journal.coffee

The reason we know people is so we can connect them to each other. Every person is a bridge. We cannot learn everything on our own, and I say that with the firsthand experience of trying my hand and, naturally, failing at this fool’s errand. But the fact that other people can be good at things you are terrible at is often understated and rarely realised. And the goal of any life should be to meet as many people as possible, to collect people with a wildly wide gamut of expertise. When I say expertise, I do not mean some position someone holds where they can make a few signatures to get things done for you. That sort of thing reeks of ugliness to people like me, and those kinds of acquaintances, while necessary, should not be the priority for any person living and meeting people. But alas, we need all kinds. That, too, is true. But when I say expertise, I mean people who know how to do things with their own two hands and who can make a molehill out of a mountain when it comes to solving a problem. And then, we must try our best to actively seek such problems.

When meeting a friend for lunch or after a long time in another city, we must ask them, “What are you trying to fix, and have you found a way yet?” And if we learn they are hammering their head on the wall, that they are stuck like someone is stuck when they have no options but to try something over and over without possessing the natural aptitude for the task at hand, we must do our best to help them, but as is often the case, we cannot be good at everything. But if we know someone who is good at it, someone who can help and reduce the effort simply by being on the scene, then I say it is our moral responsibility to bridge the gap. This is all any person is supposed to do. We must all share all that we know with each other, including the knowledge of others who can solve things we cannot.

And what if we are the person who needs help? Then, we must have the grace to accept this, to be receptive to the hand someone extends to help us out, and we must say, without even a shred of embarrassment, “I do not know my way around this; can you help me out?”

In a world so bleak and cold, what a rebellion it is to think in the wildly varying warm hues of hope. Sometimes, I fear I am not as optimistic a man, at least not as much as I could be, but then, I look around at all the people around me. I hear them talk as they diminish any sense of warmth in the world, and I realise the error in my judgment. Then, under the heavy air of adversity that has not arrived yet, I watch as they rely on the crutch of religion or some equally outlandish and bothersome idea. I sit there biting my tongue, thinking:

If you keep your heart open, if only you accept that good things exist, and they happen, and they happen more often than the bad things do, you would not need a proverbial stick to lean on. All of you will be bolstered. All of you will be surefooted. Tell me, what good is borrowed faith?

But I continue sitting there until the topic rolls over, or if there are more pressing, urgent concerns on the table, like deciding what to order, accelerated by the server’s arrival, things naturally move to that, and I avoid this absurd confrontation. Yet, it stays with me and rarely do I meet someone who shares this optimism—the quiet kind. My optimism is not about tricking myself. It is simply one of hope. There is the beginning and the end of it. I believe things happen if we try our hand at them, and until we try things, they can’t begin happening. And what of things that happen to us, the curveballs, the unexpected? What of it? Pain occurs, and you do something to it until it feels smaller.

No matter what happens in life, there is something beautiful to look at, something warm to talk about, something of a vivid and loud aesthetic quality to embrace. This is a given. But most people do not look at things this way. They miss out on the serendipity of life. When their misery ends, they have another one to mull over. Over and over, this happens. They do not stare at the sun. They do not walk under its glow. The lengths most people will go to for this exhausts me in a secondhand fashion. I do not know what to do with this feeling.

Anything can happen—that much is true. What most people forget is that this includes the good.

I sit here writing at about twenty minutes after midnight. The day is still going on like an affair on its last legs, and I am thinking about all the times I could have written today—in the morning, under the afternoon sun, in the cafe at six, but I did not do it. The reasons for it are a mystery intriguing enough for someone to look into but unimportant enough to become a cold case eventually. In any case, here I sit, writing. Nothing else matters. One might argue that by the time I say something significant, which is often only a sentence wrapped up into the padding of mundane context, like the proverbial needle in the haystack, the piece is usually over, that I take ages to even reach what I am writing about. But all of that is hypothetical, of course, for to argue about these vignettes, one would have to read them first and read all of them, and if that is a humongous ordeal, then read enough of them to know how they exist like a pack of cards. You may not always have use for all of them, and if you are the gambling kind, you definitely will look to the few, but the fact that you need all of them to complete a suit remains unchanged regardless of the utility of any card or the rules of the game. These pieces work like that, too, or at least, I hope they do. I would not know, not for sure.

