How filled with stupor, how languid is this month of December! Perhaps, more than most Decembers, or perhaps, the others are blurred by the snow and the sleet, which my city never receives but I would very much like to see. You must agree that all Decembers are slow, and if you read this in a December different from the one I find myself in now, it, too, would be slow. A conversation with a co-worker who lives in a country so far away that I might never see him, whom I know only through a tiny picture on my computer screen, made me realise that we must take stock of ourselves now. I did not realise it myself this year, and I do not wish to extend my reach to grab the reasons for it. They can fly away for all I care. You do not need reasons for things: for feelings, for love, for living. Things only occur. Like now, the realisation has occurred, and I must take stock of the state of my life as it stands.
The truth is that my life is solitary, and not in the sense that there are no people in it. There are many. I see them sometimes, and I see some more than others. But this life is solitary because no matter how much I talk to others or how often, they will never know the extent of my average day, and they will never feign curiosity. They will forever be satisfied with the parts they know. The view into my life closes with my closing of the door at night, with no keyhole for them to peer through. In the end, it is an opaque blockade, and they will rely on what I tell them, which is not much.
I talk to people and tell them the parts they want to hear, and no, it is not lying, for I do not invent things; it is but curation. All of us do it, of course. But only some admit it.
We contain multitudes, or so they say. A crumb, then, is enough for each person. You share a dream or two with the wrong person, and by the time you walk home, it wilts like a plant watered a little too much. You tell someone about a thought, and they mould it like clay and make it theirs. What urge remains is often lost in small talk or the gambles I make (and lose) in the spirit of attempt.
Thus, this life remains at an impasse, which is the long and the short of it, December or otherwise.