Dog-Ears

You get to a certain age, and you become disillusioned with life. The days often repeat more than you can keep track of, not that you are keeping track, not that you are interested in such a chore—there are enough of them to go around. The last thing you need is one more thing you have to do. Between taking the trash out day after day, all your dreams of finding the yellow brick road are gone. It has, at some point, melded into your life. Perhaps, any road we walk is the metaphorical yellow brick road. Perhaps, that’s it. It better be, or else we are all lost.

Time has marched on, and it is march yet again. In many ways, this year feels precisely like the previous one. Only it seems I’ve left the harder years further behind. One would think this would make me happier. But then, try walking a little too far away from your troubles, and you will forget why you began walking in the first place. The further I leave my problems, the further I go along this path and the more lost I feel. Why am I walking? It is such a simple question but one with tremendous impact. I have asked myself this suddenly, and it has stopped me in my tracks. Below my feet are pristine bricks laid meticulously. I do not know where they lead; I have forgotten where I started. I stand here by myself.

The road is yellow with hope and possibility, yet my shadow that falls on it is still the same. There are no signs around me. The landscape around me remains the same. Nothing has changed. I look around, and I lose my sense of direction. Now, I do not know whether I face where I came from or where I was heading in the first place. It looks all mixed up, but it is all bright and beautiful. The grass is the precise green as green should be, and the sky is the only blue I know. What do I do? Where do I go?

The road stretches ahead of me. The road stretches behind me. It is all yellow; it is all golden.

Out of fear of staying still, I continue walking.

If I were to put my greatest wish in a sentence, it would not be for money, and surely, not for love. If I were to find it in me to tell you what I want the most, I would tell you that I want to wake up in the morning and immediately, from the slice of light that falls on the wooden desk on the wooden floor, to know that I have gotten it. It is a different kind of light when it is raining outside, softer and, in its own way, warmer. That is what I want: to wake up and know immediately that it is raining, to lay in my bed as I hear the sound of the pattering overpowering everything else, and then, to go back to sleep knowing all too well my greatest wish has been fulfilled. I have been kissed good morning by the damp hours of the morning, and I have been lulled back into sleep and comfort.

Only two nights ago, at about five minutes past one in the morning or in the night, whichever way you prefer to put it, I wrote in my notes. If there is one thing I want in life, it is to wake up on a rainy day and go back to sleep. Like we often do for wishes, I watch the days closely, waiting for this to happen. You do not know the sheer scale of my disappointment. There are so many days when it fails to happen.

Now, my wish has been granted. A part of me is curious for what I should have asked in place of this day. There are, as there always are, a plethora of things to solve and a brimming plate of things to do. It is curious, isn’t it, how when our wishes are granted, we can almost immediately think of something more fitting, more urgent, more critical that could have been given to us instead? We often forget that to be given anything in this life results from a lengthy collision course of which we are but a part. Every gust of wind in this world has conspired and blown precisely to get this rain here today, at the right moment, and here I sit, ungrateful and smug.

That is the thing about wishes: when they are but wishes still, we would trade the world for them. But on the off-chance that they are granted?

We wish we wished for something else.

In no particular order: To write only when there is light outside. To not force words out of myself—and if I have to, to not do it at the behest of the ticking hands of a clock. To not let myself become a slave to my fastidiousness or my obsession to have all of it in the right place. This is no apartment; this is my life’s work. I must embrace the mess, to a degree, to till I can find it in myself to manage it. I must carry it with me, and not push it into an over-cluttered drawer. All neatness, after all, depends on how many drawers and boxes you can hide in plain sight. To write in a way that is not boxed in.

To not only break the mould, but shatter it completely week after week, or at least, try. On most weeks, the trying will suffice. To talk about more, to talk about different, and to talk about things worth talking about, even if the world has no care or time for them. To not fall into the trap of wanting to be a performer for a world that forces its tunes on us; to not become an advertisement, and if I have managed to resist it so far, to continue my defiance. To be able to say I did not sell my soul to get more eyes on my words in the end. To write for myself, and sometimes, for the world.

To write about love, even if I have forgotten about what it feels like, especially then. To write about it like we talk of the sweet memory of pumpkin spice in the middle of summer. To write about it without anticipation of it coming, with an assurance that like winter, it shall arrive in its own time, too. To write about it without the worry and terror of it leaving when it does arrive. And if it fails to arrive, to talk about the loneliness, the dejection but not paint a mural out of it. To not make a monument out of pain, and to not let myself wander too far into that maze. To write about it still, however. To try to do it without losing myself.

And if it is in me, to learn to correctly title a piece for a change.