Today, I find a sudden, almost refreshing urge to be honest. Not that honesty had ever escaped me, but today, it is present in how water is present in a glass that is overflowing already, in how someone turns the tap on and forgets the glass there and then, and the glass is then filled anew with water, and when it is fully filled with it, it is filled yet again, and on and on it gets filled with it until someone notices it. That is how I feel tonight, but I do not have a reason for this, and this is what bothers me. More often than not, if you tell people how you feel, they ask you why, and they do this immediately, and they do it instinctively, and they do this liberally, without paying any heed to kind of feeling. Eventually, we begin to ask ourselves this before anyone can.

Why am I happy? We ask ourselves as if it is something strange and unknown. It makes me laugh.

While having my second coffee today—no, I reckon it was the third—I began to stare into space and looked at the sky with its odd mauve hue of winter nothingness. I forgot I was with my friends for two or three seconds, and in it, I thought of the sheer volume of time that has passed through me, and that I have passed through in return. But then, I avoided being caught up in the trap of my own mind, and I felt neither sorry nor awe.

As I said, it was only two or three seconds, and after that, I was with my friends again. We had coffee and some food. I clasped and rubbed my hands together and tucked my head into my scarf as a breeze blew. The otherwise sunny and light-filled outdoor seating was warm differently this evening. It was warm, like a walk in the narrow paths of a hilly town, with its cobblestone roads and trails moist and wet with the rain from the night prior. If we sat there for another twenty minutes, I suppose we would have frozen to death or, hyperbole aside, caught a cold, but for the time we were there, there was warmth, too. This is an evening I will carry till the last day I spend in this life, this and many others like it.

Only one kind of happiness stays the test of time, and it is this one—the one of comfort. Everything fades. I have been happy, ecstatic even, but all of it has been conditional. Happiness has filled me one day, and the next, it has spilt through the cracks in the phoney bone china heart of mine, broken, of course, on accident, as if that is any excuse anyone could give for breaking something that was not theirs. Alas, there is happiness like that—fragile, delicate, brittle and frail. It breaks the moment you get a little too comfortable with it.

Then, there is what was on the sticky wooden table in the garden today. You cannot take it away. It stays with you in all its barren coldness. You remember it because it makes no sense when you’re in it. But then, time passes, and you realise you would do anything to return to it. Moments like these are present all over. I suppose I have learned to spot some of them ahead of time without the crutch of hindsight.

I wonder why that is, but that, too, is not my concern tonight.

The city you grew up in, regardless of the times you left and returned, irrespective of whether you stay or go again, carries a unique place in your heart, but more so, in your continuity. I walk through the narrow street which, at one point, housed the kindergarten I went to. The school is no more; there are apartments in its place now. But this has no hold over the memory. The kindergarten exists still in some lives, and children still go there as far as memory is concerned. I walked through the town, which is not something I have done in a while, for the sidewalks were all turned over and filled with dust and cement—surrounded by workers toiling in the ruckus of the day and the chilly air of the night—did not offer much opportunity. But now, everything is made anew. The lights all over, the ever-evolving skyline, and the pristine and meticulously paved sidewalks have enticed me lately.

Today, I followed the route I would follow often before the city got buried in dust a year ago. A wave of nostalgia crashed over me as, once again, I saw my whole life happen before my eyes, and I walked through both key and banal events. I lost people all over again, and I found them again, and then, I lost them again, too. I lost them at crossroads, on sidewalks, on benches, and sometimes, I lost them in the crowds.

I returned rejuvenated and energised but also heaving a sigh at the sight of my heavy heart. Perhaps, there is solace in this, that I am leaving again, and that this time, unlike before, I plan to return. I am not running away from the small town anymore, no. If my eyes are any good, this sprawling urban centre is neither small nor a town. It is now the oldest friend I have. The one from whom nothing is hidden, nothing is omitted. It has seen it all, yet it invites me for a walk.

We leave parts of ourselves, ghosts only we can see and remember. Well, us and the city. I walked half a score of kilometres, and not once did we run out of stories. Remember that luxury hotel used to be an oily food joint? Remember when no malls existed? Remember when I fell in love over there, on that corner?

Of course, it did. It remembered everything.

