journal.coffee

Did the summer love scald you, or was it a loss that burned you out? Was it devastation so cataclysmic, you cannot fathom where it began, just that it did? It was irrelevant where it started, just that it brought destruction.

I wonder how the house of cards of your heart stood upright till now. Then, it was but a house of cards; part of its beauty was how it could crumble at the slightest of winds; part of its nature is how it can be built back up again. I reckon you aren’t here to get cheap inspiration, are you? I understand you need silence, so I will sit with you.

Sometimes, we wanted a silent spectator. To know someone watched as we jumped through hoops, solving what needed to be done, doing what was required, yet not having them ask if we were okay. Only the presence of another was enough. I could be your spectator.

All you have to do is stare at these words for a little while and go about your quest. I will be watching. I don’t offer this out of some noble cause; trust me, I am as trapped as you are, but I’ve learned if there’s any way out of the hole, it’s together. I’ll watch you. In your own way, from so further down in time and cities apart, you’ll watch me, too.

Often, however, it was not about what we wanted. Often, we needed the truth, not that we knew it. So, I must try. I must speak up like a silent spectator who has watched far too long from the sidelines. The truth is to live was to fail at some point. Perhaps, the stories we told ourselves did not always help us. Maybe, we grew fond of them.

We had to learn to take sorrow as granted as we took joy. The collision courses we were on would never make sense to us, or at all. Entire empires have crumbled without a sign; what is your house of cards in front of them? Perhaps the best bet for us was to move forward when we saw a road ahead—even a glimpse—regardless of how steep, long or foggy it seemed.

And I understand how this is nothing new and how this is what you did not want in the first place. I know how all this has been said before by people far greater than I will ever be. And I know you know how all of this is undoubtedly true.

And yet, you still cry, and yet, I understand.

A long time ago, I found myself sitting among thirty others. It was a writers’ workshop. My biggest qualm was how they never offered us coffee or tea or scotch. It made me suspicious of the lot from the get-go. I battled my urge to point this out or ask for a cup of coffee myself, but I was here to write, and so I let it go. Soon began the introductions, and I knew that I was in the wrong place from that point on. Most people were there—as vulgar as that sounds—to network. They were here to make a few contacts, meet some people who write for the radio or, if they were lucky, films.

Not all of them sold out before they began, though. Some had something to say, at least, but instead of saying what they wanted to, they relied on prompts. You could hear it in the heart of the few poems they wrote, how the honest words wanted to get out. Perhaps, they thought it inconsequential of what they wanted to talk about. The prompts were crutches; they helped them avoid the blank page. Before the page swallowed them whole, they plastered the prompt on the top, neat and tidy, a one-liner in bold. A writer had no need for prompts. You wrote about what you saw and felt.

Then, I did a neat experiment; I wrote the worst sentence I could think of for the prompt. It was intentional. I was sure the man conducting it all would like it, given how he was practically just a peddler of words. My gambit worked. I was called up to read it. I was given an opportunity to work with them—on prompts. I often wonder what would have changed if I had taken it up.

At this point, I could’ve gotten up and left, but I decided instead to see it through now that I was there and they had offered us a glass of water. It was a bargain, but one often had to settle for bargains, especially when it came to other people. As the charade went on, paying no attention to the hullabaloo of snapping and clapping, I started wondering what writing was to me and how better—for the lack of a better word—did I want to be from this lot?

I settled on a simple word: honesty. I have never attended a workshop since.

There were four apples in the fruit bowl on my kitchen shelf, leftover from the dozen my father brought me a while ago. I believe it was a month, but I couldn’t be too sure. As particular as I was about my days, I struggled with this specific kind of remembering. I remembered differently.

I remembered rolling the apples from the bag and into the bowl. I recalled the series of thuds and how they quickly made space for one another. I remembered the reflection of the bowl on the shelf—a still life masterpiece; I remembered the blurry painting. But for the life of me, if someone asked me when the apples arrived, I would not know. My focus was always on the moment’s aesthetic. I had always been on the outside of my life, looking in.

