journal.coffee

A world of broadcasting, and here, I sit facing a journal. My ineptitude to follow social expectations puzzles me today as it did the first time I experienced it. I do not remember precisely when this was, but I do remember feeling a deep need to ask, “Why?” And then, in the face of cricket silence at best or “because that is how it is” at worst, I knew it would always trouble me, that there was something inherently different in my perception of things.

Of course, we all believe ourselves to be different when we are young. Naturally, I did find other mavericks—some who taught me to pretend by doing the bare minimum to be what society, as a whole, perceives a person to be, and some who taught me, by their existence itself, to never give too much merit to this want to fall out of the crowd, to try and live in the world still. This careful balance now sets the backdrop of my life.

Still, the utter ridiculousness of sharing every breath, recording and filming every second of our existence glares straight into my eyes, and perhaps, it is not the act itself. Perhaps, it is the broadcasting that is expected of everyone now—to get a job, or someone to read your words, or even find love, I reckon. And I did play by the rules for some years, but then, a voice inside me softly asked, “Why?” And when I could not answer, and when playing a part in my life instead of living it became too perverse an approach, I decided to stop and hide it all, tucked it deep beneath the smile when I tell people nothing interesting, nothing worth mentioning goes on in my life.

I am now protecting my life from other people. And sure, I know the perils of straying too much from the herd, so I share a taste now and then, like a piece of cheese on a charcuterie board or a sip of wine you could not afford a whole glass of at a chic restaurant, but when I see an opening, I make an exit, and I tell no one about it.

“Where have you been?” they ask me.

“Here, home, where else?” I tell them.

But I know what they are truly saying is, “We know nothing about you; we used to know so much,” and what I am truly telling them is, “I know, I’ll prefer to keep it that way.”

It has been over three years since I came back to this town, and now and then, I realise that despite the never-ending construction, the malls, the cafes, and the rich people and their large cars appearing out of thin air and taking over all our regular haunts in their fancy clothes and white shoes that are always clean, the city still has its distinct sluggishness to it and that I should move back to some small apartment in a larger metro. Maybe then I will find the others, wherever they are.

I read a book, which was an entire study on how larger ideas get exchanged faster the larger a city is, and it did feel true when I read it, but then, what will you do of a grand idea when your soul has already left your body after an exhausting two-hour train ride home? And what will you do when your family lives in another state and visiting them would be an ordeal?

When this year began, I visited one of those big cities that I loved visiting only for its sheer scale, but this time, having lived in this pocket of peace, it broke my heart in a way I can’t yet describe, and when I came back, I could not write. It was as if I had lost my spark, like a pen that falls out of your pocket as you rush about at the airport. It isn’t until you need it that you realise it isn’t there. It was like that, and I could not write for months. The few pieces I did manage, I wrote only on sheer willpower. But only now have I been able to wash it all of me. Only now can I write as freely as I did last year.

A part of me is frustrated with the tardiness and the casualness of this city, but a part of me knows that is what keeps it liveable, that there is still something more than this game we play. The simple pleasures have almost, fortunately, remained simple.

I sit across from my friend and have coffee with him, and we talk about how we both seem to be living slower than we ought to at this age. And I nod in agreement.

“Yes, I think I might try to go out if I feel things get too slow here”, but then, I realise what a week did for my writing, how it clouded my view of the world, and I pause and then say, “I couldn’t be too sure though. I can never be too sure of anything.”

I spent the first half of this empty Saturday talking to friends on the phone about the little fits of nuisance to find solace and belonging. All the while, I kept looking out the balcony door, wondering how the weather was frustratingly unideal and, frankly, not the kind of hot like a sumptuous meal on a cold day or like a slice of pizza with bubbling cheese coming fresh out of the oven, but like water in a bottle that was forgotten in the car the entire afternoon drinking which does nothing to quench your thirst but only make you feel that taking that sip is, and might forever be, one of the greatest regrets of your life. The lifeless air surrounding me feels like a perpetual heartbreak, but not the one that you use to sculpt poems out of; instead, one that is so pedestrian that to make even a verse out of it would be a crime against all those who have ever written poems before. Has June always been this dreary, or has this one arrived like a detached coworker who arrives with no smile on his face and no hello on his tongue, only a sense of obligation that he had to come in today like he does, like everyone expects?

The coffee has been sitting here for hours and has not gone cold. It has maintained this temperature like how the sky has maintained its stance for being right in the centre of blue and grey. Perhaps, this day, given how slow and, if I am being honest, useless it seems, is the perfect excuse to do nothing at all. Read a book, maybe or lie down. I believe on days like this one, like how they have been for this past week or so, that is the only course of action—nothingness. Instead of resisting the absence of energy, you give into it, you surrender the ounce of vigour you had, and you fade into the hours that all look the same. So, perhaps, until the rain the weather report so confidently shows arrives, I will be as lifeless as everything and everybody around me.

My neighbours from the apartment straight ahead of mine hung some clothes on the railing of their balcony as I wrote these words. It has been a while since then. Not a single breeze blew them since—not even a little bit. This should not bother me as much as it does, but it does.

The light outside has begun to fade, and the city has called it a day. I shut everything off and take the last leftover sip from my coffee. Then, it occurs to me this was the fourth cup I had today and the ridiculousness of still feeling sleepy. The pointlessness of these cups of coffee and how they do nothing for me makes me chuckle every time I set a mug down at any table, but then, habits are habits, and there is little you can do about the few that are not as terrible as some others. But regardless, the day is over, and Saturday couldn’t arrive sooner. Some weeks are heavy not because something major happens but because nothing happens at all! They are so run of the mill; they take a large bite out of your soul in their banality. This was a week like that, and every moment from it was spent waiting for it to end. And then what? What did I think would happen? Nothing, but despite the air being still and dead, we can hope for eventfulness, we can hope for a bit of rain. It’s the least you can ask from life, after all—for things to happen.

Someday many days from now, I will be lying in the grass under the shade of some sprawling tree, and that will be all I do for the day. That, too, will be uneventful, but I believe it will not feel so heavy. I cannot say why. You just know about some things.

You have some money now, they ask me, why don’t you do it? I believe only those born with it clutched loosely in their hands have the audacity to make remarks like that; the rest of us know it rarely is just about the money.

But there will be a day like that, and then, all these days will be distant and blurry, and whether they were eventful or otherwise would be a moot point. As I write these words, I look at the growing towers of books I have bought surrounding the tenements of the few I have read. Yes, I will get to all of you, too, I sigh. I will get to all of it. There is still time. This has all just begun, and I am ahead of where I thought I would be by now. It’s all well on its way.

There are just weeks like the one I just had that I must get through, one by one, over and over. Patience is all living is about—patience and looking at the sun now and then.

For the last couple of days, we’ve all been waking up with sweaty palms and a sad, muggy air in the room. June casts its spell on the world, and suddenly, everything is warmer than you’d like it. Outside the window is a world stuck in time, almost overcast, with no sign of any activity, no wind. The peace offering of dried leaves from last evening, brought to the balcony by the barely blowing breeze, seem to be fixed, almost glued to the grass. There is such listlessness outside; it has begun to rub off on me and my attitude toward whatever I do. But the day is getting on, the things to do are piling on, and here I am, struggling to write in the face of this dead air, this more than morbid day, and when I say morbid, it is only because it appears as if there is not an ounce of life in it. There are days in summer when energy flows all around you, and then, there is a summer like this, too.

My position is not lost on me. To be able to waste this amount of thought on the weather requires a steadfastness in life that I do not deny. Things are stable, as they can be in many ways, and it has led me to worry about the weather. I have things to do and decades to worry about, but the days could not be more yellow and warm. There is little else I need to do than write these words, work a job, and ensure I am well. Just now, a pigeon landed on the balcony in a languid stupor. If it was exhausted, it had been exhausted a while now. I thought it would fly away as they usually do, but spent as it appeared, it decided to walk around for a bit, and now, it seems to be catching its breath under the shade of the wall in the corner. And here I sit, sipping coffee, looking outside. This day has gotten on already. Four hours since I woke up, it seems not a second has passed. I wonder when it will rain. I hope it rains soon. This sordid listlessness has ensnared people and pigeons alike, it seems.

