Commonplace
I slowly open my eyes again. This near impossible task will be my biggest achievement for the day. But you’re not there to mouth your approval. I head out without breakfast, as usual. No one giggles a command of protein to start the day proper.
Right turn on the wrong street and from the opposite side. Who will set me back on course? Not you. Your sense of direction is slightly off these days. I slip and trip at that uneven spot again. You know the one. The one you’re not there to warn me against, to dust me off from.
Gadgets remain eerily quiet through the day. No tender secret messages or quick breathy calls. No hurry to return home only to be greeted by a silent, wistful cat. Who will chastise me for not looking after the mundane chores and everything beneath me? Another takeout you’ll never again force feed me with fumbling chopsticks.
And in the dreaded night, between fitful spurts of sleep falling, I find no stinging palm to strike my flesh and remind me that I am not purely made of written words. That despite my best efforts to mutilate, I continue to own a body that can still be felt. That my gaping holes can still be glutted to the brim. That I’m not alone in the cold sweat of thought. That I can still touch the beauty in this mortal moment.
Trivialities, all told. In truth, I don’t much care. And you’re not around to insist that I do.
18 August 2007 at 10:43 am
This was a very beautiful post.
Sometimes, being alone doesn’t lead to loneliness. And this is actually a lucky thing, for sometimes being lonely doesn’t require being alone.
It’s probably easier to face the former.
I loved the line “That I can still touch the beauty in this mortal moment”
Moments are all anyone really has in life which is constant. We, whether we like it or not, basically live to pass these moments…to taste this one and anticipate the next, while either relishing or repenting the previous one.
Mortal, all of them. Yet beautiful in their mortality!
—
Sumedh
18 August 2007 at 7:08 pm
Sometimes it is good to start the day with a bit of protein. And being reflectively alone while still tied to not being alone is also good.
19 August 2007 at 2:32 am
Z and Narziss,
I’m always slightly startled when you understand. Not because I lack faith in your ability to do so. Rather because I lack faith in *my* ability to communicate. Strangely, I somehow manage to continue trying.
Thanks for taking the time to drop a line.
19 August 2007 at 7:26 am
are you kidding me? With writing like yours, you lack faith in your ability to communicate?
ahem.
someone’s modest here! :)
19 August 2007 at 8:15 am
You are “not purely made of words”, no. No one is.
But with words as captivating, moving and incendiary as these, you certainly breathe through them.
And that is a rare gift.
19 August 2007 at 8:50 pm
Ohhhhh. That is melancholy!
19 August 2007 at 11:20 pm
Our absence was my language.
20 August 2007 at 5:39 pm
Narziss: Yes, I like to take a break from being completely narcissistic and self-involved to wallow in my insecurities every once in a while. Specially at 2 a.m.
Unreliable: *inhaling deeply* Thank you for allowing me to breathe through your words as well.
Clarissa: Yet another thing I like to wallow in on occasion.
Ben: I miss our language, often.
22 August 2007 at 11:19 pm
When words seem to be the last trace of what once existed but has long gone, it is understandable to be melancholy. Wallowing? No, just hanging on, hoping the words might just conjure up what is dearly missed.
23 August 2007 at 12:58 am
Welcome, Ariel. Yes, I often find words helpful in conjuring as well as releasing and many, many other things.
25 August 2007 at 4:58 am
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