I belong to a rare subset of people who are at once young and prone to a collection of metaphysical contemplations that befit more affably people of older ages. Since when people are older, as they invariably are, they would have suffered more, and thus become more lucid of the various absurdities that humans naturally harbor. But I am also one of those who, when considered broadly as a whole, isn't special at all, but rather is only aloof. My capacity seldom extends beyond what I write, and even what I write offers no value in a material sense. The act of writing to me, is merely a pastime I savor for the feeling of having written something. Whether I'm well-read or well-versed is of no concern to me. Like the decidedly sub-par teddy bear at the machine, I write not for the aesthetic pleasure of my prose, nor for the philosophical poignancy of my words, but for a simple, transient hedonistic sensuality that would drive others to post pictures on Instagram or to write Facebook posts for the likes of strangers. I am no different from other people in all aspects however difficult it is for me to perceive it that way, shallow and thoughtless, ignorant and sad, like the old poet in bed, patting himself to sleep not with mellow lyrics but with a soft voice.
Many things I have heartily championed have turned out to be futile and useless. And other things, while corporeal and commonplace, have taken up a central role in my life. The bard at Alexanderplatz sang yesterday "pitiful are those who sleep in suit". And I just so happened to walk past him in suit, letting out only an inner burst of awkward laugh and a half-joking admission of truth. However, even truer is the fact that the bard was wearing his non-suit, broadcasting the twaddle of his guitar to a non-audience, only to return later to his earthy abode for the mere continuity of life. Till this day, I have not yet met with another person who at least, is not only alive at the moment, but is also partially alive in all moments, keeping a conscious note of the innocence of youth, the banality of adulthood, the oblivion of elderliness, and the dark nothingness of an ultimate decease. Perhaps I have met them indeed, but perhaps their experiences and upbringings accustomed them to seeing things more positively, and thus differently from how I would see them.
The warm quietude of a Berlin afternoon acquaints me well. The ravens are crowing down the street, around a small patch of food beside a small patch of bush I would never be able to see. Their sounds confer what the yellow sun, green field, and blue ocean have been conferring for millenniums ever since the planet became what it is. And here we humans intoxicate ourselves with wines and breakfast and laptop and a beautiful song. The kid who asked me astrophysical questions is there; the cashier who laughed with me at the Chinese cabbage and kohlrabi is there; even the chatter of bartenders and patrons at the anonymous club is clearer when seen nostalgically; while I sit where I've always sat, forever listening to their buzz.
A distant siren roams by, and breaks off the silent monotony of my observation. And I realize, on this dirty office chair with the usual vividness of my indifference, that the walls surrounding me right now, the windows through which I sometimes see and hear, and this apartment in Christinenstrasse, are my exile. I clasp behind the windowsill like a prisoner behind bars, a widow inside the carriage, and an orphan behind the doors, only farther from their freedom, their husband, and their mom.
And such and such, I capitulate to reality with a false feverishness echoed by the room.
Sunday, September 11
Monday, September 5
9/5
The chilling breeze of an autumn night began to blow. Drizzles poured mildly over the eaves of the apartment building. I was close enough to still hear the wild and sporadic laughters of the kids from the playground. Yet after the distinct sound of the tires brushing against the newly wet ground, the laughters disappeared, as well as many other sounds that usually lingered amongst the air at this time of the day. I was sitting in the vacated room opposite to where I used to sleep, accompanied by no more than the black cat on the head of whom I liked to pet. It was quite cathartic, to briefly stay away from the computer, and just listen to what the world had to offer when it was unhindered by the electric swarms of noises and colors.
Three large cranes, all erected when my freshness of starting a new job was still alive, were towering against the faint orange grey of a distant dusk. Every morning I saw them; yet every morning I passed before them like the motorcade of an unknown official, condescending and slight. But I watched them more closely this evening. It was not that my eyes could tell their shapes with better integrity, nor that my understanding of the functionality of the cranes would improve, just that, I became, albeit very briefly, devout to the cranes that had been so marginal yet so integral to my identity. The basketball court where, for a not-so-short period of time, I played basketball daily, and the Momos dumpling restaurant, where I had wanted to visit and decided not to, and the Rewe supermarket, with its friendly hopeful homeless guy sitting at the front door, all lay metaphysically dormant, shrouded by the torpor and dread of the weather turning cold. Strangely I had been more careless and glad last winter. Perhaps, back then everything was more withdrawn and decided, and I more churlish and forgiving.
