All around the planet, in every home is the same lament when it comes to how things could be. Things could be harder, sure, but they could be easier, too. And that’s the long and the short of it. And then, everyone talks about something else or doesn’t talk about anything for a minute or two, but they all agree and sigh. Surely, things could be easier, too, they all think in unison. All over, this happens day after day. There is little we can do about it but carry on—with conversation and with life.
It rained till the morning today. How do I know this? Because I was up working on something as usual. My obsession is as unpredictable as my disposition, but a rainy morning mobilises them both. The morning reminded me of my dream from the other day: I woke up at five, but the air was too muggy. It was sunny outside when I did, but it did not sit right by me since I knew it was five in the morning. How did I know that? How I know it is inching towards midnight as I write these words. All of us have a sense of time. The whole schtick is to feel time pass.
I noticed there was no power in the apartment. I walked to the circuit board and pulled its door open. Inactive. I walked to the balcony, searching for electricity—in the flats all around, on the streets in the distance, on the lone bulb hanging outside the tin shed nearby. Nothing. The world was suddenly out of power. At first glance, though, it looked the same. Only now, suddenly and almost in one fell swoop, there was useless clutter around me. In one moment, everything was redundant and had no reason to exist. Of course, with the ridiculousness of it all, I could sense it was a dream. But for a second, I was convinced of the pointlessness.
Since then, it has set in me: the burst of futility. Like a stain you cannot fully wash out of a suit you once wore at someone’s wedding, like the hindsight-induced regret of a childhood long gone, like a broken vow, like the countless decisions that could have gone either way, like the thousand times we’ve talked about things, of how they could be harder, sure, but they could be easier, too; like the sigh that follows after.