journal.coffee

In the morning, I woke up and realised I had wasted a few hours, and waste is perhaps the wrong word. Stolen seems to be a more appropriate way to describe the additional hours of sleep cut abruptly due to a dream. So, I ultimately got nothing out of my crime against the world, and when I woke up, I was tired already and wanted to try again. But there were no mulligans in store today, so I began the day and had a few meetings with people living in cities I have never heard the names of, and this guy told me about how he caught the last bit of snow before it all melted off in spring, and I tried to revel in that second-hand joy—selfishly, of course—and I could not, and so, I spent the day staring at the dark brown, inching towards slaty, coffee in the beige cup one after the other until I got all exhausted and then, I watched reruns of a show I have watched a thousand times before, and if the hyperbole is a bit too generous, then I am sure a “couple of times” is a good measure.

In the evening, I walked to the nearby cafe and on my way there, I noticed that the trees were still blossoming, that the streets were filled with flowers and petals, and that there were heaps of it at equal intervals, which made me think about how the invisible workers are always making sure our lives go smoothly. And then, I began to think about how I have always played life by the ear and had no plan, that now, perhaps, I am getting tired of it all. I craved a plan, some grand answer for a little bit before my atheism knocked the wind out of me and reminded me that the safest hands were still my own. But I did think about how the hundreds of people I have met so far who have adamantly defended their lack of agency in life have fared. I wondered if they, too, have faced the hours of unforgiving silence for every little bit of music celebrated.

When I reached the cafe, I read for exactly thirty minutes, and out of habit, I checked how much money I had made by now. The number had grown, and I thought it was a good thing for a moment. Then, I realised I was sitting there alone, so to avoid feeling hollow, I stared out at the street right ahead of me through the glass wall of the cafe.

It seems amidst all the eventfulness and the general variety of life, I have forgotten to humour the perpetual speck of sadness in my heart. I have covered it with humour instead, like mud onto some sketchy hole in the ground. Now, I realise that it has been months since I had a conversation with myself, so I sat myself down and talked tonight. It is, of course, not the first time this has happened, but there was a difference today. It being that I could assign a word to it: rationality. All the sadness within me comes from rationality—at one point, the blatant absence of it, and now an overbearing presence, perhaps, as a lesson learned as a consequence of the former. And once this conversation was over, I figured a glass of wine would not hurt to help lighten the mood, unclench the shoulders a little and wind down. And then, I thought to write a little, but then, there was nothing to say, having said everything I wanted to say before I sat to write. So, I went to read some old, unpublished drafts, left in the middle as if I died while typing, got bored out of my mind, or realised there was nothing to say except a sentence or two. Not all thoughts are worthy of a passage. Not all things are worthy of completion. That was about an hour ago, and now, here we are, and I still have no words to spill.

All I know is that we must consider the entirety of ourselves. Between all the ill-timed jokes and roundabout rationalisation, the reassurance of fastidious compartmentalisation so I get things done, and the obsession with keeping everything as it is and in its rightful place, I have neglected a part of myself that defines me as much, if not more than anything else. It is not lost on me how I have repeatedly broken my heart in favour of doing the right thing, of doing the rational thing. And today is perhaps just that: a day to take stock of cause and effect. But effects can also become causes in themselves. For someone who flouted rationality like the rebel on the tower tearing a flag down in the middle of a revolution, I did not imagine I would turn out like this—not that there are right or wrong ways to be. We are who we are, and then, we are what life makes us.

Most contemporary writing is about driving a point home as perversely and blandly as possible, and most people who now call themselves writers are mere journalists or essayists. I stand corrected; both are respected professions when done right, and I shall not insult them with this association. Most of them are peddlers who hawk snake oil and half-baked insights with reused sentences and phrases. For me, the greatest pain is when I reach a place where I am supposed to tell others who I am, and writing comes up. And then, they tell me they write too and look at me with the wide eyes of a child waiting to show their painting to an adult. Then, like the aggravating aunt who chimes in only to brag, they tell me anyway: I write about business. Or if it is not business, it is some other made-up plague like self-improvement.

