journal.coffee

I believe the worst thing to happen to a person is to receive an invitation. I believe this with the dastardly confidence of a deserter, and I believe this wholeheartedly. People who invite other people to things such as weddings or celebrations or galas do not care about the people they are inviting, about their health, their finances, and the distinct trajectory of their days. “Whatever it is that you must be doing in your own time and in your own days, stop all of it all at once and witness us, witness me.” In contrast, the invitation for a casual evening or a breakfast on the weekend does not carry this presumption. It is respectful, more often than not, of the general business of our lives. It allows for the little delays. “Will you have time this evening?” We ask. “If not, we could always meet tomorrow.” But this is not the case with these larger-than-life celebrations, where people like me feel burdened under the most infinitesimal obligations. From the coordinated outfits and themes to follow to the choreographed performances to the general artificialness of it all, nothing portrays the redundant pretence in human beings more than the modern event, the contemporary celebration. I believe there will be a point—in a future that does not seem so far anymore—when I will receive an invitation and instantaneously decline, citing reasons that are absurd in their honesty. I may choose to say, “I am awfully sorry, no, but I am doing nothing that day, and it is crucial I do not indulge in activity” or, perhaps, “I understand you are going to be merry; I have no such intention for no rhyme or reason. I choose the contentment of my everyday afternoon instead.” And I believe if I do this enough, at some point, the invitations will stop. I hope they do. I do not see another way out of this game everyone plays on the regular. It is strange to me. It has never made sense to me. I believe I shall learn to own this oddity instead of playing pretend with the others.

On the train ride the other morning to see my nephew—and his parents, who, of course, get the shorter end of the stick in being mentioned ever since he came around—I noted a few things I wanted to tell him about. I saw six benches caught under the thickest of fogs, laid near a waterlogged field impeccably impersonating a lake. They were meticulous in their arrangement and evenly spaced in an arc around its bank. I wondered who comes to sit there. Perhaps, it is a secret meeting place, invisible in its perfect visibility, hidden only in plain sight and perhaps in the thicket of the morning fog. I had such places with cousins my age, and we used to name them and spend hours in them, concocting stories that we did not know we would forget. Then, I saw a young boy who could not have been a day older than sixteen, walking along the train track, wearing his grey school uniform, looking sharp and yet distracted by the ever-wide view ahead of him. He walked with the lax attitude that only someone who knows where they are going can wear. I thought if my nephew would walk like this to school one day, too. I hope he is as calm in his confidence as the boy I saw. Then, I saw the sunrise amidst the hills and the forest, and this was followed almost immediately by a brook and a trail, followed by the river they both led to, and the train zoomed past all of this. In the last leg of the journey, I read a book about the love of books, and I made a note to myself again to give him one when he gets to the age of reading. Not to force it on him, no, but to make sure a book is kept somewhere in the foreground in the off chance that boredom strikes. Perhaps, he, too, develops similar absurdities like I have, noticing things most people would not turn around to look at.

Lately, I have caught myself stopping, almost for a split second—or even shorter, almost a minuscule slice of time. I have caught myself stopping to glimpse at what is around me, the little details like the texture of the paint on the wall, the bird in the distance, the space around me, my own palms and the ridges on them, and at first I thought this must be a new quirk out of the many I know I possess, and perhaps, it is just that, but I believe it serves a purpose. I believe I did it so I remember the moment, the exact moment, and not an informed memory of it. It has held me down on days that are ever long and ever exhausting.

Just today—it could not have been forty minutes past four—I stopped for a second and realised the entire room had a sudden golden hue. The setting sun out in the distance had dyed it so, and the beige curtains—normally colourless and absent—had played their part. It all came together like a beautiful script every actor had a part, and it occurred to me that I, too, was on that stage. I could not have been more important than the mug full of coffee, resting quietly on the rug, but I was there, and I belonged. I believe that is when I realised that the day had not slipped through my fingers yet, and I pulled myself back into form. An hour or so later, I took a walk outside a little bit after that. When I looked at the city descending towards the end of the day, I realised I still had gold in my eyes.

