I sit with a cup of coffee and my eyes half open while the sun, its soft light, continues to seize all of this town and its torpor. I hesitate to begin the day. There is a limbo between when I wake up and before I become a real, moving part of the world. I find myself there often, and mostly, it is the only place I find myself at home. I rarely want to leave it; I am cooped up cosily there.
For all my readiness, I rarely am ready. For all my presence, I am almost always aloof. Every day I live is in resistance to my nature. Maybe, that is the problem with making things look easy. As time passes, people forget it was ever hard, ourselves included. I sit here, and I do nothing. I am not ready to be a person yet, I tell myself. Let me finish my coffee and get back to you in about ten minutes. With all that haggling done, I lean into the chair, let my shoulders down, and look out the window at nothing.
The morning I wrote the above passage was two mornings ago. Now, it is almost midnight two nights later, and I sit here, my shirt unbuttoned and a glass of wine on the table. For all its tribulations, this life I live is a good one. This is not washed over me, but a man forgets now and then. Guilty as charged, I accept that this realisation has come too late this year. I seem to have had my head in the sand for so long; it’s June already!
A tardy spring and gratefulness are how I will remember this year. While walking on the sidewalk last evening, I noticed the bougainvillaea had gone out of its way to cover it. I was too tall for it now, and my hair kept brushing against it. It was then, perhaps, that it must have hit me, or maybe, at some party, or while I laughed about some things I have no control over. I do not know where my disposition went or why the world’s heaviness crushed my shoulders for so long, but it was there. Now, it seems to have taken its bow, made its exit, and given way to an excess of daisies, which seem to have begun a conquest on the pots in the garden below this apartment complex.
I said this year was slow. Perhaps, it is right on time. After all, now that I say it out loud, I wonder, who am I to decide?