Then, the already trudging conversation trudges further, and to humour them while scouring frantically for a window to jump out of, I ask them what they read, and then they mention books from the aisle I would not even gloss over. The endless drivel, a picture of the author plastered on the cover, and a bold typeface suggesting the answer is within the pages. The answer to what? God knows.

The recipe to a decent life is simple, and the search for meaning ends with a cup of coffee, and then, you begin again the next day.

This hand-holding is the problem. Most people—and I do not intend to gloss over the issues of the truly ailing—do not need as much help as they believe they do. People who need help need help, but on most days, most well-adjusted people, and by well-adjusted, I mean those capable of picking terrible books from concessionaire bookstands, do not need another trick. They merely need to read more poetry. They only need to walk a little. But, well, we cannot do much about this; the ship has sailed.

Now, I must bear the brunt of it while I meet another published author at a cafe who shall tell me about the secret to it all. Yet, with all his arcane knowledge, we shall both sit a table apart in the same cafe. Only, I will be unbothered, maybe read a proper book, and he will fidget and sell every bit of himself the first chance he gets.

I learned it early, and perhaps I did not have to go out of my way to earn obscene amounts of wealth to learn it, that the greatest thing we will ever do is sit with a few people we adore or tolerate and break bread together as we talk about all things under a moon that shines brightly enough for several people to get out of their seats and take a picture. And that the most glaring mistake anyone can make, regardless of where or when it happens, is to refuse a cry for help. I know that when the latter haunts you on days you cannot do much but the dishes, it is the former and the never-ending montage of warmth that lifts you out of the fixed gaze at nothing in particular as the laminar flow of water runs over your fingers, foaming about the dish soap as you worry about things you could have done differently, and filling the sink in tandem with the despair filling in your heart.

I learned it early, and perhaps I did not need to regret every single choice I have ever made in my life to learn it, that sometimes the poorest thing you can do is to have money, that time is true wealth, and that I would always live and want a life where I have the comfort of wasting an hour, and if I cannot, if I simply cannot do it, then I will change my life till I can. To be able to waste time on our own terms is the true essence of life, and when I say waste, all I mean is to not use it as directed. To sit and write a few words, as I have done for years now, is a terrible waste of time, but it may also be the most glorious thing I do each day, and to sit, sip coffee and watch the sun is probably foolish and it is also wonderful and worth experiencing each time you get a chance to do it. And, of course, I could list all of these, the many ways to waste an hour in some sort of compendium, but I trust you to know them already. Most people, in my experience, are great at finding intriguing use of their time, especially when it comes to delinquency.

I learned it early, and perhaps I did it quicker than most, that most life is easy pickings, and most happiness is the low-hanging fruit, and if I were to be brief: On most days, happiness is a bench on the sidewalk.

I sit here like a prop in the passing afternoon scene, with the light shifting ever-so-softly every few minutes. The third cup of coffee sits on the corkwood coaster on the table; a few cold, leftover sips remain in it, probably waiting for the inevitable fate of being spilt into the sink. Time has passed today and I have watched it. It is all I have to show for the day so far, and no, I do not mean to sound even an ounce of guilt. I am proud of this day, how late it began, and how slow it is going. This languid energy, or lack of it to be literal, this lethargic torpor is what I have missed for over a month now. I have missed it without realising it like you miss the soft caress of a hand on your cheek or through your hair. You do not miss it outright, and you do not spend every waking minute thinking about it. But regardless of when that happens, irrespective of when you feel it again, you know it is what was missing for all the days prior.

And in this empty, vacuous moment, I have no thoughts, too. I have nothing to say and, surely, nothing to write about. Frankly, this is all I needed from a day like this: not to have anything on my mind, to watch my thoughts move to and fro like curtains bobbing softly, sweeping the little corner where they meet the wall, and going back again. This is how every thought has felt for the past hour or so, perhaps longer, and they have gone and come back, and I have done nothing. It is the perfect setup for a splendid evening.

