11/12

Earlier today a piece of very unfortunate news was delivered to me - Magnus, my former boss, had been hospitalized last night due to a bike accident near Harlaching, and he will be receiving his surgery tomorrow. I wish that the doctors who will be treating him take good care of him. May God bless him.

11/9

This November I have bidden a quiet farewell, one that is known but not said. These days when I meet people I hardly bother to present myself fully. In the real world there is always an implicit sense of futility. And since I, like many other people, use restraint as an insurance policy for it, farewells, usually associated with some unchecked emotions, can then be carried out quietly. Instead of the hackneyed formalities of "bye", "take care" and "good luck in life", a conversation simply ends when no new message arrives.

I do not recall exactly when I have become used to this kind of farewell as I was not. I don't think there is a moment or a series of moments that have hastened the transition. As the years go by and life progresses, something has just gradually brewed in me that allows everything to feel more palatable. I have seen many things and people being gained and then the same being lost - in between there are often some noises and fights, but those are mostly short-lived and rarely make a difference. Recognizing this, I now pick my battles wisely.

Life after the farewell is the same as it was before the farewell. Looking around, I couldn't see any material change. The world does not turn more blue or more gray because of the thoughts of an individual, though the reverse is quite true. Some bits of the morning fog seem to glisten as the clouds temporarily thin out to let the sunlight through. The cycles of weather in Munich are always mashed up together, difficult to tell apart.

In this November everything seems feeble, so was everything last November, and the November before. The mild morning light shines through the window, casting my shadow on the wooden floor - an elongated circular head that sits on top of a rectangular box with rounded corners. The trees, compared with a few weeks ago, seem looser. I can see more of the colored houses from across the woods. I am not interested in the houses, nor am I curious about the story-lines of the people living there. When I go to work, I pass by some of those houses on my way to the bus station. I see on the door tags the names I could neither pronounce nor remember. Nowadays I dare to acknowledge most things in my life only quietly or passingly, sometimes due to a lack of need, or a lack of time, or simply, a lack of reason. But interestingly the outcomes of these tacit acknowledgements aren't better or worse than those for which I have actively tried. The only difference I have observed, is the lack of repercussions from the former. Dostoevsky said: "The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment." Conversely, crimes that are committed half-heartedly and acknowledged passingly, must often go unpunished. And somehow I have learned to exploit this fact.

To me, the lights, the trees, the houses, and many other things this morning are faraway. I'm detached from them because I have no obligations towards them. But being detached from things does not mean being free. In fact, being detached from things sometimes is the opposite of being free. In this room where I am idle, I'm locked in my idleness; where I detach myself, I'm burdened by what I have let go. The misty white lights which shine through the windows, the leaves which fall from the trees, the houses which are lived by people unknown to me, collectively create a picture which I am not in.

And I reach out for something in the lump of air in front of me like a baby reaching out for its milk. But nothing is there.

8/22

Soon I took refuge in the corner seat - the loud bass of the electromusic passed through the wall behind me in rhythmic vibrations, like a giant machinery pushing me from behind. The crowd on the floor were dancing to the yellow disco lights hanging above them. I looked around for the guys who came with me, failing to find them, and took a little sip from my glass of gin and tonic. The chilled tonic water sizzled on my tongue for a moment before the warmth of my body flushed it away. I had learned to appreciate the nuances that came with using alcohol, turning things and people around me into gentler, less crude versions. In the background, the music was still playing as loudly as ever - it thumped on my ear drum every half a second, asserting itself above all else. But it was also sounding somewhat vague to me - the loudness seemed to disperse with the purple and red smokes and become more monotonous. As a result, there seemed to be no rock solid things any more in this room - the boundaries were blurring, the edges eased out, and the people began to move like waves.

I noticed that on the outer surface of my gin-and-tonic glass the layer of mists was condensing into tiny droplets of water - the ice cubes had also gotten smaller. Intuitively I began to sip faster and started to feel somewhat lightheaded. In front of me a group of people were dancing to a set of lights that seemed increasingly flashy. Or rather, they weren't dancing at all - they were merely shaking their bodies around. I had the intention to talk to someone but the cascade of the music and the voices singing to it quickly overwhelmed. I became bottled in this room. And it was only 11 PM, a long way to go until the night would die down. My decision to show up in this club was not voluntary, but it was inevitable. It occurred to me as though when there was more freedom to make choices in life, there would be fewer reasons to adhere to any particular choice. So I ended up making no choice at all, merely allowing myself to be taken to places simply because going to places was to me preferable to not going to places. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what I felt when I quietly sat in the corner - it wasn't a material substance but rather the lack thereof - the lack of belief in essential oils, in playing golf, in dotted or not-dotted reporting lines, and in the future me taking the kids to the swimming pool.

Bypassing the straw I took a gulp of gin and tonic from the glass, wishing to drive the feeling away as it permeated me like the dimly lit smoke permeating the crowd. The swirling loud electro-bangs at the moment were like the background music of a movie scene waiting for something to happen, except for that nothing did happen and everything remained the same as it was thirty seconds ago. I was somewhat amused and put up a bland smile. I drank up the rest of the gin and tonic and decided to leave.

Pessoa once remarked that "what was social is now individual". And it was exactly like that when I left the club. The dry air with low levels of carbon dioxide was refreshing. Some specks of stars from afar were faintly visible. There were tire noises of cars in the city going places, and I was going back to the apartment where I would stay until the end of September. At this time of the day, walking on the streets were only people who were the patched up versions of their former selves. But which version was more real or less fake was not an answerable question and not the point.

In whichever version the solace people sought was still missing and at a distance the music went on.