It was paramount for me to note important details and dates down, else I would miss appointments, forget birthdays and stay befuddled for what I was to do in a day. It was shocking how I could keep a worldly life afloat better than most people. I rarely missed appointments, usually ran on time, and managed to get a significant amount of work done every day. Perhaps, my strength was my natural indisposition towards it all. I never took my ability to forget for granted, so I wrote most things down.

In any case, out of the original dozen, I ate most, some rot early which was natural. These four, however, stood the test of time. When something is a part of the picture for long, we stop seeing it. Even the brightest red apples merged into the obsidian background of a shelf if not looked at and appreciated daily. The bowl looked like it belonged on my orderly shelf long enough for me to forget I was to pick the leftover apples up and eat them.

I noticed one of them started rotting today. It broke my heart and gave me a sense of regret I cannot comprehend yet. On the one hand, I know the apples were there, and apples rot when not consumed in time. On the other, they looked like such an incredible part of the picture together; I barely noticed them. Now that I see them again, it reminds me of how my forgetfulness wasted delicious fruit.

It makes me wonder if this was why most things rot—not to die, no, but perhaps, to be seen once again.

To be yourself, you had first to reject the idea of there being a normal. This was easier said than done. Normal was what most people knew, and yet, if you asked them to define it, you’d find them tongue-tied, at a loss for words and absolutely baffled at their own stupidity. It was a good thing—to feel stupid. Once a person learned to be stupid, they learned to reject normalcy.

Then, you had to learn to change. This was easier than most people would ever believe. We changed faster than we could craft a story about it. It was the perk of being a human being to change on a whim. You could choose to wake up on the other side of the bed, change your favourite flavour of cake and the way you carried yourself, and no one could do much about it. Of course, they could say a lot, but doing anything about it was out of the question.

The next step was to be a part of something bigger than yourself. No, not to change the world and other things the spanning concrete forests echoing with repetitive platitudes will have you believe, but instead to test the limits of your dependency on others as well as the amount of horseshit you could consume without imploding. To know your limit for both was to be discreet at navigating the games of society you don’t enjoy.

Naturally, then, you had to love something to the tip of devastation. You had to drown into nothing but passion, enough to have songs sung or cautionary tales written about how not to love—all the while knowing how all the songs and tales were wrong. You’d know how powerful it made you feel and how weak, simultaneously. Someone who loved regardless of the cost mapped the depth of their own heart; to know your heart was to know yourself.

The last thing to do was to question everything, even the truth. It would destroy you. The last thing to do was to be destroyed. Love handled this quite well for most, but if you were a straggler, the truth did a fine job as well. Once you learned to question everything, including these words, you were yourself.

Of course, nothing much would change, as nothing seldom does, but you’d live a life most won’t fathom during your lifetime, and more importantly, after you were gone.

I remember the first time I had to leave; I went to the desert. There wasn’t much else left to do. I wanted to get away from the city where it never stopped raining. More importantly, I wanted to get away from you. You see, when you’re in the middle of the desert, you only see sand all around. It isn’t until you climb a nearby cliff that you see it for its truth—for the expanse of it. We only saw the big picture when we were not in it.

It bothered me for years—who left first? It was a difficult question, given we both left on different occasions, and it had been far too long for me to rely on my memory. Not that one should trust memory for inquiries of importance. Like a madman trying to solve an ancient mystery, I scoured the decade, flipping years like the pages of a long lost tome, going over and over the same information, hoping for an epiphany.

It didn’t occur to me at first. I was too close to it. I was in the middle of the whirlwind, and the sandstorm was swallowing me whole. Of course, I couldn’t see! But now that I’ve walked further away from you, enough to see the expanse of the destruction we brought, I see it all. For what it’s worth, I don’t regret much about what happened to us, about what we did to ourselves, except one. I regret being the one who started it.