And what will I do tonight? I do not know yet. Perhaps, go for a walk and read a little at a cafe. I might go out and play some games with strangers if I feel up to it and have absorbed enough warmth to waste some away. Maybe cook a hearty meal and save some for tomorrow. But all that is in a little bit. I must let a couple of hours pass until then. And then, when I am ready, perhaps, when the light slowly moves further down to skip this window. Then, I shall get out of this state of temporary permanence and become a person again. Until then, I am as much a part of this still life as the television remote on the table, as the clothes hung behind the door, as the potted plants on the refrigerator.

When I woke up this morning, I lay in bed and thought about the beginning of my day, about how it will go and how it will end, but most importantly, how it will begin. Before we get out of bed, it is all but potential. Anything can happen. I once heard about a friend of a friend of a friend who broke an ankle by simply getting out of bed too fast. The person telling me the story told me they had always been impatient. And that makes me think of what I always think of: that how you do one thing is how you do everything.

It took me two days to set this apartment up, and it took me another two to make it feel like a home. By day six, I had no alien feeling for the space I currently sit and write these words from. That was almost two months ago. This is how it has been for my waking years, and what I mean by that is the years I grabbed the reins of my life. If these words are any proof, I know myself too well, and I know that my demand for order, for consistency, for certainty from myself and the world is to hide the disarray inside my heart, to cover the ever-spreading impatience, to control the chaos and, if possible, to never let it run amok. That is what I know, and that everything is always in the right place in my apartment is but a declaration of this engineering, of this painstaking process of ensuring I do not step over the line again, not in error, and surely, not by choice. All my lists point to the same thing. All my calendars make the same confessions. It is silly that even when I write a draft, it fits precisely within a bound of characters, and if a word, even if it fits just too well, even if it is the right word, if there ever was such a thing, pushes beyond this invisible, arbitrary limit, I change it to a somewhat ambiguous one. I have done this for over nine hundred pieces, and I believe, I will do it continually still.

And then, when I got out of bed, I did it softly and with a realisation I have had before, and I have had often: that it is a fact that the brass tacks of life are so brilliantly simple, and it is not them but the reconciliation of this fact, or lack thereof, that makes it all so muddy and complicated.

I often read old letters from people celebrated through history or otherwise, and the only thing on my mind is how imperative it was for them to say what they wanted to say with the best of words and the most surreal, most unexpected sentences. Merely telling someone something was not the purpose of such letters; it was about telling it well, with a sort of personal panache, a flair to the sentences that only they could write, and it makes me wish for people who would be so careful as to write a well-thought-out sentence, and of course, this wish will never be granted. We must be the victims of our time, and we must live with how things are, and if they are too unfavourable to us, we ought to try and change them, but then, the change must make sense. The incentive to write a letter has but been lost to time, and now, all we have is an archaic archive of arduously written analogies about the most mundane things in the world. We have curtailed sentences and messages that deliver instantly. Since it is a world of information, it is no longer a world of artists but one of businesspeople and journalists who want to be incisive, want to be quick, and who, I do not know why, cannot stop for a second to read a sentence unless it pushes a bottom line.

They say language evolves with usage, but perhaps “evolve” is a word too generous, too forgiving. Language changes with usage. Whether we could call it evolution is a different debate altogether. One that I do not intend on having with another person living in my time, for if they understood my loyalties, there would be no debate, and if there is one in the first place, I must confess that, unlike others, and there sure are many of them, I do not enjoy banging my head on a wall. Perhaps, wit is a flavour of society that is impossible to recover. We have lost it in lieu of speed, whatever good that has brought us. And, of course, excuse my ignorant remark; it has brought a lot of good, and I know it all, and it is but the most wonderful thing that the world is so deeply, so impossibly connected and entangled, and yet, there are still no letters, and that is how it is. We can go forward but still miss what we left behind.

While being a person, being a friend to someone, being a cog in the grand machine of nothing in particular, I remembered today that an apartment sits perfectly set up in another city, that a life sits gathering dust. I thought of this like how you often think of a long lost memory on a bus ride or as a plane begins to take off, and what I mean with this is how the reminiscing only happens because between all the movement, you have nothing to do, and I think this has been a day like that, where I was moving continually, but I was disengaged like a disinterested student in a class he could not wait to get out of. All I wanted throughout today was to wrap it all and write. The rest of the day felt like a prelude as if it were setting some great last riff up in an album full of songs you wade through until you get to that one song.