It is raining today. When I woke up, there was already a message from my brother sharing this, asking if it rained in this town, too. It did. I walked to the kitchen, to a calming view—one I hadn’t seen yet from this new apartment—the hills in a dark navy blue, solid like a swatch you’d select to get a bucket of paint, almost like it was painted by a child who had just started out, with no concept of highlights and shadows yet, painting them in the most earnest sense of the act and being liberal with the amount of colour they use. The morning has gotten on since then. I have answered calls about two deliveries and one installation. I remembered that the rug the dry cleaners promised would get picked up was not, in fact, picked up. And then, I looked at the time to realise I had missed most of the morning. Making coffee, I panicked a little, then caught my breath and realised that the worst that could happen was some minor disappointment at work, a manager or some such in the chain of command will have something to say, and then, we will all agree to finish things as soon as possible. I could not let that colour the whole day. There is so much patience in us—if we give it a chance. What is done is done, and what is left will be done at some point. I must learn to master my breath and catch it before it begins to get away from me. It tends to take the day away with it, too. In the distance, I see the sun breaking out of the clouds. I believe the rain will stop soon. The city has gotten out of its languid morning—I see cars going to and fro in the glimpse of the street from between the trees; the echoes of the horns have begun to push the torpor of the moist morning away— I should follow suit, too.

It has been my experience that if I cannot be happy for longer—perhaps, owing to the perils and pressures of modern employment—an hour would do. And if an hour is too long, a minute would suffice. I cannot do this always, and, often, I miss the mark, but sometimes, when I realise it just in time, everything changes. It occurs to me that out of all things that are important in this world, the basic tenets to a good life are ever-unchanging. Love and levity are all that a good life requires. And I am blessed that I have an abundance of both, that the dearth is over, that the fallow has passed. In this burgeoning garden of all things that are wonderful, I get to laugh with my nephew and kiss the love of my life and sit with my parents to talk about the world, often, leading to absurd disagreement, but such is the nature of these things. And yet, I would not give it away for anything. I will protect it. I recently looked at a safe with a password and a keycard and a complex, seven-mechanism lock for a drawer in the bedroom. It is a new house, and while we do not have valuables when we first move in, the instinct always urges: what if, one day, there is something you want to protect? There is, but a drawer cannot fit it. There is hope—for what might happen, for the little good that catches us by surprise, for the fact that most people, left to their devices, make the right choice, that people are, for the most part, good. Today was a day that drained all of me out of myself, and I must get a good night’s sleep to catch my wits about me. But even today, I had a minute to stop and tell myself, “What a wonderful life this is.” I did this in the evening. Then, I watched a little TV and killed a little bit of time, and all was right in the world.

I sit here on the same desk, albeit in a different home, and I realise that this is the fourth February I have sat and written words from this chair, precisely in this manner: a cup of herbal tea, its aroma and steam wafting in and about the room, the lights dim and warm, almost hugging me in the wintry blanket outside the glass door to the balcony, music moving between tracks like a train with no destination. The realisation puts a smile on my face, as it ought to. For better or worse, for the most part, I have written. There have been tribulations and distractions, and there have been several moments when I have felt all this to be moot, but I reckon I tend to return over and over, and I believe that tells me that some part of me must really want to torture myself to spit words on a screen. I have done this in the cold of winter, and I have done this in the vivid colour of spring, and I have done it in most days in between. And with all these pieces, patterns have emerged, as they should.

The most distinct detail in my body of work—if I may have the audacity to call it that—is a lack of proper nouns. No specifics, no names, no detail that may distract from the essence. Earlier, this was an oddity at best, but slowly it evolved to mean more. Now, I believe that to capture a moment, we must strip away all that puts it in the conscious stream of events we experience. Must we know the excruciating detail of someone’s heartbreak to know how they are hurting? Does the sun really glow differently on a Wednesday afternoon? Of course, those of scientific minds would jump and say, “Aha! It does,” and being one so myself to a degree, I agree with their claim. But the essence does not change. That we all fall, often due to gravity but sometimes with a lapse in judgement, remains true no matter who you are; it remains true no matter where you are, and most importantly, it remains true no matter when you are. I believe that is what I wanted to achieve when I realised and reiterated this lack of detail consciously, when I pruned every word that suggested this life that I live could not be your own, the places I visit could not be down the street, and the thoughts I have could not occur to you. I believe I have done that to an extent.

