Sunday, August 7

8/7

Mine is a process of transforming, slowly, from an enthusiastic young man whose believes are often indefensible but unusually firm, to a slightly older chap who appears often dull with only occasional rejoices to seep through. I make more reasonable decisions, culture an instinct of deliberation, and have become a pupil of trade-off - in all, my lack of vivacity is a conscious decision.

Telltales I once lightly sneered at turned out to be true, and even inevitable, that a young man loses his vibe with age, however he might like to prefer the otherwise. Though my capitulation, so shall I say it, didn't come without a few attempts at resistance. One year ago I was hopelessly in love with a woman whose name I hardly recall, and after that I fell trap into an entrepreneurial venture with an equally laudable amount of zeal. Both of them have now faded into my own versions of the telltale, at which others could continue to sneer.

Since my dusts appear to have settled at the moment, I console myself with the fact that while many things might have changed, I am still here for my own company. Even though the "friends" I play Pokémon Go with are purely fictional, the "family" with whom I always keep in touch are merely a collection of distant figures with but a few loose threads of the filial strings connected to me, and the "cold-pressed juice" I bragged about is what I have only imagined to drink. It suddenly occurs to me that, quite frankly I have taken such a deviating path that I am the only person I know who's really on it. I am all alone here, choosing to neglect this fact not due to an absence of care, but due to an absence of power. I'm like a child at the kindergarten, delaying sleep to construct a blanket fort whose protection dissipates and ugly side revealed with every change in posture.

Sandra Mattke, whimsical as it is to enlist her name here, has also decided to leave. For all the polite exchanges between us, like the girl from Bavaria, she has left unannounced, taking the remnant of her vacation quota with her. I still remember a time when I would joyfully leap forth to her workplace, and ask her about her first aider training, and occasionally, her baby. In her look, there was a certain unwillingness that I caught but paid no attention to. I presume, that unwillingness had already foreboded my surprise. I feel the urge to mention her in this passage, for I'm adamant in the fact that if I don't take the opportunity to mention her now, I might as well never do. (Mysteriously, or rather not so mysteriously, Sandra has returned.)

It's hard to discern the state of the affairs for the adults. Someone once told me that maintaining relationships with other people is never for the folstering of human togetherness, but is rather for having fun, and for being able to continue to have fun even when a portion of the circle have left. There is also a slang from my country that is aptly wise: whoever is the first to take it seriously, would be the first to lose. Yet I have always failed to imagine either a circle incomplete or an attitude towards life giddy and unattending. But, when it comes to relationships, personal willfulness hardly ever matters.

It's… it's just like that, myriads of fragmented moments, of chatting under the linden tree with a gang of friends, of packing up under the yellow light to set off for another city, of an apprehension towards the unknown of the future, of a regret that fails to die with the past, of piano keys, of porns, of the orange juice, of the anonymous tunes sung at the shower head… everything seems sensible in their moments; yet when put together, all the frames, they are just beyond me, leaving me humbled by the grandeur and minusculity of an organism's journey.