It often surprises me how people underestimate the expanse of what someone can know if they simply read, for they do not talk about such things because it is perverse to always show that you know something about anything.

There are times when you share your knowledge, and times you keep it tucked in the back pocket like some receipt you forgot was in there. If, for example, you find yourself at a party at three in the morning, and if things have reached the point where people are simply sitting down with their drinks in their hands, you do not talk about the things you know for only two things can come out of it. If they somehow reject what you have to say, no matter the pedigree of where you read it, it will lead to an altercation the others are too tired to watch, and this will do nothing but turn what was a graceful descent into an unfortunate end. On the other hand, if they do not say anything but feel inadequate for not knowing much about how coffee was first made or the clear difference between an ale and a lager, or some old law which serves nothing but be a piece of trivia, they will continue to remember how you made them feel, despite it being their fault for not reading enough, and they will never invite you again.

All that to say that there is a time and place to share what you know, but if you ever happen to find yourself in the company of an expert who is only one per a degree that eats dust in some drawer they have not opened in years, and if you truly know what you know owing to reading out of general curiosity and the joy of knowing things—which is the only way to read—and not out of the necessity to fulfil some credit criteria, I suggest you destroy them and let them have it. There is a time and place, often at a table in a cafe, where you have been quiet too long, waiting for a moment to pounce. If you find that window, by all means, pounce.

The view that knowledge is not found in books or an interconnected web of ideas, experience and error must be destroyed like the paper armour of expertise they wear. It was better when knowledge and reading were synonymous. I suggest we start a quiet revolution and put things back to where they were.

I sit with a cup of coffee and my eyes half open while the sun, its soft light, continues to seize all of this town and its torpor. I hesitate to begin the day. There is a limbo between when I wake up and before I become a real, moving part of the world. I find myself there often, and mostly, it is the only place I find myself at home. I rarely want to leave it; I am cooped up cosily there.

For all my readiness, I rarely am ready. For all my presence, I am almost always aloof. Every day I live is in resistance to my nature. Maybe, that is the problem with making things look easy. As time passes, people forget it was ever hard, ourselves included. I sit here, and I do nothing. I am not ready to be a person yet, I tell myself. Let me finish my coffee and get back to you in about ten minutes. With all that haggling done, I lean into the chair, let my shoulders down, and look out the window at nothing.

The morning I wrote the above passage was two mornings ago. Now, it is almost midnight two nights later, and I sit here, my shirt unbuttoned and a glass of wine on the table. For all its tribulations, this life I live is a good one. This is not washed over me, but a man forgets now and then. Guilty as charged, I accept that this realisation has come too late this year. I seem to have had my head in the sand for so long; it’s June already!

A tardy spring and gratefulness are how I will remember this year. While walking on the sidewalk last evening, I noticed the bougainvillaea had gone out of its way to cover it. I was too tall for it now, and my hair kept brushing against it. It was then, perhaps, that it must have hit me, or maybe, at some party, or while I laughed about some things I have no control over. I do not know where my disposition went or why the world’s heaviness crushed my shoulders for so long, but it was there. Now, it seems to have taken its bow, made its exit, and given way to an excess of daisies, which seem to have begun a conquest on the pots in the garden below this apartment complex.

I said this year was slow. Perhaps, it is right on time. After all, now that I say it out loud, I wonder, who am I to decide?

