journal.coffee

When I think of art, of building a life around it, about the pursuit of it, I think of the tragedy. The tragedy was that no artists belonged together. All of them had their differences. You’d think once people went on their own road, charting their own course, they’d all end up in the same place, but that was seldom true. Irrespective of their friendships and camaraderie, regardless of how many banded together, there would always be an air of loneliness in their lives. People conformed together but diverged differently—the diverged did not belong to the diverged. That was the colossal artistic tragedy. An artist was always going to feel isolated.

I had rarely met people with whom I shared mutual artistic respect. I revered some, most I loathed because they sold out before they even began. Most people, on most days, had a means to an end. I often met people who talked about dreams, but those were not dreams at all. They were a series of convenient steps they read in a primer on how to make a career, to reach a spot in the hierarchy an artist spends years getting out of. To me, art was an end in itself; I did not give a rat’s ass if you painted or wrote or made sketches in the sand, for that matter. The thing is, you had to have all of it in the art. The rest should happen, if it happens, on its own. Your goal, your vision, was the creation.

Perhaps, I lived in an ideal world, but then again, what is art if not the pursuit of one? At a party, someone asked me my vision for these words. I told them it was to write tomorrow—that was all. I didn’t believe in visions. A book might come out of me when it comes out of me; for now, it is only these snippets of my life. Real life, real art was action. It was the ability to face the world asking you for your soul and saying, “no, thank you, I have work to do,” and then doing what you do. It was in realising when to keep pushing and when to let things happen.

The current is strong. It has always been strong. Real art was in not letting it wash you away, and if it managed to pick you up still, it was learning to swim to shore while you were caught in it. The rest was hubris, noise.

I’ve taken a long time to understand something staring at me for years. When the world ends, when the ground beneath your feet moves and slips away, when all you can do is grasp at straws as you fall down into a chasm, there is still tomorrow. There is always more. There is life after it all, and it waits for you patiently like a friend you are yet to meet. I’ve kept it waiting for so many years now. It’s only recently that I have dived headfirst into it all. There is life after all our regrets. It was always going to be this way.

We were all going to make our coffees and teas; we were all going to start our days, if not now, then eventually. It did not matter how sleepless the nights had been. The mornings arrived regardless. When all was said and done, there was still tomorrow, and we were in it before we realised it. A wave of novelty crashed without announcement. There was no alarm. Before we knew it, the new was here. It was okay not to like all of it, of course, but surely, even in the worst things that could happen to us, there was a piece of gold lodged in there somewhere.

When you walk on a street, and you see something worthwhile, and you have an epiphany, something you carry with yourself forever, like a chance encounter with no one in particular, that was how it changed for me. I found myself in a different place in the same city I have spent most of my life escaping from—not that I don’t intend to leave eventually, but something in the air tells me my life is here for now. When I do, I won’t be running. The places I’ve been stuck in for years don’t exist anymore—one is now a bank, another an empty lot, and I’ve lost track of so many others. The city has gone forward. I have started forgetting, too.

In this little pocket of newness—new people, new places, new vocations—the storms inside me have all but calmed down. I’m trying to build it all better now—stronger foundation, better material. Everything good life has to offer us waits patiently behind the curtain of memory. All we have to do is lift it softly and take a peek. The peek is enough. The rest happens on its own.

The average person does not much care about the world. It was the simplest truth. Most people only cared about their Sunday brunch. Their weeks were swamped under their contribution to the world. Their days built to the anticipation of Sunday—sleeping in, having a hearty brunch, going out and about and naturally, telling others they went out and about. Then, there were the champions of the bohemian, those with their art and their backpacks and their lives who did not conform. I vacillated between the two like a pendulum going too fast, almost as if it were broken. No one could fathom my allegiance.

I was as clueless about my life as a bird who often flies to land at a place—not knowing what it needs from here or why it has stopped at a random railing in the middle of town. It bobs its head, twists and turns it, and ultimately decides to fly away. I lived life like that little bird. I did not know where I stopped, for how long I lived a particular life, and what was I even pursuing in the grand scheme of things? I cared too much about flight. It was why birds got lost or separated from the flock; some were going places, some wanted to survive and stick together, and some only cared about flying.