It is eleven in the night. The fog has started to set in on the balcony outside. The spicy aroma of the tea in the mug wafts about this corner of the room where I sit with the blank page facing me. All days are different in how they eat you up, how they exhaust you. Today, I feel the most unfortunate weariness, the one of the mind, the one where you can read a sentence and know what words are written, but the meaning escapes you, the one when everything that falls out of your mouth falls wrongly, when it is all garbled and boggled, and in the end, all you can do is wait for your body to become tired enough so you could sleep. You could run a marathon, running and pacing yourself along the streets of the town, even in the dead of winter. You could do it and finish it and not grasp why they gave you the medal you now hold. This is the worst kind of exhaustion because it leaves nothing in you. This is also the most common kind of exhaustion for those of us who have to earn a living, so we can write a few words in the morning or sometimes in the night.

Music plays in the background—rhythm & blues, some song about making the right decisions, and I want to think it over. I want to listen to it and let it affect me in the worst possible way. But I am so tired. The words make no sense, and in this delirium, I sit here, enjoying it instead. So much truth in the gravelly voice, the world-weary lyrics, and to think it is merely playing as I sit and write here. One must have an even head even to enjoy a good song. Today, if all my wishes came true, I would not be able to accept the gift graciously, and what if just one came true? What if the phone rang and someone confessed their undying love for me? That, too, I would process with the hay in my head and say something wrong, or out of place, or worse, not say anything at all. On a day, or rather, a night like this, we must go to sleep as early as we can before we squander some opportunity. We must let the world live and pass us by. We must pull over and sit at the curb of the night. We must let the day end, so I will do just that.

It is Sunday, and my wish for some sun has been granted sparingly, like how a genie grants a wish in the most twisted sense, almost as if the ability to wish was a trick in itself. But I am aware of the many pitfalls of hope and wishful thinking. People learn these things early. No school is necessary, and no rubric or pedagogy is required for optimum learning. All people, at some point or the other, learn that to wish is to gamble. It is the most dangerous gamble of all—you put your life, and not just your life, but the life to come, the future at stake. Yet, we wish for things, big and small. I wished for love not long ago; today, I wished for sunshine. Banal as the latter was, it has not been granted. Sure, there is light around. We are not submerged in eternal darkness as this passage would have you believe, but there is no warmth in the light upon us. “You asked for sun, and here it is,” the genie would say, “you did not specify you wanted warmth.” And he would be right. All the fables warn us about it. I have been a fool for not choosing my words carefully.

Oh, for all the regrets I have about this to mull over. If I had a nickel, oh well, I would not be sitting here renting this apartment, that is for sure. It is the semantics that betray us, writers most of all. We say things, and then, we regret them not because we were wrong but because between all that is written (or said) and all that is read (or heard) is the valley of interpretation. It burgeons with the lush patches of misunderstanding. They grow in all shapes and sizes and, often, are alluringly beautiful. Like bees filled with the buzz of innocence, we wander to them, and there we learn, like bees often do, that of all flowers in the world, the most colourful are usually traps.

Ah, my metaphor seems to have wandered like a wayward bee who never returns to the hive. It is perhaps a hint that I have already said what I could say today. And yet, it also reminds me of all the conversations that did not go right, and there it is, the reason I woke up with the craving for warmth.

But then, you cannot merely wish for things—I will now go to the kitchen and make some coffee—you must make them happen.

After waking up today, I walked around the flat as if I had been to it for the first time, with the strange unfamiliarity of how you wander around in someone else’s home, like a stranger’s place you arrived at drunk and late in the night with other things on your mind than looking at their decor or commenting on their bookshelf and only in the morning was there any time or attention to take a look around and gauge what kind of person lives there. Once I got some coffee in my veins and things began to seem recognisable, I realised I had slept the morning away. Of course, this was not odd to me because the next immediate thought I had was about how the last week had felt longer than a month, and this, I want to specify explicitly, was a welcome change.

It has come to my realisation that, like a dog in the street, I cannot rest for long on most days, that I need to rush here and there, find things to do, go places I would otherwise not go to, and only when I am exhausted and full, and I have a corner of my own, do I find it in me to get some sleep. I reckon this is not true for all of us, and it was not true of me last year, but in the overarching continuity of who I am, I feel this has been a prevalent theme.

If you ask friends I have made over the years, they will vouch for this, and if you ask lovers, I believe they will vouch for it, too, but they may give you a look of disdain on hearing my name. I urge you to only think of this as a mental exercise and take my word for it, and if you do plan to do this, do it without my permission and at your own risk. I would not wish a sour experience on anyone, especially someone who reads my work, of which there are a handful, some I know and some I don’t, but all I could not do without. And if this is a piece being read much, much later than it was published first, you, too, have my utmost respect. Among the many avenues to waste your time, you have chosen these words. There is bravery in this, and there is stupidity, too, and both are the same, depending on what you get out of it.