Making coffee this morning, I did not know what I would do for the day. I had a general idea like how we have a general idea about how our friends spend their days, but if I were asked to describe either in excruciating detail, counting the unforgiving minutiae, I would be both an unkempt person and a terrible friend. But since no one has such questions, I am spared. I envy those who know what they want in life. I map out every corner of my day on most days because I wander aimlessly. For all checklists I scratch off every day, if someone asked me where I was going, I would not have an answer. Honestly, I would not know where to begin. My dreams change like the weather in this city, which graced us with the sun for precisely one and a half days before sweeping up a gust out of the blue and deciding it would be a storm again. I resemble this sky more than I do any picture anyone has made of me in their mind. For all their surety, I am filled with doubts. I often tell people I do not know how this story ends, that I will be fine with whatever ending I get. The ending is not my concern.

But every so often, I wish it were. I wish I cared about the times I live in, not the centuries that have long passed and the decades I will never get to see. I wish I cared enough to be bothered by this vagueness. But I do not. I do not care about where things go as long as they keep heading somewhere. I believe movement is enough. When things stop moving is when I will be concerned. I know it was not this way earlier. Somewhere below all this, I remember knowing where things were going, steering the course, and not giving in to the forces of time and fate. But like someone who wakes up on an island, having fought unbelievably well against nemeses they can never defeat, I, too, have no intention of setting sail again. I, too, am grateful that I can still walk, that things still move and that everything is in the right place. There is no greater blessing than braving the storm and coming out unscathed, for whatever it is worth.

But somewhere deep down, a voice has started to emerge. I can hear it sometimes, inciting rebellion within me. Its whispers have gotten louder.

Perhaps out of general exhaustion and lack of acknowledgement on any given day, or maybe, out of randomness, I let myself slither into the more selfish parts of who I am this morning. Since then, it has been a day immersed in the sad thanklessness of what I call life. They teach us never to expect credit, that it is perverse and immoral, but why should someone do anything then?

There are times when you do the work, and if all goes correctly, I wager there is a moment of celebration or acknowledgement. A farmer toils for harvest. There is no other reason for his work. Bushels of grain and fruit is why he bears the sun, day after day, over and over. And if they are empty season after season? I reckon he will find another line of work. But what of all we do for the world we live in, for the corner we call our life? Do you ever get a chance to reap something out of it? Part of me knows this lacklustre feeling of being overlooked is but exhaustion, but on some days, we can throw a tantrum and bitch about the parts of our lives we don’t quite like.

I detest this part: for all my motivation to do good work, to do good, in general, to do the right thing whenever I can, I barely garner claps or a note of thanks. Often this does not bother me at all. Then, there are days when I wake up, and my first thought is the pointlessness of my actions. Even these words that I write day after day are acknowledged sparingly, if at all, and if they are, it is by those who already know about them.

For the better part of a decade, I have been fighting uphill for everything, to live a righteous and better life, not to waste most of it, and if I stumble or err, to do better. I have beaten myself up to an alienation I cannot explain. Ultimately, all my noble habits are for nought, all my words remain hidden, and I go unnoticed no matter where I am. This feeling has engulfed me today, like this quiet, purple June sky has engulfed the city. Perhaps, there is nothing else left to do today but to take a walk and sleep. It is a thankless existence for most of us. No snare drums thump for our arrival. We move silently from one place to another, busy living as they taught us to.

I almost always skip breakfast, and sometimes, by the time I pour milk over some cereal, it is already past noon. And I believe people have all sorts of things to say about it, but then, they have all kinds of things to say about everything. I don’t pay much heed to what people have to say, and I have people to thank for that. When they tell me I behave like a child if I make a pun too many, or drink myself out at a party as if it was my first, or continue to carry with me the interests I had as a little boy, I do not care for it, not anymore.

Perhaps, it is because they are correct. After all, only a child is bold in the most harmless, softest of ways. A pun does not hurt anyone; it only makes them feel the envy of never being able to let go of their adult pride to say something ridiculous and mildly funny, and the other things have similar results. Whenever someone calls you a child for doing something, they secretly wish they dared to do whatever it is, too, and when they realise they have been living wrong all this time, they have no choice but to paint it wrong, but it is not so; it is only different.

There are parts of me that do not fit well with most of what we call the world, and it is none of my concern. All trees are the same to us, but to all trees, every tree may be different in ways we do not understand, even beyond the superficial turning of their branches or the colours of their leaves—things that we do notice if we have it in ourselves to look up on any given day, which rare for most people, but it does happen.