Now, it is one in the night, and I am finishing this piece in the dim, ochre glow of the lamp that has a million colours to show but which, out of habit and out of routine, is stuck on this soft, warm one. As I write this piece, the somewhat heavy duvet pressing my already tired feet down, and as I try to look at myself at this moment like you often do when you try to capture the whole scene so you can remember it later, I begin thinking about how I never imagined a moment like this: glasses on my face, not many but a countable number of greys on the sides of my head still, and a life where everything has begun to fall into place. It is not lost on me how sinuous the path has been.

To be happy in the moment brings about a different silhouette in a person. It is always easiest to spot this person amidst a crowd. The other day, I sat in a cafe and read for an hour, and then, when I got up to leave, it occurred to me I had been swaying to the music playing there as I read. Now, this is a normal thing to do, I am sure. It is, however, important to me because when I was nineteen, I saw a person doing this in a cafe I was trying to write in, and I remember feeling a wave of innocent envy tower me.

“I wish I could be like that free someday,” I remember thinking then.

The other day, it occurred to me that I am.

For the past three hours, I have been trying to put down my thoughts on you, or at least, my thoughts on how all my thoughts have been about you for the past few days, especially today, and that it did not begin when I woke up. You were on my mind before I slept, which was awfully late because I was smitten thinking about every detail of every minute you were in front of me in the evening, and the ifs and elses of what may or what could happen, and like how important things often carry forward from nights into mornings, when I reached the kitchen counter to make my regular cup of coffee, the room seemed different, and the air seemed different, and the sun seemed different, and I realised then that it was because you had been there, and that we had laughed there, and that we had kissed there, and since then, you have been on my mind, and through the day—which passed slowly, like how the fragrance of freshly made pancakes sways slowly and stays behind—you were there too, and now that it is over, you are here still. Everything I have thought of today has been touched by the thought of you. And this makes me dizzy and confused in a way I have not felt since I was a boy listening to a love song he barely understood and who has, in hindsight, come to know a thing or two about love himself, but mostly, it makes me ecstatic and impatiently hopeful for what the future holds. It makes my heart float like nothing was holding it down. All my troubles from a few days before seem impossibly small, like some detail you forget to mention to a friend and realise this while you do it but leave it out because it would not change the story.

For hours, I have been bargaining with my mind to cooperate, to let me put a few words down and call it a day, but my mind has a mind of its own today, and there is nothing I can do to coerce it. I realised this, so I did what anyone could do in my situation: I gave it free rein, and I let it think about you. And there it went, writing about you, and there it goes, writing still, and if I do not stop it now, it will go on and on.

And now that I think of it, it does not seem like such a bad thing. I could do it my entire life and not tire of it.

What do I want in this life? If I discount the apartment I cannot buy right now, and if I set aside my never-ending wish for a quiet Sunday morning with someone I love, and if I slide my literary dreams under the carpet and never mention them again, and if I chuck the stray ideas for projects I will never have time to work on into neatly labelled organisers, and if I throw the impossible paths I can no longer take in this life along with the trash when I take it out, not much.

To clarify what I mean by this is that no amount of change, unless it induces emotional whiplash in me, can change my life, that no amount of money, unless a significant sum dropped on me tomorrow, can help me, that no amount of quiet personal comfort can replace a reassuringly restful Sunday, that for all my prolificity, writing is an egoistic undertaking and all literary success boils down to how well you affected the times or the people, that all the things I truly want to work on will continually be towered by the pressing concerns of the eight-hour workday, and that time has marched on and has wound many paths like you would fold a carpet after some event, that the potentials now lie rolled up and gather dust.

And this is what I mean when I tell people I do not want much in life. But then, hell-bent as they are on their lack of understanding, they begin to force the list I have effortlessly shared above with loaded, leading questions. It is offending, and I often leave those conversations with a sour taste. I have thought about this to reach the circular logic of never worrying about the grand path of my life and have slowly built the muscle to think only about the next few weeks or months. And all this effort gets ignored by those who have barely thought about it at all, who want things simply because others want them, who never stop to think what dreams demand, and who fail to see that patience comes with practice, who would not know their dreams if they stood right in front of them.

