I walked in through the outer gates of the apartment complex and heard the wind chimes from one of the balconies in the sweetest of duets with another set from another balcony. I looked up from my phone to realise it was about to rain and that what did not come during the day often comes to you at night, which is to say that most things happen when they do. You can anticipate them, but there is no use for prediction. To predict anything is nothing but failure. It is failure to admit that there are forces in life that are beyond your control, and often, when something appears like the outcome of painstaking preparation, it is often just dumb luck. You find love when you do. Or if you can look back and pinpoint a few days which ultimately changed your life, they will also seem as if they came out of nothing at all. Then, you will try to make a story. I suggest you avoid that. It leads to only hubris and vanity. To be alive is to do things. Sometimes, things lead to other things. There is no story there. Things do one thing: they happen.
Anyway, I sit here with the balcony door open, waiting. The apartment has gotten a chilly cold, and the breeze has rustled the trees, which seem like they have woken up from an early and incomplete slumber. They are angry and confused. They are flailing at whatever they can manage to grab. They remind me of the friend who sleeps like a dog and often wakes up at the softest of noises. I cannot wait to wake up in the morning to a damp city into a slow day. And what if it does not rain tonight or tomorrow? Well, I will wait for it still. It will come as it comes, and the day when it falls will be damp and slow and a soft nudge into a change of pace for the season. Sometimes, I wish this patience I covet now held my hand when I needed it the most, when my life quivered with uncertainty when I grabbed so tightly at any way I could weave the days into a coherent narrative, a complete story. But then, it came to me when it did. It was a little bit late, I reckon; I had lost much, and the direction of my life was forever altered, but that, too, has been a lesson.