In a seminar on all things wrong with our world, some idiot might call that laser focus. But focused and aloof were words for the same thing, viewed from different ends. I thought of all this when I was out having coffee, searching for love. I had met them for the first time, and a little exchange we had flew me into this tangent of thought. I don’t much remember what we talked about after. I could not care.

Oh, you are a writer? That is so inspiring.

I don’t think it’s inspiring. I think it’s just one way to live. Mine might not even be the wisest way.

I write sometimes, too, you know?

Oh, you do, do you?

Yes, when I get time after a long day or when I’m tired, I write sometimes.

That’s two “sometimes,” I mumbled.

Did you say something?

No, no, I didn’t; tell me, what do you write about?

I did not listen to a word from that point on. In my focused disinterest, I had already started thinking about these words—my words. I had already begun writing them.

I’m getting coffee with a friend after a grocery run. My phone buzzes. There’s an email. A document is attached to it—analysis. For all it brought along, the internet did get opportunity. Piece of cake, I think. How much? Two hundred. Two hundred? It would cover my rent. I’ll need it by Saturday, he tells me. Not a problem. I come home, and then it hits me—my art is being displayed on Saturday. Not that anyone cares about it. Not that anyone cares about anything, but when someone does, it makes all the difference. If I sell some prints, it would be a nice nudge into doing this—writing—every day. It’s what I wanted, after all.

Wait? I ask myself. Saturday. Saturday is when another episode for our podcast comes out. Everyone has a podcast. Not that anyone listens to it. But we have fun making it, my friend and I. It was all about fun, after all. It was fun and about three hours on a Friday afternoon to clean the audio up, publish it wherever we could, and hope someone would tune in on Saturday morning. No problem, I tell myself, I can stay up Friday night, write, and make it to the display in time.

Halfway into Friday, I’m exhausted; there’s always more than we remember to do. I take a break to sit in the sun and watch Mitch and Morrie talk about life. For a second, I lose myself in the daze of their wisdom: be patient, look around; I look at my watch. I scramble to my desk. I remember I did not get eggs. I’ll get them in the evening. It’s already evening. I’m losing my mind. Come night, I’ve met people and got my eggs. I can start working. Six or seven hours now, and I make rent easy for this month. The smallest gig after this is extra credit, I tell myself.

The night goes by in a montage. For a second, I remember how much I enjoy playing with numbers. The birds coo and chirp outside. I look out at the world—what a bright blue. I stand outside sipping coffee, my fifth for the night, staring at the neighbourhood. It’s worth it—this view. I come back inside. All I have to do is write and leave for the display.

This is the life I wanted, I tell myself. I lie down for a bit. I doze off.

It did not happen as regularly, for I usually had a grip on my words, but sometimes, I said things—cruel things—in the heat of the moment, amid a loud conversation, in the fit of rage, and it scared me. How much did I know of myself? How much was uncharted? There were places within me even I dare not visit, spots I stumbled upon for the first time now and clearings I did not know I could set camp in. It was not all hidden; some of it was wilfully ignored. We all knew the parts of ourselves we believed in and the parts we did not water. There was nothing to life besides this choice: which part of myself will I worship today? A good life was guaranteed if only we knew how to make the right call.

It was easier said than done. We talked of the greatest injustices in our living rooms over cups of tea and coffee, and then proceeded to smack a beetle with whatever we could grab in the panic-filled buzz of its arrival. Its only fault being how it wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. It was how most people found themselves caught between the largest of troubles: chance. And what of us, the talkers? We could not fix the infinite problems of the world; all we could do on most days was talk about them, but then what? Right between the bridge of words and action, there was a choice—to act or not, and if so, to act softly.

You see, on most days, for most people, the beetle does not enter the room even though the window is open and even though it can fly through it. It was all chance, after all. On most days, the only thing we had to be for this world was soft. And when the choice came and knocked on our door, it was up to us not to give in to fear, to resist the call from the parts of ourselves we did not endorse. No one liked to admit the cruelty they were capable of; it rarely implied they could not be cruel. When the choice comes, whenever it may be, in whatever form—big or small, when we have to cross the bridge, I hope for all of us, I hope we choose correctly.