Oh, how this week, this start of something new, has rejuvenated me, my writing! I reckon there is rarely a more splendid start to a year.

Lately, I have been reading a book about how longitudes were found, and it is not a long book by any measure, but it seems as fast as I can read in general, when I pick a book up, I pick it up for days and months even. And while poetry has had its heyday, and while prose has had its place, it has been a while since I have picked something so accurate, so factual, so real. Learning about how humanity overcame a glorious challenge is, of course, important, but the reason I have enjoyed this book is because of the many, and primarily loud, failures. I have enjoyed the intrigue, the depravity, the lowest of lows people can go to claim their name to fame, or simply to say that they were right, the sheer perseverance of an honest pursuit in the cannon fire of misdirects and lies. Stories, after all, follow life, and life happens without the coat of paint, without the masks of characters and metaphors. Sometimes, we must read that which really happened.

I wrote this and forgot about it, and when I reached the last page of this book, I happened to be in a plane, flying over more cities than I could ever count or name. I remembered it then, the passage I had left writing midway in the wake of something better, something more profound. But the thought, my awe at every convenience, little or large, is with me still, and it has inspired me. No, not to pursue some grand pursuit. At least, not yet.

These words I write each day are not grand. This discipline that wavers like deadwood floating on water, often diving under only to pop back up again owing to forces out of its control, is nothing remarkable. People live far more inspiring lives than I do, so I must keep an open mind for what comes my way. There are, of course, moments when life asks you to step up into greatness, but we can pass them by like we pass by the most mundane store in the neighbourhood, no name, no sign over it.

Everybody does it, but for a few of us, provided we keep an open mind, its austerity becomes a call to open its door and walk in. Now, I could not tell you why, but this life has begun to feel like a door closed for far too long. I might fling it open from the inside and see what happens.

To tell others how we truly feel, and then, to grant ourselves the same privilege is something I wish for all of us. To be honest in a way a child, who comes across as rude to a stranger, simply for their untouched, unmarred honesty. And to be as humble and calm as the understanding stranger, who does not bat an eye and often laughs and lets it go as the parents, if they are around, profusely apologise to them. To put it short, I wish innocence on all of us. But as I sit here, convoluted notions already crunching me, as they do all of us, like vines in some second-rate scary film, where the special effects are far too visible, far too apparent, but we ignore them. We suspend our disbelief, as they put it, and it seems we have done the same with our lives. I wish all of us would open our eyes now and then. At least, I am willing to try. I am eager to pour my heart out like you would pour paint on a blank canvas lying on the floor as you play around with colour, again, as children do. A lot of it has been left in bittersweet memories of summers that did not end and winters that were cosy beyond measure. A lot of it is simply left behind, like a book that falls behind the others, by itself. It is by no means unreachable, but until no one does inventory when the library is sold to an unnamed mogul or the sort, it is lost to time. Where is that book? Where is that sweater I wore when I was fifteen and January was too cold? Where is the allure of saying what truly comes to my mind? Where is the temerity, and why has it been tempered? All questions fit for a cold evening following an otherwise warm day. All without answers.

I reckon there are parts I can still change and fix. I reckon in this wish for innocence is masked a personal need, some vendetta against the world which I would admit if the world had not made me dishonest in how the cleverest of housecats are dishonest about the state of their hunger.

The world has taught me to never show all my cards. But this is getting exhausting. I might as well stake it all on the hand I have been dealt. I still have a few good years left in me before I dance to the tunes of the world. At least, I am willing to try.

Tonight, once again, I am writing from my bed under the bearable weight of the quilt, which is nothing in comparison to the desk by the window whose glass emanates a pulse of icy air, almost as if it were breathing.

Last night, I brought a book with me in bed and planned to read it when I was done writing, but then, as I wrapped the piece neatly and where I liked it, I lay down, and before I realised, it was morning and pigeons were colliding with the glass which was so frosted opaque by all the condensed air on it. I carry more energy tonight than the last, and I believe I will read a few pages. It is but a pleasure to read old dystopian novels, after all. You realise that the author was in their wildest imaginations coming up with some jarring ideas about the structure of the world, and then, you see how most of them have come to pass. You sit there appreciating the writer for the sheer measure of their genius while simultaneously crying a dry tear over the state of the times.

