journal.coffee

As I walk through the corridors of the building to reach my apartment door, I pass the usual. I pass the guard and the flat, with a plethora of plants outside it. And then, in a daily ritual, the cat scurries past my feet. This conniving miscreant, this thief, always manages to ransack my trash kept outside my apartment. It has made a habit out of it. Of course, I say this in a tone that seems far more annoyed than I am. If anything, it is a bit amusing to me. It is also a welcome back, and it makes me realise that this is what life reduces to when all is good and little is awry. The days end as they end, I work as I work, and then, I come back and see this cat run past me—a slender, grey shadow. But this is life, where you sit and tell yourself not to go and ruin it. It is all too good for me to ruin at the moment, but something tells me I tend to find a way.

For now, however, nothing has changed. I sit here even in October, as I sat here through the other months—working. And I look out the window now and then, and I see the sky change. This city is quite like the cat—it waits for a window and then sneaks up on you. You look outside out of habit and see the sky is pink or orange or another peculiar shade of all things calm and tranquil. And then, suddenly, you snap back into life. I am alive, you think, I must make a cup of coffee at this very moment, and I shall go out on the balcony and stand. So, that is what I do each time I catch the sky in a bit of a mood. And today was the same, I worked hard at things I enjoy, and then, I saw a floral overlay to everything. It was a sort of pastel coral; by it, I mean everything.

Yes, that is precisely how it all looked. So, I took the same cup sitting on the coaster on the desk to the kitchen, and I brewed coffee again, filling it. And then, I stood outside, looked around, and stretched a little. It was then that it occurred to me once again that I was happy.

I don’t want to call it anything. Still, as I come into my own in a year that has passed faster than I could think about it, I have now found firm footing in where I stand in life. If I may be as forward, I may have, in my haphazard attempts, come to know who I am. It is still the first week of October, however, and three months is plenty of time for things to change. Most of us can change within days; a quarter of a year is the universe being generous.

And why do I think so? Simply because I am not distraught—even in October, especially in October when everything slowly turns to the amber death of it all, only to begin again. I have not felt the life going out of me yet. A friend once remarked in a loud pub as we caught up with life that all of us have phases where we thrive and where we don’t, that it is crucial to recognise the latter and be soft with yourself, but that it is equally important to appreciate the former. We are not as equipped to handle peace and calm as we are to handle the inevitable ruining of things. When there is peace and calm, we must recognise it.

When you wake up, perhaps, not with a joy that makes you jump out of bed, but also not some feeling that drags you down into it, only a gentle appreciation for who you are and where you are, you may allow yourself to smile and have your coffee, or tea, or hot water in a cup. But you must recognise it when it happens. When the time comes that you must recall a good time to survive, you should have something to remember how good it gets when it gets good.

I sit here, not smiling but with a smirk that suggests some measure of happiness leaking out of my general visage. It has been a pleasure to be alive. October has just begun, and I know who I am. The contentment of not being lost is unparalleled. I seem to have stumbled my way into happiness. When they ask me how I got here, I tell them I do not know. They ask me, “why do you have a smirk your my face, then?”

“I am as amused by life as you are”, I tell them, “even more, perhaps, infinitely more.”

To write about a moment and nothing else, you must first sit in front of whatever you write on, even if it is a piece of tissue. You must sit straight, close your eyes, and slowly erase everything else. I like to imagine it as a shockwave of deletion as the world around me becomes a grey blur, with only a desk and me in the centre of this vast space of nothingness. A spot of colour between all the white almost painted in rustic brushstrokes. And then, you must bring the first thing you remember into the picture. Then, slowly, you must let the picture form. If it is a cup of coffee, then, in this world of three passages and about three hundred words where you can play God, you must imagine it as you remember it without opening your eyes. You must remember the taste of the coffee to the last detail. One after the other, you must bring each vital thing into the picture again while everything else remains removed. And now, you see the moment for what it is, and you can now write about what is essential. All else is gone.

