Bookmark #562

I walked to the coffee shop after dinner, a hoodie over whatever I was wearing, part out of habit, and part out of duty, instilled in me like a hangover from years before when I pretended to live like a writer and wrote barely enough to call myself one. Now, I live like a person and be that as it may, I know I must sit and write, come hell or high water. I am so awake, at all times, so brutally awake that I see everything, I see words in silence, and I see meaning in banality, and I am so tired, at all times, so brutally tired that I do not want to look at it, and I want to go to sleep and do nothing else, nothing else at all. And then, I realise I can do none of those things. I can only stay suspended in the middle. There is a tendency in me to seek balance, and there is a tendency in me to struggle to find it. At first, I think of this, and it bothers me, but then I remember all questions are tunnels and all answers wait at the end. All answers mandate crawling to them. There is no other way. And if you cannot crawl, you must at least be willing to walk a mile or two to get coffee. It’s a start, and it gets you somewhere. On most days, it is more than enough: to arrive somewhere.

It was ten at night. Well, two minutes to ten. I sat on the white patio chair, sipping coffee and yawning myself into oblivion. I thought of how there are answers we all find and then quarrel over. “We have crawled and gone through hell for them”, we claim, “they must be the only truth.” For most questions in life, however, there are only two answers: all of them or none of them. For most inquiries about how we carry ourselves, the answer is neither what you believe in nor I; the answer is both at the same time or none. On most days, the only single solution to most questions, as ironic as it appears, is the prospect of another equally correct answer.

But we have walked through the tunnels to reach happiness. How must we lay the sword down? I do not know how, but I reckon it must be in trying to sit and see everything. I wonder if that is why we writers devour coffee, our eyes wide open—we must see everything.

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