journal.coffee

We, people, do not make decisions well. We linger with an odd sort of patience as if waiting for a bus that is never on time, as if there is some magic involved, but neither decisions nor their consequences are magic. They are odds and probabilities. Every decision and its outcome is a carefully crafted series of events we mostly have no control over. I wrote the previous sentence not as some display of free will but as a consequence of the tapestry of events—big and small—which happened before I began observing them and which will continue long after I stop looking. What brought upon this nihilistic lashing of words? I could not tell you any more than I could tell you why the planet we live on is precisely at the proper distance from the Sun, which is to say I could not tell you at all.

However, as much as making decisions or predicting their consequences is impossible, I argue for decisiveness still. I say, why linger? Why waste precious time cogitating when the outcome remains out of our purview? Why not be incisive and swift? If no shoe fancies your sight in the store, but you know you need a pair (otherwise, you would not be there), why not pick any of them and see where it leads? We are spoiled for choice, and it has made us terrible leaders of our own lives. We lead nowhere because we fail to decide our direction at all. The entire world is now in an arrested development, a perpetual limbo of options, cushioned and smothered by all the different choices for all the things imaginable. We have outsourced our authority to systems we do not understand. When the time comes to exercise this muscle of making a decision—when we must get up and leave someplace, when we find ourselves caught in the web of monotony, when we face even the bleakest, tiniest moment of changing our lives—we hesitate and dillydally, almost out of habit, thinking the decision will be made for us anyway.

I go out for a walk with no destination. Yet, all the roads lead me to the same cafe, day after day, walk after walk. I sit there, sipping my coffee as usual, and I find it hard to answer who made that choice for me.

Is October over? How did this happen, and why did I not realise it? Today, I lie on this rug with a light blanket covering me, watching a mystery unfold on the TV as the kettle whistles and pops on the kitchen shelf a few steps away. There is no doubt about it. Winter is slowly setting in. The auburn autumn is over before it even began in earnest, or maybe I missed out on most of it because I was too caught up with myself or, perhaps, others. The greys and blues of winter will soon set in around us. Another year is inching towards its end, racing almost. It all passes so quickly. We ought to look at things more sincerely. They end faster than we get to make up an opinion about them. Life moves too quickly; I was about to comment on how beautiful the tree across from my building complex looked under the golden light of the honey-dipped, cinnamon-flavoured month, and before I could, it had lost all its leaves.

What else to say? I shall make some tea now and continue watching the show till my eyes grow heavy and the gaps between my yawns become shorter and shorter. Some days must end like this, too—in the quiet comfort of cliche. There is nothing I want more or less than peace. It is the tomfoolery of our daily lives that shakes me up. One might say I am wilfully stubborn—almost blind with how I see things. But then, what even is the alternative?

Nothing to do or think about, not because the list of worries has run short, not because the river of responsibilities has run dry, but because to begin would be to surrender to the feeling of helplessness over how little I can affect in this life. When you have a typhoon of problems whirling about in your head, it is better to shove all of it in the desk drawer behind some paperwork and then shift your gaze to the grass outside, glowing under the sun.

My insistence on the banal beauty of this barren bouquet of experiences—living the same days repeatedly—is not some unfound wisdom. Poets look to the stars because the world is filled with bills to pay, houses to build, and families with impossible demands to appease. I go a step further and claim all that is beautiful, too. Am I in the right? Maybe not, but I know I am not in the wrong either. All of us have a duty in this life. My duty is to live. There is a soft, green field between glory and purpose. If you ever pass by it, say hello. I began living there when it was made apparent to me that I would not have the impact on this world I had always been convinced I would. So, I turned inward; now, this is what it is.

In terms of larger-than-life stories, you would say this is where the vigilante hangs their suit or costume, never to wear it again. But there was nothing larger-than-life before I made this decision, either. In terms of this world and society being a large machine, I am the smallest cog possible. I reckon these comments appear to be self-deprecating, but I do not mean this as an insult to myself. I think it is quite appreciable that I seem to have accepted this. There are people I have met who live unhappily until they are about to die, and then, they think about all the times they could have looked at the sun.

“Any last words?”

“Could you open the curtains, please?”

This will not be my life despite its never-ending tribulations. At least, I will have that to my name. Nothing is ever as beautiful as the regularity of this moment. I wish to lie down in the grass, watching the sky as the years pass like clouds, but since that is impossible, I must make time to watch the sky anyway.