A writer is not a painter. It is not our job to take in every detail; writing is remembering. It is a test of what you can remember seconds later, days later, and sometimes, years later. As I write these words, I sit at a messy desk in the corner of my bedroom with used-up tissues all over its smooth laminate since I woke up with a stuffy nose. There is a scalding and fragrant cup of coffee, helping me with my runny nose and making it harder to breathe simultaneously. The door to my right opens to a patch of grass and right into the white, overcast October sky, with a broad stroke of the hills: a grey-blue silhouette. The city lays the path between here and the hills. The trees and houses compete for domination as a woman hangs laundry on the balcony, a beeline from mine. Her son—a little boy—stands facing the hills, watching the view or lack thereof. He’s still in his pyjamas; school is off.

The music—a violin overture—sneaks its way into the picture, and the happy, slightly sentimental notes make me remember my childhood. For a second, it seems to be a balcony away, but then I open my eyes. Here I am, back in the room, and the writing is done.

As far as dreams are concerned, there is not much difference here compared to the countless small-town boys who grow up in terrible neighbourhoods that reek of piss and chaos at all times, where the roads are barely paved no matter how the rest of the city looks. That is all you want when all things are tallied up, no matter how fancy the wine or how strong the coffee is. You want a place of your own, far away from the streets and alleys you know like the back of your hand. You want not just to run away but take everyone along with you. Even if you leave alone, you wish to return and take the others along. No one should have to live here, you think, and then years pass, and you continue visiting the streets where pigs still roam and swine talk about other people, and you tell yourself there is work to do. Much work is done already, but in your heart, you know tenfold remains.

A poor house remains that way. No matter how well you live, a house that was poor once finds ways to remind you of where you come from, and if it doesn’t, the neighbourhood is not too far behind. You must leave the place for anything to change. Unlike ideas wildly propagated by the films we watch, no one wants to remember their roots. All growth is pointless if we remember everything about where we began from. The urge to leave, in itself, is an urge to forget. Things happen now, so we can forget what happened before. Such is the dilemma of having everything in the palm of your hand—the other hand remains empty. Looking back at my life until now, as I wrap a quarter spent neatly with the ribbon of time, my days are a whimsical irony. No matter what I do, I will always live between two worlds.

But in my house, we do not shy away from work. Perhaps, there is some merit in those streets after all. Even if I run to some hill half the world away, I will always belong to a crowded market neighbourhood where everyone dreams about leaving and gets stuck forever, in one way or another. This has given me the best about myself, and it has, in many ways, given me the worst of myself.

Yet, it has only been twenty-five years. Much work is done already, but in my heart, I know much remains still.

Today, as the evening slowly turned the sky lavender with each passing minute, I thought about time again. There has to be some significance for my deliberation with time. One might even call it obsession, but I do not care what it is called. There is no need to define everything. If there is anything that is guaranteed to bring about the end of the world as we know it, it would be our perpetual need to have words for all things. We must feel to feel, and we must write or talk about the little we remember. I prefer to write. When I speak, I can never seem to find the right words. Even if I forage some of them and string a sentence together, the recipient fails to do their part in finding the appropriate response. The cycle continues.

In any case, as I peeked at the evening come about and change everything to a fluffy, cotton candy pink, there was an urgency in me to get up, go outside and look at the trees and the sky. Time was running out; it was running out, and there was nothing I could do about it. In a desperate attempt to salvage a situation already out of my hands, I ran out onto the balcony and had a quiet moment. I cannot explain this urgency, and I believe there is no word for it. If there is, I would not know it, and if someone told me an obscure, pretentious word, I would still think it captured none of my haste.

Some of us can always see time passing and, thus, are mindful of it. I watch the seconds tick like stray drops on the kitchen shelf, which fall here and there when you make a cup of coffee. Unnecessary and trivial, but small as they are, they are still a part of the coffee. And so, all my wasted seconds bring me a pain I can’t much translate.

I must capture as much of it as possible; even if I do, some of it will have spilt away. I do not much know what to do about it. All the moments I seize remind me of just so many I may have missed.

