effacement

Terrible coffee; a lousy blop of white foam in the midlde with visible coffee grounds at the bottom that leaves a bitter aftertaste. One shouldn’t dream of drinking coffee except when you pay a premium price for it. Give me limau ais and I’ll just be as happy. I do not know how those people can afford to drink at Starbucks (with a side salad or banana bread, no less) every single day together with their favorite book.  As if books should be tied forever with food and cafes to give a sense of identity.

Speaking of books, I have not had the pleasure to read as much as I wanted to due to a fault of my own. There’s a vast difference between trying to accommodate your own needs versus the needs of others, even if they are your own family. Then, I used to have the liberty to go out at nine, walk to the gardens, find a nice tree and just read while enjoying the view downhill overlooking the sea. Then, I would feel like I wanted to borrow books and then head out to the city to find some nice food at the grocery store. To arrange things according to your own needs.

Of course, there’s a certain lesson of selflessness to be learnt here. To efface your own needs (to some extent, of course) for the needs of others. Efficiency is key too, to find/allocate  time to read and to write consistently. To not be satisfied by the little that you do and feel you deserve some sort of time off after that. Most of that time is of course to browse whatever social media that exists, but of course, everyday I am getting constantly disillusioned by the ridiculousness of things. There is much to learn and most of the useful things cannot be learnt by the simple scanning of images and words on screen. It is time to efface one’s self.

But efface too, is a strong word.

In a week, I shall start working. The prospect of working is interesting but the amount of interaction between people required on a daily basis sort of bogs me down. The generic conversations, plus the range of people and their ecosystems to accommodate to. I should hope to breeze through everything, adopting the general attitude I have maintained from high school, but this no longer should apply.

“The Height of the season,” said Bonamy.

The sun had already blistered the paint on the backs of the green chairs in Hyde Park; peeled the bark off the plane trees; and turned the earth to powder and to smooth yellow pebbles. Hyde Park was circled, incessantly, by turning wheels.

“The height of the season,” said Bonamy sarcastically.

He was sarcastic because of Clara Durrant; because Jacob had come back from Greece very brown and lean, with his pockets full of Greek notes, which he pulled out when the chair man came for pence; because Jacob was silent.

“He has not said a word to show that he is glad to see me,” thought Bonamy bitterly.

The motor cars passed incessantly over the bridge of the Serpentine; the upper classes walked upright, or bent themselves gracefully over the palings; the lower classes lay with their knees cocked up, flat on their backs; the sheep grazed on pointed wooden legs; small children ran down the sloping grass, stretched their arms, and fell.

“Very urbane,” Jacob brought out.

“Urbane” on the lips of Jacob had mysteriously all the shapeliness of a character which Bonamy thought daily more sublime, devastating, terrific than ever, though he was still, and perhaps would be for ever, barbaric, obscure.

What superlatives! What adjectives! How acquit Bonamy of sentimentality of the grossest sort; of being tossed like a cork on the waves; of having no steady insight into character; of being unsupported by reason, and of drawing no comfort whatever from the works of the classics?

“The height of civilization,” said Jacob.

He was fond of using Latin words.

Magnanimity, virtue—such words when Jacob used them in talk with Bonamy meant that he took control of the situation; that Bonamy would play round him like an affectionate spaniel; and that (as likely as not) they would end by rolling on the floor.

“And Greece?” said Bonamy. “The Parthenon and all that?”

“There’s none of this European mysticism,” said Jacob.

“It’s the atmosphere. I suppose,” said Bonamy. “And you went to Constantinople?”

“Yes,” said Jacob.

Bonamy paused, moved a pebble; then darted in with the rapidity and certainty of a lizard’s tongue.

“You are in love!” he exclaimed.

Jacob blushed.

The sharpest of knives never cut so deep.

Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf.