journal.coffee

People wrote for different things. I only wrote to make someone, anyone, less alone; that, in turn, made me less alone myself. I was prone to loneliness. I had known this forever. We wrote to give others what we craved for ourselves. Even in crowds, in groups, in places teeming with love, I felt odd loneliness. I did not know what to do with it, so I allowed my mind to wander into the breezy afternoons, in the sunlit sultriness of April, in the muggy nights while I lay with a book only to find something to say. It often came back to me, back to the moment, with a sentence or a few words that I would quickly jot down. It was all there was to it. The words were my doorway to all of these moments in time. All my words were a map. These bookmarks, these soft afterthoughts, were all I had to remember my life. I could not rely on my memory; the little I did not record was often forgotten.

But the purpose of these words was to tell someone I too felt it: in all moments of happiness and those of sorrow, in all longing and all fulfilment, in every echo of laughter and every tear shed, I too felt it, this galling feeling of being alone. I could never put a finger on where it came from, why was it there, or what I could do with it. At some point, between years I cannot quite remember because I did not write enough, it occurred to me I could not be the only one who feels this way. I could not be the only one who builds a home in crowded malls, in raucous cafes, on the streets, only to walk back home and retreat to my own pockets of peace when I had seen enough. No matter where I went, this recipe for my life stayed the same. I had made my peace with it.

I ignored it, this trickling feeling of being alone, like we ignored a leaky tap. It sat there, marking some sort of ticking of time. I sat there, not letting it get to my head until it became white noise. In this unique arrangement, I found my way to happiness. I wondered if it was because I wrote more often, but I could not be too sure. It was the most pleasant spring I had ever seen. I was alone, perhaps that much was true, but I was not lost. It was all that mattered.

I wish I knew who cursed me with this striving for perfection. I wish I could ask them why. This picture of flawlessness runs deep within my veins, right along with my blood. This obsession, this want in me for a world worth living in, a life lived correctly, of well-rounded days and ideal interaction, has killed me on more occasions than I can keep count of. If I have ever bled out, I have made sure I did it right. At least, I have tried. So far, my life has been a pointless attempt to keep everything in the right place, to do what I say I will, to improve and improve and improve, and never reach the ideal I have set for myself. I have consistently failed to climb the pedestal I can see ever so clearly in my mind. I have seen it ever since I was a little boy. I jump towards it, but I always fall short.

I had an unachievable standard for myself. I was my worst critic. I was my worst admirer. There was always more work to be done. I did not know when to congratulate myself. The world with all its odd intricacies and make-believe was a reflection of the standard we held for ourselves, of what we were willing to let go or let be. As much as I know perfect does not exist, we could not know, and we could not rest until we got close. The only paradise we deserved was built with calloused hands and tired minds. All that was to be fixed could be fixed; everything and everyone could be made into a better form. All we needed was the will and a little bit of time.

There was little we could do for the world; there was always something we could do for ourselves. It all trickled down into the world, but it started with us. There were no gods; we built the world in our image. I pronounced myself guilty for all trials in my mind. It is the only crime I have ever punished myself for: imperfection. I have only asked myself a single question for all of time: was there a better way? The answer has always been yes.

I think I should sleep more. I should sleep for twelve, fifteen hours if possible. I know people who can manage this, but I was far too connected to the world. I took too much responsibility for what I did with the day. The roots of the game were entrenched and dug deep into me. With these words and the way I carried myself, I was just going to be a lousy player. Artists tend to act as some sort of digression from others, from society, as if the whole point of art was not to improve the world you lived in. All art was about change, but you could not change what you did not know. To know how little ordinary people want, to want it all and then reject it was art. You could not shorten this journey. You could not start with the rejection. There would be nothing to reject.

Coming to sleep, I feel that is the only time I am not worried about disappointing someone. For all hints of wisdom in these words I wrote, the terrible curse of never making the right choice hovered over me. If I laid in bed for an added hour, it was to avoid disappointing someone; even this would disappoint someone. The world runs on promises kept. No, not promises of forever, but little promises of yes, I will see you for coffee, and yes, the work will be done, and yes, I will handle the favour, and yes, the errand will be done, and yes, I will go to the bank, and yes, I will file my taxes, and yes, I will make time for you, and yes, I will listen when you want me to. This is the way. Regular people, like you and I, we did not have the luxury of breaking many of them.