It wasn’t until I was sitting atop the cliff of my flaws that I understood. The fault was never in the leaving. It was bound to happen. The question of who left first was of little consequence. The error was in the beginning. Some things were doomed from the start. I hate being the one who started the collision course. If I could turn back time, I’d go back to the day I told you I loved you. I’d decide against it. I’d never tell you at all.

No, not for your sake, but mine. Perhaps, then I’d still have some love left to give. It’s a foolish thought, now that I’ve thought of it. The love I give is my own. It had nothing to do with you then. It has nothing to do with you now. Maybe, all I need is a scapegoat, and who better to blame than oneself? As if I didn’t see you looking straight at me from the other end of the room the day we met.

But who am I to trust memory in matters of love?

Art was corrupted. Writing was dead. They wanted to win. But, there was no prize. Not that anyone knew it. If they did, they ignored it like they ignore a fly in the room. It bothers them at first. The buzzing and the way it moves about gets on their nerves. They chase it. When it manages to elude them, they make do. Humans were incredible at making do, and forgetting.

Truth was a fly in your room that came and left on its own, enough to rile you up, but nothing you could do much about. You could kill it, obviously, if you were fast enough. Perhaps, that is why art was dead. They were all fast enough.

Me, on the other hand? I was terribly slow, and I was indifferent. Most people I’ve met have told me my defining trait was consistency. They weren’t wrong. I displayed an immense capacity to continue with anything I set my mind to. My defining trait, however, was indifference. The consistency was an undesired result of it.

I was remarkably aloof, almost like a bug sitting on a leaf, not making an effort to jump or leave when a child starts to notice it or the wind begins to blow. My only concern, like the bug, was to do what I was doing, which was nothing in particular. I couldn’t care about most things. Any care I showed to the world came from a conscious decision. Anything beyond that just passed right through me.

Perhaps, at one point, I wanted monuments to my name and songs sung about how I marked the world somehow. Now, I have no desire to be in any book of history. I have no inclination to lead. Don’t get me wrong, I want to do things—write more words and make more art. Learning about history and people is never out of the question either. I’ve always been interested in what makes us human.

I have now learned the cost of winning, for whatever it means to anyone, is too high. I will do all of what I want and more, in my own time, at my own pace, and it still won’t be enough for me. With my capacity to not care about much came a need to be continually occupied. Perhaps, I may make a mark on the world after all.

But first, I must get some rest. The cost of restlessness was too high. You ended up scarring whatever you touched.

Growing up in a market neighbourhood, I wanted to escape. It was the only dream I had. I pictured myself living alone on some remote hill or a beach, a cottage with a small café for lost travellers, serving coffee and conversation for chump change. Like most things in life, this changed in a manner so uneventful I still can’t put a finger on when it happened.

To love a city demanded attention to detail. It was a love story unlike any other; to love a city, you had to be patient with it. You had to trace its streets and alleys like you’d trace the skin of your lover, slowly and with unparalleled softness. It was all about the time spent together. Like someone you adored, you had to understand you couldn’t own any part of it, and yet, all of it was here for you. You had to understand it changed without rhyme or reason, that old places shut down all the time, and new ones popped up continually.

To appreciate a city, you had to learn to zoom out. You had to learn it was not about you. You were but a part of a remarkable story being weaved for generations. When there have been people, there have been cities and towns. On every old building lingered a passive scent of what once stood in incredible glory, of an older generation trying their best to survive.

Cities were the testament of dreams dreamt year after year, of people working hard to exist together, of smiles exchanged in coffee shops, of letting someone go first, of keeping an elevator door open for a stranger, of the shop on the corner of the street you waved hello to, of so much more happening together, continually, over and over again.

The mess, the raucous traffic, the screaming, the fighting was all part of the deal, and it wasn’t easy to love it all but to love a city meant you loved people. The cacophony and chaos wasn’t a curse but a blessing; it said there are people here; there have always been people here; and where there are people, there was bound to be love. Tucked between an argument or a sour exchange, sometimes, but there it was, all you had to do was look.

It was a story like none other. It had never been about you, and yet, it could never exist without you.

