After waking up today, I walked around the flat as if I had been to it for the first time, with the strange unfamiliarity of how you wander around in someone else’s home, like a stranger’s place you arrived at drunk and late in the night with other things on your mind than looking at their decor or commenting on their bookshelf and only in the morning was there any time or attention to take a look around and gauge what kind of person lives there. Once I got some coffee in my veins and things began to seem recognisable, I realised I had slept the morning away. Of course, this was not odd to me because the next immediate thought I had was about how the last week had felt longer than a month, and this, I want to specify explicitly, was a welcome change.
It has come to my realisation that, like a dog in the street, I cannot rest for long on most days, that I need to rush here and there, find things to do, go places I would otherwise not go to, and only when I am exhausted and full, and I have a corner of my own, do I find it in me to get some sleep. I reckon this is not true for all of us, and it was not true of me last year, but in the overarching continuity of who I am, I feel this has been a prevalent theme.
If you ask friends I have made over the years, they will vouch for this, and if you ask lovers, I believe they will vouch for it, too, but they may give you a look of disdain on hearing my name. I urge you to only think of this as a mental exercise and take my word for it, and if you do plan to do this, do it without my permission and at your own risk. I would not wish a sour experience on anyone, especially someone who reads my work, of which there are a handful, some I know and some I don’t, but all I could not do without. And if this is a piece being read much, much later than it was published first, you, too, have my utmost respect. Among the many avenues to waste your time, you have chosen these words. There is bravery in this, and there is stupidity, too, and both are the same, depending on what you get out of it.
Oh, how this week, this start of something new, has rejuvenated me, my writing! I reckon there is rarely a more splendid start to a year.