journal.coffee

I could not say if I liked it, but I had a habit of touching death and coming back. I would go for days, engrossed in work, barely eating a thing. I would not sleep for days, guzzling a gazillion cups of coffee to fuel the leftover husk of my body, only to work and get things done. This habit, this self-destruction in the name of work, love, or purpose, was how I remembered myself. I reckon it’s how so many others remembered me, too. I could not be too sure. We could not be too sure how others remembered us, if at all. They say everyone has a fatal flaw. I could not be too sure what mine was, but I reckon this may be it—this taste for a dance with death. I wonder what they say about me when I’m not in the room. Everyone has something to say about everyone else.

He drinks too much, it will take him away, they say for some. He’ll smoke his life away, they say for someone else. He’ll work himself to death, is how they must describe me, and for what? I have no job, no career to show for it, only some absurd projects here and there, and these words are my claim to fame. It was work still; who was to say it wasn’t? It was just work that mattered to me—honest work. It was the only work I was capable of doing. I often forgot to eat or sleep, not because of some pursuit or fire, but out of simple forgetfulness. Once stuck on something, my one-track mind took a long time to look at something else. This dictated the little love I found, the way I worked, and even how I talked.

I regularly hit the hay with exhaustion that knew no bounds, with nausea all over my being, a throbbing head, a body that hurt immensely, a mind that barely worked, lost in a trance of exhaustion. I worked myself like a trusty mule. I did not know any other way. Everything in a day was too important for tomorrow, and given my penchant for dancing with death, I could never trust it would come.

I often wonder if I left a lot unsaid. It’s a consistent bother that never leaves my mind, but it’s not true because I could not possibly say all I wanted to say to you. I could not tell you how much I adored you; I could never find the right words, so I would settle for more words than good ones. I was never one to shy away from wasting words as well; look at these vignettes of my inner workings, my thoughts and observations about nothing in particular; look at my wasted hours! All I have to offer are words. Beyond that, there is little I can give anyone.

I could not tell you how much I missed you; each word would be a poor imitation of the magnitude of that longing. If I would say it to you, I would say it out of habit. It would not be an exaggeration; being habitual was the only way I knew how to live. I was a creature of habit, a denizen of the mundane. I missed you like the man who runs through the crowds of the subway station only to arrive the second the gates close, like the utterly naked tree standing by itself in the middle of winter at the minute it watches its last leaf fall, like the roll of a dice that slows down to stumble at the correct face, the right number and then turns one more time as everyone screams in dismay.

I could not divulge how angry I am with you. I couldn’t possibly find the right words. I could not tell you about it at all. So, I settled for a poor excuse: I left a lot unsaid. I left nothing unsaid. I couldn’t have possibly said everything, not if I had all the time in the world. Perhaps, that is why I begged for a lifetime. It wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere, but it would have sufficed like a shoe with a hole suffices warmth on a rainy day, like a little snack suffices hunger at three in the night, like half a sip of coffee left in the cup suffices thirst, like a kiss left midway, with an apology and a farewell, suffices forever.

Yesterday, in the evening, I decided to take a nap. There was nothing better to do—not that there wasn’t anything to do, but a nap sounded like a more pleasant idea, so I decided to shut the curtains, and I dozed off. I believe when all seems off, a nap is often warranted. I woke up with my phone ringing—that sordid thing. I realised I had slept for a little over two hours, and so I decided I should head out. While I had to visit my parents, there was still time, and I was still disoriented from my nap cut midway, so I decided to walk to the coffee shop.

Now the route is the same; I have a mechanical understanding of the path. I have walked it in absolute flaneury for almost two years now. There was something different yesterday. Maybe, it was the delirium of not being fully awake that I was still in, but I saw my entire life for a little bit, about five hundred metres from the coffee shop. Of course, I did not see specific events or some impossible premonition; now, that would be some make-believe hullabaloo. There was little to no supernatural in this life. All we had was what was right in front of us; all else was things people said to get some sleep at night.