If I were to let you in, I wonder if you’ll see beyond the neatly arranged boxes, parallel to the rug, parallel to the couch, each lined properly with the tiling on the floor. Will you tell me how I have a beautiful place? That, it isn’t expected of people my age—especially men—to possess such fastidiousness. That, no, no, it’s a good thing and that, you meant it as a compliment.

Will you appreciate how well the colours go together, or will you notice how there’s nothing but hues of blue and grey around? I wonder if you’ll see how the jacket on the couch is thrown in a controlled mess, as if it wasn’t thrown at all. What about how everything is almost always in the right place? Will that pique your interest?

Or will you see beyond the neatly arranged mugs in the cabinet and the symmetry and the lines? Will you see how every drawer and box hides a mess of its own? Will you see the chaos without the order masking it?

I wonder what you’ll see when you see me from that point on—all with the clear thought, the articulation, the drive, the bland routines, the elaborate plans. I wonder if you’ll see what I see in the mirror.

If I were to let you in, will you see the ruin? Will you choose to walk by it, pretending you saw nothing?

What will I do with the time? You ask.

I’ll learn to walk again. I’ve been running for a long time. I seem to have forgotten how to pace myself; I shall learn it again. Often, when we’re running away from imminent danger, we run like there’s no tomorrow. When we’ve run far enough, something within us assures us of our safety, and our steps become softer until we find ourselves walking. A few steps in, and we come to a standstill—heaving. Brimming with adrenaline, we start laughing hysterically.

From that point on, we always remember the moment. We recognise the feeling of it all ending. We remember how to run, but we often forget to walk. We tend to forget how to gallivant without a destination in mind. For a long time now, walking to me has been an act of arriving, but more importantly, leaving. I’ve come a long way since I started running away from you, but I have yet to learn how to walk again, to go back to my flaneurism.

I’ll also learn to write again. When we’re far too caught up in wars inside our own heads, we tend to talk about nothing but devastation. Naturally, all wars end and all trenches are eventually filled with dirt where grass burgeons. Scarred, of course. One could quickly point you to a field where a battle was fought and show you the remains of what once was a desolate landscape of hellish proportions, but cracks do fill, and grass does grow. If the Earth can move forward, perhaps, so can my words.

Most importantly, I’ll learn to rest. When we have run a long way and lived to tell the tale, there’s only one thing left—to get a good night’s sleep. It’s easier said than done, of course. I have twisted and turned in my sleep for a long time now. It is only recently that I’ve had some proper rest. Lately, I’ve enjoyed the sun, the rain, and the banalest of days. I’ve made the most of them all. All the running and all the fighting within can make you terribly exhausted. I will find respite tucked in the corners of all afternoons from this point on.

If you’ll take my word for it, I’m well on my way for all three. One tends to get better at most things if one can only make the time.

And making time is the one thing I have never had to learn.

The act of writing was rarely about what you wanted to say to others. Naturally, some idiot sitting on a comfortable chair writing some corporate one-liner may feel the urge to get off their seat, armed with a platitude on articulation and clear thought on a placard with space for two-hundred and eighty characters. I reckon they should sit down and do what they do best—but it’s not writing.

Writing was a dialogue. It began in your own head, as you struggled to make sense of experience, of which there was no dearth if you kept your senses open, especially your eyes. It began with the voice echoing in your head as you sat in a bar with the people you grew up with, a drink too many sometimes to make it stop for once. If you’ve heard the voice, though, you know that never worked.

It then became a conversation between you and a blank page; whether the page was on paper or glass was irrelevant. Anyone who thought it mattered might fare better in sales than writing. Not that I would know how one fares better in either; I tend to fail at both. Rarely, in a feat of genius, the conversation happened in a minute. Sometimes, it took days. Often, it took years.

The conversation never ended. Writing was imitation. You went to the greats if you failed. You often failed. You sat in the sun, a dark room, a bus or a train, and wherever you could read what was written before. More often than not, without you asking, the greats lent a hand. All your words sounded like theirs until they started becoming yours one day. The page guided you from that point on.