The greatest piece—the one that I aspire to write—is one that has no identity of its own. None of this is mine. I give it away freely. These words belong as much to me as they do to anyone else who reads them. This was never an exercise in vanity.

My eyelids are heavier than the weight of all my responsibility, and yet, this day appears to be unlived. It is not for the lack of action, for there were things to do, and I did them with the best of my ability. Now, it is almost two in the night, and the dull light from the lamp falls on my face, and I have no plaque to show, no award to lift. There was not a single minute to rest, and the little ten-minute respite I decided to take in the cab ride to meet friends—who, for all their eagerness to convene over food, talked about nothing of significance—was thwarted by an early arrival and the driver asking me, over the sound of wonderful music, whether I wanted to get off here or on the opposite side of the road. Dinner was two hours down the drain, where the food was as okay as food can be, and there was no shortage of things to discuss, too, but every interesting, intriguing topic flew on and off the table with the haste of a mosquito in a crowded room.

Out of all my pet peeves with those around, this is the largest one: how a good prompt, a good topic, is shrugged out of a setting without realising how hard they are to come by, and not only shrugged, but replaced with drab, flavourless humour or the sheer incompetence and inability to have an opinion. It baffles me to see the weightlessness of those around me: they have no personal philosophy, no opinion of their own, no reason for them to stand their ground, and so, with shaky foundations, they slide about their days into yet another year. There is but no error in their ways, for error comes from the conviction to follow through with what you believe in, not in regurgitating beliefs—eliminate the latter, the former never occurs. I envy them. Of course, I do! I make mistakes—often. It is all I have ever done, but they are the well-adjusted. They tell people like me how the world works over and over while I, having failed a million times to merely sway it in a different rhythm, nod reluctantly like a child who has just flunked another test.

This is what makes me tired; this is what made me tired today: the attempt to live a real life with my feet planted in the ground for things that ring true to my ears. And yet, I am up at night, wasting these words, and all of them, I suppose, sleep peacefully. Who gains from this? Who wins? No one does. The world, in its intricate tapestry of how things connect to one another, loses. Those like me? Well, we simply lose a little sleep. Then, we wake up and try again.

The bell from the church nearby rings once. Then, it rings again. Now, I could be sure a minute must have passed, but I look at the time, and an hour has gone by. What a tragically slow morning I find myself in. To motivate myself to do anything has been onerous and feels like lifting the heaviest, the largest weight in the world. And when I finally manage to sit down to write, the phone begs for my attention again. But it is no bother. There are people in my life. If they have something to say, I must listen to it: the annoyance of a friend’s redundant humour, the question they already know the answer to, and the advice they will never be bothered to follow; the long-drawn, factual, continual conversations with my brother about all that exists under the yellow sun, despite him never asking whether I want to engage on a topic or if it all matters to me; the sweet nothings of the morning in the most mellifluous voice from the love of my life. It is easy to move about life like you have something important to do, but what we have to do is seldom important. The important is in between. I know this like the back of my hand. But then, the demands of the world never cease, and it occurs to me once again that to be a living person is the most difficult task of all. And when I say “living”, I mean it in the most alive, most true sense of the word. Several people have jobs, have routines in the morning, have oatmeal off the breakfast menu at a chain brand cafe in a rush, but I would never want to be them. They are not living. But I must remind myself of this time and again, and over and over, and often between the chime of the bells atop the church in my beeline. To live is to remind yourself consistently of what it means to be living, and then do it again just for good measure. We are frighteningly foolish, forgetful creatures. We could convince ourselves a meeting at work is more important than laughter if left to our own devices.

“I could not be more in love,” I claim with the steadfastness of an inebriated, boasting soldier with his leg on a stool in the bar, but the bravado is short-lived, for I wake up in the morning and find that I can, after all, be a little more in love today. Then, the next day rolls over, and the sky is a perfect blue and clear like the conscience of a child, and the hills in the distance are vivid like oil painstakingly smudged on canvas, and I realise I am a little more in love still. And this happens day after day, and I realise I ought to stop. It does not behove me to tell myself things that are not—that cannot be—true.