The server brings the coffee to my table as I am caught staring outside through the glass door that is not fully fixed in its place. As the door vacillates ever so softly, I hear laughter from the group having a grand time after a party on Sunday, catching up over the little bits and pieces you talk about after a party. The “did you remember” and “were you there” questions seem to flow. Of course, as the door opens and closes, I only hear jumbled events, and I can’t much make the story out, but I am not here for that. I am here to have a quiet moment with the music and the coffee. With the soft touch of the saucer on the marble tabletop, I come back into the golden bakery and thank the mild-mannered acquaintance I see more than most of my friends. And then, it occurs to me that even if the light thud had failed in bringing me back to the moment that I came here for, the significantly strong aroma of the americano at eight in the evening would have grabbed me by the collar and dragged me back inside.

And then, for a good fifty minutes, I sit there by myself. I don’t talk or use my phone or read or fidget. I only sit there, sipping silently, like a meditative as a chant from a wellness retreat. Suddenly, all the turbulence that the weekend fell short of alleviating disappears—at least for the duration of my finishing the cup of coffee. One might suggest it only hid from the yellow glow of the light all over.

As I go through the coffee, sip by sip, all troubles that plague me and drag me down, all concerns from yesterday and all those still waiting for tomorrow seem finite. I believe that is all we need to know—that it is all countable. That is all we need to know at all times. I may have a thousand chains dragging me down, but they are thousand, and I know it. It is always better to know these things. I lose myself in the kick from the coffee as a second wind appears inside my heart. There is still some writing to do, I tell myself, and take a walk home. Perhaps, a return to normalcy is in order.

I reckon I have spent much time on autopilot, as one must do when one has to deal with a barrage of emotions. And now, once again, I allow myself to feel.

I have sat for the past two hours and pretended to write, not having thought of a single thing. Mainly because I woke up so relaxed, in such a trance that the veil has not yet lifted off me. But since it is Saturday, and there is not much to do on Saturdays anymore, I think I will have to sit and conjure some words after all. I often think of how I have changed my days gradually. From continual motion and almost no progress, I am now moving so much slower, perhaps, slower than I have ever before, but towards something. I do not yet know what that is yet. But you often feel progress when it happens. You do not wake up one day having reached somewhere instantly. You bear with the journey and the not knowing.

When you sit on a train, unless you know the route by memory, you often pass stations you have never seen. It does not bother you, and the not knowing does not impact whether you reach the place or not. If in some world, for some reason, the ticket master came and quizzed people with questions like, “what station did we just pass?” or “do you know where we are?” at random, lest they be thrown off the train, no one would get anywhere. To not know where we are at a given point has no say in where we end up; it only means we are on our way.

As relaxed as I woke up, I did manage some chores, sliced up an apple and had it for breakfast with my coffee. It is a Saturday well done, from where I stand. Perhaps, as the day gets on, I will spend some time with family, go for a walk and watch a movie or read a book, if time allows. As I move towards my late twenties, with the days ticking one after the other, I notice how this lethargy is part and parcel of being an adult. I used to look at people who were grown up when I was a child, and I was baffled by how slowly they moved. And now, here I am, cutting up apples and thinking that is enough for a day—to eat healthier. But again, I wonder, what else must a person do to justify their time?

And come to think of it, I am writing as well, aren’t I?

It makes me chuckle as the last night of September slowly passes me by. It’s fantastic how another year has passed. I look at my hand as this thought catches me off guard. I touch the desk, which was not even here when I found myself on the ground after a gazillion attempts to not fall. But all of us fall, and all of us stand up again. I think of all the words I have written while sitting here at this desk and how I have watched the seasons change, one after the other, and now here we are: it is autumn again. I had decided to do things differently around twenty-five days from this day last year. It seems all within the time it takes for me to blink, I now face the fruits of my little attempt. Fortunately, things seem to have gone my way. Things have changed for the better. Life is a gamble, of course. It could have gone either way. Everyone must celebrate when they make a decision, and it works out, regardless of whether it was some display of skill, hidden genius or just plain old luck.

