I grab my favourite mug off the shelf and rest it on the kitchen shelf. I notice how its white enamel insides have now turned brown over time. How things get old, how fast they change colour, how quickly the dust gathers, how memory forms, and how it melds into a blob of remembrance with no end and no beginning. I remember the day I bought the mug. I do not remember anything from that point on, only infinite images of it being filled with coffee or soap and, on rare occasions when more people were over than I could count, booze.
There are times when I am dusting things off in the apartment. I pick something up only to remember how I got it, and then, the story unfolds again; the cleaning takes the backseat for a bit.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I passed an antique store, and I could not help but pause and take a picture. I could not help but exclaim how beautiful it is that something as run of the mill as an old spoon can mean so much, and can tell legends of its own: of being passing hands, getting borrowed, or forgotten. Backpacks get ripped from their sides but are never repaired, and shoes get soiled. Books get their corners blunted and dulled and never complain. It is not the toll time takes that interests me; how we fail to notice it for days on end makes me curious.
The grey shaggy rug covering most of the hall in this flat does not look or feel how it used to when I first got it. I do not see this on most days, but when I do, I cannot help but resist the wave of nostalgia that crashes over me. And what do I remember? I remember returning to this town for six months; then, six months became a year.
Now, three whole years have passed.
Now, I sit here at this desk, which too has been nicked from here and there, looking at the spotless leaves sprouting from the plants on it, which are a far cry from the dusty ones that have remained since I got them from the nursery, sipping from a mug that, as I mentioned, is browner than its original white now. None of this was here; none of this came out of my suitcases.
I admit it worries me how quickly time passes, but then I look around; I cannot help but smile at how things get old.