When I say I saw my life, I mean I could feel it. I could sense the general mood of what I would feel for years to come. I could feel this sense of things being slightly awry, but not enough for it to matter. There was no large struggle, only small, insignificant battles which would not matter in the grand scheme of things. I was always going to be a little out of touch with it all. It reminded me of a jigsaw puzzle I had as a child. It was a perfect puzzle, and I learned to solve it early on. But a piece, in its correct position, would stick out still until pressed hard upon. It was off whilst being in the right place; it was the wrong piece while looking like the right one all along; it completed the picture but still left something to be desired. Some things are made that way—a little askew.

All my life was going to be mild discomfort without reason for why it was that way. I could see it all so clearly yesterday when I reached the cafe. Then, I got some coffee and got on with the day.

The world has always burned, and people not caught in the middle of the fire have always found time to brew coffee and fold their laundry. Chores were the only thing that kept us human. To pick some papers up or get groceries at the last minute was a pursuit of the highest order. The world has always burned, and people still manage to find time to fall in love. To get some cleaning done is, perhaps, the most significant way to change our lives. To cook a meal is the most commonplace magic of all, but it was magic nonetheless. To be human was to have an inventory of things to do every day.

Our humanity was tucked along with the sheet we stretched neatly over our beds and tucked into the corners. The dishes were always waiting for us at night. This is how you knew someone was alive; the chores were being done. It was how I managed to drag myself out of bed on days it seemed impossible: to get groceries, clean the flat, or get something fixed. All my life, I have kept things in the right place. It may be an obsession, but I prefer calling it responsibility. Part of it comes, perhaps, from how my mother raised me, but not all of it. This tendency has slowly crept into my entire being. It is no longer limited by the physical room I am in. In many ways, I am constantly cleaning things up, cleaning as I go. In my mind, everything is in the right place. All my thoughts are earmarked, arranged and annotated.

It is, in many ways, the simplest way to exude control, especially when the world is burning; the world burned more often than it did not. The best we can do on most days is to fold our laundry and do it right while we’re at it. But this want for control is now slowly waning. I do not understand why that is yet. There is a lot I don’t understand when it comes to change. The other day, as I headed out, I left the book I was reading on the couch. I left my jacket on my chair. I was now okay with entertaining some mess. I reckon we all had to learn to do it at some point.

There was only so much we could keep spotless. Most life was a dusty, soiled affair. You did not know what the storm brought with it.

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head. I did not quite want to think of it yet, so I spent some time lying with my eyes shut and the light blanket over myself. The day was getting on, though. Since it was warmer now, I had to let the blanket go and manage without it. I was not fully asleep, only I did not want to start the day just yet. This was the luxury of sleep, not being in this world for a little while. I got out of bed, and as I ground some beans for my coffee in an almost mechanical routine, I remembered the idea that had woken me up: to be a nobody.

In what I can only describe as a long time ago, as ironic as it seems in my short life, I had this deep aspiration in me to be somebody. An obsession, almost, to make my mark. I did not know what mark it was—truth be told, I haven’t the faintest idea now either. But when we see a flowering golden shower tree, we don’t see a single flower unless it falls out of the clusters to die alone on the ground. No flower in the tree thinks about turning orange or red. There were some things we just could not change about ourselves. To be a nobody was to belong to the whole.

And how beautiful does the tree look! How generously overwhelming are all those flowers, intertwined streamers of bright yellow, lumped together as a whole. What a wonderful sight on a warm, spring day! And so is the galaxy, to be honest. I looked at the sky late last night; it had been a stormy day, and the remnants of the storm were still blowing by midnight. I wondered how a shooting star may make for a good moment of awe, but it is the starry sky we turn to when we need hope, with all those stars lumped together into one, reliable narrative.