I don’t know which of those it was in my case, but I am not for empty arguments anymore. If all my happiness results from a wild stroke of luck, then be that as it may. I do not much care. I am only grateful for it. When you reach a certain age, you do not much care how things happen to you, and indeed, you understand there is no glory or vanity alike in being revered as the one who makes things happen. Things happen with or without my touch. I only happen to have an urgent disposition. But things would happen, even if I were not the way I am. It is juvenile to ponder about and, worse, to believe the cause of all in your life is you. Things are too complex as they stand, and the best we can do is take what we get and be quiet about it. And so, as I sit on this September midnight, writing, I bask in the soft satisfaction before we step into the month I most enjoy and, in some ways, equally dread.

All my life begins and ends in October. Everything that has changed for me has changed right before it, and all that I change myself has happened right after. October, the auburn beginning of the end, already ashen, already dead.

I sit with my family, and we talk about things. I make myself comfortable on a narrow slab of the windowsill in the old house I grew up in. I remember sitting in the exact spot for much of my childhood. Almost a decade later, I find I can still fit on it; if not, a little discomfort is nothing when you’re happy. But this is not about me; I look ahead. There are faces, some old and some very new. I sit there and watch the next hour unfold as the conversation continues about all sorts of peculiar oddities. In many ways, this is what I live for, I think to myself. In fact, barring a few singular pleasures, this is all I live for. There is tea, and we have some things to eat. The new baby has learned to chuckle. But like all people, young and old, there is a time and mood to his shenanigans. And we wait ardently for the right time. What else is there?

In many ways, I know this moment is mine, despite arriving in the middle of a crisis. Life has a habit of squeezing joy over most pain and stress. On the pot of boiling pressure, this moment is a welcome garnish. Everything I’ve ever wanted and received, and everything I have ever craved and been denied, has led me here. In these days of fortune and folly, of grace and melancholy, the meaning of why we do whatever we do creeps up on me, and I get startled for a second. But then, I sit there, on the dark slab right below the old window. I sit there, and I look ahead at the history of us, and I sit there and get a glimpse into the future of us. And as averse to superstition and all things magical as I am, I sit quietly and make a wish. Of course, I avoid talking about it and quickly click a picture. You often don’t forget moments like these, but a picture, as always, is a reliable contingency.

There it is, I think as I look at the blurry mess captured hastily. There is my moment. Something tells me this is a crucial time in my life, and we have a habit of missing these, and even if we wanted to catch them, we rarely know when we’re in them, but I see it. I’ve seen it just in time. No matter what happens now, I’ve seen it, even if it were to fade away as all things eventually do.

Slowly, I am moving to the age where when you arrive at a party or a dinner by yourself, they find a way to make a question out of it. It could happen out loud if someone feels particularly obnoxious or drunk, but on most occasions, it occurs in soft, intimate interactions where someone asks you one of many variants of the same question. The night has gone on for a while. The energy has succumbed to isolated murmurations on tables and balconies as people talk and give away their deepest secrets. With pints of beer, in the forefront of blurry music emanating from some corner of wherever we are, they ask me the cliche, “Were you ever in love?”

“Yes, more than once. I wonder who hasn’t?”

“What happened?” They follow up almost as if this were a scripted interrogation.

“Nothing. Nothing ever happens—seasons change. Have you looked at how gorgeous the weather is lately?”

“You writers!” They laugh, “Always writing your way out of everything!”

“Not everything,” I whisper, smiling as I spin my pint slightly, giving them the pleasure of having stirred something.

But they haven’t. They seldom do. When people ask you if you were ever in love, or if you have someone, or what went wrong, or if you plan to find love soon, they are only trying to ask you: don’t you feel lonely? But they are also telling you something: because I do, because I do all the time, I don’t know what to do, help me. And so, I humour people and then ask them to look at the weather. If only they knew that was the answer after all: to look around the world at all times, to keep your eyes wide open.

