Day by day

28 September 2013

If I could subdue my day as if it were an animal, we would both be on the arena, I would stare at it and it would stare back. My gaze would not flinch and it will hold its eyes on me. By the time the sun descends from its perch on our zenith, my day has transformed into a cat and we would be sitting side by side, a comfortable but familiar gap bridging our nearness. Both of us transfix our gaze on the traversing sun, knowing fully that our togetherness is marked by the setting of this heat ball on the horizon. What do we do but cherish the only period when I was myself as I was meant to be when we meet and that my day, in the form of the cat, was the cat that would sit by my side and convene with me in silence. We both know that both of us, as we were together, would be gone forever. What would prevail is thankfulness that such a moment transpired, that we, as we were, coincided in this world of ineffable possibilities. Today was such the day when I knew my days could talk to me this way.

The days come by to present me who I am. And I embrace that truth that I may not be who I thought I am or that I may not end up who I thought I was going to be. Nothing’s certain in this life and while I’m tempted to append, more than death and taxes, without those, I am certain, the point’s been taken.

If I would recount all that had happened to me this week, it would not only be laborious but more so, redundant. My journal has contained lots of what has transpired as I had documented. I was not faithful however in my transcription of each day though at most times I feel as if I only existed to observe everything and try to capture all of them in words like the moment when Ma’am Bing and Ma’am Tiff were singing Chasing Pavements together. I haven’t missed what Ma’am Tiff meant when she said that getting the lyrics clear in my head but not singing because of shyness was of no use because unlike me, she, despite her being out of tune, she said, was singing out loud. I have my reasons. Those were clear to me and I have no compulsion to explain myself to her. I was more happy hearing them singing together than it would be if I were to sing with them. I do sing often and I have heard myself singing that song so many times, I have to set aside that time to hear other people sing the song.

Bothersome to me is the fact that without even consciously realizing, my attention was summoned by my intact but injured spatial cognition. Weekly, I get to bang myself on door posts or faucets because my mind has forgotten to orient my body away from these objects. These are stuff we do not think about, like an overwrite command which works on its own without us having to will it or conceptualize it. It simply happens that when we pass by openings, we walk through the spaces and not merge ourselves face to face walls then wonder why we haven’t gone to the other side. They just happen. And I am losing this auto function. Why?