This urge to be unknown, to be left to my devices, is something I have felt for many years now. There is peace in it. To aspire to be a nobody when everyone tries to be somebody was an act of rebellion. To be happy without an endless pursuit was unfounded. It was heresy. Yet, happiness was all I felt as I had the coffee I made for myself, in one apartment out of many, like one person out of many, all sipping their coffees and teas to start their days.

Only, I was now almost okay with it all.

To live among people was to make connections with no name. The world of the living was made up of little hellos and greetings and roles we played in each others’ lives. The baristas who remain in cafés for years. The patrons who come and sit there for years. The regulars—who all smile at one another but seldom talk. It was the crux of civilisation, these bonds. In a world that keeps moving, all we wanted was to be remembered. To remember each other was a gift we gave each other, over and over.

It was why I made homes in cafés and bars or made friends with kids who stand near the same mall, trying to help them in all ways I can, to sometimes tell them I’m having a bad day already, that I’ll see them soon. I have said more goodbyes to baristas and bartenders than friends when I’ve left cities. It is always one of the most important things to do when I leave town. And what of the cab and auto-rickshaw drivers I ran into all the time? I wouldn’t give anything else over the conversations I’ve had with them. Sometimes, it’s small talk; automatic responses. How’s it going? Hanging in there, how are you? All good! Sometimes, we talked about things we’d not tell our closest friends. It was easier to confide in strangers on most days. It was a simple camaraderie but one of great value.

These friendships often ended without a sound—someone quit their job, someone left town, or someone passed away. Someone else tells you, “Remember that old man, the driver? He’s not here anymore.” You’re left wondering what must have happened, what must have changed; you remember the last time you saw them. You acknowledge how little you knew about each other, yet it was enough to share a laugh or two. You remember the old man’s voice. You remember he told you he had a son your age. There is nothing you can do about it. How do you grieve the loss of a stranger?

I slid my curtains open, and in the wake of my grogginess, blinding light was all I saw. It was not a light that burned you, though. It was a comforting, encompassing white hug. For all the sweaty inconveniences they brought along, warmer days were a respite for those prone to cold, in all sense of the word. The rest of the picture came on slowly, in layers of detail as I opened my eyes, quite like a television you had to smack to get its picture stable. What a wonderful morning, I thought. What a day to be alive! It was all I could think of as I went to the kitchen and ground a handful of beans for my coffee. With a cup of coffee and a well-rested disposition, I sat down to write.

But what could you write about in April? When I thought of April, I thought of the pause. April was a harmless stranger—no, not a friendly one, just harmless and innocuous. It felt like a soft, restful hug between what had happened and what was to happen. Not that I had anything against this sudden uneventfulness. Too much happens, too fast, all the time. It is an immeasurable pleasure for something to not happen at all. It was all I wished for on most days—for a day to be terribly simple, to be so run of the mill that I forget it the moment I shut my eyes, leaving only a vague memory of a series of good days behind.

I had some things to do, but beyond the short to-do list, all I had to do was live and, if possible, laugh. A noble agenda and the hardest of them all. It was the most important thing to do—to pause. There were different ways to pause. For those looking to pause a day, a nap or a walk were both perfectly suited for the task. To pause a week, Thursdays did the job quite well. To pause a year, April and September were both equally capable options, depending on the season. And what to pause an eventful life? Well, what indeed. I wouldn’t know a thing about it. Perhaps, I shall revisit the question in five years time. I have just begun to slow things down.

When did my heart first break? It broke one day, on its own, when I learned wanting was never enough. When the hills collapsed and turned into the city where nothing ever happens. When the dust stood suspended in the air before it settled, a sunlit colloidal pause. When the leaves stopped fluttering, paralysed in their pallid, sorry state, indefinitely. When the skies turned grey without a chance of rain, staying colourless for days to come. When every word fell flat on my ears, deaf from the sound of the implosion inside me. When I forgot the sound of laughter, turning to scoffs like how you settle for an alternative in a clearance sale; then to a reluctant smile; then to nothing. When the green was gone, and the flowers stopped blooming, dying before they opened up. When walking was a chore, and my feet shook as I struggled to take another step, and my lungs heaved before I could. When the world was tasteless; when I lost the sense of pleasure in poetry and art alike. When you disappeared without a trace, and I did not know how to breathe anymore.