It was how you ensured you saw love arriving, greeted it with a smile and said, “The weather looks lovely today. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

The pieces are set; it’s all in place. You seldom get this feeling. Most people search for it all through their years. Then, one day, like I have, they stumble upon days that feel like this: the pieces are set; it’s all in place. Everything is as it should be. It is a beautiful world, time has never felt more abundant, and things are going as they should, for better or worse. I stand on my balcony and stare at the breathtaking view ahead of me. I do this in the morning, and I do it in the evening, and even when I do it every day, it does not seem to change how novel, how fresh it feels. Laughter with the people I love and would continue to want to live for is the only major priority. I drown myself in all life has to offer, and in doing so, I learn to swim through the river of time. I must continue to be here; I must continue to live; there is so much more to do and feel; I have only just begun. Only one proclamation echoes and pulses through my heart: I must keep my eyes wide open. All else will fall into place. I am infinitely in love with life, so much so that I am willing to be destroyed by it. It is the only way I know how to love. My guard is down. I am alive.

This year appears to have changed me on a molecular level because no matter where I look, I cannot find my old self. I wonder, no, I am sure this is happiness. This is the happiness that arrives and softly knocks on your door when you come into your own, when no part of your body or mind feels foreign. For the first time in the quarter of a century that I have been here, I believe I am meant to be here. There is no greater feeling, nothing else a person aspires to. All of us only want to wake up in the morning and know, deep in our hearts, that we are not trespassing and are, in every capacity, supposed to be here. I cannot promise it will always be this way; I can’t promise that to you, or myself for that matter, but I am privileged to have felt this, even if for what feels like an infinite moment, even if it is that, and even if it is a glimpse in the montage of time. I have lived to say I belong here; nothing compares.

The wild tempest last night gave way to skies so clear they persisted till midday. Even the sky compensates for lost time. I wonder, then, what prevents us from forgiving ourselves? But then, I wonder of many things over the day, and then, I leave the thought there and then like you leave some stuff in an old apartment. It is no compulsion to take all we think seriously or along with us. We can leave thoughts where we meet them. Opposed to what many people may imagine when they read, if they read, these words, I rarely think about things at length. All my observation is a passing thought. And then, some things keep coming back, and I know they are formative ideas of my personality, but all else can be changed on a whim. All people are capable of change if they learn to keep their beliefs and thoughts down on the ground, stretch their shoulders and crack their backs. Then, they can see it all for what it is: a cumbersome bother. Most of what we believe can be left on a bench in a park like you leave a lover you don’t see a future with—it may hurt at the moment, and it may confuse you for a bit, but it is also the only right thing to do.

We do not come with guarantees of conviction. There is rarely any obligation for us to think tomorrow what we think today. But, of course, there are certain parts to it. There are things to us that we cannot leave behind, like we cannot leave an old habit or a preference for food. And we must know these things, and they must be few. Everything else is fair game. Everything else can be washed clean off us. I used to think time was running out, that I must make up my mind about who I wanted to be as early as possible to get somewhere. And at some point, it occurred to me that it was not very interesting. And so, I decided to keep my mind and my door open for all possibilities of who I could be, at least in thought. Now, I know time runs out, and I don’t much care. It is earlier, much earlier, for all of us. It will only be late when we’re all dead.

If you notice a leader of any kind—no, not those in fiction who are written to be the epitome of human wisdom, but those who stand atop or aspire to stand on pedestals and platforms in the real world—you may notice how they only talk in pithy platitudes. They never delve into the utter chaos of nuance. It is too difficult for them to navigate, and if I were to place a bet, it is far too hard for them to understand. They are simpletons. It is the mark of common person, living a common life, brimming with the common trouble of finding the middle ground every living, breathing day to know there is no simple answer.

A person you meet on the street will rarely be able to give you succinct advice because their life and all they go through daily will force them to consider the lack of one. The denizens of marble citadels, literal and figurative alike, live their lives within the confines of one laconic maxim. They can do so because they can afford to do so. The inadequacy of those we lift is precisely why we are tempted to do so, but in the end, it is inadequacy no matter how appealing, and eventually, it reveals itself. All pithy advice falls flat in the face of fate and fortune, and the further we raise the messengers, the further from reality they go, and the wiser they appear, and eventually, as things play out, the further down they fall.