The crescendo of the blue sky began to command a blacker hue. Throughout this day, Berlin was utterly cloudy. During the night, the clouds would be less discernible, and so would the stars. I looked outwards without nostalgia nor hope. It was one of the looks I routinely posed when something had puzzled me, with my mouth half-open, as if whispering the silenced words. Indeed, it was puzzling, the monochromatic purity of the night, almost like a brutalist building without its eager edges and looming contours, only more simplistic, and more straightforward. I felt more puzzled as I looked up in the sky, the all-encompassing dome under which all but a few of my race had dwelled. Wars were ravaged, wonderful stories told, wine drunk from the glass, the songs sung at the fire, the distant pleasures I described lyrically, and the nearer ones I remembered but neglected. Yet the darkness of every night had eaten them all, leaving behind only the skeletons, bare and confined to the weariness of their afterlife.
Suddenly a small gust of wind nudged against my upper arm. I closed the window, severing the flimsy tie I had with the already invisible sky. Indoors, surrounded by the slow buzz of the heater, and the dizzying snide of the television one room and a corridor away, I wallowed in my bed with a smartphone to a gradual halt.
-
I woke up gracelessly, with a deep longing of going back to sleep. After three snoozes, I sluggishly braced my body upwards. Today could be my final trip to Bremen before spring next year, and I foresaw it as being rather placid and repetitive.
Another day started without my conscious knowing of it. Only in my weakened memory of what was yesterday and the day before did I infer that indeed I had slept, and that the planet had already completed yet another cycle of rotation. I was riding on the InterCity train from Hamburg to Bremen. The trees and bushes flew by the windows on both sides, and were pigeonholed into fleeting shades of green and gray. The wagon ran on a constant speed that was already beyond the comprehension of the human brain. And I was like a willingly startled cat, boxed up in the cabin to be sent to a familiar strange vet.
Bremen, an objectively neutral place, when coupled with the various things I had learned to associate with it for the past two years, turned decidedly dolorous. It was earthly and real, and therefore more relatable to the emotions felt during a true heartbreak, rather than those invented when reading a romance novel. I hadn't got a useful word to say about it. In Bremen I was more speechless than I was anywhere else.
I began to miss Berlin almost instantaneously. Like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn't exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn't exist.
I was still quite familiar with Bremen's public transportation system, as well as different Starbucks locations without the aid of Google Maps, so I was able to order Caramel Macchiato this time. In the taste of it, there was simultaneously a sweetness reminiscent of the local cuisines of where I came from, and a loosely bitter touch of coffee that for me, pertained firmly to a western ideal that wasn't included in my original upbringing. On the chair with steel framework and a black woven cushion made from bamboo, I mentally curled up into a ball, protected from the incessant rumble that was Bremen.
I envisaged, with a level of earnestness likened to that of a man's tears, how marvelous, how staggering, how vastly cherishable must it be, if in the future I finally freed myself of the fears and uncertainties that were marauding me now. But I could never be too sure of it - my life was a book that had been merely initiated, but remained unplanned, and unplannable.
And thus, without gaining any new perspective into my existing pool of knowledge, I took a ceremonial sip from the empty coffee cup, rose up, and left.
-
The sky cleared as I left Bremen. I became calm and joyful.
Three large cranes, all erected when my freshness of starting a new job was still alive, were towering against the faint orange grey of a distant dusk. Every morning I saw them; yet every morning I passed before them like the motorcade of an unknown official, condescending and slight. But I watched them more closely this evening. It was not that my eyes could tell their shapes with better integrity, nor that my understanding of the functionality of the cranes would improve, just that, I became, albeit very briefly, devout to the cranes that had been so marginal yet so integral to my identity. The basketball court where, for a not-so-short period of time, I played basketball daily, and the Momos dumpling restaurant, where I had wanted to visit and decided not to, and the Rewe supermarket, with its friendly hopeful homeless guy sitting at the front door, all lay metaphysically dormant, shrouded by the torpor and dread of the weather turning cold. Strangely I had been more careless and glad last winter. Perhaps, back then everything was more withdrawn and decided, and I more churlish and forgiving.
