Woke up yesterday with a dream I could not make head or tail of, and it was not until the afternoon that I accepted it to be a fever dream. Since then, the juxtaposition of the city caught in the rain, with storm warnings issued yet again, and my body continuing to boil has had me cross-eyed and confused. My febrile and fatigued state has painted the last forty-eight hours in its own dull colours mixed in sweat and many hours of lying down or doing the little I can do. I’d say I was able to do something still, often owing to the faux vigour pumped in my veins through coffee or a tablet or two. But mostly, outside of the hours of work, the last two days have been watching TV and the rain, and at times, both of them together. How fast days pass when we’re sick, and yet, how long every second feels when everything in your being hurts to some degree—it makes me curious still, and here I sit staring at the clear night sky, washed anew by the rain this evening, a cup of chamomile on the sill, enjoying the breeze as it plucks the droplets of sweat stuck to my temples.
Before I moved inside and sat to write, I picked all the books lying on the desk and the rugs and put them back on the bookshelf. All the books I wanted to read, that I had begun reading ardently, have now disappeared into the pile of failed attempts. I must find something else to read when this ends—this fever, this annoyance. It always goes like this—when you find a good book and begin reading it and liking every second of your time spent with it, some barrier blocks it from being read further. It could be a sickness, a spell of busyness, a wedding or something you have no control and imagination for, and then you can never open it up and continue from that point on. You have to start reading it again someday, and until that day arrives, the book remains shamefully jailed amidst the towers of books you own.
Now, I wait patiently for everything to pass and to begin a new book, hoping nothing interrupts it, but seldom is it all so benevolent. Most life is interruption to things we thought we would do, and somehow, between all that, we end up doing something still.