The world is a scrambled place. Once we accept that the answer if there ever was any, is never contained in a few words is when we truly begin to live. Surety is taught to be a sign of intelligence, so most children are a bit too sure of themselves; as they grow older, they realise doubt, not surety, is the mark of the wise. Even fools, especially fools, can be sure of everything, especially themselves; the rest of us continue to second-guess everything we do and think, and for good reason! There is always more than meets the eye. In a world that is a smidge away from a million little oblivions and in days that personify a thousand contradictions, it is but a privilege to be pithy. For the rest of us, we must use all the words we have. There is so much to say, at all times, always.

If you have a lot to say, you may as well share it with a friend before you are left with nothing, and then, and only then, should you sit down to write. It is not about having a lot to say that people become writers; it is the opposite. If there is a question on my mind, it is about how life is the same on most days; how do I find something special in it? And for better or worse, my disposition to look at things, ordinary things, only so I could write about them with an earnest appreciation, has saved me from the perils of what most people call finding the meaning of life. It is a fool’s errand.

If life has meaning, you make it like you make coffee in the morning. You make it on your own, and you do it repeatedly; sometimes, when someone stays the night or if you are with others, you do it for someone else. And like coffee or tea, everyone else has their own preferences, which you must remember if you ever have to make sense of things for them, which is why they will never quite enjoy your preferred flavour. There is no grand meaning; what comes close is a strictly independent motivation to create it in the most mundane things. All writing is about looking around and being amused by it all. The meaning of my life is whatever makes me not pull my hair out and go mad. There is so much that fits this description—I am overwhelmed by how much sense it all makes.

And what of happiness? You can be happy with the simplest excuse. It is raining outside. There’s a good excuse. I am here, writing on a Saturday afternoon. I am still young, and there is still time. Those are excellent reasons to feel a sense of meaning, and what is even better, those are all fantastic things to write about because when all the details are stripped away and all the preferences removed, this is what remains in common.

You must not talk about the syrup, the sugar or the milk; you must talk about what remains when they are removed; you must always talk about the coffee. The rains, the coffee, the feeling of time passing and the reassurance that a lot is still to pass. It is why people read the classics. They all find a bit of them in it, and in searching for meaning, a bit is all you need.

I stood outside the bar on a Friday a few Fridays ago and waited for a cab. I thought of going in, of cancelling the ride and blowing off some steam. It was still about five minutes for the car to arrive, which meant I had to use this time judiciously to decide what to do next. The music was enticing, and truth be told, I could have used the ambience; the hospital rooms are terribly depressing for people like me—those who think too much. But no, I told myself, there was so much else to do, and the day was ending already. I must get home. Of course, that was over a few weeks ago. Time blurs faster than we can keep a tally of the days. In the end, we don’t remember much, only a few specific moments and a general idea of how our lives were in certain seasons or certain months in certain years. We do not remember much; if I had not written about it, I would not remember this ordinary moment of contemplation. But now, I have written it down, and in many ways, I have a doorway to these weeks, too. All I have to do is read my words again, and I will be here: in a September which began with rain and is still caught in it, and somehow, still passing by. I can always return to this even if I do not see any reason for it now. We cannot predict what we may or may not want to do in the future.

But all this, what we go through, and this act of writing it down, makes me think. It makes me think of how proud we are, how conceited, to think things only happen to us and no one else, that we are so unique and special, and then we watch a film or read a book. Almost instantly, it drags us down from our pedestal and into the muddy ground. We are reduced to what we are: a human being with a beating heart, still living. All that we go through, all life is about humbling us into oblivion. The final plea goes like this: I shall not be proud from now on, I promise, I swear. In whispering this, over and over, most life is spent.

