journal.coffee

In upper kindergarten, if my memory remembers the room right, I wrote the first set of words I have ever written: a reiteration of a standard run-of-the-mill fable. With a small notebook and a pencil in my even smaller hands, I wrote it all down; transcribing would be a more appropriate word now for I was simply writing what I remembered. The grammar must have been shoddy, and the handwriting illegible, but I completed it, and I filled pages, and then I showed it to everyone, and I remember the notebook went with us as we went to visit relatives the following weeks and it was shown to everyone, and there was applause, and that was when I knew I was going to do it forever. Not for the applause, no, but to remember.

Perhaps it was because I knew about my forgetfulness even then, of how easily I forget my days. Or maybe the cloak of meaning on this memory is the bias of two decades having passed in the meantime, and maybe, at the moment, it was but the whims of a child and nothing else.

Since then, I have written. I have written to remember, and sometimes, I have written to forget, and the fallacy of the latter is not washed over me. And when applause came, in how it came—loud or soft, little or large—it was a welcome sight. But by no means was it something I sought; there always has been a greater meaning to it all. But now, I have become disillusioned with this practice. Most of it is the tribulation and general air of life, of things you hear and see or things that happen to you—good or bad. A giant elephant sits in the middle of this room as I write these words down.

The truth is that what I write, how I carry this activity, and what I say or leave out do not fit in a neat box, and the world has, if not always, surely now, been about demarcation. Among all that I have felt these past few months, I have felt this strongly: that the part of me that does not belong, my perpetual alienation, has been laid onto this act. But I reckon I do belong now, and these words remind me of the very thing they allayed.

So, I must get off this desk, if not forever, then for a little bit. And when I do return to it, I hope I do it on a whim. And maybe, to write a story for a change.

At fifteen past eleven, I lay on this couch watching a rather heartwarming film, and the light from the TV continues to cast its ever-moving interplay of shadows all over the beige tiles. And it occurs to me all of a sudden in this moment of quiet respite that my exhaustion has had me frazzled, and it is not merely exhaustion from the days I have lived through these past few weeks but the exhaustion of being let down more often than not. Soft piano starts to play as the credits roll, and I get out of the couch and stare out at the tree from the kitchen window. The tree has been moving rabidly since the last two evenings, and each time I hear the rustling leaves or the whistling wind, a part of me hopes for rain. Perhaps this state of dejectedness is because of the weather, that the temperature has been stuck on the highest of highs like a broken thermometer. And to lose this thought, I stare at the tree for a bit more, and a gust blows about and waltzes inside, and I feel invigorated for a little bit.

The credits from the film continue to roll. I open the fridge door, the light from which spreads further, casting a larger shadow as if trying to compete with the light from the television in some sort of juvenile game between children. At least, that is what I think of suddenly as I take a bottle of cold water out and take a large sip. And then, I remember a memory from childhood of inane competitions between brothers, at first, and then, more come gushing in, between cousins, between friends at school, and suddenly, I cannot help but stand there smiling. And then, my mother’s voice echoes in my mind as she asks me to close the door to the fridge, and to refill the bottle before putting it back in. So much of this life is lived right because so much of it is continually informed by things I do not even remember. And I want to end this day on this note: that I have stood on the shoulders of others all my life.

I do the needful with the fridge and the bottle as I was taught, and then I turn the television off, glance at the apartment door to see if it is locked, and shut the bedroom door behind me, calling it a night.

Lately, I have shaken my head wildly trying to get rid of a thought I cannot shake, that the most ridiculous part about my life are these words I write, that the root of my cyclical dissatisfaction from life is simply that I am not valued for this: the writer I pretend to be.

If this were an ordinary life full of ambition, there would be endless contentment in it. But since this thorn in my side—that I need to write, that I have not written yet, or that nothing has come out of it—continues torturing me daily, something is always amiss.

I begin my days by wasting three hours staring at a blank page, or I harass myself for every second until I finish a piece. If it were an everyday life, and by that, all I mean is if I were like other people in that I did not have this obsession from an early age, I would be content knowing that I do good work all through the day, which I get paid and celebrated for. But for no reason other than a hodgepodge of nature and nurture, I have become convinced that the only kind of pursuit worth pursuing is artistic.

In fact, if you were to take my life at face value and if there was an inventory of what brings the most results—of any kind—my work would always trump my writing, which may be on the last or penultimate spot on the list.