So, when they talk about dreams I wax poetic and make a smug speech before leaving. Because I have been waiting and working, waiting and working, waiting and working since long before they even began.

Everything leaves a mark. The graze on my foot from a football game a couple of weeks ago has healed, but the skin will never get to how it used to be. Like the many spots gathered all through my life, this, too, will be a memory. Thinking of how all days leave something with you to remember them makes me curious, like a cat tiptoeing towards some tuft floating about on the street, making sure its curiosity does not get the better of it. When the mind forgets, the body remembers. The ghost ache I often feel in my right ankle reminds me of the three and a half years I spent with it hurting, and only when I remind myself it has passed, that the time has passed, that everything that happened in those days has passed, that the pain has passed, does it leave. And often, I have to do this, and it intrigues me beyond measure. Psychosomatic, they call it, of the body and the mind. And perhaps, the most crucial thing out of this train of thought is that everything ends, mark or no mark. When things end, new things begin. It is a cycle as old as time itself, and it is a cycle deeply personal, and it is a cycle profoundly universal, and all we can do is revel in this, in this big magic of all that happens to us and all that we remember.

And when it comes to remembering, by the great gifts of evolution, we remember the worse parts more vividly than we do the better ones. It was, after all, crucial for those who came before to remember that one of their own was eaten by some beast at the pond. Safe nights were forgotten for their lack of information. And this instinct prevails, but we must resist it now, living as we are. We must remember the good. We must write it down. We must look at the details when laughter echoes around. The colour of the curtains, the strange song playing far away, the taste of sushi you do not remember ordering, the coy remark which took the table by surprise, the friend who arrived late walking towards you while lying out of their teeth, the bits we tend to gloss over, we must remember all of them. This is how we survive in this age when the hazards have left the pond and have moved into our minds.

Never before or, perhaps, rarely have I looked forward to the week to be over as much as I have looked forward to it today. And I wish there was something I could name and put a finger on, but nothing comes to mind. I have been exhausted with the drudgery, and I must, at some point, manage myself and my faculties. I must take the day tomorrow to take stock of everything on my mind, and I could start listing things down here, but it would not do any good to anyone. All that to say that there seems to be a hundred-megaton rock on my head and that I have still managed to keep my wits about myself says more about how I have acclimatised my body and mind over the years than it says about some unique ability to manage it. When I lay down this evening to get a little bit of quiet before the world needed me again, I could not find it in me to count every bother, every little 3M note stuck on the walls of my mind. So, I just let it be, letting my jaw unclench and my body loose, leaving my arm suspended, barely grazing the rug beneath the coffee table. And I stayed like that—a living corpse—for a good thirty minutes till there was something to handle. It was then that it occurred to me that to think about what had exhausted me only tired me further. So, I stopped the inquiry at once and then resolved to rest tomorrow.

Now, I will make myself scarce, refuse to answer phone calls and disappear for a day. I will sleep in and do what I can when the sun is out, and then, in the soporific hours of late afternoon, I will nap again. I believe this, and only this shall fix this absurd ache in my heart, in my body, and most importantly, my head, which has pulsed in inexplicable pain these past few days. That I was able to carry myself through it all to reach here, this midnight hour, this last mile, shocks me, but I am too tired to appreciate my resolve, and I am too lethargic to remark on it. There have, of course, been weeks like these, too, and there have been days of rest following them. But to even know we are tired, we must have someone say it to us, for some things only ring true when we hear them.

In the morning, this apartment gets the most wonderful sun. Now, I do not know which side it faces, if it is true East or some skew here and there, and when you tell people about this, that the apartment gets this incredible blast of light, I believe they ask you these questions for no particular reason. While, what they should be doing is appreciating it or, if they are so keen on seeing it, making plans for breakfast. This is where I believe I think differently from others. This is, of course, a bold claim. We can never be truly different, and anyone who claims that will be saddened to hear that there always is someone else like you. This may be news to some, and to some, this may be the greatest vindication, but it is how things are, and so, my only intention in saying this is that I exist in a sort of perpetual disagreement with where I tend to be, or where I was born, or where the borders end of where I can be. And I am sure, by this line, it is getting frustrating, like the audience waiting after a cliffhanger or some big reveal in some book that just won’t arrive. So, I will elaborate on what I meant, and then, I shall wrap this piece neatly and tie a bow onto it for pleasure.