Everything I have ever wished for was denied to me. But then, I got what I got; some of it was good, and some of it was bad, and they told me it was a blessing—there is wisdom in the crowds, or so they tell me. I took it in stride, believing I was blessed. Whether I was or not was irrelevant. Most things often are this way. Curses and blessings, heroes and villains, angels and demons, I wish life were as simple as our demarcations of good and bad, but it is still a wish, and if I know one thing about it, it, too, will be denied. What I get in place of it is instead this vast sea of grey in which I dip my toes and stand quietly, staring at the horizon.

I sit here and sip my coffee, reminding myself that my father was once a boy, too. I think of how I possess the best of him, and then I am reminded of how I also have the worst of him. These multitudes—my father, my mother, my batch of mistakes, and all the others I have met in passing—confuse me. So many answers, barely any questions worth asking.

Now, I am reminded that my levity is a sham. It is a carefully crafted charade. But then, it all comes back to haunt me, like an unfinished task, an overdue bill, a road to hell paved with good intentions. My life has no space for someone else because I do not want them to bear the brunt of it—of my father’s needless anger, of my mother’s wasted potential, of how lodged in my chest these pieces from their lives are, and how overbearing and present they will always be, whether they live or die.

I sit here for hours and talk about life and, sometimes, love, pretending I know what I talk about, but I do not. I have never given myself a fair chance at either. All my tragedy is an excuse so I can sidestep happiness. I sense that when it all comes to an end, all my life will be a compromise: never to rock the boat, never to lead astray, to maintain things as they are because I was too afraid to see beyond.

The neighbourhood I grew up in still holds me in its clutches. I am lost on its streets, navigating the crowds, shoving people around, but mostly, I am waiting for the boy my father was and the girl my mother was, wondering:

Why is it taking them so long to come of age?

How funny it is that every decision we make affects someone else’s life more than ours. The paths we cross may not lead us to proverbial paradise, but we may leave footprints altogether on accident in the right places for others to follow. All the people who have touched my life, despite not wanting to, have changed it for better or worse. I sit here with the balcony door open and the post-midnight October breeze lurking about the room, dancing with the curtain on its way inside, thinking about how my life would not have been the same unless strangers nudged me like claws in a pinball machine—their effect wholly random and, in most cases, unexpected. Do others acknowledge this, too? I would not know, but I would want to believe they did. We cannot all think of the same things at all times, but often, it is not too far from what we all think.

It baffles me sometimes how similar the world and the people in it are. People will always make cheese and bread—no matter what culture or geography they come from. They will also have some way to bring caffeine into their bodies. They will also, almost always, find a way to be kind and forgiving. People will dance and sing, and the good ones will believe they are not any good, and the bad ones will be convinced they are maestros. This is true through all of time and equally true in any corner of the world. There will always be those who help others reluctantly, and there will always be those who do not deserve it but will receive it anyway. There are many such similarities, and listing them would, firstly, be an extremely arduous undertaking and, secondly, absolutely unnecessary because, by now, you have already come up with a few examples of your own. There will always be this, too. There will be people who talk to each other across time and space.

They will be the writers and the readers. I sit here in a chilly room and decide to write these words. You do not know this, but it pokes your life into taking a turn for a minute or a decade. I will never know what it is, and you will never be able to tell me.

What we both know, though, is that people affect people. And this will remain true regardless of anything we do.

I sat on the aisle seat at the far end of the flight. My friends sat in the same row. Before I knew it, I was knocked out. I reckon my body knew it was time to go home. When I woke up from that hour-long nap to ask for some coffee, a familiar otherworldliness spread over me like a blanket. Once again, I got the feeling that I was not an entire person, as if I was very close to the real thing, but something seemed off. I wondered if all the people who sat in their various poses felt this way, too, but I could never know even if they did. The man who sat at the window seat said he was seventy years old and had just returned from a yoga retreat, which was impossible for him until some seven years ago when he busted his knee, went through surgery and still needed to recuperate enough. This complexity I find so fascinating in others is intriguing because I find it missing in myself. Even my decisions are based on how I feel and lack any or all narrative.

Everything I feel, everything I am, is too rudimentary. Before you make the obvious suggestion that I look deeper, I beg you to consider that over seven hundred of these pieces remain written as of now, not to mention the many before them which have now been lost to time, and writing does not come easy to those who wade in shallow waters. I have looked; I have looked hard. I have left no stones unturned, no sheets unfurled, no drawers shut. I have only learned that no matter which strata of my soul I visit, it is all the same. I exist in a world that is not fit for people like me.