And this is what the original problem, the biggest issue, is all about:

If I were to list all the things I am respected for in my life, these words would not make the cut, for no one reads them, and if someone reads them, they do it out of some personal allegiance to me, and even that fails eventually. Take my friends and family into account, who, for all their education and knowledge, fail to find time to read a piece which lasts a couple of minutes.

Even the momentary attention I get for sitting in a cafe and ordering a tea or coffee I can as quickly make at home for one-tenth of the cost, and even the cursory consideration I get for going to a bar and ordering absurd amounts of liquor is the result of the money I have earned, which is indirectly a result of the work I do.

I often have this exchange. Perhaps I ought to take my word for it.

The light from the sun outside reaches about the halfway mark of the hall, touching the rug barely and hesitantly. I lie on the couch and look at the brown parcel box, which I have not had time to cut the tape off of and open. It is morning, and to be fair, I have time right now, but things that are delayed for a bit often get delayed by and large. While waking up early did not do much for me, I still woke up with some restfulness within me, spending time in the joy of nothingness. This has given a soft pastel sort of hue to the entire day. It is the middle of April, and the city has boiled into a pot of hot chaos, but this moment is a respite from all that and more. My life, too, has had a surge of bedlam, so this little crumb of calm is a welcome change.

It is April, and I think about writing, about art, about all things, and I wonder if I want to keep writing. And, of course, it is a beaten path. I have stopped writing before, and then, I found myself here again, and it has happened thrice and I know better than to cater to this thought. But I ought to paint more. I want to make more things. I want to do so much; I feel as paralysed by the possibility today as I had been about a decade ago. Everything can be learned if you spend enough time on it. It is time, then, and not talent or ability, that limits us. At least, this is how it is for me. I am much too confident in what I can do, which is, more or less, everything I can think of and, more importantly, make time for. And as for doing it well, which is what most people mean when they ask if you can do something, there are a few things I know of, and I reckon there would be a plethora more if I had the time for it.

And, of course, I want to work with wood and tools, tinkering in a quiet shed, making something that truly exists. After all, all I have ever wanted from my life is to have the time and space to build myself a chair.

I have not enjoyed writing lately, and it shows where it does, like the faux smile someone makes at a party they could not avoid. Perhaps to keep up appearances, under great obligation, or to be a civil person and nothing else. But then, even without words, the smile reveals everything. If not in the moment, then, I reckon in some sort of retrospective as people look at the pictures over coffee and an afternoon many days later. It has been like that, and I have been keeping up appearances in the most honest and the most necessary sense of it.

My distraction is immeasurable. I have been inundated by things to handle, big and small, and I believe it has impacted my health. Directly by inducing the exhaustion only known to those parched for peace and time, and indirectly by turning the few minutes I do have into moments I want to leave my head out of my body, and since this done literally would render me in a vegetative state, the next best thing is a glass of wine or the fifth order of whiskey at a bar without care about all else. They have collectively thrashed these words and their quality, and they have done this not in the way a hammer strikes a feeble wooden board but in how a tap which continues to drip on a piece of marble can prove lethal to it. And what has brought on all these things? Well, it has been a good cocktail—perfectly balanced. It has taken equal parts of myself and equal parts of life, and no, by no means is this a complaint. No, do not misunderstand me. Most, if not all, things are good, but we must work for all the good things, too, and it is the work, and not the general state of my life, that has exhausted me.

Sometimes, I sit and wonder if I could write someone a letter. When I say things, I find it is often jumbled up. It is difficult to talk to people, as I learned last night again, because they come with their caveats and puzzles. Then, I reckon I begin unpacking and solving them. A letter, however, would be ideal. I could bare my soul, and I could ensure all my thoughts followed each other, and I could take time. Yes, I could take time and craft a beautiful letter. I wish I could do that. But then, where would I find the time?

Most of what we do in life is either right or beautiful, provided, of course, that there is a sense of agency in a person. If that is missing, then most of what they do is irrelevant and should rarely become a cause of concern. But for those of us who have some agency, who believe in their hands and themselves, and who trust themselves to change course on their own, we have both the opportunity to decide correctly, to gather every bit of knowledge there is, to stand tall as a tree, our feet planted like roots, if we know ourselves to be right, and to stand there alone come snow or sun, and we have the opportunity to set everything ablaze including ourselves and become a spectacle for all to see.

But what most people fail to consider often is that a good measure of overlap, that most things that are right may be beautiful, too, and how could most things that appear beautiful be ever so wrong?