I can be more in love. I can always be more in love with you. I will be when I wake up tomorrow. And I will spend all my days losing face over this and fading into you. All my achievements—present or those waiting—wane in front of you telling me about your day. It is the greatest thing I do, for it is the greatest privilege to be the one you tell things to. And to think I was once afraid of what might happen, to think there were valleys of differences between us, how we have bridged it all, how we have overcome it all, and how we have walked over thin air to meet for a kiss. To watch you move about the house is but better than any film, any opera I will ever watch, and to watch an opera with you is, in turn, all the more magical. Days of quiet idleness, days of buzzing busyness, and all in between become better when you grace me with a smile. I would go to war with the world over a single slight on you, and, which is more, I would go to war with myself if needed, too.

I reckon I could go on and on with this and never stop, and all of what I will say will be true, and all of it will be earnest, but what is the point in making a fool of myself any longer? I am yours—heart, body and soul. That is the long and the short of it. And I will go to sleep, and I will wake up. And when I do, I will be yours a little bit more, too. And this is how it will be, forevermore.

In the evening, after my brave battle with the ants that lasted more or less the entire morning, after the proceedings of a general workday in the afternoon, after the rushed care of my body and mind, I walked to get a cup of coffee before heading on into the night. I walked for fifteen minutes in the cold of March; the patio cafe, my regular haunt—and it is a haunt, for I simply sit there with a cup of coffee, thinking, like a ghost who may as well not be there on the white-enamel painted chair—was closed. A rare sight! But such is life. Rare things do happen. And there will always be tomorrow. And if it remains closed then, too, well, there are always more directions to take a fifteen-minute detour. Much disappointment in life is in a hurry; it is fleeting in the most literal sense of the word, like a bird which flies through a window. We cage it in, we shut the window, we prevent it from flying away. And I believe I talk high and mighty today, but I have done this enough to warrant compunction as I put this down. But much wisdom in life waits. It sits right across from us, day after day, for us to take note of it. It is us who assume it to be in the invisibility of the scenery. Well, it seems, today, I have taken note.

I walk to the desk to revisit a half-written piece, and it is written partially because I slept while writing it, reminding myself once again that working from the bed, no matter what kind of work it is, comes with a sense of indolence. I must avoid it today. And since I have forced myself to get out of bed on time—with no merit because the afternoon is here and I have accomplished sparingly little—I shall try to avoid this before it becomes a habit. All writing must happen when the light is still out. At least in cities and towns that are colder. And I shall remember this for my entire life. This is how it has to be if I have to get these words in and some pages filled. To get in bed with any intention other than that of sleep is playing right into the trap of fate. Before you know it, you open your eyes to the soft, beige light filtered through the curtains, and the words remain incomplete and even unwritten at times. But now, I shall complete it all for writing—the act of putting words down—and writing—the act of taking a thought and turning it into meaning—are two separate activities and can happen asynchronously. But the latter must happen first. The act of jotting it all down can wait. At least, this is how I have always looked at it. And perhaps this is my excuse for the days and nights I spend without writing, that it is the former, that it is merely pushing on buttons that remains, that the work is mostly done.

Coming back to the hometown has caused a stir in my willingness to do things, as I was doing them just a day before I arrived. Perhaps, owing to the fact that the weather is not helpful in the least. It is cold and dry and drab, and no matter how many clothes you stack onto your person, there is no respite towards the end of the day. You realise a breeze caught you at some point—and often you can place it with the accuracy of an astute detective for when it must have happened and how—and now you must lay and rest. Most of the last few days have been either this or worrying about the new apartment, things that remain undone, trinkets and furniture that remain unbought, deliveries that are pending, and cleaning that never ends. There was also an invasion by some ants practising the most subtle guerrilla warfare, but I reckon that was a minor episode and was thwarted by sealing the hole they had been using as an inlet into enemy territory. But yes, it has been different and distracting enough that I find myself in a fix yet again. And this is where my want for constance, for rigidity, comes into the picture again. Oh, how I would love a life with little change—the same home, the same places to visit, the same days to live. To many, it might sound like imprisonment, but to me, that is true freedom. To be unbothered by the other frivolities of the day and life, to be left alone to think, to read, to not have to worry about invitations, to have the stubbornness take such a hold on you that you simply reply “no” to all mail and messages, and not be bothered to give a reason. And when asked for one, you simply tell them that you are too busy, not lying, of course, but playing coy with the interpretation that busyness might look different for all of us, and for some of us, it is the blank nothingness to simply be.

