Just don't get the wrong idea.
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Well, how shall I begin?
… After I have spit out all the butt-ends of my ways, how shall I begin?
So here I stand again, in a suit, except this time it’s my own new suit, instead of my father’s old one. As I walk outside, the air hit me. What logic, hosting a formal dance on the warmest day of the year!
Outside, a stifling haze fills the air, subduing the brightness of what should be a clear day. The air has a murky stillness; insects and moths lazily flutter in the air, their bodies reflecting in the late afternoon sunlight.
It is hot – perhaps the hottest day of the year, a day where people pack the beaches, or where the more introverted ones whittle away their time in a nice air conditioned room. Those who are outside act methodically; they have a purpose and a direction in mind. Such a day is not one for leisure walkers.
Even in full dress, I manage to keep cool, as I walk down a lawn, extending my arms to catch what little breeze can manage to stir the humid air.
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There is something enigmatic about this kind of heat. It enshrouds our bodies upon exposure, but does not inebriate your mind. We all supposedly are able to blend and adapt to our surroundings, that is, until we actually become aware of our surroundings. The second we do, a cascade of messages in the mind tell us, and make us painfully aware, for the rest of the day, just how hot and humid it outside.
The heat stifles our minds, invades our thoughts until we can think of nothing but the duality of the uncomfortable heat, and of the moment we will be removed from such weather. The heat can also make us restless, perhaps, incessant wanderers and chatterers. It changes us in ways only our sweat can express.
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So I’m at it again. A year removed from my old life, a year in a new setting, a year spent casting away the more undesirable elements of my old self, a year spent trying to move on and improve. Yet it has come to this again.
Nothing more than the soft scraping of a pen against a pocket-sized notebook. Nothing more than my thoughts on paper.
Once again, I remove myself and simply do what feels natural – have my thoughts pour onto the paper through an organized stream of ink. It has helped me regain my cool, however.
Alone, outside the venue, with only the distant sounds of a conversation in Chinese and the fragmented birdsong as background music, I feel at ease. The moon is high in the sky, flush against the remnants of the sunset. In this state, I feel and envelop every sliver of each breeze that passes.
I can for the ride, not the experience. I came for the product, not the process. Yet I feel this innate unease, as I feel myself calmly melting into the dusk.
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What nonsense. Why did I ever think, for a time, that I could change who I fundamentally am? Is this a question again, of the villain’s dilemma: to be or not to be what you are? All sunlight has just about faded, and the breeze has picked up, toning down the intense heat of the day.
A year has passed, but has it been a year of travelling in a line towards the end of the rainbow, or has it just been a year travelling in a circle? A fairly witty person would quip that I have travelled in a zigzag, or perhaps in a crudely drawn circle (think of a rough freehand sketch of a circle). Perhaps he is right.
The night is now setting in, and I am faced with a choice: whether to return to those lies which have given me a false sense of progress and hope, or to let the night consume me.
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Of course, I could have done something to mask this, but I chose not to, instead relying on the fundamental nature of these events and their relation to me, to guide my actions. So, I’m back where I was a year ago, with the pen movements of my hand barely discernible under the faint moonlight.
Have I any fortitude to force such a moment to return, force such a resonating declaration to once again overcome me, or shall I be one with the night? For the night is a great companion for me, all the better so, for it gives me reasons to dodge and delude myself to the point where I believe nothing but that of the past.
At this moment, the passing of a year stands cemented, trapped in unbreakable stone, and for all I care, infinitely distant away. Perhaps I am who I am, and no amount of the shifting of the sands of time will change, for the in the end, the sands may shift, but they will always remain on the same beach.
-
“Do you know what a writer’s high is?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s that feeling that gives you chills, that feeling that sets you free…”
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I feel like I’m able to float. Perhaps I am floating on the wings of my own existentialist rant.
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Once again, another blur, another night, another memory to look back on and shudder at: that was my night. As I walk back, still in full dress, under the stillness of a cool night, I feel entranced in my own bubble with nothing but “Commissioning a Symphony in C” to comfort me.
I’m not sure if this is angst. Angst seems too dark of a word to describe my state of mind. Angst gives off connotations of a deep and sickening depression. No, what I feel cannot really be described in word or song.
All I see is this image of a kid trapped inside his own bubble sandbox world, a kid who runs around stomping on each of the sandcastles in the sandbox, but for some reason, unable to keep up pace with how quickly the sandcastles regenerate.
That must be me.
So after all this, it has just been a cycle. One year, one cycle. Perhaps the sandcastles will grow faster next year.
Cue the next cycle.
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