regardless, but I would not focus on the lyrics as much, not think of the rhythm, and not enjoy it as much as I do right now. I would think of it as a song, nothing more or less. It must be nice that way at times, I’m sure. It would be like how someone reads these words, if anyone does. It’s funny to be an artist of any sort if you truly believe in it and are in touch with it. It is all so important to you. But to the others, to the audience, it is just one work out of many. Your heart bleeds on the display; they glance at it, move along and never think of it again.

I got out of bed, coughing like a dog, and made coffee. Even when you recover, you are left with lingering symptoms—the minor annoyances remain. I believe I have been ill more times this year than should be tolerated without some sort of concern, but so far, they have only been coughs and colds and fevers. So I am not as worried. It has been a damp year, anyway. The rain has stopped again, which matters little since I’m sure it will begin again soon. At least it is not flooding where I live. This lets me sleep at night. But then, life finds a way to trap us all.

I do not see myself here for long—in this apartment and city. Where will I go? It will not matter. A plan is as relevant as an umbrella in a rampant storm. It feels useful to have it, but its usefulness is limited, and if the headwind is strong, the rain is the least of your troubles as you go around scrambling for an umbrella turned inside out.

To search for new with a stringent set of expectations thought up in the old seems to be precisely the kind of thinking no one ever thinks about, which is to say it is the kind of thinking where everyone does it wrong from where I stand. We must have some idea of where we’re going, yes, but why bother charting an itinerary? We must first find a shore before we begin settling. At least, that is how I will go about this, and it may or may not be wise, but I was never the wisest of them all.

I have only consistently managed to be a step ahead of the curve and not in everything, mind you. In some things, I realise I do not understand even the rules of the games I’ve been put into. But regardless of whether you know the rules, if it is your turn, you must roll the dice. And I, too, have made decisions and said things I learned could have stayed unsaid, not because they were wrong, but because they were honest. You can stay friends with someone for a hundred years without telling them even a sliver of the truth, but tell me, could you live with a liar for that long?

There is no escaping ourselves, and I don’t intend on it. It is the curtains around me that need changing. It has come to my realisation that for all the trees in this valley, no one ever grows here.

The other day I talked to someone about art at length, and I realised that, more often than not, most artists give into the idea of commercial viability. Now, there is nothing wrong with this; everybody has to pay bills and eat at some point. But the part that does not sit right with me, even if what I think barely matters anyway, is how instead of honesty, many try to build a narrative around what they are doing as righteous requirement, perhaps, to convince the dreamers, their younger selves, still hidden somewhere inside them. Now that the ink of reality has rewritten their fates, they attempt to add a biased preface to it all.

If someone writes a poem that does not come from within them but is only a reflection of what runs well in the market, there is no shame in it, but by no means is it art, and it should be admitted as such. It should be proudly admitted as a product. But if you are subject to the market, and you still try to convince, if not yourself directly, then yourself through what you tell others, that you are still on some glorious artistic journey, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that, and only that, makes you a fraud.

There is a glaringly commercial appeal to art; there is a requirement for those who serve this, too. I would rather the caterers own up to their role: merchants with artistic skills. An artist should serve their zeitgeist. If, in an insane coincidence, they are a fit, they should revel in it; their life will be easier than they can imagine. And if they are out of step with it, they should either be so good that they turn the wheels in their favour or so patient that they wait for the tides to turn. But I would take an honest business person who knows they peddle films for money over a devious artist who carries an elevator pitch for why the business or the balance between it all is a necessary component on their sleeve any day.

We need these filters in the boiling pot of nothingness that the modern age and art have become. It might create an honest artist somewhere by accident. We could always use more of them, especially in this drought, this arid landscape coloured only by the green of dollar bills.