Most people make the mistake of thinking I am always together. Of course, this is far from the truth.
I am not always together. Most of the time, I am scattered in several places all at once, pulling desperately at the pieces to shape a coherent, sensible whole. I am as together as a puzzle hit by the cyclone-tantrum of a two-year old.
What I am adept at is pretending. Surface-level assurance. Willpower engine. The shallow hi’s and trench-deep hellos. Everything is fine and dandy, but in truth, I’ve got the chills and nobody knows.
I am not together and I am not whole. I am stardust flung across different galaxies, with no chance of meeting in a single lifetime. I am shattered glass from an old, forgotten chandelier in a house coloured by the footsteps of ghosts. I am a raindrop crashing to the ground, anticipating the sweetness of a fall.
On days like these, I feel like nobody and nothing at all.
are sacred, surprising, and sometimes sad.
The thought of Monday lingers, and if I were to be completely honest with myself, it comes with dread, lethargy, fear and excitement–all in equal measure.
But I am, as always, getting ahead of myself.
I try to remember that it is Sunday, that it is sacred, that I am free to be selfish for at least one day of the week. That I can think about something else other than work, the pitfalls of being an adult, the frustrations of one who continues to desperately chase after dreams. That without the sublime Sunday air, the rest of the week will never be the same–everything disengaged, dislocated…
Doomed.
So even if Sundays don’t always go my way, I’m still glad that it happens, that I have always been given the choice to make it happen despite all the other things that could easily derail this slow-cruising train.
Today, there are oven-fresh cupcakes, brewed coffee, the laughter of family, the soothing voice of a beloved.
Unwinding means remembering to eat breakfast at 4 p.m.
I had forgotten myself again.
For two weeks, all the world was merely a stream of butchered consciousness, to borrow a phrase from a beloved friend. Waking, working, sleeping. Lather, rinse, repeat. The real world is a merciless enemy. And I could not fight against it at the time.
But now I think I’m realigned. Finding balance is such a tedious feat. I operate off-kilter most of the time.
On and off, on and off, I flicker like a dying light bulb. Or like Sylvia’s fever.
Jackie called.
She did not sound like a girl.
I normally would not have answered the call, but I recognized Jackie’s number and thought maybe she ought to know. She was wasting her time, and I needed to clear my inbox and call log soon.
“Hello?” I do my best Helena Bonham-Carter imitation because there was no one else I’d rather pretend to be at that moment.
“Mark?” she said in a timid voice.
“Who?”
Jackie lowers her voice even more and the only word I could pick up was “Mark.”
“There’s no Mark here, love. I think you’ve got the wrong number.”
I drop the call and go back to watching Sengoku Basara Season 2 because it was a Sunday and I deserved to lie in bed and let my mind wander off to ancient Japan on steroids.
A small part of me wonders whether Jackie will try other numbers, hoping that one of them would finally lead her to Mark. We step out of each other’s lives just like that, and I expect never to hear from her again.
I pause the video and head outside for a cigarette break. My shoulders were aching. All afternoon until way into the evening, I had been lying on my side, watching, gushing, squeeing, holding my breath. Apparently, while I was indulging on Japanese history, the rest of the nation was watching a debate between presidential candidates on national television. For a moment, it sparked my interest, but I wasn’t going to aggravate myself over lies and lies and lies.
That night, before sleeping, I went to the kitchen to grab myself a glass of water–to ward off the nightmares. I found my brother staring at a watermelon.
“What are we gonna do with this watermelon?” he asks.
“I dunno,” I shrug.
“If we leave it there too long, it might turn into a coconut.”
Jackie’s back. She asks me how I am and if I remember. She starts her sentence with two periods, followed by two smileys, and a lowercase letter. I look at the word remember again, surprised that she spelled it right and ended it with the correct punctuation.
She gives me two calls. Except I left my phone inside my room, and a part of me wonders if she will call again, and how I would break it to her that I am not Mark and I remember nothing about meeting her, or selling her “scarp.”
I begin to wonder about them both, Jackie and Mark–two characters who accidentally made a tiny appearance in my everyday life. Two strangers who I will never know, and have no interest to, save perhaps for the fact that I continue to become fascinated with this little saga of short, mistaken messages, if it will all end up as a trilogy.
I toss my phone back on the bed and shuffle to the kitchen to make coffee.
(Part 3)
Early morning. Uncaffeinated.
I am texted by an unknown number. Apparently my name is now Mark, I bought “scarp” from Jackie, and I am cute. She informs me that all her numbers are available. She asks me where I work. She spells a kiss with double Js. The message, short as it is, registers in my brain like a puzzle that the keypad spewed out after a night of binge drinking. I wonder if the sender used her forehead to type instead of her fingers.
I run to the kitchen, relieved to find that coffee is already brewing. Perhaps the caffeine would help me cope with these little intrusions from the outside world. I take the first sip, feeling a bit closer to finally becoming human for a time. But someone sends me a chat message with another stupid question, and I wonder which vortex this person’s common sense has been irredeemably sucked into.
I wander off into the veranda, which is perhaps the farthest I could get away from my tiny space, my office, my room. In the distance, I could hear old songs drifting from a radio. A thin sheet of white noise and bad signal breathes over the wind. Other sounds make it into my bubble of existence: Cars, motorcycles, people walking their dogs, dogs walking their humans, humans talking in a volume best suited for conversation across mountains. There is so much turbulent wakefulness around me that I feel as though the weekday has never left.
I envy our cats lazing about in the garage. Nothing excites them at the moment. They sprawl themselves over the ground with nary a care for the world. Later on, when my grandmother comes home from the grocery, I discover the scene of a recent murder: A small rat lies dead near our gate.
The world goes on without stopping.
The wind blows coolly from where I sit, as if winter is just about to begin in this strange part of the world that knows nothing about the snow. The closest we could get to experiencing snow is perhaps when we gaze at the clouds and feel their white, infinite softness fall ever so slowly… but not quite. Or maybe the ashes from a cigarette would suffice, their tiny crumbling forms–fire-stained murky snow–ferried gently away by the wind.
The world around me stirs with agonizing slowness. It is almost night. I can feel darkness beginning. The lights dim slowly. A part of me longs for summers lost, when we could walk home from school and feel the fingers of sunset touch the world and those beyond it. Now, I hardly go out. I am constantly plugged in a dream of monochrome. My body remains in place yet my mind wanders off into the landscapes of memory.
And I do not know if that is the best place to get lost in, especially when it’s this cold.