Analogikal

I just finished cleaning the cast iron skillet with salt and hot water. I had made some grilled salmon with some sautéed broccolis and mushrooms and served with some sourdough bread and a cup of jasmine tea. That’s not true. I just heated the rotis and cauliflower gravy I had made a couple of days ago and washed it down with some beer. The former version sounds like something a character in a Murakami novel would do. Wearing comfortable satin pajamas and illuminating my face in the pale yellow light from the refrigerator. Instead, I lie here on my couch, watching the sea lions in the Apple TV screensaver swim around on my TV screen. Poor beings have to swim so much in such a confined space, because I am too lazy to make up my mind on whether to watch something or continue fiddling with my phone. I feel sorry for them and I switch the TV off. Finally they can rest. I have always wanted to be like one of those characters in novels; Winston, Tengo, Kino and the others. Stoic, organised, passionate yet lonely, I will call myself pretentious.

I should sleep. But it has been a long day. Playing football with some twenty-something year olds yesterday definitely makes me feel old, today. I’d like to say that my bones are aching. As with most things, I know what is happening, and I know it is just delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). All these years of learning to call things by its name has brought me here. Everything has a name, a label and an explanation. I will call myself lonely right now. Recently, a friend told me how she likes having that one person with whom she can share the most mundane things, the most routine things, life itself. I have friends whom I can call at any time and talk about anything. They are not that one person though. I don’t want to bore them with my mundane, routine, life. I will always hesitate in calling someone even if they were that one person. I don’t want to call myself dependent.

There is a Post Malone song playing in the background. Had this been a Murakami novel, Wagner, Bach or Schubert would have been chosen. They wouldn’t have been wearing a faded black t-shirt and loose pajamas and crouching over a keyboard trying to type something coherent. They wouldn’t have been struggling with making sense of the action of writing or articulation. May be they would have. I wouldn’t know. I have made the error of deciding what people had done or would do; not anymore. With every passing year, I refuse to associate with the person I was exactly a year ago. This is the first point in my life that I can look back and say that the guy I was a year ago was pretty rad. I picked up the word rad right now from the profile description of a woman I saw on a dating app. I will call myself desperate. I hope the guy I become, twelve months from now, feels the same way about me. I will call myself insecure.

I know this is just a passing phase, as always. I will call myself fickle minded. By tomorrow I will feel adequate about the place I am at. Not the physical existence; but me, the cognitive concept I have conjured up and relate with as an ‘identity’. Tomorrow I will wake up with the sense of oneness I feel most of the time and I will not feel this plunging need to be with someone; to cure loneliness. I have been told I cannot fight loneliness alone. I will call myself hopeful. I don’t even know what being with someone means any more. I have been with women whom I thought I knew, only to realise, I was in love with what I saw in them and they just wanted me to see them for who they are; who they really are. Especially the parts they hid away because who wants to show their broken pieces. We showed each other the carefully curated experience, manicured and tuned to viewer expectations. I didn’t want to call myself broken. When the show was over, I was left holding the ticket stubs of what I once considered love. I will call myself wise. Hence, I will call myself broken.

I am not stoic or cynical. I will call myself a hypocrite. I am resigned to the way the world is designed. People with money will get richer, People who are attractive will get what they want, and then some, Things will never be fair and the world will never make sense. I will call myself bitter. I always thought I will meet someone in some way and we will see each other for who we are. All the quirks would just fit in and the puzzle would be complete. I now know that there is an AI based machine learning algorithm that powers this puzzle piece. I will never stop changing shape, hence I might never find the piece to complete me. I will call myself hollow. I will call myself fluid. I will call myself confused. I can settle for that. I have never been comfortable with surety. People who have their shit together annoy me and cause envy. I will call myself bitter. I will call myself unimaginative.

This is not what I sat down to write. I will call myself indecisive. Today was a long day. As long as the day was, the night has been longer; and we are barely a few minutes into the night. I will call myself exhausted. I am tired of conversations; on dating apps, on social media, on the phone and most importantly, in my head. I would like some silence. I remember that my tinnitus would drive me off the cliff. I will call myself torn. I like where I live. On days when the weather is nice and the leaves of the fan don’t move, life is made up of perfectly still shots. Ones you can easily click with a 6 second exposure without the fear of blurry images. Nights are always tricky. Nothing is still. Mostly things you won’t see. I will call myself shaken, not stirred. Well, may be I am a little stirred.

I wanted to write something funny. I will call myself incompetent. The music is feeble now. Lights and sounds have been toned down for optimal sleeping conditions. If only there was a convenient user manual for loneliness. My loneliness is the result of the authors I have read and the people who surround me with love and kindness. My loneliness does not exist in isolation. Without the belongingness felt by others, on which it is superimposed, my loneliness is null and void.

My loneliness is the result of night after night of wishing there was someone lying next to me in bed. That might not be great though; I would wake up next to them the morning after and not feel the need to see them again. Not in a one night stand kind of way, but in an I love my time on my own more than I can probably love and share with someone else kind of way. I will call myself selfish, till the next night. I will call myself needy then. My loneliness is the result of silent nights like these where I wish I had the sound of someone else’s breath around me. My loneliness is the result of wanting to share the meal I made with someone whose eyes would glint as they bite into burnt garlic.

There is something about these nights. These nights when the silence is too much to ignore and the words are not enough. The labels are insufficient and the explanations lacking. I will call myself inadequate. Tomorrow morning will be different. There would be a different song playing and more natural light. As for me, I hope I wake up with less aching bones and shallower sighs. I will call myself alive. I will call myself grateful.