This incompatibility is not because of some underlying complexity but a rampant simplicity. It is the people around me who have agendas; it is the world around me that makes the demands. I only exist as best as I can, confined by these rules. I fall in love easy. I appreciate all good things in the world. I like sitting in the sun. I try to keep an open mind. The missing bits are how others live for other people—and not in service but desire. They desire to be looked at. I live to look at the world I live in. The world prefers the former more. I do not know why it does so, but I do know that this gap, in my experience, is irreconcilable.

I woke up to the cat purring and lazing around on the carpet beside the sofa I was sleeping on. It took me a bit to realise that the purring had woken me up anyway. The clock was still at the fifth hour, and there was still time. She looked at me with eager eyes, and somehow, I knew exactly what was required. I tapped the blanket. Almost instantly, the cat leapt on top of it and whistled and purred as it rolled into a ball of a creature. Then, it slept, and so did I.

When I woke up, the cat was gone, and I would not see her until later in the day. Perhaps it is me, or maybe it happens to us all, but when a vacation comes to an end, I feel the urge to define it as if there is some underlying lesson in the days spent away from home. The world has convinced us that everything must be squeezed for meaning, so we look for it frantically. We leave no stone or seashell unturned. Every friendship, every place, every moment must have some meaning, but most things are inherently meaningless—that is a good thing!

Sometimes, you want nothing but to feel the sea steal the sand beneath your feet or want to get drunk and slur your speech, or maybe you prefer to have a quiet lie-down near the beach and stare at the sunset, or perhaps you want to dance to your heart’s content at the beach, or even take a walk till the sand runs out. This has no meaning, but how sad would life be if everything was explainable? I do not want to see a day where even my wants need some thesis to prove them. We sat at the shack last night and ran them out of their supply of beer for the day: A meaningless achievement and yet glorious enough that it will become a part of all the stories we ever tell.

Ironically, there is still a lesson in there somewhere—something to do with how only a few things matter—but I do not have the patience to think about it. I have yet another day to spend here. A lot can happen in twenty-four hours and matter so little, still. It does not mean we should not look forward to the day unfolding, but rather the opposite.

Nothing ever goes per plan. Every birthday reminds me of this, and today, as I sit here beginning anew once more, it occurs to me that it is all about the strides made and the miles travelled. Whether we become the best versions of ourselves or the worst ones is not entirely up to us, but we must make some attempt to get there. I sit here with this apartment’s resident cat beside me and catch up on some television shows I watch regularly. The cat does not say much, but it lets out a mew or two to let me know she’s there. The sun sets outside the window’s grills, and the palm trees’ shadows are cast all over, almost till the sofa-bed on the far end of this hall where I sit, stroking the cat’s head with my headphones in. Today is a day of rest—which I was chided for by everyone who called me on the phone to wish me happy birthday. I responded to every inquiry about the plans for the day with chuckles and laughs. I will sit here and watch TV. I think I have partied enough for this week. And as I said this, it occurred to me that I had fallen into my pattern once again—of wanting to go home before the trip ended.

In any case, I think about this twenty-sixth year I have spent in this world, and I have so much to be happy about; it would be unfair if I counted the few times the plans fell flat. But despite how things fare or how the times come and go, I have made strides. Whether they have worked or not, I am not at liberty to say—not yet. But the attempts were made, and sometimes, plans did come to pass. Perhaps that is the only thing we can be sure about.

We are free to make our choices, and we then live with whatever they lead to. There is little else I want to think of today. That, and maybe just this: I do not feel any particular pull of emergency in this life. I have done some things, and plenty remains undone. There is still time—nothing but time.

I stand in the shower and watch the sand dissipate from my feet. It is already the evening, and we have sat in the sun for hours, sipped enough beers to get an army drunk, and yet walked through the market overflowing with trinkets only to get back into the flat that we get to call our own for a few days. This air of degeneration and aloofness all around me has made me feel so content I now see why some of my friends were pushed to the extreme end of sitting with their hands idle and their minds full of useless hay. I now see it all because I, too, am compelled to do the same. Sitting today, staring at the sea under the golden sun, napping before I knew it, and waking up only to find the off-white embrace of the entire scene in front of me made me feel extreme complacency. I remembered all this just now when I took a shower and washed the sand off my feet. All my friends are asleep, too, and I sit here thinking I will be twenty-seven years old in a few hours.