I believe I simplify things. I cut to the chase in thought so I do not have to spend time waiting. At work, I do not like blaming others, and if I realise something is out of place, and if I can fix it, I fix it myself and do not point fingers. This is how I am with people, in general, too, or at least I try to be. If you can fix something, the only course of action is to fix it. The rest is laziness. I also believe that in all things in life, there is the fuss and fluff, and then there are the important bits. I have good reason to believe—through experience and error—that most people do not know how to separate them, and perhaps—through luck and practice—I have learned to do it. This is how things are, and if they were the same as others, I would not get looks when I said something in some gathering, and I would not be told that I was always out of step with people, and perhaps, it is true. But then again, I wonder which is worse, to be out of step with people or yourself?

I lie on the couch with my foot propped onto the armrest, making a temporary sling, exhausted out of my wits and bones. It has been a day chock-full of activity. So have the ones before it, and as far as I can look back I see endless activity. But again, my memory is the most unreliable clerk, meticulously writing down the most absurd, the most unnecessary details but failing to recall anything in proper order or of right importance. But for all my limitations, I see eventfulness: bars overflowing with people sitting shoulder to shoulder, brunches in the brightest, most sunlit cafes there ever were, turfs of grass and feet clamouring for a ball, strangers, strangers, strangers, and chance encounters. I guess things could not be better than this, and if they were any better, I would be suspicious of them. I would keep an eye on them, and like a guard working the night shift in a museum, I would do it with half a heart* and full tilt. I would chase the slightest of sounds, not because I would want to, but out of proactive procrastination. Not looking after a problem often turns it into a bother, and who wants that?

That is how I would look after it all and so, this is why things should not get any better from where they are, for I would not want the panic and the uneasiness. Not that they will get better. To paraphrase someone who has who I am down to the last detail: I am an unlucky bastard. In the soft daze of sleep coming on, I can but confirm this and do it with all my heart. There has been, I believe, a component of unluckiness to this life, and for all that Fortuna has spilt on me, and she sure has spilt a lot, she has taken in equal measure in the form of simple denial. They often say not everyone can have it all. I wager this life is a prime example, or it looks like it from where I stand—or lie, in this case, there is no energy left in me to stand tonight, which, again, is a good thing. And with that excuse, like the guard at the museum, I must doze off. I must end the day to wake up with the morning light and pretend like I stayed up with my eyes peeled.

* Half-heartedness. It is a funny way to think about distraction. I wonder who came up with it.

Woke up this morning with Hemingway’s Ten Indians lingering in my head like a friend lingers near the door when they are about to leave your apartment, or how you stand and ask a final question just as someone turns to leave, hoping, I could only imagine, for the conversation to go on for a little bit more. I regretted not bringing my bookshelf along with me since there are at least three compilations with the story in it, and I had to go the route of scouring for it wherever I could find it. Then, I spent the next few minutes reading it with a cup of coffee, remembering all the times I have read it before, and feeling glorious envy over how I could never write a story as simple and yet so impactful, it meets someone when they are eighteen, and sticks with them for a decade as nonchalantly as a piece of gum being lodged in an old pair of sneakers that sits in the attic because it is too old to be worn but too important to be thrown away. I reckon it is somewhat like that, and when the story knocked me out again, I began the day again, correctly this time. I primed myself by looking at all the things I had to do. Then, I got a message from someone who needed help. I reckon that was it: when someone needed help, you could never tell them no, you could never say things like, “There is a lot to do today”, or “I am a little exhausted”, or “Are you sure you could not do it on your own?”. Now, I wonder that you could, and I am no one to speak for everyone, but not me. It is impossible for me to say things like these on most days, and this is what my life made me, for better or worse.

