I got out of bed, coughing like a dog, and made coffee. Even when you recover, you are left with lingering symptoms—the minor annoyances remain. I believe I have been ill more times this year than should be tolerated without some sort of concern, but so far, they have only been coughs and colds and fevers. So I am not as worried. It has been a damp year, anyway. The rain has stopped again, which matters little since I’m sure it will begin again soon. At least it is not flooding where I live. This lets me sleep at night. But then, life finds a way to trap us all.
I do not see myself here for long—in this apartment and city. Where will I go? It will not matter. A plan is as relevant as an umbrella in a rampant storm. It feels useful to have it, but its usefulness is limited, and if the headwind is strong, the rain is the least of your troubles as you go around scrambling for an umbrella turned inside out.
To search for new with a stringent set of expectations thought up in the old seems to be precisely the kind of thinking no one ever thinks about, which is to say it is the kind of thinking where everyone does it wrong from where I stand. We must have some idea of where we’re going, yes, but why bother charting an itinerary? We must first find a shore before we begin settling. At least, that is how I will go about this, and it may or may not be wise, but I was never the wisest of them all.
I have only consistently managed to be a step ahead of the curve and not in everything, mind you. In some things, I realise I do not understand even the rules of the games I’ve been put into. But regardless of whether you know the rules, if it is your turn, you must roll the dice. And I, too, have made decisions and said things I learned could have stayed unsaid, not because they were wrong, but because they were honest. You can stay friends with someone for a hundred years without telling them even a sliver of the truth, but tell me, could you live with a liar for that long?
There is no escaping ourselves, and I don’t intend on it. It is the curtains around me that need changing. It has come to my realisation that for all the trees in this valley, no one ever grows here.