Today, a hawker approached our deckchairs while lost in the aether. She had some necklaces made of rocks and beads. “For your girlfriend or sister?” She said. “I don’t have either,” I said, “I am as loveless as you might imagine, even more.” I laughed and said, “No, I don’t need it, thank you”, and then she left, walked to the adjacent set of chairs in the adjoining shack and continued her pitch, hoping to sell something. I forgot about what she looked like in that second or that she existed, not because of apathy but because I was utterly lost in whatever I could find in the blank sky. I only remembered her when the sand slipped away from my feet, over the toes, along the scar I do not remember receiving. In fact, I placed all of today in that second, and then, I came out of the shower and took another beer out of the refrigerator.

There it is; this is how I need to be tonight. I cannot remember I have no one to buy overpriced necklaces for. Not today, no. Today is not a day to remember but to forget. I will walk into tomorrow with a freshly wiped slate, as we always intend when the year turns over a new leaf. We tell ourselves things will be different, but they are the same eventually in different ways.

In a drug-fuelled rage last night, I turned completely inward to the worst alleys and corners of my heart. Infested with nothing but hatred, I took some wrong turns and all of a sudden, all I could see was red. There is little I remember, but I do remember an out-of-body experience where the side of me that is furious at the world came out and took its place in the centre stage. In everything I said, I remember repeating, “I am angry. I do not know who I’m angry with.” But some things were said in the hour or two of my soliloquy as my friends sat around me and I walked around the apartment in the utmost frenzy of paranoid rage. They were true, of course, but we do not say some things. I could feign the blame and say I did not mean them, but the truth is I did. One by one, all of my friends tried to calm me down. One by one, they all failed until I got exhausted and slept. In the morning, I did not say a word, embarrassed not at what had happened but at the fact I had things in my head, thoughts they would not have expected me to. But we do not control what we think of, and anger is normal. I am only grateful that the four people across from me are still sitting here. One is playing with a football, knocking it around, waiting for the other three to get ready. We are about to head to the casino, where the drinks will be unlimited, and the luck, I hope, may be on our side. Not to make us millionaires, no, those things are reserved for the films, but enough that the fun remains.

That is all it is, mostly. It is a gamble to have people in your lives, and as angry as I have been at things, many things—a list long enough for me to never be able to put it all down without some aid from a tablet—I think I have still picked the right cards, or at least, not as bad a hand as one might hope. I claim to be many things, but after last night, I think that is all it is: a claim. I am no longer sure I am a good person. For all the things that live in my head, for all my anger, I am anything but that. I am, however, trying to do better. I hope that counts for something. What else is there?

I have sat to write a bit too late—a whole day has passed, but something done is always better than nothing, and so, I sit here in this vacuous bed and breakfast hall, surrounded by an annoyingly bright sofa and a couple of bean bags of the same red. I have lost track of what is in my system, but I think the nap I just woke up from was necessary. Of all the people I came with, only two are here in their rooms. I do not know where the others are—probably walking down the market road right outside the alley which leads to this building.

Yesterday evening, we sat at this very empty bar with a sprawling view of the sea. At some point, as I looked at the sea, perhaps because of some principle of Physics my brother would remember, the sunglasses I wore filtered all the unnecessary bits in the sea, and all I could see were static waves in the centre, pretty much exactly how it was on the old television sets when you did not have cable or a signal or a rat had chewed the wire off. But a forced simile or not, it sure was beautiful. I stared at the sun and watched the water, and for a minute, I felt an untouched sort of joy. It was unnecessary to even talk to the friends I was there with. I could easily have sat there for years if not for the loud music—an insult to the gurgling of the waves and the murmurations of the sea. But then, it was a club in the end, and they do not care for the view or the peace; they only care about charging you cover for overpriced beer and food.

It does not matter, though. There are good things around, and life is comfortable enough—barely any complaints if I am honest. But still, I can sense that I am angry at things that have long happened, that I could not control then, or I could not control even if I knew exactly how they would transpire. But I must walk off it year by year, footprints in the sand or whatnot.

In any case, this wayward piece is but me trying to catch up with myself. There, I backdated it for yesterday. We must make room for life in our pursuits, not the other way around.