Most life is not spent on the extremes of it all but in the muddy waters as we wade against the dirt to reach the bank. Most life is spent in the sprawling middle, and most things we do are right and beautiful. I have good reason to believe in this, of course. I realised this early on that being right counted on most days and that the price of it was hefty and often absurdly large. I also realised early on that everything dubbed beautiful appeared just so, and we must go out of our way to experience life from the perspective of someone who died and came back to life so they look at a loaf of bread as if it were a pound of gold.

Every memory I remember fondly could be considered doctored, for it did not fully happen on its own, and all my waking life is spent looking for the opportunity to have a splendid day. Nothing less would do! And if I must push myself to the breaking point, shove myself into situations, and force myself to stay awake until my body gives up, so be it. It has been a life worth remembering so far, and it has been a never-ending effort.

To merely be a living person and to be alive are two different things, and only one of the two is right and beautiful.

And I am glad I have been able to see the difference, and I hope, with all my heart, you can, too.

Sat to write this morning—or well, afternoon—and could not find the right words—or well, any—and it occurred to me that I ought to write from different places, that sometimes we must induce a slight change, and if an entirely new setting is not possible, then, a familiar cafe at a time you never visit it shall do, and if even that seems outlandish, then we must sit somewhere else in the same room, but I tried the latter and got nothing out of it, only sentences that went nowhere, and all that inevitably led me to the overcrowded cafe I currently sit in—it is Sunday after all; what can you expect?

Finally, I have a table to sit on, which I currently share with two guys who seem to have much to discuss. Enough to let a sole fly manoeuvre around the accidentally aesthetic arrangement of a brownie and cups of coffee they seem to have left unattended.

Sometimes, not as often as I should, I talk to people about how you can feel a sort of soft and perpetual loneliness in life simply because of who you are and what life made you and that the combination of two often can create a living contradiction, and then, they begin to state the obvious and then, nothing goes anywhere. But then, I find myself in a cafe with fifty people and the staff I see at least thrice a week. The golden evening sun stands near the door like an attentive, diligent doorman. All of it makes this seem like something you would want to belong to, and for a little bit, for a tiny sliver of a second, I do not feel as lonely. In this and only this, I stop feeling that thorn in my chest. I do not know any of these people, and that is why I belong because for all these words I waste, maybe I do not know myself.

I feel most myself when I am just one of many, when I am nameless and goalless, and when all my identity can be reduced to a prop in a picture. It is the only belonging I know; besides that, all of my life is a consistent and frivolous struggle to be a person. And now, I have learned the oldest lesson: that in all the fretting over what to bring with us and what to leave behind into a new life, we forget the glaring detail that we will carry ourselves with us.

I lay in bed after waking up and played some soft rock to accompany me in the silence of the Saturday morning. I lay there and did not think of much. I closed my eyes and let the music fill every empty space, every bubble of air in my mind, and before I knew it, I was fully there. No bother on my mind, nothing to block out the sweetness of life, and so there I was, lying as the beige curtain filtered and coloured the light into the room and onto the bed. And then, as the phone rang, I got out of bed and answered the call, and it was someone who needed some help, and I told them that I had just woken up and needed some time to become myself. And it was then that I realised that it never stops. Nothing ever stops. The asking, the taking, the living, none of it ever stops, and those in the older days were blessed that the letters took time to reach them, that the telegrams were slow and expensive and that pagers had a limited range. Nothing ever stops. Everyone is always here as long as you are awake and alive, decent enough to not turn a blind eye to the world, and competent enough to keep it all afloat.

And it is the last part that bothers me as I stare at the tree buzzing with flowers and bees outside the window while waiting for the coffee to brew before I can plunge the French press down. That last part is all it is about. I often wish I was not as competent. I am not the smartest man I know by any means, but I know I am not as dense either. But often, I wish I did not have the sense to live correctly, that I was a slob, and that others would pick up my slack as I waltz through my days. Sure, there are people like that; the helpers need someone to help, after all. Often, I wake up and wish I was among the perpetually tardy, the blockheaded, the wishy-washy, and if not forever, maybe for a year. But I will always find ways to help myself before someone can lend a hand, and I will always watch myself, and I will always be my mean critic, and it will all be like this always, and nothing will ever stop as it never has, and every single thing will be in the right place, and I will have kept it there. And I will stand and wonder if capability is a burden, too.