Until we’re at the crossroads, I hope the cups stay warm for as many of us as possible, and I hope if a beetle wanders into the room, I hope we are soft. I hope we find a way to guide it out.

We could not know what goes on in the minds of other people. It was a terrible blessing, but oh, so lovely a curse. For years I have wanted to know the inner workings of your mind—what were you thinking when we sat together? Words did not do much for us writers. We did not trust words. We warped them and played with them and said things that weren’t true, only inspired. We took little trinkets from our days, odds and ends of time, and like someone who dives into the dumpster to find things that still work, we, too, salvaged moments. Moments untainted still: the kiss, but not the heartbreak that followed; the pouring rain, but not what it washed away; the coffee, but not how scalding it was when had alone. Words were not to be trusted, and that was all we had. I wonder what you thought of me when I last saw you in the city where nothing ever happens. It was years ago. I don’t remember what I thought of myself either. I reckon you would not remember it, too, if you remembered me at all.

But if I had to imagine, if it were a blessing to not have known, then I hope you thought of me with kindness still, and if kindness is too big an ask, then I hope you remember nothing. It was better to be forgotten than be hated, loathed; to not have been was better than to have been badly. It was how I wanted these words to age as well. All my words, my confessions were better off forgotten than remembered for being terrible. I reckon I want the same to be true for this life I lead. I wish no one remembers my name, my face, my mannerisms or what I stood for, and if they do, I hope they do it kindly, like how we remember the summer afternoon from our childhood. It’s no particular memory, not a single afternoon but an amalgamated blur of it all—of happiness, of levity, of warmth, of respite, of popsicles, of lemonade, of laughter. I hope they remember the little I did to try to make a difference. Perhaps, a small gesture that stuck in their memory through the years. I hope you do the same. I would not know. We seldom know how we affect the lives of others. We could not know what we did, only how we did it.

We could not know what goes on in the minds of other people after all.

I look at these warm spring days and nights. I remember the winter—a single day in particular. I recall the cold chair on the patio of the cafe I visited too often, the dew on the table, the drizzle of vapour in the air, the hottest cup of coffee I’ve ever held. Winter was not dry last year—there was plenty to cry about. I look around the building I live in; the flowers have grown in the garden downstairs—the roses, periwinkles, the daisies—burgeoning in the annual proclamation of we shall try again. I’ve found a lesson in my days lately: winter arrives, but so does spring.

But why was I by myself? As fond as we are of stories, we often don’t know what to do with endings. When it’s two in the night, and a book grips us, we keep reading until the break of day, and when we finish it, we lay in bed for another hour. It wasn’t about the book; it was about the feeling of not knowing what to do anymore. Every story left that feeling in its wake—the good and the bad alike. It was the end of one too many stories for me. Like I had just gone through books that tore me apart, one after the other, I sat by myself on the patio overwhelmed, with no one to confide in on an abnormally cold evening.

But eventually, when the feeling of something being amiss leaves, we get out of bed to begin our day. At first, the day at hand is slow and out of step owing to the emptiness, but then days pass. With each morning, memory fades and blurs. We often find ourselves talking about it all, of how we sat up reading, how it gripped our very soul, but never how it ended. Because nothing ever ends. The end of one book is the beginning of another. There is little I have learned, but I now know how all stories end and new ones begin—who I am today will never last. This story will end too.

But with this turn of seasons—sunny afternoons, flourishing gardens, endless laughter, and infinite possibility—a new story has begun. Years from now, when I’ve braved many winters, and I’ve seen many springs arrive regardless, I will tell them of these days, of how my life began in an epilogue. For now, the coffee sits on the table, and I must savour it before it gets cold.

The bougainvillaea creeping out of a house on the street I often walk on is in full bloom. I have to stop in awe when I pass it by, even when I’m running late, especially in those moments. I pause to look at it for a wee second—I smile, and then I take my leave. At that moment, I know something I rarely catch hold of: there is still time. It is a simple realisation like all realisations are supposed to be. As fond as I was of being places and running through the day, I believe my true self was hidden in these moments. Oh, but who was I? I had no sense of self-concept. I was a reflection of everything around me.