Earlier today, I lay under the sun for hours, watching the waves and drinking pints of golden beer, one after the other—almost lost count of them and track of the hour. Well, at least until the bill arrived, but that matters little. What matters is that I was completely present in the moment I will now remember forever. Every breeze that blew across the beach was felt in earnest—felt, recorded, and remembered. Every lash of crashing waves was heard, the echoes of which will remain etched into my memory like the grooves on vinyl. All I need is a moment to read them carefully; all of it will play in all its glory without a stutter or hiccup. But how could I afford this moment? Three of my friends had gone in search of a football. One was out in the sea taking a dip. It was a window, and to be honest, I had written this entire passage then. I had not jotted it down, but the sentences were arranged as if they were the metallic type form in some old-school printing press. The only thing that was left was to press it onto a page.

When my friends finally returned, we played football with complete strangers on the beach. Of course, this was expected. Things are always mostly as simple. A few people go to the beach with a football and start kicking it around. Before you know it, the ball is kicked astray without intention and entirely in error. But then, someone kicks it back and asks if they, too, can join. One by one, this happens until enough people join in, and goals are drawn in the sand, flimsily demarcated with flip-flops. The game begins. As I said, this is nothing new, but when it happens, you do not compare it with when it happened last. You do not say, “The fun we had that day was better than today.” You never say things like these because joy is joy.

Lately, I have felt incredibly attuned to the present. I had no doubt today that I would be at the same amount of peace had I never come to the beach. It seems, I have come across the incredibly commonplace realisation that wherever I go, I will still carry all of myself with me. Only now is it not as difficult. Often, I forget I’m carrying something at all.

As I wait for my friends to pick me up so we can go and get drunk three thousand kilometres away, I am compelled to think about the quintessential contemporary experience of being young in this time and age. There was a time when the world was separated not just by borders but also by different periods of time, by entire eras. Now, there is no common denominator better than a pint of beer, down to the same brands consumed everywhere. If marketing has any victories, it is this—global parity in some things. No longer do we tell our stories while keeping the location in mind. We only tell the year, and it all is understood. You might say my knack and, well, obsession to avoid mentioning names of places I visit fits like a glove over these days then. But, well, this is a play with an audience of one—the director. No matter how well I write these words, only a handful of people ever read them. All cards on the table, I do not believe, even for a second, that I am as adept at crafting them as I would like to be in the first place, so who reads what is a moot point anyway.

Now, the important thing for the next week is, of course, to keep writing regardless of how inebriated I am—it is never easy doing that. Not because the act of writing becomes difficult per se. With all the practice I have had in doing it, I can maintain grammar and spelling regardless of how much whiskey is in my system. It is difficult because, at that moment, you become convinced that doing anything is better than sitting and writing a few words. There are fewer things more brutal than this: to resist yourself. They say willpower comes with practice. I do not know about that. Each day I sit facing the screen, it seems like a battle I am fighting for the first time. Most days, I win, but if I said most victories come easy, I would be lying.

The fragrant aroma of the hibiscus, cinnamon, and clove tea moves about the apartment in its placid stupor, and I think of nothing but how all of my words are stolen from others. All my writing is a collaboration. Even this thought, I seem to have blatantly yanked out of one. I plagiarise moments. There is no punishment for this crime. If anything, there is an infinite amount of what they call inspiration. But this makes me terribly dependent on others.

What is a thought but a response to something someone said or did? All we think is a response to the world and, if we look closely, to other people. Most art is but a collection of things you could not say, or maybe said enough times for them to turn into a bad case of the boy who cried wolf. You can never say something in the right amount. You always fall short or overshoot. The only time people are precise in their speech is when they are characters in a novel or a film.

Ordinary people who live their lives do not have the luxury of a redo or a retake. They say things: sometimes too much, often too little. Then, they live with it all. Then, people like me come along to steal those words they spared lavishly. The sentences write themselves. All I have to do is listen, and if I catch a word too difficult or a thought too heavy, to jot them down.

Even the beginning of this piece, the particular blend of tea is in my memory because a friend drinks it more often than I do. I drink chamomile. Today, even this cup of tea is stolen.

This night, the tea on one side of the window and the October air on the other seem torn out of some masterpiece I could never write. Every moment I can capture is an unfaithful representation of the life I live. All the parts I omit are things I could never come up with, even if I sat staring at the white page for days or even decades.

This disappoints me, but then, even my disappointment is foreign, quite like a word you pick up on a trip long enough to pilfer a word, but short enough that you never learn to say it quite right.