When did my heart first beat? It thumped one day, on its own, as it climbed out of an early grave and crawled itself to life. I have never been more alive. The hills have never stood taller; the city still laughs. The dust has settled, the sun is warmer, and time has started running again. The sage green leaves now flutter, conversing with the breeze, like furtive lovers who have managed to find a corner of their own. What of the skies? The skies have never been bluer and endless. Ask the birds; they will tell you about the pleasures of doing somersaults over the indigo backdrop. They seem to be having the time of their lives, and truth be told, so am I. There is an unshakeable calm inside me—the battles are all long fought and repented over. Of laughter, there is plenty. Of flowers? The daisies have bloomed the brightest this year; the bougainvillaeas have never been so overwhelmingly pretty. I have walked so far; I know I’m not tiring anytime soon. My days have been full of poetry and prose lately; all I think about is art. It was a pleasure to have been stabbed by you. It was a luxury to have died at all.

Happiness was sitting by yourself at brunch hours in a place people rarely frequent. The more you did it, the more it all made sense, the more you understood the poets, the artists, the lonely. The gifts of loneliness were sweet, but like all things, you had to moderate your indulgence. The act of being a living, breathing human merely existing in this world today was nothing short of conducting an orchestra. In days filled with the this and that of the every day, it was necessary to remember: even though every player, every instrument has a part, the music is made by the silence.

This preference for solitude was a muscle trained through hard work. Like all things in life, you had to cultivate it. If we isolated ourselves too quickly, too soon, too often, we risked losing the very thing we wanted to protect. Sitting with ourselves, talking at length with the voices in our heads, was no easy undertaking. Some took a lifetime getting even a smidge better at it, and most lost themselves in the attempt. The trick was to remember when to step out of your mind, to keep in mind that while important when it interrupts the music, without the sound, the silence is deafening.

To continue to live in this absolutely jarring world was a balancing act—the hardest one of them all. It was a dance: too fast, you stepped on too many toes; too slow, you were left behind. But people have done it before, and people will do it again. These thoughts surrounded me as I sat by myself at brunch the other day. Then, I caught myself smiling about it all—I did not know why—and then, on impulse, I called a friend. I don’t yet know why I did that, but at some point, it occurred to me: it is a wonderful afternoon, the sun is pleasant still; it warrants some music.

You will hate your coffee for a few months, and then one day, you won’t. You will despise the town you grew up in for years, and then one day, you will want nothing but to stay there. Not right now, no; you will long for a town that does not exist, a beach you’ve never visited, a hill you cannot climb. Then, one day, it will occur to you; you’ve been taking yourself wherever you’ve gone. That was how it played out for most of us. The pain changed nothing. It only made us lose time. It did not stop until we did for a second and looked around. It was when we realised: the coffee waits for us, and so will the town. Things break, and then we fix them. Things happen, so get on with it.

Times don’t change. Time passes. The change has to come from us. This was the tipping point of all human wisdom. It was seldom followed. This was true for all the history in the world, but most importantly, our unwritten chronicles, yours and mine. We had no time to waste! Don’t dillydally, come along. There are things to fix, new ground to break, more to see, and much more to feel. Let the summer sun enter the cracks you’re trying to cover. Let the serendipity of the city take you by surprise. There is hope yet, and it is waiting for us in the small talk at the bus stop when it’s pouring. It is in how you let someone pass first. It was in how you offered your seat. That is how times changed—one person at a time.

There might come some good out of this yet. Seconds often dictate years. There is all the time in the world if you’re willing. The days are warmer, and the flowers are blooming; best get on the bandwagon. The daisies will not bloom as they have today, the sky will never be this shade of blue again, and this second will never be back. I will never be here this way, and you will never be here quite like you are. Was it not enough? Oh, the birds are finally here; best tell them hello. It was an excellent place to start.