And if it were to be that way, then I would often stand on the streets and malls, among regular people in cafes and bars, absorbing the world around me. I often caught myself coming to a standstill as if it had only then occurred to me how I was lost, but it was only in those moments that I found myself. It was important to stop now and then, to stand and look around. We often lost our way not when we stopped but when we kept going without paying heed to where we were heading. We only learned we were lost when we stopped to look around. From then on, we could decide on a new direction or continue on the same path—both were correct to someone who was lost. How could they know? But it was essential to make that decision.

Last night, I stood on my balcony after I had done most of what I wanted to do with the day, even though it had been over two hours since the day had ended. It was a moment of absolute quiet, except for the soft music coming from my apartment and the whistle of the breeze. It was nothing out of the ordinary—it was a pleasant spring night, and the air was comfortably cold—but I knew I would remember it for years to come. It was a footnote—something that wasn’t as important but still vital enough to be noted. I knew I was on my way; there was still time. I could not know where I was going, but I was not lost. There was a difference.

There always was a difference.

There are four plants on my desk, there’s one in the same room, and two in another. All of them grew to face the sun. All of them bow towards the window. This tendency of plants bending towards light always excites me. If one read further about this, they’d learn of auxin, which tends to concentrate more towards the parts where the sun fails to reach. Of course, reasonable explanations for most things exist. It was one of the true joys of living in a world where information was plenty and available. It makes me wonder why despite no respite in sight, I often lean towards the light? Why do I look at the bright side when things are bleak? What is this optimism in me, and where does it come from?

A few months ago, I sat in a bar with an acquaintance. As we shared how life had fared, and as I told them the gist of the events of my own, they told me how I was an optimist at heart. I did not know of this before, nor had anyone ever said this to me. Naturally, I was a bit curious. I had never thought of myself as one, and I wanted to know the reasons for their conclusion. They told me how there was always a hint of possibility in how I talked about things—events that had destroyed me. They said I spoke of the ruin, sure, but I always made the debris look good, that even as I told them about my life and how it was coming undone at the time, I talked about it as if there was still hope for salvage. If that wasn’t optimism, they said, what was?

I was impressed by this observation, of course, and since then, I have called myself an optimist. Then, I saw the plants bending. I learned of auxin, of how to make the plant get enough light, this imbalance deforms its stems. It was the cost of optimism; it was the price of survival. To understand brightness, you had to get accustomed to the dark. The plants did it by bending towards the light, losing shape in the process. I have reason to believe we humans were not as different.

I wish I could stop someone on the street and ask them, “Hello, can you help me out? I seem to have lost my way. You see, I was happier a while ago, but I found myself at this spot again, and I don’t know how to get back. Can you tell me how to trace my steps to the point where the leaves filter the sunlight into soft, little patches? Could you point me in the direction of a warm cup of coffee? Can you help me up? I seem to have stumbled again, and I can’t find the strength to get back up. It is not the first time this has happened, but we can’t always do it ourselves, so could you, perhaps, help me?”⁣
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There is no one on the street. There is no street in the first place. I am sitting by myself in a crowded café. I look up to see the server waiting on me. Maybe, to ask if I needed anything else lest they fetch me my check, then ask me to leave. Others are waiting outside, and they may want more than a couple of cups of coffee. I manage to smile out of courtesy, to tell them to get the bill for me, but I realise how my face has betrayed me. I find comfort in how people don’t see us as we look at ourselves. I tell myself he has not yet noticed. This memory makes a home in my head.⁣
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As I come home, I stand by myself in my apartment—my little palace of one as I often dub it. I begin unbuttoning my shirt. I remember what I always tell myself after the day ends. I recall the very words I have told myself for years now: just one day, that’s how far I have to go for it to get better. Even after years of saying them, I couldn’t know for sure if it had, in fact, gotten better. I was only irrevocably certain that I had replayed the exact moment almost every day since I first began my little habit. Perhaps, at some point, I only got used to the waiting—waiting for things to change, for a win, for love, for the following day. It was the only thing I had mastered. I had mastered waiting patiently.⁣
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Just one day, I told myself, that’s how far I have to go for it to get better. I couldn’t bet on it still, so I slipped into something comfortable, cracked a can open, and began writing.⁣
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We all needed something to do while we waited; some read, I wrote.