Of course, as is with all things, this is a game of balance. For every bill you struggle and pay, you must climb a wall for no other reason but to check if you can do so. For every difficult conversation you have, you must splash on a puddle to wash the dirt of age. And for every impossible situation you face, you must make a harmless pun that makes them roll their eyes. Where do you get all these terrible jokes, they ask me? It is an urge I cannot resist, I tell them. It comes to me, and I must say it out loud.

Between you and me, if I don’t, I might grow old like all of them. Now who wants that, I wonder.

Didn’t write for what—how many days? Three or four or maybe more; did not keep track, of course, was too busy living. Made several notes here and there and forgot about them until I sat at the desk.

The process is easy. I refuse to believe it begins somewhere or ends somewhere. It starts when you feel something enough to put it down and ends when you write the last word, but when would I ever write it? There is always something more to write after you are done writing. There are more pieces I have not written than the ones I finish, and many I have left midway kept like dough kept in the corner to ferment and rest. I think every person must live first before they tell a story. Living always comes first—documenting it, sharing it comes later. Many befuddle it and have it the other way around. I pity them.

Yesterday, I took a nap on the plane because the sky was too bright, the clouds too white, and I was too tired to look out and bear it all, and a sentence came to me: no matter who you are and where you come from, there will be some struggle, and in the end, only you will know it. It will be your weight to lift, your cross to bear, and as much as telling others is an option, you will never find the words or the opportunity—which is often more critical. If you have ever tried confessing your unending love for someone, you know the struggle of finding them at the right moment and by themselves, which is, again, more important. People are rarely alone anyway. Their thoughts, regrets, and other badges and patches of time and worry travel with them. But that is not the topic at hand; my digressive roundabout ways of saying things get on my nerves as much as they do others, sometimes. The case is that no matter who you are, you will struggle with something. This is, of course, an obvious realisation about yourself. Ask anyone on the street if they have ever struggled, and they will tell you: naturally.

But this is not as obvious when you think of others, and it is the more difficult thing to admit: as much as I have struggled, others have, too, in things they don’t tell me, especially in them, like all I refuse to mention even when given a chance, or a thousand.

I’ve thought about time. It does not surprise me, nor was I able to make any major or new observations. But it does not mean I didn’t think about it. Most thought is routine; you do it like the dishes or cooking the few things you know how to cook well. That is to say: you do it without volition and almost robotically. It would happen even if you weren’t thinking about it, and it would happen precisely as it would if you had your mind set on it. That is how I think about time. It occurs independently, and I don’t have to move a muscle to trigger the thought. I reckon there are topics like this for all people. For me, it is time, its passage, its importance, its monotony and its omnipresence.

I sit on this bus, as I have done many times before. Like the dishes, like writing, like everything else that I do over and over again, it has all melded into one another. There is no particular memory I have of travelling in an overnight bus. I just have a general idea of how it goes and what happened when I was on a bus once, but separating it all and sifting through it is impossible. Time has cast a patina on it all. It’s all safe and protected and forever hidden from even myself. But most of all, like all things with a little burnish on them, it is colourful and vibrant.

I reckon, in the end, it all becomes this: a collection of general ideas. I will never befriend someone new like the first few times, and indeed, I will not fall in love and know about it. It will happen and get melded with the many times I’ve experienced it before. There is nothing new to feel anymore. All the new gets sorted into a label before it even happens, and why does it happen? Time, of course; why else? It is time that blunts the effect of novelty.

Many people would think ill of this idea, and immediately, conditioned as they are to say the right thing, even when no such thing exists, they will retort by saying something that has been rinsed and repeated a million times by all sorts of people. There is always something new that can happen; they might say, not knowing that their mindless regurgitation of the idea defeats their defense on its own.