And yet, as I go through this day fulfilling the different roles I must play like all of us must play, I will think about what I would write about when I write a story, and if it will be any good, and that most things are good if they are complete. I reckon that is all I have to do at some point: sit and complete something other than these pieces that say nothing at all, and if, by exception, they say something, it is rarely anything worth saying.

After spending the entire day working, I went out to take a walk and read. Perhaps, get a cup of chamomile while I was at it. And on this short walk, which takes about the time it takes me to hum and listen to a full song, I noticed enough things to wash away the drudgery. Then, it took a wonderful turn when I saw a familiar face as I pushed open the glass door. It was someone I met at a party three, four weeks ago. I nodded Hello as I entered and asked what he was doing there, that I came to read there often, and if he was there regularly, too. He said his workplace was nearby, that it was shocking that we had not run into each other yet. How funny that in a city bursting at its seams with ten million people, you can run into someone still! Yet, it happens all the time. Things that seem impossible happen all the time.

Then, I read a little, making friends with Orwell as he told me about his journey with how he came to write and became one of the greats, and I was amazed at how casually he said that he had a phase where he was disillusioned with his words, his writing when he was my age, too. Of course, this little exchange happened where most of our lives happen: in imagination. But it did tell me something I have wanted to hear for a long time. Orwell, in his refreshing and signature honesty, told me there was still time. Time for what? Time for it all, that a quarter does not a whole life make. It leads to something if you keep walking, that you run into people if you keep walking, that you run into yourself, and it happens for all of us, the greats and the plebeians alike, and most greats are just ordinary folk who kept walking.

Perhaps that is the recipe: equal parts possibility and walking. It does not matter how much you do of either, but so long as you do both in tandem, something good comes out of it.

I had time to meet someone for work today. I had time to roam about the bustling market streets today. And time to play some games with my friends, of course. I had time for all of this, then why not these words? I think about this to begin writing, despite my eyes shutting like a broken shutter on a window, coming down all at once and held only by the accidental knot of disarray in it.

But then, there is nothing to say. The only thing on my mind is last night, the drunken, purple haze and the aftertaste of mango-flavoured beer, brewed fresh. That, and the morning after, and arms I was unfamiliar with until last night. I reckon this is how it goes for most people, and I reckon this has now happened to me. Or perhaps, this absurd hope in me for love, for all things I did not know were possible until the sun set yesterday and the night began, and all of it seems to be a lingering memory of a dream still. I am unsure which parts happened and which were machinations of my booze-addled memory, and I would not be certain till I wake up again tomorrow. This day has been like the parts in a dream where nothing odd happens, when you simply sit somewhere or do something ordinary, when the dream is least like a dream. And now, I await waking up from this dream, and if in the morning, things are still as they are, it will be a pleasant surprise, and I will have to learn to live with the soft happiness of pillow talk in the morning.

You see, I have not felt this way in a long time, and so this is as new to me as the first warm slice of Sun after a long, dry and dreary winter. It is, in many ways, the first Sun I have seen. It is, by and large, like new to me. I do not know what to do with this flutter in my heart. Tired as I was today, not a second passed when I did not think of you. I had time for everything today. But I was stuck in the strange memory, trying to pick it apart and accept which parts did happen. And now, it has become clear to me, it was no illusion; I may have given my heart to someone is but a given now. And now, I must allow myself to be happy.

Got out of bed and walked a little with a cup of coffee in my hands, not for the purpose of walking, but in the most natural, purposeless way a person can do things. Sat to write but realised a bright sun was out already. What a day this is to do laundry. Changed the sheets on the bed, added them to the load, set the machine spinning and sat to write again. I reckon this is how life is—when I know nothing, young as I am, I will do the dishes and the laundry, and when I am older, much older than who I am today, having lived all the years yet to happen, I will do them still. No will or knowledge spares a person from the banality of life. The most enlightened people still need to eat, and the man meditating under the tree is a religious myth. True enlightenment, if there ever was or can be such a thing, is in the mundane. This is, of course, a consistent argument I have made in these words. But that I repeat something has no hold over my loyalty to it. We tell people we love that we love them, and we do it over and over again, and we do it when we get a chance. This does not mean we love them any less; it is only that we still do. All things need reassurance, convictions most of all. And my convictions, for better or for worse, lie in living this life in the broadest way I can.