The patio door to my balcony is closed. Still, there is a breeze outside, evident by the tufts of feathers blowing around the grass. I often stare through the glass as I sit here, writing. Inspiration is usually waiting for me right outside it. There is enough inspiration to go around if one only managed to look at the right time. All art was an epic collaboration. No piece of it would exist without what was around us. All art was an act of looking. Art did not happen during creation—not that making it was not crucial; it happened when we looked. To be an artist, then, was to look around with your eyes wide open and your heart even wider.

As the haze, the fog of not knowing who I am is lifted, and as I begin to see clearer day by day, I am learning how all that has ever mattered to me is art. Art had little to do with what you made; it was how you lived. We had to approach life as a sort of artistic endeavour; else, there was little we could do with what we made—everything would be bland. There was more art in someone making the first cup of coffee than could ever be in a museum they visit with half a mind. At least, that is how I went about my days. It’s how I have always gone about my days. It is only now that I accept the purely aesthetic reasoning behind the way I do what I do—and when I say that, I mean how I live.

Doing things was living, and by saying that, I do not mean doing something for monetary gain or even worse, social merit, but for the heck of it. Doing things without an endgame was the only way we were meant to live. But, I could not be sure of others. The only instinct I have is to do things—to write these words, to think of ideas that never seem to work, to fail repeatedly. It was the better way. They often ask me: why do you write? Instead of answering, I ask them: why don’t you?

They never have an answer. I believe it is because they don’t look around, or maybe, they don’t do things. Perhaps, it’s even worse; they barely stop to think, and even if they did stop to think, they would still debate why they were doing it, and that was the end of it all. I write these words because I can and because I wish to.

Should there be another reason?

The easier way out was callous detachment—cold, unyielding days without offering an ounce of care about anything around us. It did wonders, at first. There was a wave of independence, of happiness, and for a bit, the illusion worked. Then, the detachment spread into the very things we were trying to protect. It didn’t happen overnight, nor could we notice it; it crept upon us. Before we knew it, before we even had a chance to look, we’d have walked so far away, we couldn’t find our way back home. I would know, I distanced myself so far away from everything; I still lose myself if I stray too far sometimes.

The poets are not wrong—not that they ever are wrong—real happiness was in indulging, in looking at the world with the same wonder you had before you wanted to get away from everything. The one thing that people often missed was how wonder was not necessarily in some exotic view, some serene sunset. While those were excellent alternatives, there was something easier. All we had to do was look around without looking at anything in particular. To engulf ourselves in the moment, to immerse in where we were so completely, to drown in the moment was the easier, and in my experience, the better way out.

Out of what? Out of the sheer weight of life, out of the human condition, out of the feeling of something always being askew. If there was a way out, it was in the art of observing clearly. The error was in assigning meaning to everything. There was no meaning, and that was okay. The art of observing clearly meant to look at things as they are, let them be as they are and still find joy in them. Like all things, you had to practice it. If it were raining and if it ruffled an old memory, you had to tell yourself, the rain is nothing but the rain, beautiful in itself. People were just people, words were just words, the sky was the sky—spanning and infinite; life was here for us to see in its epic glory, as it was.

To live was to care enough to let something destroy us; to live well was to look around at life in awe, knowing nothing truly could.

The next time I fall in love, I shall do some things differently. That is, given there is love to jump into in the first place. It had come to my notice how little the chances were and how it was a matter of random luck. Love was not clay; we could not mould it through a nudge, a push now and then. Love was like water; it flowed when it wanted to, in the way it wished to, and when it had to leave, it tore through rocks; your walls to keep it in did not stand a chance. Your walls to keep it out did not stand a chance either. So, I have now left my wall halfway. It was a fool’s errand to even build it. But I have kept the little I managed to make before this little epiphany—not as a blockade, but a reminder. The next time I fall in love, I will let it flow. I will give it way to arrive, and I will give it way to leave.

