We sat on one of the vertebrae-like benches sprawled across the length of the library. It was a very slow and tiring morning. We’ve just had our fill: I had my all-time fave mongo soup with shelled shrimps and he, on the other hand, had sisig or pork’s rejects (He branded it, not my fault) since he didn’t want to be remembered again about how impure he had become. Like he said, he desperately needed cleansing.
After a long and grueling unknown analysis, we just both needed each other to survey the scenes / look over the subtle errors/indifferences/hints. You know, to know. “Was he really crossed when I used it?”, “Is it too much to ask for that? / Am I too overbearing?” “Where are my manners?” “Will I ever go far in life?”. Pointless-but-not-pointless-at-all questions that make each day more live-able. I digress, I like this kind of conversation.
“Do you read books?”
“I do. Why?”
“What kind of books?”
“I dig historical ones you know. Steve Berry-ish.”
“So you’ve read The Historian?”
Ha ha. Steve Berry is not the author of The Historian, but I knew it and he got it. We talked in loops and pauses. He zigs, I zag. So the conversation became all the more interesting (?) like driving around an unknown territory with words in one hand and a curious company in the other (I don’t know what I’m trying to say).
I rifled through my bag, in search of the to-be-passed-in-half-an-hour problem set. I needed to get nos. 1 and 5 done to let them realize that I prefer not to. Monarchy is never going to happen in this uni (Re: The Outcasts of 19 Schuler Place). But I am not a multi-tasker. His company outweighed my temporary priorities, but I was not the least upset or irritated. After all, it’s rare to have a talk with someone who have interests completely same as mine.
He had read almost all of my favorite books such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Coraline, Life of Pi etc., and I thought, "There’s more to a person than what he seems to be. Hidden inside us are a multitude of cosmoses quietly illuminating, waiting to be unearthed.” To attest to this, I’ve found out that we have the same familial situation. His honesty was too disarming, and I’ve never met anyone who was as honest and compelling as him. You could very well say that I admire him for his bravery, and baking skills, and work ethics. I’m older but he’s wiser like I haven’t aged at all (Physically yes, but mentally and emotionally no). It’s not always that I say this, but I do, I do want to grow up (not in numbers of course) like him.
"You live in past programs, past events. You are a memory. You only feel comfortable in the non-existential, in that which does not yet exist, in the past and the future. In the present, in the actual existential moment of now, you are ill-at-ease. You feel powerless, for of course anything might happen. You fear you might not be adequate in dealing with the unexpected situation. You sleep while thinking you are awake, even though you manage to be highly efficient at maintaining your life even while being asleep to your true surroundings. You dream twenty-four hours a day regardless of what the real world is relaying to your senses. Your thoughts are in perpetual motion but any openness to receive new experiences has been replaced by the closed mechanism of the mind which edits and re-edits the same past programs. Your activities are pre-programmed by society, the nation, the parent and the priest. Rituals of politeness mask whoever might have once been inside. Spontaneity is lost. There is a constant rehearsal in a mind which is perpetually in a state of preparation of what to do, of what to say and to whom it is to be said. You can never be in the present because your thoughts have rushed on to the next place and the next time. You live for other's opinions, acting out your assigned roles efficiently and properly."
- Yatri [paraphrased from Humanoid, Chapter 2, Paradise Lost] Unknown Man
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I still need to finish this studying. I feel a lot calmer and better now.