The simple, mad truth about me was that I was a liar when it came to effort. I had a habit to promise, to overpromise on most days, and to somehow, while braving impossible odds, deliver. It was a common thread, running through the eyelets of my years, woven together in the name of magnanimous effort or none at all. I possessed no sense of scale when it came to it. To my simplemindedness, effort was effort, and the lack of it was the lack of it. There was no such thing as more effort; there was no such thing as less of it. There was only the doing of things. There was only moving the Earth itself to keep your word, and I had a habit of giving my word for things I did not know how to do, things I did not have the slightest, the faintest idea about. I spent my days and many sleepless nights armed with only an absurd confidence in my ability to find the answers as I go, if at all.

There was an odd, inexplicable trust in me. The little I managed to do in life came from this very trust. There was also arrogance in me. The effort I managed also came from this sheer arrogance. On most days, I was but a clueless pebble, kicked or plopped into the rapids without a path in mind, only movement around. On some days, I managed to find shore regardless. I did not believe in some colossal power dictating the course of our lives. A pebble does not know where it lands; it only knows to resist being obliterated on the way. We were no marionettes. All we had with us were our words and the will to stick to them for as long as we could. If we held onto them for long enough, we managed to do fantastic things. I did not know what I was writing with this madness I carried my life with: was this the making of something greater, or was I going to be a cautionary tale?

But I did not concern myself with this question often. There was always work to do; there were always promises to keep. My days were only my days, as far as I was concerned. The rest was up to the river to decide.

I dreamt of books last night. I did not know which books they were, but I remember a hand clutching them, and then they were handed to me while I was on a walk. I did not see who it was; for the rest of the dream, this did not matter. There were countless notes in the books, scribbled along the margins in blue ink; some notes were in pencil; some were even squeezed between the lines. The covers were tattered, and the pages were yellow. Something told me not all notes were made in one sitting or reading. At some point, I realised I was only reading the notes; the books did not matter anymore.

These could not have been my books. That much, I was sure of. There was no metaphysical meaning to the dream, for I don’t scribble in my books out of principle. If it is something important, I will remember it. If it makes me feel something, I will remember the feeling. The rest, I will forget anyway. The notes did not matter. When I woke up, I remembered the feeling of going through the notes, but I did not remember the words except one sentence: some were earlier than others. It was written in blue ink on the top-right corner of page 47. It wasn’t written as a single, long sentence; the words were written as a group, huddled together as if to save space.

I woke up late this morning; it was still four hours ago. The blue note has been on my mind since—while laying in the bed, while brewing my coffee, while moving to music, while sitting idly and remembering an old day from a different life as one often does on a reflective morning. Some were earlier than others. Their joy was early; their grief was early. This was not out of their own volition. They were born with a sort of urgency in them, a sense that time was running out. They were early so they waited. I know how you feel, they often said when someone finally wandered where they had lived by themselves for years.

They arrived before the others. They did not know where to go.

I couldn’t say when it happened. Every day of my life has led up to this feeling. There is a resignation in me now. It is lodged into my conscience. I often look around at the life I live, and I see possibility, but I desire nothing in particular anymore. If I had others to walk along with, I would make the most of all promenades and streets. We will stop to get candy or coffee as the sun, filtered through the leaves above us, frames the moment at hand; no afternoon, no evening will be put to waste. But if I have to walk alone, I had no qualms with it either. The promenades would be the same. The sun will feel the same. I may even stop to get coffee still.