Then, you wrote until the voice stopped. It never stopped.

When it stops hurting, we don’t write a poem about it. At least, not at first. At first, we doubt ourselves. We doubt our ability to heal as if no one has done it before us. But then, we catch ourselves off-guard, basking in the sun without a care in the world. It doesn’t sit well with us, of course. How can it? It doesn’t fit into the story as neatly. Where is the catharsis? We ask ourselves. What about the closure we deserved?

And then, slowly, we start forgetting the sorrow. Of course, not completely. Never completely. But we learn to make room, and that’s when it begins. Happiness finds its way into little corners of our lives, in nooks and crannies of our days. Before we know it, it starts to settle in. It comes with the myna on the balcony, with its two hops and three chirps before it flies away to attend its worldly business.

It’s not always magical, of course. Our lives pretty much stay the same. Our days don’t change as much. We make room regardless. We make room for another houseplant we’ll probably fail to keep alive for longer than a couple of weeks. We make room for a book we might never read. We buy some paint and brushes, and we shove them into a drawer after painting the one masterpiece we’ll talk about for years.

Slowly, however, we make room for more and more until the heaviness pales in comparison. The grief starts to blur. That was the thing about grief and joy—they both expanded, given the room. And without anyone telling us how to, we slowly increase the space in our lives for the tiniest of calms.

And when all is done, we write a few words, and they call it cliché. As if that were a flaw. As if it was supposed to be hard. As if that was not the point after all—that it was easy; that all we had to do was make some room.

A few kids in the building I live in have been making the most of the winter sun lately. I was convinced there couldn’t be a much better use of the sun than reading and just lying down on a grassy balcony. But then, I saw them. They arrive at the grass patch shared by all residents every day when the sun breaks. Mostly, it’s just two siblings. Sometimes, they have a friend along.

The elder sibling, albeit still tiny, has a picnic mat that’s twice his size rolled. He arduously lifts it between his hand and shoulder like a miniature infantryman walking to his own war. His other hand has a few toys, almost always more than a couple of them. The little one usually has a toy in each hand, but I’ve seen him walk around with just a ball in his two little hands, stumbling but never letting the ball fall down. Once they’re here, they begin setting up for a time of what I can only imagine being absolute fun.

I often look at them carrying their things and think of how we hold things; it is a uniquely human trait to hold as much as we can regardless of how difficult, heavy or inconvenient it seems. I see their little hands trying to bring as many things as they can from their houses. Anything less would not suffice. I remember my time in another city—climbing the six flights of stairs to my apartment with three bags of groceries in my hands and a heavy backpack, carefully balancing everything, taking the keys out and unlocking the door after a long day at work. I remember how much I was holding on to at the time.

As I sit here writing these words beside the grassy balcony I’ll read from in a few hours, I have managed to let go of most of those things keeping me on my toes for years. I’ve let go of my want for more, of you, and of countless little things I don’t care to name, lest this piece starts resembling a note of inventory instead. I look at the kids every day and wonder, maybe this is how it was for all of us.

We learned to hold on to things, to carry as much as we could, and not leave something or someone behind. We never taught ourselves to let go. No one else bothered either.

The sun graces my balcony for about an hour and a half, starting about two in the afternoons during winters. Lately, it has become my favourite part of the day. Of course, I often get caught with some worldly business during the time, only to keep staring out the glass door to my balcony as I finish a meeting or wrap some work that makes little sense in the grand scheme of things. I often tell myself neither does anything else, even the sweet space of reading the worldly business in question makes me miss. I often fail to convince myself, though.

I couldn’t speak for others, of course, but I knew what I knew, and I knew what I had learned. Or at least, I knew what I was learning slowly, deliberately, one day at a time. I was learning that it was not too difficult for me to be happy. That I did not need much beyond what I had managed to build so far; that with some adjustment, I would be okay with less as well. It is one of the great perks of growing up without much wealth to be able to fit yourself amidst the gifts of life, however scarce or abundant they may be at any point in time.