Today has been a rather uneventful day in that nothing special happened. Of course, what was planned was achieved, and nothing remains undone. I am forced to think of the critically high standard I have had for myself all these years. Thinking about this act of writing at this moment itself: how I have denied myself the pleasure of writing comfortably simply as a superlative pressure of doing everything the right way. But now, I sit here, having written more words than I ever imagined but not enough to summarise what it is I write in a single sentence, an elevator pitch to some stranger I met at a party who I will possibly never meet, or some washed out musician I met on the plane who would not shut up and let me watch the clouds drifting by. I sit here by myself with nothing to show for anything. If this was the final destination anyway, it could have been achieved without the added discomfort and faux discipline I put myself through.

Perhaps this monologue echoing in my head is just a lament of regret now that my life is genuinely uncomfortable—or beginning to be. How many days, I wonder, have I subjected myself to utter torment simply in the fear of becoming too comfortable?

After a long time, I am writing from the bed, under the warm and heavy quilt. I am too tired today to sit in the chair in the ominously cold room. While earlier today, I was still surrounded by potential, I have returned to the slowness of the city I call home. I have returned to the cold, the languid, and the comfortable once again. And this to and fro, I assume, will continue to happen for a good part of this year. I imagine I must prepare for it as one gets ready for the sudden onset of fortune and misfortune, only in the knowledge that they will happen at some point. Today, however, I am out of my wits to come up with more than a handful of sentences or a clever metaphor. I reckon the day has had me go from one corner of the country to another. I believe that is explanation enough.

And now, I lie here, waiting to fall asleep as the chilly air from outside seeps into this room from slits and holes where the glass doors close, slipping like lies from lips that appear closed. There is never a way to know it, of course, but all closed things have a tendency to let something in. If the last week has taught me anything, it is that for all my checks and balances, for all my rules, for all my nature to keep everyone at arm’s length, I, too, have let people in. What an impossible thing it is when you think about it—to belong to others—and we do it day after day, and then, one day, we look around, and all we see are people who call us one of them. To know that all over this world, there are people who sometimes think of me and who I think of now and then, too. It fills me with joy on this otherwise solitary evening. To think I was convinced once that I will be alone, that I will fend for myself for all of time!

Today, I can rest and be at ease. There are people in my life, and soon, there will be more. There is nothing more cosy than this; there could not be. I do not have to brave it alone.

What else is there? What else matters?

Nothing.

Started the day with nothing but hope, and not for something specific, but for life, for today, for the days to come. It is a new feeling in the sense that rain in a different city is new. You are, for all intents and purposes, familiar with the general idea—that water falls from the sky—but how it changes the city, how it changes the street, how it changes the people is different everywhere. That is, perhaps, how I would say this hope appears.

I have talked more in the last two days than I have in the past few months, and as I sat in a cafe and told a friend over the phone about the why and the what, it occurred to me that the reason I seek comfort inward that I even have the urge to do it is for a purpose, and that purpose is so I am alive and ready to talk to other people, that I am not staring into space, yawning and distracted, that I am interested, engaged and listening. We all rest, after all, to be active later. To rest for the sake of rest is as helpful as an umbrella inside a building. Once we have rested enough—like I have done for months, if not years—you must go out of your way to exhaustion, you must sprint to drudgery, you must seek days that begin in the AM and end there, too.

I feel invigorated by my fatigue—that I am already spent energises me. This is no irony. This is how it should be. There has been a dearth, a fallow of activity in my life, and now, it is here, and it is burgeoning. There is so much to do that I have not stopped to think about what I am supposed to be doing. Here, I am one of many. Here, I do not need convincing of my irrelevance in the larger world. Here, it is a placard shoved into my face, a megaphone screaming in my ears. This, too, is something all of us must experience.

I sit in a cafe and spend the entire morning working on things. Twenty other people sit at the other tables and do the same. I cannot describe how happy this makes me.

Did not write yesterday. Tried to, but was too busy at first, too tired after that, and too drunk in the end. This, too, is a thing I have missed—not having time. Sitting with a mild hangover in a cafe, I am forced to remember the flight from a night ago. I looked out the window and saw three clouds arranged contiguously, like pieces of farmland separated by fences. It was all I could think about for a good chunk of the journey. Then, I slept and woke up with the expected thud of the plane landing on the asphalt.

