It tickles me curious how whether it rains in the first leg of the day or not sets up the tone for the rest of it. The large, zeppelin-like cloud has poured over the city like a generous bartender filling up drinks for the butterflies at a bar. The spills are too many, too copious, and all glasses are brimming. This has set the tone for the day. The week, already at its end, could not have had a better epilogue. The lychee tree beside the apartment complex shakes violently like a drenched dog as the rain begins to die down. It is already over, but it did what it had to do: reminded all of us to go gentle into the weekend. Now, I want to pick up a book as if I were fifteen and begin reading it during the day and continue until I reach the cover. The only challenge, like always, is other people. But to hell with them; I cannot waste such a good day. I shall keep appearances, but I will not worry about the rest.
This is a day that demands you lie down with a light blanket on top of you and read until your eyes feel heavy as you lose yourself in a nap. When you wake up, you look at the pale evening light sneaking in through the window and begin reading again in comfortable grogginess. The light shiver in the air, the soft rumbling in the distance, the birds taking shelter in your balcony—I can already feel it, as if the day has already happened and I have woken up from an unintentional nap into a moment of snug respite. I can only imagine how incredible the real thing will feel in a few hours.
All my life is a stolen moment. My joy is the few minutes I can take away from the world, sneakily and without a hint that I took them. This is true for most of my day. Sure, I play all the parts I’m given with unmatched accuracy, to the best of my ability—to be alive is to be held accountable for something—but if I were given a choice, I would choose to sit in the audience of one—a perpetual spectator, watching the wheels forever. To exist in a pocket of my own, experience the world, art, literature, a rainy day or two is all I want from my life. I will continue to engage in the rest, for I must, but I will continue to steal my precious seconds. That is my only compulsion.