You get happy for a little bit and you posit foul play. Surely, you tell yourself, it cannot be like this forever and just like that. Clearly, there must be a catch. There has to be something that goes wrong soon enough, and you wait for it, on most occasions, rather ardently. It prevents you from immersing yourself into the sea of what is good and noble, and it brings you nothing but disappointment in the end. But, which is worse, it brings you the proud feeling of correctly predicting the demise of your joy for it is never the same; life always finds a way to change itself. And then, when the inevitable and rather obvious comes to pass, you think this is the correct way to live—to always second-guess your happiness. I believe I am more than guilty of squeezing the life out of pleasure softly, day by day, only because of my belief that things will turn sour eventually—which they did, as they must. I have done this a long time until now.

Now, in some cruel irony, when I find myself facing even an ounce of happiness, I think of the same thing. Surely, I tell myself, it cannot be like this forever and just like that. Clearly, there must be a catch. Since there is a catch, I must revel in this ounce of joy like I devour fresh honey on a crispy toast. I must not let even a single bite escape me. I must taste each molecule of that honey and I must savour each crumb of bread, and I must remember this snack, and with it, I shall remember this moment as it looks to me right now. Things go wrong, as they should, and then, they get better, as they should, and in the end, we only remember the honey on the toast, and we remember the evening, and we remember nothing much beyond that. Life has a way of helping us forget. We remember to laugh in the end, and we remember the meals and the moment and the stories.

Do you remember? We almost lost hope that day if it was not for that talk of honey. Almost. All hope is almost lost, and then, it is found again, and somewhere within that is the story of humanity, of all of us who have ever lived, and perhaps, all of us who are yet to begin.

When you walk by a garden that seems to be well-tended on all occasions, you appreciate the beauty. You tell a friend about this peculiar garden with no weeds and bushes, almost as if it were sliced out of Eden, and if that is too religious a comparison, then out of a film or book. But just because you cannot see the garden in an unkempt state, and just because you cannot see anything that does not belong there, does not, in any way, suggest some magical property in the soil. Neither does it say anything about the plants. It only means someone pays attention and tends to it regularly with almost surgical precision. All good things that seldom change have someone working inexplicably hard to ensure it stays that way.

But even having a grip on things is a curse. It is the most terrible thing to have it together, for, despite their reservations against it, people crave change and motion. It is unfortunate for a person to not budge in the face of trouble. It is unnatural for them to not go mad or lose their wits over misfortune nor celebrate any achievement with some pompous flair of parties and fanfare. In fact, when all things are as they appear, at all times, to most people, it is a sign of apathy, of not caring. It is unfortunate only because to have things stay the same, no matter what, you must care, you must care very much, about everything. There is no other way.

This is the only thought on my mind for the past few days; that is just about it. The very reason people like the garden is why they despise the owner. It looks the same, they say; nothing ever affects you. Oh, but it concerns me very much, you tell them. It affects me so much I cannot stop working on it. I do not know what to do. It is all I think of and dream of, so I must keep tending to it. If you see no change in it, that is my reward, my glory, and now that you have given me a piece of your mind, that is also my sin.

The other day I looked into the mirror, and for a minute of strange disassociation, I could not recognise myself. It was a feeling unlike any other. Like, how you meet someone after a long time and when you look at them, you realise time has changed their face a little. There are specks where there weren’t any, and they look familiar but new and strange. Or perhaps, when you open an old box of pictures or an album and look at pictures of your father and mother, of how different yet similar they were and how young they had been, too. And then you look at them, and for a second, it occurs to you they may not be the same people. And you feel this odd sense of being tricked by time. That is how, I believe, I felt when I looked at my face in the mirror, like I had met myself after a long time.

Time had changed a lot of things over the years. I had only just noticed them.

For someone like me, this is a contradiction. If there is one thing I know more than anyone else, it is myself. I know my own self like muscle memory. I know myself like my favourite passage from a book and favourite bit in a song. I know myself like the cocktail I always order and how I like my coffee. I know myself like the bench you prefer when you go to the park, the one you are inexplicably drawn to and the one you feel most comfortable in, even when the other benches look the same, even if all are equally enticing and empty. So, for me to be shocked, and if not shocked, then surprised at how I had grown up was strange, to say the least, but we seldom say the least; it was absolutely baffling in that regard.