As I stepped onto the balcony the other day, I looked around as one tends to do when one leaves a room. I stared at the view, which has cogently proven itself quite dynamic to my surprise and reluctant acceptance. Until now, I’ve claimed hills stayed the same, that no matter what happens, it is the same landscape over and over, that it is the sea which is to be looked at in awe. I stand corrected. The first thing I do when I step into the balcony is wait. I pause before taking a step to look at the view, which is always different. It has become quite the ritual. I’ve learned it is important to pause before taking a step, however banal the step may be when you’re taking it.

In any case, lately I’m learning to be happy in ways I never thought possible. I don’t know much else, and trying to say more would be forcing it. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned after almost destroying myself, holding too tightly onto things too far gone, it’s that nothing good ever came out of making things overstay their welcome.

The rain pattered on the large glass window of our quaint bed and breakfast stay. Like most people in love prefer spending idle time together, we lay in bed talking about nothing in particular. I remember she said something about how I talked too straight, that I often lost my patience when someone tried to walk around with words instead of getting to the point. That was almost three years ago. We’re not together anymore, but if there is one memory that has stayed, it’s this one and for a good reason.

Over the years, I’ve heard the same remark in different forms. Years ago, someone I loved said I was too trusting for my own good. My mother recently told me how I’m too simple for the world I live in. Most friends think I don’t understand the world isn’t as fair as I believe it to be, and they’re probably right in their own regard. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but I’ve been thinking about anger as well. You see, I used to be angry at the world just shy of a decade ago. I was furious at everyone I met. I despised everything, and the lens I viewed the world with was painted red. Red was all I saw.

It was a terrible existence, and I didn’t know when it began, but like most people who lose themselves in their mind, I too lost the light. I found my way outside of it with experience and error, and it has been an odyssey of its own. So, now, I live by a simple philosophy. While I know the world isn’t fair, I try to be just that. While I know people often don’t stop to help someone, I make sure I am never too busy to lend a hand or listen. If someone does me wrong, I try my best to rein the rage in, or if nothing else, to forgive.

I believe in a world that offers a chance or two to most people. I know the world well enough to accept it is a somewhat stupid philosophy to live by, and I can imagine how I might write myself into a corner with it eventually. Still, I will not settle for a world of mistrust anymore. I believe the world and the times are an image of the people who inhabit them. If I can manage to tip the scales, even slightly, even for one person, even once at all, I’ll be naive my whole life.

Out of all the questions ever asked, one sticks out: how must one keep going? It’s a question that has glazed my life with its presence ever since I was a child. Over the years, I’ve found answers and then realised they were all wrong. Friends have come up to me and asked me a version of the same, dreaded question.

I don’t have an answer to the inquiry at hand. If I were even to try, I would barely be able to string one together. But there is one thing I’ve learned about myself which may or may not serve as an answer.

While I often stop walking, I’ve learned that I always manage to begin again. While there are days I want to give up, I often find an umpteen sense of hope in me on the most uneventful afternoons. I do not know where it comes from; I do not know which ancestor to thank for it, but I know it’s there. Maybe, you and I have someone in common—someone who came before—who never gave up. Perhaps that is why we are here today—talking.

I often notice how you refuse to give up too. I see you when I’m walking on the street. I see you sitting by the fire on a wintry evening. I see you laughing a little too loud at an unfunny joke at a party you didn’t want to attend. I do not know how long you’ve been fighting for, but I know how hard it is to keep going. I have no excuse to compare our maladies and troubles; yet, I believe something unites us.

Winters often remind me of how cold it can be. Even then, I can barely grasp how cold it must be as you lay down on your couch, all alone, wherever, whoever you are, and yet, I see you make tea for yourself. I believe the search for warmth made us human, and when there was little of it in the world around, we somehow managed to create it ourselves.

I do not know how we must keep going. I barely understand what pulls me out of bed on the worst mornings I’ve faced. To be honest, I shouldn’t even be here, writing these words.

And here I am—typing in the blistering cold on the patio of a café I visit too frequently, and there you are, reading them in some place and time far away from my own.