If no one ever read these words, it would sit as well with me as it might if everyone did. If I spent my days surrounded by laughter, so be it, and if there was nothing but silence, I would put some music on, brew some coffee and start the day regardless. I would stand in the morning haze, sipping my coffee and listening to the sound of the birds, and if I could not tell anyone about the sheer joy of it all, I would write about it. Perhaps, what I want to say is that I will be utterly unbothered by how things turn out. My only concern now is how I do something; I do things as best as I can and then some more. The rest may unfold as it does. I do not want to worry about how my life turns out. I will be fine irrespective of how it does. I am not afraid of missing out on things anymore. I am not scared of time running out.

This fearless living of my days has made me happy lately, but if I did not feel that way, it would still sit right by me. We could not be or do all we wanted. I may not see everything—no one ever does—but the little I do is a privilege, and I am glad for it. There is always enough time to see enough; there is never enough time to see it all.

I have a habit of picking at scabs. I have always been impatient with healing. A while ago, a sliver of a cut appeared near my forehead out of the blue, right near my hairline. Maybe, I had scratched myself while thinking about something hard enough to have my hand on my head. Most of these came and went on their own, of course, so it should’ve healed quickly. But, I kept picking at it whenever it scabbed. It’s gone, but now, the skin is softer, more vulnerable. My wounds always did take longer to heal than most people’s. My healing was always late, never quite on time, because I could not let things be. It was how I was with everything, scabs and all.

Constantly interfering, always managing to put my foot in the door, always doing things—often for the worse—I could not sit still, be idle. On most days, this was a blessing; when it came to waiting, a curse. My patience was not silent. It was loud. I waited well, but I waited by doing things. If there was nothing to do, I found something regardless. If I could not do much about a wound, I started picking at it. If my heart was not yet open, I bent it into shape. It was how I had always gone about things. I wish I could claim some novel approach to this, how I am changing this about myself, but it would be a blatant lie. Perhaps, we did not have to change all about ourselves, only accept it.

All I know about it is that the wounds do heal, even with my hindrance. The new skin on my forehead won’t stay tender for long, and my heart is open despite me having to bend it into staying that way. What more could I want? If I changed everything, how long would it be before I stopped being myself? We were who we were because of, not despite, our flaws. I was the most impatient patient man on the planet. It was always going to be that way.

There is a bar with no name at the intersection of love and loneliness. All art is made there. They often say writing is a lonely pursuit. I often question the veracity of this claim. I wonder if writing is a pursuit full of life and vigour, perhaps, only carried out by lonely people. To some extent, all artistic pursuit had an air of loneliness to it. Art had nothing to do with what you made. It was about how you lived. A pencil-pusher adding numbers throughout the day may do it artistically. Someone else may be a master with the paintbrush and still not have an ounce of art in them, their skill being mainly mechanical. Art was about how you saw things. The medium, the expression, the ultimate act of creating something was but a release. I did not yet know where I stood in this dichotomy.

To live artistically was to love every little thing in the world. You had to be on the periphery, on the outside looking in, as if you were staring into an aquarium. You had to make a note of all you could see with as much honesty as you could muster. The looking was the art itself. The rest happened on its own. This obsession with looking bound us, artists, to some measure of loneliness. I knew because I felt it. I am in awe of the blooming flowers because there is love in me. There is loneliness in me, too; I stop to notice the flowers. I look at a plant, and I see a metaphor. I find myself among people, and I see some problem that needs to be fixed. A wave of restlessness, of helplessness, courses over me. It reminds me of my limitations, of how I am just one man, of how little I can do, if at all, and suddenly, I am lonely.

I do not know yet if I am an artist. I do not know the limits of the love I possess for this world. But I know what they mean when they say writing is a lonely pursuit. I feel it now, more often by the day. I often catch myself stopping to look at the flowers.

It’s Sunday evening in the first week of the hottest April. It’s too warm to sit outside; the air is still trying to forget the afternoon sun. The petals—of which there seems to be a plethora lately—move about in the dusty zephyrs of the city as if passengers on a train. I’m at the coffee shop I often write from, only today I sit inside looking out for a change. It’s a different point of view in so many ways. A family sits outside—a young couple with their little daughter and two dogs. The dogs run around in the grass and the marble playpen they’ve transformed the patio into. Something tells me they’ve been here before. The little girl runs between them laughing, her hands raised in nothing but an expression of joy. It’s something out of a film with no name. Sometimes, this is where we ought to be: out of the picture. This second-hand joy makes me realise how there is more than one kind of happiness.