The next time I fall in love, however, I will be tired. I will be cautious, and I know this ahead of time. It was good to know or at least have an inkling about how we may act in a situation before it arrives. But I will not plan. You could not plan around love. It was the one thing I could take away from my escapades with it. I could not make a to-do list of things to do, no calendar was good enough, and truth be told, that was the better part as I’m learning now. As much as we know when the sun usually sets, it is the unexpected glimpse of one that we remember. Love was like the sunset in that regard. You caught a glimpse of it. You sat across from them, perhaps as they stared across at the view or as they sat in the same room, doing nothing in particular. We only remembered the glimpses.

Most importantly, the next time I fall in love, I will not tiptoe around it. I will be bold. If there is imminent destruction in sight, I will look them in the eye. Go on, destroy me, I’ll say. There’s not much left anyway. I don’t see how I will make out of this alive, and I am too tired to run. Fire at will; I surrender. I surrendered long before I met you.

There has been a mellowing lately. I have noticed more. For the longest time, joy had eluded me, but I have learned to catch a peek now. There was a strictness I had put over myself for years. I am slowly letting myself be, yet as all things are good in moderation, I’m not letting this lightness engulf me. I found myself singing a song the other day; as tuneless as my voice was, I found everyone must sing along with a song or two now and then. It was not enough to only listen to music. We had to participate.

I believe it was last week when I sat to read outside. The sky was in its golden prime at about five in the evening when the tree in the adjacent complex caught my eye. It was a particular group of leaves dancing to the breeze. The colours caught my eye, and I realised how each leaf was slightly different from the other, even when they belonged to the same bunch: golden, brown, green; there were a plethora of different shades between them, too. I kept looking at it for a while, away from the urgent pleasure of reading, from all my thoughts. It is how I remember that day now.

I indulge a little now, too. My abstinence against certain foods is now weaker. I let myself enjoy the occasional dessert. The other day I had the most fantastic slice of cheesecake at a place I had thought I would never go back to. In many ways, there has been a complete reversal of how I carry myself with some things. Wanting to get into bed in time, I now have fewer cups of coffee, which has been all the better, for it has brought back that kick, the taste I had absolutely forgotten. All leftover work waits on the desk until tomorrow. Although, I stay up to play a few rounds of chess now and then, losing most of them in the daze of exhaustion. I do not intend to win anymore.

I don’t know what to feel about all this—I believe I have now found the balance I was searching for under every rock, in every place, nook or cranny. I found it within myself. There is a discipline to do things, there is gaiety in most things, and I am suspended in between. The other day at dinner, I nonchalantly told my mother how I was happy lately. I do not remember saying this to her ever before.

All of us have our little crusades. Ideas we believed in so strongly, we could fight over them. Some end up burning the world down for them. Most only lose some sleep. I was among the latter. All I could do was lose sleep. I was never one to fight. Perhaps, the way I lived my life was my way of fighting: my complete disregard for the opinion of others, even though the words managed to gnaw into my conscience. There was no bravery in blatantly ignoring what others had to say. It was the childish way of living our own truth. The truth was we lived, breathed and spent our days with other people. The trick was to let everything get under your skin and then get used to it being there. If we could live how we wished to with a thousand critics screaming inside our very heads, we could brave anything the world had to throw at us. It was in finding the music amidst the noise. There was always music in the noise.

What was I fighting for? I often forget. There was a lot at stake. I had never been one to conform. Lately, I have been waging war against the idea of more. But I did not march around with a banner and a strong argument against the collective pursuit of it. On most days, I was fighting for a kinder, softer world. The truth is, I did not know how to fight. I was an artist; I knew how to exhibit. My life was an example of beliefs, a museum of ideas. The peculiarity of this method was not lost on me: it often took years for your arguments to take hold, for your way to be understood, but you could not ask someone to be kind, you could not teach a child to be soft; you had to be kind first, and you had to be soft yourself. It was the classic literary advice: to show, not tell. It was how I lived my life and how I waged my wars.