Years of civilisation have solely depended upon promises being kept by us. To steal a moment of sleep in the sun and grass, or even your own bed, to make it easier, was the act of ultimate rebellion. I was about to commit it this evening. They would accuse me of high treason, and then they would forget. Too many promises were broken too often; people have promised forevers and then stolen them. Surely I can take an hour or two for myself.

For a long time now, love has been a fever dream to me. It has been strange, vivid, incomprehensible, and extreme. It has been recovery through an illness I could not yet name, knowing only that I was boiling, seething, sweating as I lay with my eyes closed, unaware of where I was—trapped. And when trapped, I did not want to get out, not that I would know where to even begin. I did not know where the door was. Love was a creaky, old basement I had trapped myself in, like how a child wanders downstairs in curiosity, failing to realise the door has shut behind them. Like them, I have panicked only when the darkness grew louder, only to run up the stairs and learn the door was jammed. For almost as long as I can remember, I have trapped myself in love, not knowing the door has locked behind me until it was too late. I have gotten out of it in shock, baffled and disoriented as someone told me it was just a bad dream. I have only remembered love as something I am supposed to forget.

There is little I know about soft love, but I know it exists. I have known it has existed for a long time now. Perhaps, that is why I trapped myself in the basement in the first place. When we know something to be true, we scour all corners of the world for it. There is no other way. I am now learning to accept it when I see it, even if I see it once, even if I see it faintly. I see it in the way someone looks at me when I look away or how someone else remembers something even I forgot about myself. I often notice the possibility. The fever dream is all but over now, but I am not fully ready to wake up yet. Like how we sleep in, lay in bed after an exhausting sleep, I am taking my sweet time, too. If nothing else, my eyes are still getting used to the light. I have just left the darkness after all. I still see flowers in the dark.

Most goodbyes are never said. You understand them like the sky understands how the rain must leave and how the sun must shine again. For that to happen, it has to let the clouds go about their business until they disappear. That’s how most goodbyes are in life. That is how people are lost. We think we can get used to it—this understanding—but life is too short for it. The sky has been doing this for a long time. Even then, it has trouble letting go. The overcast skies have not left the city for the last week. There was a storm with a chance of rain. People looked up in respite. It has been too hot lately, they said. It never rained. The sky still waits—a faded blue cover over otherwise sunny days.

And what of the rain, the cloudburst? It is inevitable. Nothing is the same after an outburst. It rains to clearer skies, but a lot has to end first, a lot is lost in the middle of it all, and much has to die. Perhaps, that is why the sky prefers there to be no goodbyes at all, for it to be silent. It already knows the scale of what is lost: all the birds that lose direction, all the bugs who feel the wrath of the downpour, all the lightning striking here and there. All storms took too much away, too quickly. And all we had, along with the sky, was the solace of being unaffected. We write poems about it, the silver lining, and how the sun breaks still after each storm.

No one talks about the cost of it all. Storms don’t end until they’ve taken enough. All blue skies carry a toll; someone has to pay it, and the others, the untouched, make poetry out of it.

Lately, I’ve made a list of places where flowers bloom. I now walk around town with an eye open for pockets of pretty flowers, trees and plants in bloom, burgeoning patches here and there. It could be a colourful world if we were to look for colour. It could be grey if grey was all we saw. I have embraced grey, and I have embraced colour, and I know why the latter is better. I am now trying to attune myself to as much of it as possible. There is an aesthetic pleasure I am now finding in life. I notice more things more often—like the brown of your eyes and how the light green you’re wearing brings it out, how the light makes it all better, and how I could sit across from you for a long time only thinking about this and nothing else. It would be a day well spent.

As for my list of flowers, I would add more to it until spring ends and then, the following year, I would know where to look. It is often in the simplest undertakings we find happiness. And if I were not here in this city? I would continue adding to it wherever I went until one day, it would occur to me that there were flowers, a plethora of them everywhere, if only I was looking. An inventory of things only told us they were many. We do not take stock of the sky. We know it is there. We do not count stars, for we know there is no point. But this aesthetic pleasure, this childlike curiosity I have with flowers, is new to me, and while I know where this journey ends, I must first go through the motions of compiling this list. Knowing how things end is not reason enough to not see them through. It is often on the way that most pleasures are found.