I sat with my hands at the marble patio table, holding my glossy, enamel-coated white ceramic cup. A light gold border accented its rim and handle, which glinted at the setting sun. A posh place, of course, given the delicate cutlery. But then, are the rich that careful? I would not know. For us—me and my friend—this was new. To sit on a patio like this one, drinking out crockery made from touch-me-nots, was all new. It would have been an absurd thought even in imagination once, but now, we could sit here and talk as if we knew some things about life.

This was years ago, of course, and since then, I have visited often. I always walk there, order an Americano and sit outside on the patio, watching the blue and the green around. I have made a habit of holding the cup in both hands and slowly turning it to and fro in the dimple of the saucer. Why do I do this? I do not know, but it seems to be something I do consistently. It is a simple pleasure. I do not have an explanation for it, nor do I have an excuse. It is one of those harmless quirks we pick up from nowhere.

The other day, I sat there again with my friend at about the same golden hour. The same glint reminded me of the first time we had coffee there. I listened to what he said with one ear; the other I lent solely to the birds because they seemed to be saying something far more vital than whatever rant my friend had up his sleeve.

It is always something with us, people. Perhaps that is the problem. We think too much about it all. The birds? They but sit in trees around places posh and poor, acting as if they belong wherever they go.

The day began with rains—unexpected, cold, but all the more welcome. Suddenly, winter had begun in one fell swoop, and hours of winds blowing all over town and never-ending showers. When the rain did stop, it was already nightfall. I sat there working, forgetting all about the first thing I said after waking up. “This is a day for long naps. Whoever works on a day like this?” But then, I had worked for the entirety of it. Life had decided not to go per plan again. I was not disappointed by this; if anything, I was happy. I had spent a day doing something I do not quite detest.

Sure, living your days doing things you enjoy is a blessing, but most of life is not about blessings. It is about whatever is left if you count all your blessings away—the space. The dishes are not the most vital part of the day on most days, but they are what is left when all is said and done, when the hours have passed, when it is all over. It is still a blessing to have dishes around the sink. More than most people imagine or, often, are willing to admit. We are taught to hate the ordinary. Everything must either be some grand adventure or a sordid tragedy. There was a time I would have cried and thrown a fit over being stuck in a rut and being forced to work for others, but now, I see it as what it is: freedom. As long as I keep working, I can keep writing these words, which will be better for it, for they will not be exchanged for bread. They will be pure and untarnished, honest and unadorned, just and fair. It is the greatest thing an artist can do for themselves—build a life outside of it.

A few years ago, a friend and I sat on the grass in the square enclosed by the many buildings of a mall complex in a busy city. We would get coffee and talk about how we would keep working as artists and finding new ways to say things we wanted. I am still waiting for his film to come out. He, perhaps, is equally eager for my book. But when I meet him now, he never talks about art. He talks about ads and money, and bending his camera till the cash is in focus.

But you could do that and not sell your soul, I wonder. I do not know how to tell him this, but I wish I could; God, I wish I could.

Sat last night and imagined, once again, the kind of book I want to write. My perfection got the better of me, and I did not begin again. This is not a new lament, but it has begun to strike a nerve. I will soon be twenty-seven years old, and I hope when I am at the beach, getting drunk out of my wits, I will also remember that the book remains unwritten. It is not that hard to sit and write things. If these words are any indication, I reckon it is the easiest thing to do in my life. It is only the indecision of what story I want to tell, and no, it is not cluelessness—I only seem to have too many ideas. It becomes impossible to choose. The average life, and this is by all means an average one, gives you so many stories that if you sat and began to write all of them, you would be dead before you knew it, having only waded in shallow waters of the pool of potential tales to tell. But then, if I do not write at all in this paralysis, I would be dead before writing one. It is a simple argument: you write what you can. And I know this, I know this, but I must begin, I must choose, and that is a fatal flaw: I want everything, and since everything is impossible, I get nothing in the end. I want to chase every vision, every idea, and every person I could ever become, and now, I see this flaw is reflected even in my writing, or lack thereof. I do not have a defence or answer for “How long will I write these vignettes, these meandering, twisted pieces that go nowhere, instead of stories and books filled with stories?” The irony of writing day after day and being unable to say, “I write stories” is not lost on me. But it has started to get under my skin. I believe that is a good thing. It has begun to stare at me like a ghoul hiding in the corner. Every piece I write is an excuse I make not to write the story I wish to tell. There is little else to say. It is a Sunday. I have written again. I do not know what to do with it. All these words are words wasted.