All day, every day, I sit and work and go through meetings through a screen, and I send other people messages and work some more, all the while looking outside the window and thinking whether I could stop all that and write. I have done that before, however; I tried that life. Now, if I meet someone who wants to write, and if they think of quitting their job or business or whatever else puts food on the table and keeps the lights on, I tell them it won’t work that way, no.

First of all, a writer does not need any time to write. They do, however, need time to read. Then, they need to eat, to splurge on whatever their choice of beverage—or poison—is, and to live in a place—which could be a home, a hostel or whatever puts a roof over their head. For all of that, they need something to pay the bills with, and that sometimes is the first thing that often gets the axe. I know now: if you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to have to write, but if you’re going to always be a writer, you’re going to need a job, and yes, I am playing fast and loose with the word, and all I mean is you’re going to need something that brings the money in. Only then can you write without worry when the refrigerator is stocked, and there are snacks on the shelf, and when you write without worry, you write well. The words flow carelessly—that is how you want them to flow.

And if you don’t have time to write now and then, fret not, don’t worry about it; this is a marathon, and most die running before they reach the finish line. Be blessed; every moment you get when you are not writing is a moment you can later write about. That is the trick of the trade. When a writer sits at a desk to write, he writes, but usually, it takes time to reach the desk. Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes, it takes days, but often, it takes a good night’s sleep, and, which is more, all of that time eventually ends up on the page. Nothing is ever wasted. The whole profession is built on the backs of the scrappiest of scoundrels, splurging seconds like sultans.

Dark clouds loom over town as if something is about to go wrong. It makes me curious how we suspend disbelief in ordinary things in the name of art. Clouds are ominous in narrative. But when it rains, it just rains. We know this all too well, but when we read a poem or watch a film, we doubtlessly think them harbingers of something awful. But it is not awful—it is the most usual thing. More storms are swept daily than we can count. Far worse things happen, and we never bat an eye.

I sit at my desk, and the burst of light from the window has dwindled in lieu of this weather, but push has still not come to shove—I have not gotten up to turn the lights on, and now, only this corner I sit in beside the glass door of the balcony has any light on it. The rest is engulfed in the soft shadow of the evening already. I am lazy in this regard. Most of what I do—daily and in life—is rarely ahead of time. It is always in the nick of it that I do whatever I expect of myself, and what of the expectations of others? I do not care much about it.

I have learned there is only one promise to keep in this life: to do what you told yourself you would do—whether it comes of your own volition or from a request is a different thing. But we must never succumb to expectations. People expect the most from others and the least from themselves. My expectations of myself are humongous; it leaves no time and space to think of what others expect of me. There has always been one rule: to do what I said I would do, and I have made myself proud, and I have let myself down enough to know not all of us can win all the time, but we all can win sometimes.

I was talking to someone about the reluctance to improve in the average person a few days ago, and it occurred to me that the only thing the average person has to do is be a smidge better, and what average means changes on its own. But I did not say it on the off chance that they considered themselves average. You do not want to offend anyone, not until you intend to. It is like spilling something on the floor. You never want it to happen, and it does happen now and then, and when it does, you spend hours wiping it off.

The events of my days are wrapped into cardboard boxes and kept in the corner of my mind. The dates scribbled haphazardly as if I had no time to hide them. Of course, I did not have any time! Before they even happened, people asked you how things went. There wasn’t a moment to spare. You had to be nimble and preserve things before they even had a chance to ask anything and ruin them. My need to protect all I can from this life, for not sharing anything besides the bare minimum and the irrelevant but comical or jocular, has had an overgrowth. Now, all my life hides obscured by grass no one has mowed in years, intentionally. The best way to protect things from people is in plain sight, right in front of their eyes, and under their noses.

You tell them all your days look the same, but no two days are truly alike; there are subtle differences, but you do not reveal them. You omit them like a letter hidden between the neatly folded handkerchiefs in the almirah drawer. You tell them nothing worth telling has happened lately, even if a lot has happened lately. You only tell them it is nothing worth telling. It has already happened, and all you feel about it has been felt. Why open it to scrutiny or, worse, misunderstanding? Ever so often, excitement transforms into confusion when someone completely misses the point. People come with their ideas, opinions or whatever else they come with; it is better to tell them a joke than tell them things. You laugh and have a good time. No harm is done, and you still like them when they leave. And sure, this may incur some loss. There are always those who want to listen and celebrate or mourn with you, whatever goes, but their numbers dwindle as you move forward in life. No one needs to be privy to your life. At best, they deserve your disposition, which you can keep cheery by looking at the world often.