The crescendo of the blue sky began to command a blacker hue. Throughout this day, Berlin was utterly cloudy. During the night, the clouds would be less discernible, and so would the stars. I looked outwards without nostalgia nor hope. It was one of the looks I routinely posed when something had puzzled me, with my mouth half-open, as if whispering the silenced words. Indeed, it was puzzling, the monochromatic purity of the night, almost like a brutalist building without its eager edges and looming contours, only more simplistic, and more straightforward. I felt more puzzled as I looked up in the sky, the all-encompassing dome under which all but a few of my race had dwelled. Wars were ravaged, wonderful stories told, wine drunk from the glass, the songs sung at the fire, the distant pleasures I described lyrically, and the nearer ones I remembered but neglected. Yet the darkness of every night had eaten them all, leaving behind only the skeletons, bare and confined to the weariness of their afterlife.
Suddenly a small gust of wind nudged against my upper arm. I closed the window, severing the flimsy tie I had with the already invisible sky. Indoors, surrounded by the slow buzz of the heater, and the dizzying snide of the television one room and a corridor away, I wallowed in my bed with a smartphone to a gradual halt.
-
I woke up gracelessly, with a deep longing of going back to sleep. After three snoozes, I sluggishly braced my body upwards. Today could be my final trip to Bremen before spring next year, and I foresaw it as being rather placid and repetitive.
Another day started without my conscious knowing of it. Only in my weakened memory of what was yesterday and the day before did I infer that indeed I had slept, and that the planet had already completed yet another cycle of rotation. I was riding on the InterCity train from Hamburg to Bremen. The trees and bushes flew by the windows on both sides, and were pigeonholed into fleeting shades of green and gray. The wagon ran on a constant speed that was already beyond the comprehension of the human brain. And I was like a willingly startled cat, boxed up in the cabin to be sent to a familiar strange vet.
Bremen, an objectively neutral place, when coupled with the various things I had learned to associate with it for the past two years, turned decidedly dolorous. It was earthly and real, and therefore more relatable to the emotions felt during a true heartbreak, rather than those invented when reading a romance novel. I hadn't got a useful word to say about it. In Bremen I was more speechless than I was anywhere else.
I began to miss Berlin almost instantaneously. Like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn't exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn't exist.
I was still quite familiar with Bremen's public transportation system, as well as different Starbucks locations without the aid of Google Maps, so I was able to order Caramel Macchiato this time. In the taste of it, there was simultaneously a sweetness reminiscent of the local cuisines of where I came from, and a loosely bitter touch of coffee that for me, pertained firmly to a western ideal that wasn't included in my original upbringing. On the chair with steel framework and a black woven cushion made from bamboo, I mentally curled up into a ball, protected from the incessant rumble that was Bremen.
I envisaged, with a level of earnestness likened to that of a man's tears, how marvelous, how staggering, how vastly cherishable must it be, if in the future I finally freed myself of the fears and uncertainties that were marauding me now. But I could never be too sure of it - my life was a book that had been merely initiated, but remained unplanned, and unplannable.
And thus, without gaining any new perspective into my existing pool of knowledge, I took a ceremonial sip from the empty coffee cup, rose up, and left.
-
The sky cleared as I left Bremen. I became calm and joyful.
Sunday, September 4
9/4
What is there to be written about the life of an office clerk? While the receptionist could be a game enthusiast, the cleaning lady a loving mother, the IT specialist a geek, a clerk always seems a clerk, one of those looming yet anonymous figures at the corners of the office, mostly typing on the keyboard of who knows what words, and occasionally staring somewhere with an attentive gaze of empty thoughts. In those moments, it seems almost counterintuitive to envision for the office clerk a congenial group of friends, a colorful arrangement of events, or a distinguished habit of enjoying a series of refined tastes after the daily ritual has finished. The stern, inexorable face of blandness and bore extends beyond the boundary of a firm, leaps past the crowds and restaurants and tram stations, and terminates only in bed where the loose cotton collar of the pajamas replaces the strangle of the tie, bringing in an unfamiliar, even hostile sensation of freedom and aimlessness - only before sleep does the clerk get to undress from his hefty costume and entertain a shiver of animalistic sloth, perhaps just like a woman after her sixties, when the urge to feign a layer of femininity begins to subside, and when scarcely anyone would pay attention.