I spent the day with my own family today. Writing things down was not the first thing I did after waking up, and for a long time between a hearty breakfast, laughter and sharing the same, wrung dry anecdotes we cannot seem to get enough of, it was not on my mind to write at all. It is often what we need. A change of pace, a different view. Take the white flowers, for instance. I would not have noticed them atop the overwhelmingly large creeper on the west wall of this complex I have sat for countless hours had I not taken this table inside today. Realising they were getting ready to leave, I left my words and stepped out for a bit to play with the dogs. I know both their names now; I do not know the names of their owners.

The patio is empty now. The ochre sky has turned into a pale blue. A few yellow petals hitherto laying about, perhaps tired of the sun, take to the wind. They shift my gaze to the empty chairs and tables through the glass. I try to picture myself sitting at the table I often choose, mostly doing nothing in particular, sometimes writing. I feel a nostalgia I cannot explain. It’s Sunday evening still. I have never felt happier. There is nothing else to tell anyone else.

The very definition of life was how things were going to happen. It was both incredibly hopeful and also, completely unnerving. Things were going to happen; we were going to cross paths with others, we were going to be happy, and we were going to laugh, and that was going to change to give way for newer things to happen. It was the cost of life—this sordid temporariness. It was an outrageous ask, but it was the way things often are: outside of our control. So, what could we do? We could watch. We could remember what we could remember. Memory was a gift if looked upon not as an archive but a museum.

Deep within the forest of my thoughts, on a clearing one can only reach when they’re lost, open two gilded gates to the museum of everything that once was. Sometimes I sneak into it at night to look at everything without the glass display, without supervision. I touch the sunshine of the last days of March when I laughed. I move my hands through my dog’s fur, something I would never be able to do again. I watch the rain arrive again, and we throw the umbrella down to get drenched again. Only, this time, in this remembering, I do it right. I do it with all my faculties intact, all my senses focused only on what is happening. Sometimes, I pass by exhibits I don’t recall. It makes me disappointed in a way one feels disappointed when they’re flipping through an old album to find a missing picture. Often, they don’t remember what was there, but the loss of memory was the gravest loss of all.

How much have I forgotten? How much did I fail to record? I have always been too focused on recording it all. I often missed things happening right in front of me. There were gaps in my memory. I did not know what to fill them with anymore. All I could do was imagine and smile—there must have been something sweet there. We only forgot the sweetest things. So, I plant some flowers in them. I find solace in that; it tells me things were good once; it tells me things can be good again.

Only this time, my eyes are wide open, I intend on not missing a thing, and when things have to change, I plan on letting them do just that. I have been a terrible curator, but things change.

There are days I wish I was someone else, living a different life. Perhaps, someone who was not kind. It has piqued my curiosity for a long time now. What if I was not a kind person? What if I was not patient enough? Who would I be if my life had turned out differently up to this point, if I had been raised differently, if a few days that changed how I looked at life did not happen at all? When I think of this, it irks me. It’s natural, of course, but what of someone who was otherwise? They would not be so uncomfortable with this thought. In fact, their days would be dictated in an attempt to be untoward or hasty or unkind. We were a sum of our experiences, but what if I had seen different things?

My obsession with kindness, patience, consistency was appreciated by those around me. It was how I had built up the little reputation I had—which was nothing in the large scheme of things, but I was often complimented for one of the three in that list. I believe they are my strongest virtues. But I was tired of kindness. I wish with all my heart to lash out now and then and not feel an ounce of guilt, without it being a bother. And I was tired of patience, of waiting silently for years, invisible, while the world went on about its business. And what of my consistency? I was exhausted. I have been tired for years. It was all I knew how to do: to move consistently, to work consistently, to write consistently, to love consistently. But I was so tired. I could gouge my eyes out. I could pull my hair out.