February. It did not occur to me that it was here until I met a friend back in the hometown and took a walk, crossing streets one after the other as the dry winter air brushed my face. How time passes, how it has changed so much, and yet, I cross through them in the exact same manner as I have for years. A sort of afterimage follows me in my head; I trace its steps; it traces mine. My entire life happens all at once, and I realise that this town has many such phantasms of myself, and they are only visible to me, only recognised by me. Yet, they are there, for I run into them time and again. Many of them come from Februaries left far behind in the river of time, floating along with the debris of memory.

I crossed a street that got me closer to home, to the neighbourhood I grew up in. And I walked over the painted street—yellow and black stripes—and I wondered when they changed it. I remember the yellow used to be white. Perhaps someone ran out of white, and then the others never questioned it. But this is how things change. I heard a story once about a person who painted a pier wrong, and the people just carried it into tradition, making it the only yellow pier in the country. I do not remember the specifics. I thought about it as I glided over the empty street. And then, the breeze blew by and kissed me into nostalgia. I remembered suddenly that I was a child once and that this street was out of bounds and that getting here was once an achievement, a milestone of sorts. I wonder what month that was. Perhaps, it was February. We lose track of time so quickly.

I enter the apartment and lay my suitcases down with a thud. It echoes, reminding me yet again that a lot of work must be done before this feels like a home. And then, I remind myself, it always takes work. I have done it before, I can do it again; the good thing is only, I will only have to do it one last time. This is home, for all intents and purposes, and there could not be a better one for when I stand by the window, the entire city appears to be right in my reach, and when I say the entire city, I mean the trees, the hills, the many leftover patches of green and brown that, I hope, shall not leave our collective sights. But, we can only hope. For every new apartment, like the one I live in now, a little bit of the city goes out, and it is nothing but irony to wish for one while wanting the other, and, I reckon, somewhat selfish and flawed. But then again, we are flawed creatures, are we not? I walk around the apartment. A hushed echo trails my steps and follows me furtively. That no one lives here is apparent within the first few seconds. That no one has cooked here, or gotten dressed on a day that continued to slip through their fingers, that it has not seen laughter or pain or extended days of nothingness yet, that no wine has stained the couch accidentally, that life has not happened here yet. But it will. It is, like all things, just a matter of time.

There are as many people in the world as there are minutes in the time the sun’s light reaches them, and there are as many agendas in the world as there are people. And I would assume I too would have one, if looked from the outside in, but from inside out, I believe my agenda, if there was any, is about as literal as the word could be in that I have a few things on it today: sipping coffee, doing my crossword, packing my suitcase, working and writing, some other day-to-day oddities, a little meditation if time allows. And my hope from myself, from this day, is that all of that is done and dusted before the night sets in. My life and, by extension, I, are simple that way. The rest may be little displays of annoyance, such as wanting no vehicles parked boldly and with abject stupidity on the sidewalk so I can use it for its intended purpose, but that, and other little things like those, are but provocations and responses to the world. Often, I keep a tight lip and keep it to myself, and they spill out only in the presence of those I trust would not keep it in some sort of tally or record either because there is some sort of mutual respect and love between us, or when I am certain they could not keep a tally or record of the greatest truths even if they wished! But all that said, I float aimlessly. I do not want to spin the world a certain way. I want to go wherever it takes me. I am sure people have their reasons, and I am sure all of them are justified, and I am sure people far more educated, far more capable than me are put in charge of the world or in charge of where it will go next or where it ought to go next. I trust them to do their job well so long as they do not bother me while I sip my coffee quietly in the corner. I was never of this world, only from it. If the world itself holds no candle to me and my attention, then how, I wonder, do religion or country or other arbitrary taxonomies fare? I stand for nothing. I simply stand to take the sun in. I go about yet another day.