It may take a while before you notice it - that you don't wake up as quickly as you used to, and when you do, your body aches; that you lie back in bed too many mornings staring out the window, and what you think about always makes you sigh. You see, life is a path that should twist and turn, and when it runs straight for years and years it begins to feel like someone is slowly turning the lights down inside you. Yes. Do you still remember what you wanted to be in primary school?
I wanted to climb mountains. But the last thing I remember climbing was a stool, to reach up to change a bulb, or was it to pull a file down from the top shelf? I tell you, if you do these things too many times – the mechanical motions of a life on auto-repeat – you could wake up one day and stop seeing the green in grass, or the many shades of yellow in the sunset. That used to be me, you know; star-gazer, legs dangling down the sides of my neighbor's uncompleted fence, looking up. All I ever wanted was freedom.
But the world is troubled and refuses to be healed. So, what do you do? You find a place in it and hold on tight, hoping you can make it across the middle passage safely. Build a house, while at it. Raise children. Work long enough to earn a pension. Is that life?
Sometimes, my brother, it must be. Not everyone has the luxury of alternatives. So, even if you get up tomorrow knowing you would rather be elsewhere, where do you go? This is where you are – in a job you don't like, in a house that's too small, with a man or woman you used to be madly in love with, and children who are currently too old to be 'cute' and too young to be responsible. Eh? What shall we do then?
If I was like my brother Che, or my sister-in-law, Shioke, I would wake up a little before dawn, around that time when it is still pitch-black, but not the same kind of darkness as midnight. The darkness of pre-dawn has a lightness to it, you see. I would sit in a corner with a guitar and play an old song, from the early days when I had faith in abundance, so much so I created art to store the excess. Now, I'm running a bit low. I'll listen to the songs of the younger me. For today is the day that truth is needed.
But I am no musician. True. These things don't come to me swaddled in melody, in melancholic riffs or titillating chord progressions. They come as whispered words, condensing out of clouds of brooding despair, falling on my upturned face like the cold rain of a mid-July morning. So, let me do it my way.
Yes. Starting is like being shot out of a cannon, full of adrenaline and the excitement of the chase. Everyone can start. And to end – ah! – to see the finish line sparkling in the distance, that alone is enough to mend broken legs, to suck energetic shouts out of tired lungs. It is the middle that has no joy, no light except the one you fumble for in the darkness to light yourself.
Yes. On some days, it is can be as simple as that, forcing yourself awake, forcing yourself to get out of bed and go in search of inspiration to do the same things – the exact same things – you did yesterday. Because, well, how can I say this? The children will need holding every day, and love will need tending, and the search for a better tomorrow will continue from where you left it last night, boring or not, routine, mundane and unremarkable or not.
So, my sister, sing Tracy Chapman if you have to, dredge the Internet for a story that will make you laugh if you have to, scream into your pillow, do the moon-walk in your bathroom, pray, or don't pray, read, or don't read, hunch over on a sofa and paint your toenails lemon green. Honestly? I don't really care. As long as you're ready when the sun comes up.
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