The rest goes as it does. Years pass, and no one knows the battles you fight or your greatest victories; it is all kept close to your heart, safe and unadulterated. You can remember things and feel exactly how you felt when they first happened. You look at the view from your balcony; you don’t miss a thing.

I woke up at an hour I dare not say. I had been tired to the last cell in my body, and I did open my eyes now and then all morning. Then, I pulled the blanket over myself and slept again. To be out in the world meant that you had to be ready for it, and to be ready for the world was not something you could take lightly. I was not ready the first, second or third time I woke up, but I was ready when the doorbell rang with a parcel.

It always came in the nick of time. You could spend your whole life preparing for a moment but only feel ready at the precipice of it. You could wait years to confess something and miss every opportunity, but only when your heart was thumping harder than the pistons on the engine of a train and only when your voice shivered as if you were standing knee-deep in snow on new year’s eve, did you find that you were ready. Every moment before the second you would utter the words would convince you there was still time, but only when you finally say what you had to say would you learn how tardy you had been.

This was true for all things. There was a trick to it: you let life decide. You let the moment push you to the edge. There was no such thing as being ready in my experience. I was nineteen years old when the beats of my life changed overnight. When I woke up, I had no choice but to learn to dance.

How it changed is irrelevant. They say details make things intimate and vulnerable; I say they are alienating. If I tell you about a cafe without telling you the street it is on, you will see the cafe you frequent in my words. If I tell you its name, it will go in one of two ways. If you are familiar with it, your concern will turn to the veracity. And if you don’t know it, you will think of it as some mythical place in an itinerary you might never fulfil.

Life thrust me into readiness that morning all those years ago, as I am sure it has pushed all of us at some point. But it was not immediate. Funnily enough, it was precisely like today. My phone chimed, and I somehow knew why and how life would never be the same. So, I did the reasonable thing: I pulled the blanket over myself and slept, but when it chimed again, I was sure I was ready.

I walked to the cafe this evening. I had not done this in days because they had been long, and when not that, they had been stormy. I crossed the patio and pushed the glass door, which was locked. The lights were still on, so I stood beside some girls who, I realised, were waiting. But I had not yet decided to wait, and then, I decided it was not worth it, that the walk to the coffee shop was the change of pace I needed in the first place. The coffee is but a dog ear in the corner of that chapter.

I walked away, but as I walked over the grass and out the gates, I could not help but think of how everything was topsy-turvy this year. I had noticed the blossoming sidewalk on my way, with bougainvillaea and other flowers I do not know the name of yet. I whiffed their aroma as I spontaneously bent and manoeuvred my way from under them, and I remembered June was about to begin. It was a tardy year, and in some way, it was the first time the world emulated my disposition.

Then, I thought of the arbitrariness that surrounded me, of how we rarely ever knew what we would do or say until we did those things. It’s all in the capricious decisions based on the most flimsy rationale that life happens, justified only by the person making them. The rest is but entanglement, how paths intertwine and how each decision affects the other, and often, we remain entirely unaware of our impact in changing the tempo of someone’s life. It was the most obvious observation made nonchalantly on an unremarkable evening. For a second, I thought about all the people I had crossed paths with, how we had gone our separate ways without realising what the last word was, and that is what had all my attention for the rest of the evening—of how little it all had mattered, how little I had thought about it, and how we often only collide like molecules in a room.

I reckon if I made small talk with those waiting alongside me outside the locked glass door, I would know a few more people in the city, but then, eventually, it would all come down to not knowing each other. I would move someplace else, or they would stop coming to the coffee shop, and we would not realise a thing like no one never does.