Before I got a sense of myself, a measure of the minutiae of changes in me, the year ended. Now, December waits outside my balcony window. In a while, it will begin knocking. Perhaps I have taken things lightly. I have been wilfully aloof; now, I will bear the fruit of it or lack thereof. I should have been more strict with myself this year.
There is a specific brand of person, and I happen to be dead centre in it, who will do everything to fault themselves, and it has been this way for more years than I can consciously count. After all, until it hit me about twenty minutes ago, I thought November had just begun. I can keep track of time as deftly as I can find love in this life; the jury’s out on the latter, but the survey does not appear particularly gleeful or encouraging.
Major and minor disappointments have nothing on this night, which feels beautiful, energetic, almost impossibly larger than life. I feel this force surging through me. It tells me everything will fall into place. There is a calm touch to it, almost like a hug from a long-lost loved one, but there is also a fierce call to arms. At this moment, I feel I can do anything, yet I have made the conscious, somewhat pointless, decision to sit and write.
I feel my love for banality course through my veins again. How often we lose ourselves, I wonder, along streets and alleys of cities we may never visit again, in crowds of people who do not even know our name, in the dreams of others who rarely, if at all, give us a second thought? I reckon something like that must have happened to this little wayward soul of mine, wandering off into the strangest dangers like a toddler stumbling around in a new place.
Or perhaps it is the sun. Two afternoons in a row, I have stolen a moment to sit under the golden light sliding into my room and lay under it. Perhaps it is nothing but stolen warmth. I had nothing to do for an hour today, so I lay there, waiting. For what? Time to pass. Perhaps I had fewer of these moments this year. I ought to make time for this tête-à-tête with the sun more often.
“Four in the afternoon?”
“No, I would be terribly busy.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Nothing, nothing at all.”