Here we are, together. Here we are, continuing.

I walked around town again today. It makes me glad how the unfinished sidewalk, under construction for the longest time ever looks beautiful now that it’s complete. The city is really coming together if you ask me. Truth be told, now that the dust has settled, so am I.

It’s been a while since I went on one of my regular strolls. I’m not sure if my doing that again has any significance at all, but to me, it is the only thing that matters as December slowly folds into yet another January.

I have little to show for this year, really, besides the fact that I’m still walking. But this was like most years if you ask me. If you asked anyone else, they’d be able to give you a better tally of what I did or did not do this year. I was always my meanest critic.

All that said, I don’t understand where to begin or where to end this little barrage of words. I believe it’s in line with how I walk, I barely know when I begin or when I stop. I couldn’t even tell you where this year began for me and where it ended.

I couldn’t tell you many things if you ran into me on this patio I’m sipping my coffee on and writing these words from. I’m unsure, clueless about who I am or what I do or where I’m going, but I know one thing.

I know while I’m sitting on the exact table, having the same coffee I’ve had all year, I’m happy now. I’ve left much behind, hidden in corners of most months this year. Now, I’m tucking a memory in the bookend of December, hidden amongst some flowers wrapped around a wooden beam. It’s made it easier to walk ahead, all this leaving things behind.

I reckon I had been walking away from myself throughout this year if not all years before this one. Lately, I’ve been walking towards myself. I couldn’t tell you how it feels. I’m only learning to feel happy myself.

You had to be here to see it on my face. I couldn’t tell you how it feels. Only that, it feels like the first day of my life.

You can make of it what you may.

The day inches towards an end. I still have dishes to do. It’s the middle of December. I imagine the water is cold, but for no reason in particular, I decide against wearing gloves as I start doing the dishes. It’s an important task, of course. My insistence on never leaving dishes for the next day still gets the better of me. I start to have another one of those conversations with myself—with you. If I could count the number of times I’ve stood with the ghost of you in my lamplit apartment, bargaining, I’d probably live out my days counting. Truth be told, I haven’t thought of you in ages. If nothing else, I haven’t bargained.

I still talk in metaphors—nothing new—but I often talk about grief without someone realising it at all. I speak about feeling at home in crooked corners of crowded coffee shops. I write about doing the dishes with freezing water running between my fingers. I describe my flaneurism with ardent romanticism when it merely has been a way to wait for you for the longest time. Of course, I am now ready to admit the fact—of how I have left my life on hold for years, holding out a hand to the sordid universe you preached about all the time.

I know I could still talk my life away talking about you. I could write a thousand letters and waste my words, over and over. I could detest you or be angry at fate only to begin scarring the world in my own twisted way. Or I could accept the truth staring at me. The truth is I wasted years loving someone who did not love me back. I spent my days building a future that never came to pass. I built the foundation of a life I’ll never have for no particular fault of my own—barring the fact that I held love for someone who didn’t love me enough or perhaps, at all.

But a human being was no place to hold that grief or any at all.

This one, well, was grief as old as time. Almost everyone carried it, day after day until they forgot it on the seat of a train or someone’s coffee table or in a broken bottle at the local bar. Until then, one could only hope to fall asleep on time. Laughing through the day required a proper amount of rest, naturally.

As for me? Well, I haven’t tossed and turned in bed for months.

If I don’t write a word today, the sky won’t fall. If I don’t string another sentence, the world won’t stop spinning. Like all before me, I have little say in the matter. Of course, you will continue to read regardless of whether I write or not. You may find more words to read—better ones, perhaps. At least, I’d hope for it to be that way for I have little left to say. I never had much to say anyway.

If I don’t stain the page with another blot of illegible ink, nothing would go wrong. In fact, much would go right. It was the curse of a writer to unknowingly change the course of history. A word here, a phrase there, and down went the dominoes. We could never know who we affected, of the damage we did; and yet, we did not concern ourselves with matters of the world.