The way I carried myself was the strongest argument I could put forth, and so that was what I did. It occurred to me early on how not everyone rallies to your cause. It’s often only a few people who walk up to you. I learned to take the few and live in the image of how I wanted the world to be. When no one joined in, which was often, I learned to go alone, go all the way. It was the only way I knew how to fight—by myself—and sometimes, I won.

When I woke up today, the apartment had a sepia tint to it. In the confusion of not having fully stepped out of my sleep, I thought of myself in a film, as if I had been transported into how I remember some moments—golden and warm. A second later, I realised the sun was shining outside; even at ten in the morning, balmy air wafted around me. It occurred to me I had left the balcony door open behind the curtain last night. It was the source of my amber daydream. I conducted this pointless investigation curled up in my bed, with my eyes still closed. Worrying about why something is the way it is was a sure-shot way to wake yourself up. It was the only way I knew how to wake up; all I thought about was why things were the way they were.

I always found it interesting how the first few moments after we arose dictated the step of our days. I was well aware that a moment should not hold our days hostage, but all that was talk for people who lived with avoidance. That is not to say it was not good advice. It was the most important thing to know about better days—the direction of our days could change from any point. We did not have to wait for a fresh start if some event ruffles us up at quarter past three in the afternoon. We could wait a minute, take a deep breath and get a hold of our day the minute we wanted to. But I was not too scared of feeling what I felt; I had an outlet in these words.

I was talking to someone I had met for the very first time the other day. We spoke of levity and being okay with embarrassing yourself, enjoying ridiculous humour and spending our days with a sort of lightness about them. Then, it occurred to me how these words make me sound more serious than my usual disposition, which is in all senses of the word, klutzy. It was all the others without a place to dump what they thought, who carried their days with a seriousness beyond my imagination and planned their lives for decades to come, worrying about every little thing. My worries were under metaphors and imagery. I wouldn’t know what I would do without them.

Where would it all go? How would I carry it all? What would I do with it?

I worry I would eat myself alive.

Nothing good was ever easy. The expression is much older than I am. I did not have the patience or desire to look up its origins. Not that words can be attributed to any one person. Everyone has thought of everything there is to think. Some forget what they think of, most ignore it, few record it. I was among the few. Yet, it does not make these words mine. Everyone before me has thought of these same things—over and over again. It is disheartening when you think of an idea—it appears before your eyes in a flash of inspiration—and you find how someone has said it before. Does it make it any less your own? Was any of it yours to begin with? Ideas belonged to no one and everyone at the same time.

It was also about how we perceived ideas. No amount of inspiration ever gave someone an ounce of patience to sit with their thoughts. Patience was cultivated, quite like the garden most people try to grow at some point in their yard before realising it is easier to get vegetables at the store, hanging up the tools in their shed. Few find the patience to deal with the failure and persist. Once the garden burgeons, the entire family enjoys vegetables with little to no effort for years to come. A person who thinks of a clever concept on a bus ride to a bustling workplace often forgets the novel thought amidst the papers, graphs, and meetings. I had lost a plethora of ideas this way—even when I had noted them down.

Nothing good was ever easy, but people thought easy and simple were the same. Often, when we lack the patience to truly understand what words meant, which is a quality in dearth in my time, we assigned more meaning than intended. When they read the words, they often read them as: nothing good was ever simple. It was the most common error. It was an error with radical ramifications to how their attempt towards anything good panned out. Everything good was ever so simple. Missing this distinction, we often spent our lives in a convoluted mess of misunderstanding, complicated events that scarred us over and over in the same places, as we continually, almost obsessively chanted: nothing good was ever easy.

Most love was lost this way; most lives, too.

As happy as I was with my new life, I did understand the troubles brewing softly under the carpets of cosy comfort. Like how we often notice someone looking at us, even if we can’t see them directly, I sensed a peeking, too. I could not be too sure what the future entailed, but I knew it wouldn’t be just sunlit skies and shining days. All of us are bound to run into the shadows now and then. It’s how we make sense of the light. As I sat on my desk that night with these thoughts, I stared at the blank, digital page. I alternated between looking at the off-white wall, reflecting the lamp’s yellow, and the screen. In an instant, I could feel it: the fear all artists had felt before.

