It was the greatest illusion I had somehow managed—that these words were all my life, that all I shared with the outside world was all there was to see. The truth is these vignettes of my life were just that—vignettes. There was much I did not write about; there was plenty I left outside the realm of these passages. Like how writers often wish to eliminate the regular, the quotidian from their words, I eliminated the fantastic, the remarkable. It was not the easiest thing to do. It was selective work—this choice of words, moments, and feelings. Perhaps, the purpose of my writing these words was not to describe the life I lived. They were potpourri in an intricately blown glass bowl, set on the table, only there to spread the gentle fragrance all around, and like potpourri, they were designed to have some purpose but not be the most important thing in the room. This unbothered presence, this veiled existence, is how I lived my life—or preferred it. It was how I wrote these words.
The careful obscuring of the rest of my life was vital to the process; the process was vital to the careful obscuring of my life. They had served each other for years now. Even my writing these very words, at this moment, is a subtle betrayal. I do not intend to cause confusion. By no means is my life some epic adventure; not that any life is a continuous adventure; everyone has to go to some office or the bank or to some building to get something done. I have seen people travel all over the world only to return to fill out a form. There was banality to all our adventures, and there was an adventure to all of our days. All journeys started with a visit to the ATM, some coffee shop, or the grocery store. I wanted to keep reminding myself of this everydayness of life, so I wrote these words, these passages of nothing but the normal.
All words, including mine, were a careful process of sharing just the right amount—to tell as much is required and not a letter more. All life, including mine, was a series of waves softly coming and going, a constant back-and-forth between the shores of repetition and the waters of novelty. The trick was not to forget the shore; there were others there.