It was a selfish desire—to write—to tell the world we thought a certain way; that it was important enough to be recorded and essential enough to share. It was an exemplary pursuit of being in over your head, believing you had anything worthwhile to add to the deep wisdom of the world you happened to breathe in. The truth, however, was that all words to have ever been written were written already, and all anyone ever had to say for anything remotely important to life had been said countless times over.

To write was then shouting into the void: I have something to say, too. Won’t you listen to me?

Writing reeked of hubris, of thinking you could sway others to the way you saw things, the way you saw the world. It was arrogance. It was a declaration of war against everyone who came before and everyone who came after. It was an echo through time, screaming: I was here.

If I don’t write today, nothing would change. If I never wrote a word again, the world won’t miss it. There were far too many of us. Why, then, am I compelled? I often wonder. Do I have something to say or is it just empty pride, bleeding on the keys of my keyboard?

Ticking and tapping and ticking and tapping and ticking and tapping until the end of my days, repeating the same song over and over and over again: I was here. I was here. I had something to say.

If I don’t write today, would I still be here?

Would anyone believe me?

The other day, I stood waiting for my cab, staring at the countless cars crossing each other at the intersection. The coffee I had a minute or two ago didn’t seem to do much against the chilly winter air. I looked around aimlessly, as one often does when one is waiting. It didn’t matter how long you were waiting for or how long you had to wait—as long as one was amused, one could wait a lifetime.

I noticed my shoes were dusty again. They were always dusty because I walked a lot, of course. Yet, my indifference towards cleaning them on most days could be traced back to an ordinary day in third grade when a teacher berated me for having dirty shoes. She recited the age-old maxim of how we were all judged by our shoes. It was a rote retelling of the exact words everyone before and after her quoted continually.

It didn’t make sense to me because it was a fun day. My shoes were dirty because we had played a lot during the break. Any less, and the shoes would’ve probably been clean enough for her to decide against stopping me and plastering a quote over my conscience.

Later, I insisted I would polish my shoes instead of my mother hitherto doing it for me. I would smear some polish on the shoe, take the brush and polish them until they shone perfectly. Then, I would dampen the shine on them to make them dull. The ritual carried on until I stopped wearing the uniform. My indifference for shoes that didn’t look like they came out of the box continued. Dusty shoes, to me, were a sign of days well-lived.

I continued waiting for the cab. Just then, a man selling balloons walked past me with only one foot in a shoe; the other one was bare. He asked me to buy a balloon from him. I told him I had no use for one and asked him about the shoe. He said he broke it at some point during the day. I asked him if I could help him out; that it was cold. He said he’d rather I bought him a cup of tea instead. I said I’d be happy to, but a cup of tea only kept you warm temporarily.

He smiled and said, “if there is anything I’ve learned today, so does a shoe.”

I think to become a well-adjusted adult, not one who could buy groceries or hold a job, but to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, one had to learn to live in a world they disagreed with, and one that disagreed with them. That was the difficult part. Pretending you were living righteously was the easiest thing in the world.

When you believed the correct way for something to be was so and such, and someone told you they didn’t agree, you had to be okay with it. You had to be okay with the idea of there being no correct answers to the human experience, and if there was such an answer, you had to accept that you—one person alone—couldn’t find it.

Of course, that was easier said than done but you had to develop an ability for it. The ability of not only being able to see the world through the eyes of someone else, of not only being able to walk the streets as they did, but to know that sometimes, you couldn’t see how someone saw it or you couldn’t walk places they’ve dragged themselves out of. To accept that your life is utterly limited and your experience is bound by those limits.

If there was an answer to make a mark on the world, to lend a hand to everyone else, to lead so everyone could take a step together, it was in the acceptance of it all. It was in accepting that when all is said and done, for all your convictions and maxims, for all platitudes you preach, you couldn’t repeat your own life in the exact way it has panned out.

It was in the humility to accept all you had was instinct and all you had was an inkling, and somewhere between those two was your truth. Your truth was that you didn’t know anything at all. You never did.