I often look at other people when sitting or standing by myself in a crowded space. I notice their little quirks, and often, a look is enough to know what I would give to be like them for a day—oblivious, uncaring, without ambition or thought. This obsession with righteousness had gradually become my fatal flaw. I did not know how else to exist, but I wanted so much to try. I had been myself for too long. It was slowly becoming clear to me how in the long tally of things, my virtues, not my sins, would become the cause of my greatest tragedies. But that was no reason to act otherwise. At least, not today.

The words don’t flow easily all the time. Sometimes, it takes you more than a cup of coffee, and sometimes, you have to add a couple of glasses of wine. I often have days like these. I judged the quality of my writing with a relatively simple metric: how warm was my coffee when I was done? If it was still warm after I had said what I wanted to say, I knew it would not be a good piece. If life has taught me anything, it’s that we did not use the correct words in these moments—when we are brimming, when we need only an outlet. But I recognised the necessity of those pieces—they unclogged the pipes for the good stuff to flow out.

If the coffee was lukewarm—warm enough to feel like coffee but cold enough for me to take that last, leftover swig to end it all—it was a good day of writing. I had written enough, waited enough; I was patient and gentle with the words. I had paused to think. It was always important to pause to think when we wanted to say something. If we did not stop to catch our breath and rein our words in, we often risked saying things we did not want to say or implying things we did not want to imply, which was worse.

On some days, however, the coffee was hot because I had to get up and brew myself another cup. I ran out of it because either I had so much to say, I did not know where to start, or I did not know what to say. As a result, I went about writing and scratching it off and writing and scratching it again. I often saved some good sentences here and there from these blocks, for the lack of a better word. A writer who believed in blocks was going about it incorrectly. There is no such thing as a block, only slower motion.

The trick was to keep sitting at that desk, to only get up to make more coffee, to keep scratching sentences off, to keep jotting the little gold that trickles down, and eventually, you found the words. They may not be your best, but they will have been written down. It was the only way to go about it—to write them down. A writer was no judge of the quality of their writing, but, to me, these were the crucial days. They reminded me of the times I thought I could not go on, and then, I kept going anyway.

The truth is you will always feel regret. No platitude, no wisdom about savouring the moment, even when followed to the tee, would save you from it. Things end, and it makes us sad. That was the gist of it. It was the be all end all of life. We could spend our lives obsessed with how we could’ve done things better, but we couldn’t have done any better or worse than we did them when we did them. We know better in hindsight, and we try, but there is a guarantee on how I will miss the winter sun, no matter how much I bask in it, when spring arrives with its hotter days. There isn’t a single thing I can do about this; leaves fall, and we reminisce how the tree looked better when they were on it. They grow back again, and we remember how the tree seemed completely different at one time. It was the only human feeling there was—to talk about the not anymore.

Be present, they say. When you ask them about the good times, of stories when they were happy, they will not start with the moment or the day before; they will mention an exotic beach or a trail they hiked on or some important event of their life. It would take them hours before they said, “right now,” if they reached it at all. The human gift and the human curse were both the same—the not anymore. This suspension between what has been and what is now was where we spent our entire lives—not always stuck, no, but suspended by choice. What else would you do? The mango slices from your childhood served to you right after an evening of random play will never return, despite how many mangoes you devour today. It was the only way to go forward, to look behind and smile.

The inability to smile at what was, the not anymore, had people stuck in time. Once we smiled, we could move ahead, move on as they say, but to forget was out of the question. All we could do was look back and smile. That was it: all we had to manage was to think of it, whatever it was, and smile. It was much harder to do than talk about it, but so beautiful when done. We had to smile at the not anymore and get on with it. There was so much in life waiting to be remembered.