While many pressing problems have paralysed me, it is love that is on my mind. And it is on my mind in the way a look from a stranger is on your mind where you cannot help but wonder if you left a story stranded on the pavement by not smiling in return. And now, I am compelled to bring a glass of wine and this modern-day typewriter in the bedroom and talk about how I love. And how I love is at odds with the rules of the world I live in, and it has caused me great heartache—not fracture but myalgia. The heart is but a muscle after all—or at least, full of it—and the hurt has been how a muscle pulses with pain as you sit with your gaze fixed on the plain-white ceiling, waiting for sleep to smother you. But hurt aside, I love immediately, quickly, and with naivete, and I can spin some sprawling story about it, but it will be a lie. And so, in all that I have thought about, I have realised that I cannot help but love how I love, and I cannot help myself, and I cannot stop this perpetual pulse of puncturing pain.

It is not in me to be subtle. If I love you, I trust you immediately like a child. For the better part of the last decade, I have learned that this is the wrong way, and when I say wrong, I simply mean that it is not the most accepted way, and often, it makes all the difference. It is not in me to think about the consequences. All I can see is a breakfast of brightness or a brunch brimming with booze, or perhaps, evenings filled with the sweet and soft comfort of nothingness. That is all I can think of when I look at the next person—of which there have been enough and many—and I throw my heart like a dart on the wall. It sticks if it does, or it falls off most disappointingly. That is how I love. I hand over the keys to my life, then leave the door open and suggest they were unnecessary.

I will hand you my heart. And I will watch as you forget it at a cafe we may never visit together again. I will watch you break a piece, keep it to yourself, and I will say nothing. And I have so much of it. I have so much love to give. I do not know how to love like the world does.

And if I love you, you will know, and years will pass, and I will remember you fondly still.

I do not know how to forget.

It is still the morning despite my having spent over two hours sitting and staring at this screen. I wonder why this is the case and what has sapped all the energy out of me, but then, I remember it is perhaps because I did not sleep too well last night. And why was it? Why it always is. I had another absurd dream about the same day I was to wake up to, and it disturbs me that I often have to live life twice in this uniquely odd way. And if I tell someone about it, I get looks of disbelief and, sometimes, contempt. But what would I gain from lying about it? I had six things to do today and chores in between, and I had done the six to the best of my ability, conversations with people were as lucid as can be, and then I woke up, and I realised, once again, for the millionth time, that it was a dream, and that it was but a rehearsal for what I was about to do. This ailment—for the lack of a better word—has been the greatest cause of all my agony, and if I seem worried, it is because I am unable to separate what is a dream and what is not sometimes. And sometimes, you want to live through your days only once. And, of course, I am not one to believe in the hullabaloo of mysticism. It is simply that my mind is not at rest, and it never has been, barring a few months a couple of years ago. It was the first and, perhaps, the last time I learned how it is for other people.

Oh, well, nothing a little bit of coffee cannot solve. That I keep an upbeat demeanour, that I am jocular and I talk fast and ask people to get out of the house, that I am a person in the strongest sense of the word as soon as I shut the door behind me and go outside is my greatest favour to the world. I have every reason I need to be miserable, I have every reason to be furious, and then some. Exhaustion is all I have known, and no amount of sleep, if you were to take me at my word, and I suggest you should, helps. Seventeen minutes to a meeting, so I must stop here and call this a piece. There, I have written. I have done it again.

All things happen when they happen, and deadlines are for fools. If you have worked in a job, regardless of what you did there, whether you were a pencil pusher or someone who made actual effort during the day, you would know it. I believe there are idiots, and there are people who get things done, and those who get things done know that anxiety over all that remains undone is wasteful. On some days, you do more, and on some days, you do less, and all of it adds up in the end. I have been smothered by my mind for the past few weeks, and I have not done as much as I would have liked to, and I have noticed this in myself, in how I have reacted to things, and in the hours wasted on this couch, lying and thinking about nothing but everything that has happened to me in this life. This, I reckon, is also work. We are the longest projects we ever partake in, and the work never ends. There is always something to fix, and something to take care of, and formalities here and there, and papers to sign now and then, and often, we require a break from this onerous job of being a person.

Note that I intentionally left the slackers out of the discussion to make this appear like a dichotomy. But of course, indeed, there are not just idiots and those who get things done; there are always slackers. And if you know them, then you also know that it does not matter what you do; they will always feign malicious incompetence, raise their hands, and leave the room before you can address their lack of valuable output. And no amount of complaining or rage or flailing to upper management brings about any change whatsoever. And in this grand project of ourselves, this is more true than anything else. And the best thing anyone can ever do is keep their head down and do what needs to be done. I have gotten this far by doing just that: my due diligence. And I have met all sorts of people, and it has not made a sliver of difference. Life has gotten on as it would have, and I have continued working.