But what am I if not my contradictions? At least, that is what I told myself after returning from this trip of disillusionment and when I could feel like I still knew myself. I believe, now and then, we see ourselves in light so new and different that what we look at changes on its own. To be a person is to be a million people, all different in their little, peculiar ways. To be a person is to be made aware of this fact without warning.

At the edge of a mountain of hope, a little voice pulses through the valleys of my heart: these days will amount to something. It is all for more than I know. We are too naive to pretend we know where we’re going and too foolish to pay attention to the signs. Even on uncharted hikes, in places no one dare visit, there is a wooden milestone, dilapidated but dangling, with directions, and if nothing else, then the distance ahead. It is not about where you’re going but whether you notice the signs and continue walking. And if there are no signs? Well, look harder, and if you cannot find them still, congratulate yourself. You are the first one here. You must do as the others have done; you must leave something behind. The next time someone feels lost, they will come across what you left, given it stands the test of time, and they will know. You will be their sign. There is no greater glory.

I am not so special, however. I know the road I walk has been walked a million times before. And all the signs tell me there is still a ways to go, but with every step, I get closer to the summit. If I have learned anything, it is this: there is only one instruction for walking—taking one step at a time. All else is philosophical tomfoolery. But one often feels lost even on charted roads, even on hikes with trodden paths that have begun to resemble city roads. Now and then, when I have walked far too long through the forest without a clearing in sight, I, too, feel the wave of doubt like all those who came before me. And then, out of nowhere, on a rock or a tree or a little signboard, you see, something is scribbled. It asks me to keep going, and so I comply cordially. And not too far from it is a clearing.

I found a clearing and a sturdy place to camp. I have caught my breath. How does it all look, you ask? It is the greenest clearing I have ever seen, and when it rains, flowers grow. But I would not have reached here without the signs and if I had not kept walking. And soon, I will begin walking again. There is still a long way to go. And just as I make my preparations, a whisper echoes through the forest: these days will amount to something. There is no bigger sign.

I sit down to write and think: there’s too much on my mind to write properly. Then, it occurs to me: that is what it is about. It is taking the too much and chipping away at it like a madman with a hammer. It is not our job to imagine new things; it is our job to remove the excess. And so, I navigate through it all, finally arriving at a memory of a beach from years ago. The night sky and us walking under the moon’s gentle glow, tracing the ever-changing curves of the sea that crept up to our feet and descended quickly, almost embarrassed, like an indecisive lover. I remember the walk, thinking if I could keep walking here forever, if by some magic this night does not end, I would not mind. I would be content. I would be happy with the life I had up until that point. In hindsight, it seems like youthful folly to have thought this; life has blossomed into such a joy. But all joy gets tedious sometimes, and you are left to reminisce.

Often when you meet someone, a good question is whether they prefer the mountains or the sea. When people ask me this, I tell them I prefer cities, that I am too fond of the crowds, people, and chaos, but if there were no cities, a beach would be it. Yet, the way I live, how my life has transpired up until now, and how it goes, in general, do not reflect this in earnest. As much as I adore the sea, it is the mountains where I always end up; the hills keep pulling me towards them. I can never seem to build a life where I end up on a beach. Perhaps, some esteemed speaker at a seminar could blame my agency for this turn of events, and I do not plan to dispute them. They are, of course, correct in their shallow and accurate analysis. It is this way because I have chosen, several times, against living near a beach in favour of the mountains. But if I were to make a defence, I would say our choices are painted by our circumstances and limited by the extent of possibility.

The timing, not the decisions in themselves, has prevented me from living near the beach. And so, I long to live a life where walking on the sand at night would be as tiring as staring at the hills feels now and then. For now, it remains a memory, and a dream.

This piece is part of the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium for October. The theme is Beach.