The sureshot doubt, the certain uncertainty, the question without an answer: what is it all for? Like a soft whisper, a hand on my shoulder, the warning crept up to me: this was going to be a long and lonely road. It was a faint echo in my mind, almost as if it came from someplace else, some unfamiliar corner I had never visited. Completely engulfed, practically lost in that moment, I was truly alone—without friends, without family, without anyone; me, sitting with my palms on a keyboard, stuck in time. For a second or two, I could see through the years. They had all gone ahead, in different directions. I was still there, facing the page. It was the first time I understood the toll. I understood I may have a very lonely life in more than one way.

It was the only time I ever found myself in the presence of the greats, those I looked up to, those who came before, and something in me told me I had it. I had what they had. If nothing else, I was stubborn. I had the nerve to think I belonged with them. I had the tenacity to try and the drive to stick to it. And I had so much, oh, so much to say. All that was left was to write it down, one word at a time.

I left the city at the tail-end of winter and came back at the onset of warm, comfortable spring. It made me think about how much changes in about a couple of weeks. Yet, when we wanted change, we rarely noticed any for years. What is that point of inflexion, I wonder? When do things warp into another? How is change so invisible, so elusive, and yet so present? They say the only constant is change—show it to me, then! Point me to it when it starts to happen. I want to observe it as it unfolds; I was tired of being a witness to the before and the after. I could only beg, but it would be a pointless exercise. Change happened when you weren’t looking. When did I become so happy, so blithe about all things? Was it yesterday, or was it a month ago? I could not know.

Why don’t I feel the weight anymore? I’ve thought a lot about where I forgot it, and I have no answer. Life was a lot like seasons in that regard. We could not know the precise date when a season shifts. The meteorologists, the scientists, the calendars have a lot to say about this, of course, but it did not matter what date spring began on; spring began when you showered on a slow Saturday afternoon, and as you picked out your clothes for the day, you decided you did not need that extra pullover. Perhaps, only a shirt will do just fine. Spring came in the ballpark of the same time for all of us—at least those in the same hemisphere—but when it truly arrived was up to the person experiencing it. It was the same way with happiness; it was the same way with love. You could not put a time stamp on experience.

What do I do once the pain is over? What of my countless notes about it? I wonder if my sentences, the ones yet to find a place in these passages, are now worthless. Then, it occurs to me how seasons change, how they always return. So, I bind all of them in a neat folder. Perhaps, I will revisit them in some time. Naturally, I could not say when it might be, but I hope with all my heart it is not soon. After all, spring has just begun.

In life, the only constant is the feeling of regret over the handful of mistakes we make; when it came to mistakes, even one was enough. We mull over the very events that shaped us into those who did better, or at least, tried to. I noticed in most people an urge to do better. It wasn’t in all of us, and I had my encounter with all manner of miscreants, but it was present. Just how I could not live a day without meeting a terrible person, I rarely spent any days without coming across a noble one. The memory I chose to go to sleep with dictated what I had to say about the world. And for that, all I could tell anyone was: the world was a gentle place if you gave it a chance, and if it ever feels like it isn’t, it’s calling upon you, passing the baton into your hands. It tells you: it’s your turn today.

If my penchant for walking has taught me anything, it’s that you meet a lot of people on the streets; the more of them you meet, the more you learn how almost all of us are trying to only get through the day. There are days I obsessively think of, moments that haunt me, times I failed to act at the right time or in the right manner, losing the most crucial thing we could possibly lose: people. We could not know our last second with someone. It was important then that we spent it as best as we could, even in times when reconciliation is impossible. To let someone go softly was the only thing I had not learned yet. Not that I have found an opportunity to try since I last held on too tightly.

If it comes to what I hope for, I hope I don’t have to let go at all. I was terribly fond of people, especially all I loved and will love eventually. I hope when the time comes, when I find myself at the crossroads of holding onto someone and letting them go, I hope with all my heart, I make the right choice. The memory of an unseemly farewell was seldom forgotten; all you could do was write about it.