The start did not matter once we began, and nothing ever ended. All we had was the middle. If you don’t have much to do on a Sunday afternoon and if the rote pondering on your walks is exhausting, counting flowers is an excellent pastime. If nothing else, you could always point someone to where flowers bloom. It was important information.

There was an obsession, in my generation, to reduce responsibility, to do the bare minimum on most days, and often, to not do anything at all. I did not understand this because the responsibility did not disappear even if we buried our heads in the sand; it dissipated. It went to the others who did not cut theirs down but lifted it instead. It went to the ones with individual agency, who struggled to keep the world afloat, the weight of the world crushing their shoulders while the others waltzed through life. Out of an unfounded pride, the latter often told the former they should do little. The former only smiled and went about fixing things silently. The latter did not repay this debt. They did not realise they were in one, but just as not paying our dues on time only increased the duration we’d be under them, this debt too was there, forever. No one would pay it. No one would ask for it either. The helpers rarely ask for anything in return. It does not mean they are not owed. It only means they have things to do.

There was a dearth of uniqueness, in my generation; you could hear it in how people talked. The dreams, the humour, the thoughts were all the same. Everyone had the same idea of a good life and the same places for a vacation. The same rote platitudes and maxims covered the need for wisdom, and the troubles were all the same, to the tee. Everything was one immaculate repetition. It was all a charade, some twisted caricature. People listened to the same ten songs month after month. There was no need to cultivate an individual taste for music or books or art anymore; we consumed what was served. There was no need for singular effort. There was no need to think. Our deepest points of view were handed to us on a platter as we went about repeating them, over and over, to talk to others who repeated what they had heard, over and over. It was a nightmare of epic proportions; it was a horror show.

I was not too far from this suffocating spiral of similarity, but I could not shake the feeling of something being off. I was but one man, though. The only person I could take charge of was myself. Now, I’d be damned if it was the answer after all.

Epiphanies are a dime a dozen. I state my learnings in passing conversation with friends and family, and if I can’t find someone to listen, I tuck and hide them within these words. All my tiny strands of understanding are uniquely public. I contradict myself through time, repeatedly in a grand display of indecision and cluelessness. But it occurs to me how everyone does this; I only leave a written record. I wonder if there’s any other way to live. If there was, I would not want it. Most of my flashes of insight are about myself, unique to this very regular life I lived, of course. I did not know how to talk about other people, not that I ever saw any reason to do so. I was too involved with myself, in knowing the inner workings of my mind, in observing how I am changing. To me, it was a more noble way, more palatable to live than to talk about others, to cry in outrage for every breathing second of my life, or to be bitter, in general.

Lately, I have learned how it takes a lot to fill the colour back in. I’ve also learned how you have to start somewhere if you plan to get anything coloured at all. A fresh coat of paint looks unnerving, odd, for the first few days. You have to give it time to settle in, to let it talk to your walls for a while, for them to arrive at a unique agreement of who they are; I often tell people they are not a coat of paint but a wall. They seldom understand the metaphor, and if they do, they don’t quite enjoy the permanence of the notion. But walls, too, can change. They can be brought down and built back up again—differently. In many ways, I have understood myself more in the past six months than I have in the past six years. The concrete of the past sets quickly; it takes a lot to break out of a wall you have trapped yourself in. But I am learning I can’t go forward with one foot in the cement of the past, especially when it has started to set. And just because I have been a certain way does not mean I have to continue.

I’ve learned that when a wall gets old and cracked, light often creeps into it. It was astonishing what a little light and warmth could do. I’ve seen fantastic things. I’ve seen flowers break out of debris.

I’m slowly learning how to rewrite. I often go back to sentences and things I’ve said before. I’ve been revisiting places—sometimes by choice, sometimes by chance. When we’re writing on paper, we often scribble over something we’ve written poorly; poor not in artistic quality, but the scribble itself is light, faint, and illegible. It has been like that in many ways—this rewriting of memories. There are many written poorly. Lately, I’ve scribbled over things I don’t remember clearly. I’ve added a colourful lie in some places, like how a child draws a crayon animal outline over some critical papers. It is a terrible chore to fix the documents at the moment: an example of the innocent destruction children bring about. Eventually, it becomes a cherished story, a family folk tale, an anecdote for the ages as years go by. With the same audacity, confidence, and innocence, I am colouring the grey days I don’t remember too clearly. All I care about now is filling the colour back in, and if I find no space to do so, to colour outside the lines.