This moment, the one I am in currently, came faster than I thought it would. That is to say, I did not realise when a day passed. Yet, looking at yesterday, I cannot fathom the sheer amount of things I did. The blanket of uneventfulness has been lifted from my life, it seems, and I have not even spent a weekend here. Of course, everything comes with some sort of caveat, an asterisk that tells you to look for the fine print. Now, I have begun to read it, and I have realised that all places and all people have terms and conditions attached to them. Ultimately, the conditions you find favourable or tolerable make or break your time with people and places. There is always the choice to not read, to ignore the fine print altogether. But I am not one to not know what I am getting into, and it has its benefits, but also, it seems ignorance has its pleasures, too. At least, that is the impression I get when I look at other people.

In any case, I think I have ruffled the status quo now, and there is no returning to my old life. Even if I went back after a week only to return permanently, I would still have spent a week here. It would have changed me in ways I would not know. People change us, places do, too. Once you lift the veil, you cannot draw it back over your eyes. Once you set things in motion, you cannot bring them to a halt. For the first time in a long time, I feel uncertain, unsure. This is unnerving. It is also the only thing I need right now.

In life, there are often symmetries that happen without plan, without our control. These parallels inform us, and often, they make us laugh. When I first tried to live a quiet life in the quiet town I had grown up in, having found myself terribly exhausted by life in a larger city of dust for a few years prior, I failed terribly. This happened for many reasons, getting into the details of which would be tiresome, but I reckon it did fail, so I took the first job and flight out of the city, vowing never to return. I did return, and naive as I was, I do not blame myself for my audacious yet flimsy resolve then. A broken heart does a lot to a person, I believe, and we should not blame those who grieve the living. It is a difficult thing to do, after all. The years passed, and I woke one day when the world had all but reached a standstill. I realised I ought to rewind it all and try again. And so I came back, but only on a few statutory guidelines. They say all safety manuals are written in blood. Well, this one was written in tears. But it was written, and not adhering to it would have been reckless now that it was there.

It is time to leave again, of course, and it has made me smile since I woke up this morning, primed and ready. To say it is the same as the last time would be a lie. What has changed? Neither person nor circumstance is pushing me out. There is no vow. There is no promise. There is but grace and endless possibility. The door to my heart is wide open.

It seems I have been terribly blind. I have thrown blame like chump change. I have downplayed and diminished all the ways people have lifted me up in this life. It seems like how some dishevelled gambler knee-deep in debt talks with a sort of unfound bravado, I, too, have done the same. What I owe those around me, I will never be able to repay, and on this winter night early in January, I have realised this, and not just the night, but the day, the many moments I ignored earlier have lit up bright, as if a spotlight hung from a star far away in the purple sky shined on them. But now, I see this life for what it is—an overdrawn cheque, a loan I could never repay, a tab that has run for as long as I have walked. So many hands have pushed me forward, only for me to look back in disdain. But this, too, is an error. It is up to us what we do once we spot one. I shall try to be better. That is, after all, all one can do.

Through guilt that has sprouted with an onslaught in the middle of my heart, I have begun to be grateful, not for just a cup of coffee, not for this view, not for the life I had in this city for all this time, but for the people, for every single one of them. It has all started returning to me: the many favours I never thanked people for, their patience for taking my crass criticism head-on, without as much as a cross word. It seems I have been fast asleep with my eyes wide open. I am awake now, of course. And now, I see the aftermath of this state of limbo, of being too caught up in a web of my own design. No person can brave it alone—me least of all. All my confidence is borrowed. All my intelligence is stolen. All my patience is imitated. There is nothing in me I could claim as entirely my own. And all this time, I have not spent as much as a minute bowing in front of those who made me who I am. Today, of course, I lay my sword down, I lay my pen down. There is nothing else to feel but awe, yes, awe, for those who have looked at me and called me their own.

There is nothing else to feel but shy embarrassment: I have rejected all the warmth I was given on a platter only to howl in the night about being cold.

The day begins, and there is nothing to be tense about, so I lie in bed for a bit. Then, I stretch my arms before I walk to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. And then, nothing happens. I finish making the coffee and sit at the desk—like clockwork. Then, I am compelled to think of the security guards at the building who change shifts the same way each day, cracking the same jokes, I reckon, as they did yesterday. And the many commuters who work in large offices, shops and stores, and everywhere else. Before I know it, I am outside the moment at hand, doing, I reckon, a painstaking inventory of how people go around in circles, myself included, obviously. In another life, had my story gone differently than it has, I would have been a meticulous bookkeeper.