I did not think of much today, but I did learn a few things about cocktails and art in the Islamic age. Unrelated trivia, of course, but it pays to be curious. At best, it comes in handy at just the right moment as you surprise everyone. And if it is never used, it is good to share with friends at a party. When will the moment arise to segue into it? You wonder. There always is a moment. If it does not present itself, you can always begin with “Did you know…” and it would be some fact and not gossip, and everyone would be glad for it.

There is so much to this world. Rich, multi-faceted histories have come along as strands of thread, and continually, we weave them into what we call life, the world, society, what have you! But how many people study the strands? How many people keep track of them? The world is, after all, ever-evolving, ever-growing.

I am guilty of not doing it enough, and I have always been one of the interested ones. What do the others have to show for all their years living? What is a person who does not know a few things about the world they live in? Sharing knowledge with your fellow people should be on a person’s list of high priorities. But people seldom read, and if they do, they do to gain something out of it. And when I say gain, I mean the ugly bits—the next promotion, the next bag of money, the top spot in some collective imagination. But knowledge is noble, and we must always consider it the highest of pursuits.

If someone pretends to be a lawyer and wins every case that comes their way, who should be in prison—the fraud or the qualified? It depends on how you define both of those words.

At the time of writing of these words, the world does not define them well. I wonder how it all came to this.

Now, now, isn’t that a good question to ask?

October has begun showing its cards. There is a nip in the air, a whiff of restfulness, a coat of pink on everything in the evenings. And with this change in season, I sense my heart quieting down further. Lost in the daze of comfort, I do not wish to go out of my way for anything. The path I walk in this life, regardless of how banal and ordinary it is, will lead somewhere eventually. There has been good, and there has been bad, and somewhere between them, I’ve learned not to hold onto things too tightly.

The other day, my mother told me about a man from our city who, in his second wind, had decided to buy a small store, spending every penny he had in the process. Then, a week later, to the dismay of all who knew him, the government had declared some land theirs, and I do not know the specifics of it, but that was the last thing he ever experienced. They say he died of a heart attack from the shock of losing everything, but when I heard this story, all I could think of was how he could have still managed to do something had he lived. Still, what is sad is sad, and we must mourn people who come to unfortunate ends.

But there is a lesson in it, I believe. I would prefer to be alive even if I experienced some great misfortune. I wonder if this is what all the Zen monks and rich people mean when they talk about detachment. I reckon that is it—we must not hold things too close, even if they seem valuable and important. We must try our best to protect them, but when things happen and if they are out of our control as things often are, we must not let them get close to the crucial organs of the body—the heart, brain, or even the liver.

As long as we are alive and able, we are capable of dragging ourselves out of things. We must manage even when things seem impossible. Most things always seem impossible. And yet, we must manage somehow.

So much to do in this life, and yet, I procrastinate to get some coffee with a friend, and dinner, of course, how can we skip dinner? I wonder why this is the case. I wonder why the gnawing feeling of not having written a single word since the morning seems nothing compared to when you are lost in the delirium of conversation and coffee. Now, it may seem ironic that I am writing about this—it suggests I was able to keep the fight up and managed to write some words regardless. But I must put my foot down and say this is not true. It is only that a convenient window must not be left unutilised, and here, I have found one, and I have taken the time to write. Isn’t life this melange of ironies, of things that should not make sense but they do? How unlikely, how almost impossible most things seem, and yet they do happen, time and again, over and over.

In my heart, today, I have nothing but a kind appreciation for the complexities we play with every day. We casually toy with improbabilities and call it hope; when hope does come to pass, we forget all about how impossible it felt. To think I thought I would end up by myself, alone and reclusive. But for all my tendency to lock myself in a pocket of my own, the world has extended a hand forward. I look at this life, the people here, there and everywhere, the times they ask me how things are, and the times I tell them they are okay, that there are tribulations, that I am solving them one at a time. How nice it is to have someone who says: do you need any help with that? How nice it is to have someone who listens to your problems and how beautiful it is that, if necessary, they are willing to laugh at them, too.

All of us only need this: some food, a drink, some laughter, family, and a few friends. The rest is as rest goes. You do some work to earn some money. And if your friend is meeting someone at a cafe for work, if time allows you a little window, then you quietly sit at a different table to sit and write.