3/25

The shred of blue sky that was revealed after this afternoon's rain slowly receded from the view as I sat on the S-Bahn back home. The day was a day of usual business with an early Monday morning start and a late Monday afternoon end. Sitting in front of me was the girl with whom I had inadvertently chatted up a few weeks earlier - she reclined lazily on her seat, swaying rhythmically as the cabin moved forth.

I looked around at those who were sharing the ride - a lady in her winter clothing was swiping her phone, and a dog laid between the seats that were behind mine. The loud speakers of the train announced the stations I passed by as dutifully as the first time I heard the announcements almost two years ago. I put my hands snuggly in the pockets and babbled some words to the girl and she babbled some words back - there was a particular instant in these babbles when I felt that, everything, the train, the people, the dog and all of these selfsame routines seemed to brim with a certain softness. I smiled and then peeked away.

I had no idea what I would do when I would be back from work. Nothing in my apartment room still amazed me, and nothing I could do in my apartment could amaze me. I drifted out from the apartment every morning, and drifted into the apartment every evening. The apartment was an instrument through which days transitioned into other days. But its mereness did not disconcert me - on the dotted blue S-Bahn chair I eventlessly and happily sat, waiting for the station where I could then transfer to an U-Bahn.

The sky dimmed a little as the sunset neared. The traffic lights and the tail- and headlights of cars began to stand out. Though it wasn't so much of a dazzle - through the tired eyes of a long day in the office, nothing could dazzle. But nonetheless it made the city, and subsequently me, slightly more alive.

The train gradually slowed down as it approached the Harras S-Bahn station. I got off, and took a long deep breath of the crisp wintry air. When I waited in the morning on this platform, the sun shone from the east through the trees. By the evening the trees had turned into silhouettes, impatient like the weariness of a late afterwork crowd. The girl was still following me. Her walk was a bit slower than usual, as was mine and everyone else's. But her dotted coat looked merry amongst the sea of black and grays. I tried to conjure up some words to say to her but couldn't bring about any of them - there wasn't anything in this world that was so novel that I had to say it out loud. Thus I kept on walking straight, but not so straight as to appear nonchalant.

On the escalator down to the U-Bahn station, I faintly remembered some quote about shooting stars. It said that there would occasionally in life be shooting stars, upon which we would make our wishes and then let disappear. In the rumblings of distant trains and the gusts of tunnel winds, I somehow felt better and began to walk more affirmatively.

It was still a couple of minutes until the next U-Bahn would come and pick me up - until then, I walked in my black and gray overcoat, against which the dotted coat fared.

1/9

Almost half a month after I have traveled back from Germany, I haven't any idea about what I had set out to achieve. In turn, I have simply become a more susceptible, or to put it figuratively, a more walkable person, guided by a set of believes that are now rather malleable and infirm compared with, say, when I first embarked on this journey earlier this month. I realize, that however I adorn and defend my follies with rousing appeals, seeming arguments and wishful thoughts, I remain largely helpless when it comes to confronting how things would actually work in this reality - which is always kind of rash, devoid of the bittersweetness, the caprice, and determinism that I have had the habit of ascribing to it. I have not been disappointed as much as I have been taught, of what I do not know - I just have this vague sense of being shown, like at the end of one of those interviews with the vibe of engagement a door is politely shown which is then promptly shut closed.

I used to lament when I have to sit alone in a curtained room, lit only by the solitary glow of an artificial light - sitting in it feels demeaning to me because of the deafening silence. In such a room there are no facts, only hypotheses, rootless fantasies, and half dreams that extend wildly and unrealistically outward. But now I savor it because it is more comforting for me to have the certainty of what isn't real than that of what is.

Hence I sit on this wooden chair where I have sat nearly five years ago, with my elbows and wrists drooping forward onto the desk. Through the window I see that the sky is getting darker. In the past I could see all the way to the road on the far side; I could see the street lights slowly turning themselves on, and the cars coming and going about their own businesses. But now the view has been blocked by a towering yellow mall with furniture stores and supermarkets in it - massive billboards of varied artistic designs and messages are stuck onto the side, ready to blast their lights on my face when the night falls. Familiar traffic noises, sometimes even loose vestiges of voices talking to other voices, will shine through the window with all the liveliness of this city that is my hometown. At the same time, on the streets and in the rooms the uncomforted people are still uncomforted.

It was on this chair that I posed the many questions, drew the many conclusions, and decided on the many actions which have led me to this point in life. The ideas I had at the time were not necessarily accurate, but were nevertheless temporarily inspiring - some of these ideas were, from the get-go, logically untenable, like the belief in the power of a man triumphing over his reality, or the belief that the future will be better when a deplorable past is renounced. I recognize now that these ideas are only convincing when left unpursued, since a reality, by definition, is merely an objective state of being that cannot be triumphed over, and the past, however deplorable it is considered, can never be altered, not to mention renounced. But at least back then I had these ideas and could seek solace from them. Now I have become more sheepish - having learned the extent to which many of my insistences were ungrounded, I'm no longer capable of being the idealist I once was with the same fervency. However, neither am I a realist, for to me, a realist is just an unknowing nihilist. Five years ago on this chair was a reckless young man setting out for his shiny dreams; five years later the same man sat on the same chair, looked out of the window, and did not say a word. The chair is the same chair but it has also somehow started to feel awkwardly anachronistic - the meanings once assigned to it are no longer so heartily needed and appreciated - the sparkles, the fists, the countless remembered or forgotten nights, yes they once exist - but only like the old wounds from the days past that are never quite healed but are nonetheless increasingly unseen.

Emptily I sit on the chair. The dim gray sky hovers above the buildings, and all of the nearby or faraway people walk by.