I note things as if my memory was as unreliable as a weather report, as fallible as a drunk’s testimony. It is here, too: in these words, in these pieces of my days. Every little thought I have had is here, and the thoughts not here are noted down to live another day. There are no exceptions to this because I note it all down, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes illegibly or in code, but I can always go back to my heart on a particular day. I can always come back to myself. And so, I sit here, every person I have ever been all rolled in one. My contradictions reach the surface like bubbles in a vat of acid. It would be a lie to say this was not a blatantly tiresome way to exist. I am jealous of those who forget, but I envy those who do not note things down more.

It is not just parts of myself but also things people left behind. Everyone we meet, everyone we get close to lends us something to carry forever, after all. Only some people forget things and do not note them down, so they live for the better. They forget what others gave them in old flats, between moving crates, among donations. And yes, I have tried to do it, too, but the records remain etched in my memory.

To cry over this would be some sort of gilded grief. All the good I have gotten, after all, is because I have remembered. It is just that all the things I wish to forget have remained, too.

I believe the first thing is looking. As long as you can see something, it exists. I look at the few birds who seem to have made a camp of the grass on my balcony and, in doing so, have made an absolute mess! The synthetic turf is now all but soiled and spoiled with the many instances of a bird having relieved itself. It is ridiculous—the amount of mess a little bit of comfort can create. This palace of one, and all the time spent in it these past three years—I see it all, and since I can see it, it has all happened. To say it has been a smooth journey would be a bit too liberal with life, but to claim it has been anything but a goddamn pleasure would be lying, too. All in all, I see these years for what they are: a slice of time.

In a rather lengthy letter sent to a friend last month, I dubbed these ‘the patio years’ after the many warm afternoons and evenings spent on the patio cafe at a ten-minute walk.

Time has acted on everything. The baristas are long gone, the selection of music has rotted, and the tables are always dusty, but I walked to it last evening. Night as it was, I felt the warmth of the several suns I had spent doing nothing there, and with it, the many walks I took under the bougainvillaeas, which sprouted and wilted as seasons changed. To think of it all, to look at these last months for what they are, has made me realise the change in my disposition, my want for yet another hour with my friends, my yearning for a handful of flawless days, my demand for perfection in everything.

What is it? Loss. What else?

It is hard already to say goodbye to people; it is impossible to say goodbye to a time. Realising this has kicked my senses back into me. I stand on this balcony today and tell myself I will be back here as I look at the town, the variegated green carpet of trees spread over the city, sprawling until you see the hills. And I know in my heart that when I do, it will not be the same. I will not be the same!

Perhaps I take solace in the fact that I found contentment in my heart for a little bit of time, a crumb of it. Until the humanity in me took over and told me there was more to look at and become.

For a little bit, I had peace.

I look towards the open sky: nothing in sight. They say it will rain soon, and we will see the hills again. This is all anyone says when they talk about the weather. Perhaps a script was distributed when December began. I must have missed it—trips here and there. Now, I am stupefied as I stare at the nothingness of the city. The fog does not help, and it, too, is what most people talk about on dinner tables in bars we have frequented ever since we first learned to drink, where we learned how to drink. I do not know why everyone talks the same way, why they say the same things, why all of their complaints and all their wants are the same.

I talked to a score of people today, some strange, some familiar faces. Now, as I stand here with my mug of chamomile and nothing to look at, I think of an experiment. I could picture their faces floating in the air as if the fog ahead was a whiteboard and then draw circles around those who said the exact same things. If I could do this experiment, I would end up with about three circles.

Now, I am aware of the futility of it, and to think all people are the same simply based on what they talk about is superficial and, dare I say, elitist thinking. But as much as people are not replicas, they are also not entirely unlike each other. I reckon this is a good thing. It means there will always be something to share some time, a meal or a drink, and there will always be something common among any two people you put together.

The other day, angry as I was over some paperwork, my brother took the same thing, turned it on its head, and made it sound as if it were a good sign I was asked by my bank to fill out a few additional forms. I could see his intention, but it made me think of how every event, every thought, every moment is malleable. That if we bend things enough, that if we are careful and do not destroy what we have in our hands, we could make it appear precisely how we wanted it, that we could take our frustration-filled tirades and make them sound like the only song we ever wanted to hear.

This, and only this, is my defence against my growing contempt for the world—a world I deeply love at that.