This vibrant spill of colour has trickled into my present. This rewriting has saved me from myself. It has also saved these words. There is colour now, so much of it, I do not know what to do with it. Like how we fix the dull corners when we have a bucket of leftover paint, I am fixing some corners here and there. I do not have much to say about it. The colour does the talking for me on most days. I do not have to tell someone, “look, things are vivid and rich now.” They can often see it for themselves. This burst, this explosion of colour, has not been loud. It has been slow, deliberate and meticulous. At least, it started that way. It is always in how things start. Once begun, most things take a life of their own, but if we remember how things started, we can go further than we believed we could. This was true for some superhuman pursuit, some struggle of the righteous, all tales of lasting love, and relatively irrelevant, deeply personal undertakings like my own.

It was always in how things began, and it was in how we remembered them, and if we remembered them poorly, it was in how much colour we could add after the fact.

I woke up with a stuffy nose and a heavy heart; it was spring after all. As I sat down to write, I started staring out the window, my focus blurred as I fixated on a thought and temporarily on a spot of dust on the glass. I was near-sighted by choice. I only cared about the present moment or, at best, the next day. I did not have a plan. I could not make one. I was lost when it came to what would transpire in years, but in every day, in the quotidian, in the what happens right after I have a thought, I was found.

I mulled over writing, over how it was probably not the best vocation to pick up; that if I were wiser when I first wrote a sentence out of sheer overwhelm and no other reason, I may as well have picked a brush or even a camera. While there were always going to be words, something told me there would be fewer and fewer writers. There was a difference. There was always a difference. This thought washed a wave of terrible loneliness over me. I was mocking myself. I did not pick a pen up. It called out to me all those years ago. The pen only called to the loneliest ones of them all. It only called to the ones who could brave it and, if required, who could brave it alone.

All I had was my will, which I had in tremendous amounts. I did not know which ancestor I had to thank for it, but it was the only quality I was proud of; all else faded. This unshakeable resolve I had in me was how people remembered me, if they did at all; it was how I remembered myself, too. It was a curious problem: to have enough drive to power an entire generation concentrated in one irrelevant human being. You could not make friendships on the pretence of some scene, some faux attempt in the name of pushing each other, quite simply because you didn’t need it. That was not to say I did not need friendships—only that befriending someone for some placard inspiration made me nauseated.

All that said, artists like me, we only became examples—more often of not what to do than a gold standard to aspire towards. At least, we became something. There was solace in that much alone.

Can a person be a song stuck in your head, an earworm? You’re all I have heard lately, in all songs I have heard lately. What a stroke of luck to find a tune so pleasant, so mellifluous! Once you find a song like that, if you find it at all, it’s all you hear. You hear it in the mundane moment at three in the afternoon when you’re sitting at a desk facing a screen as a mellow track wafts through the sunlit room. You hear it along with the coffee you get in the evening as the breeze whistles about the patio to gift you a few leaves, setting them softly on your table like a child carefully setting down a present made for you. You hear it in the unintelligible music, in the chaotic laughter of a drunken night when your wits are not about you, and your heart is pouring faster than the booze.

There’s only been one tune in my head for a while now. You’re the only song I feel like hearing lately. It’s the only song I can remember. I do not know what to make of it, but I do not mind it being this way.

You’ve stirred something in me, like how a good song stirs something in us as we catch a bit of it while walking around the city or sitting someplace doing nothing in particular. It’s a happy coincidence to hear just the part that grabs us as if every decision up until that moment led us to hear that little riff or chorus or just those two lines of lyric that were written as if only for us. Then, we listen to the song over and over again. It lights up something inside us we did not know existed until we first heard it, something that lay in corners we don’t visit or don’t know of in the first place. I can’t seem to put my finger on it—this unknown familiarity.

I don’t yet know what to make of it, I don’t know if I will know it, but you feel like a song I heard a long time ago, before I heard anything at all. It is all I have to say about it. For now, I only want to hear the music.

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.