But according to the more established, and hence more resigned of the clerks, life with all of its moments of hope and ecstasy, is fundamentally unglamorous. The majority of those who take the pleasure of walking under the trees entitle to it by bearing the grind and angst that came as a price for one's subsistence; the couples who buy movie tickets and popcorns could afford them precisely because they have earned their money, paid their rent, and would not mind spending some extra time having fun; the pianist performs flawlessly on-stage for he has played endlessly off of it; even the smile of a clown could not be lastingly maintained without some aching of the muscle. And hence to be a clerk, a hermit, a clown, or a poet is to be no different, all are but gimmicks that they deployed for the comfort and illusion of the sense of belonging with which they gild themselves. These are ways in which most of the people live by; even for the few who are accustomed to life's tedium, they serve as rare solaces, that after all, to have a mode to follow is to have a pat on the back, however wicked and impenetrable things are to become.
Perhaps, the clerk has already known, that if life is the confusion over a long road trip leading nowhere, then it is infinitely easier to be thoughtless and vague than to be pensive and agonized. For after all, with only the intermittent reassurance of voices of the radio and the engine that seems to accompany it forever, the trip will consist mostly of a gradual process of realizing, and reconciling with its inevitable end. And hence if to be thoughtless and vague is to desert from an unwinnable war, those who fought heroically and dramatically face their demise quicker, after which they experience neither joy nor honor; however, for those who have the foresight to plan out the details of the retreat before the battle has even begun, the pleasure lies in the aftermaths, where they gloat at the graves of the heroes, and revel in the unique privilege of being able to do so.
However, having not the courage of entering a battle, nor the ignorance of a useless escape, the clerk chooses to play along with what life has to offer with only half-hearted interest, and half-hearted remorse.
Then, beneath the green of an Excel sheet, he lights up his imaginary cigarette for a subconscious smoke.
But according to the more established, and hence more resigned of the clerks, life with all of its moments of hope and ecstasy, is fundamentally unglamorous. The majority of those who take the pleasure of walking under the trees entitle to it by bearing the grind and angst that came as a price for one's subsistence; the couples who buy movie tickets and popcorns could afford them precisely because they have earned their money, paid their rent, and would not mind spending some extra time having fun; the pianist performs flawlessly on-stage for he has played endlessly off of it; even the smile of a clown could not be lastingly maintained without some aching of the muscle. And hence to be a clerk, a hermit, a clown, or a poet is to be no different, all are but gimmicks that they deployed for the comfort and illusion of the sense of belonging with which they gild themselves. These are ways in which most of the people live by; even for the few who are accustomed to life's tedium, they serve as rare solaces, that after all, to have a mode to follow is to have a pat on the back, however wicked and impenetrable things are to become.
Perhaps, the clerk has already known, that if life is the confusion over a long road trip leading nowhere, then it is infinitely easier to be thoughtless and vague than to be pensive and agonized. For after all, with only the intermittent reassurance of voices of the radio and the engine that seems to accompany it forever, the trip will consist mostly of a gradual process of realizing, and reconciling with its inevitable end. And hence if to be thoughtless and vague is to desert from an unwinnable war, those who fought heroically and dramatically face their demise quicker, after which they experience neither joy nor honor; however, for those who have the foresight to plan out the details of the retreat before the battle has even begun, the pleasure lies in the aftermaths, where they gloat at the graves of the heroes, and revel in the unique privilege of being able to do so.
However, having not the courage of entering a battle, nor the ignorance of a useless escape, the clerk chooses to play along with what life has to offer with only half-hearted interest, and half-hearted remorse.
Then, beneath the green of an Excel sheet, he lights up his imaginary cigarette for a subconscious smoke.