And what is the biggest conviction than love? I love the rain. I long for it. I do not, however, curse the heavens when the sky is sunny. I love the rain with conviction. That it is sunny outside has no bearing on it; it changes nothing about how I feel about the rain. Good things are good despite circumstance. And if it does rain, when it does, I will tell it; I will whisper under my breath, and I will sigh in relief, and with it, I will reassure myself, and if a force as natural needs any reassurance, then, I will reassure the rain, too. And that is how things will go, and between today and then, the sun will glare and shine brutally, and on all such days, I will do the dishes and on some of them, the laundry. And there will also be coffee and a lot of life in between, which will come and go like the morning news, and things will go on as they go, as they have gone.

The pleasure of meeting a friend in a different city is under-celebrated. To see someone you last saw many years ago in a street you have never seen before brings upon a side of them you could not have imagined, even if you can imagine the wildest of things. It is beyond the most abstract of thoughts, the most faraway truths, the most absurd creation you can think of. Only when you experience this can you know how intimate, how personal, how soft the feeling is, and how wonderful an aftertaste the conversation leaves as you walk home. There are fewer things so simply pure that a person can experience, and this is one of them.

Perhaps it is the soft blemishes on time on both of your personalities, of how it shaped you and sometimes knocked and dented you out, how it changed them, and how they, too, have had their knocks and bruises. Perhaps it is all that, and then, the decisions: the paths your lives took, and how the paths crossed again.

“Look, we met so long ago, and it was goodbye, it was almost goodbye; for all our phones and messages and our million ways to stay in touch, we could not have known this would happen, that I would see you again, and yet, here we are.”

Perhaps it is just that and nothing else. It is the improbability. To see someone again is never a given. When we leave or when someone else leaves, we make our promises and vows. I have done this before, and I am sure you have done it, too. But we hug goodbye, and all regrets begin and end with fading footsteps because it is virtually impossible to meet someone again. And that it happens is an exception, not the norm, and so many people we miss not because we want to but because we once saw them in the flesh, and then, we never could again. Something came up, and life happened, and there was always something else more urgent, more important, and “I am not in the city on those dates” and “Will you stay till the weekend?” It is all this and so much more, and none of it can be held against anyone, and no one is to blame.

And yet, it does happen now and then. You plan to meet at the cafe, and you walk to it, and through the glass, you see them sitting, waiting for you.

Oh, how I love the morning light, how it spills into my veins and causes unparalleled vivid awareness, and how the first hour of the day can be so tranquil, so restful in itself that the eight hours of sleep right before it appear second-hand and hold no candle to the present moment, which in its brightness supersedes anything else. In this light, I walked to the kitchen shelf, put last night’s dishes—now dry—back into the racks, and made a cup of coffee, which was so fruity and flavourful that if I might have just sipped from some mythical fountain and it would have failed to compare. There is little that brings me more joy than being fully present in the moment I am in, with all my faculties in harmony with it and today is such a morning, today is such a day.

It has occurred to me recently that I am a selfish person, that all my selflessness is a mask to keep people around for the days when I do not quite feel like myself, but on most days, this is not the case, and so, on most days, I barely give other people a second thought. Sure, I answer phone calls, get back if I have a message and say yes to invitations like a person must, but besides that, I care about other people like a field cares about the rain. It does not prefer specific droplets and does not care which part of the rain falls on it; as long as it pours when necessary, the field is content. It is, perhaps, this way for everyone; only I have thought about it and now put it into words, and once you put it down, it becomes real. Perhaps I often paint this much darker picture of myself simply because I am willing to admit certain truths that most people gloss over. Maybe I say all of this in some sort of coy comfort so I do not feel as obligated to others, so I do not have to surrender to how strongly I wish to be a consistent part of the grand tapestry made of other people, of society. Ah, this train of thought does not seem to have a station, so I must pull the chain here. I must stop it in its tracks.

Back onto brighter things, the sun has decided to usurp my rights from this hall, taking it all for itself. Rarely does coffee taste ever so wonderful! What a wonderful day it is to be a person.