i may be an orange peel

Real work has come at last.

I have just recovered from a month-long sickness that involves vomiting and feeling nauseated every other day. I have not drunk any coffee for the past month, on the advice of the doctor. So what I do when I get home, is that I eat some form of dinner and chat around with the family before I withdraw to my room and sleep. 

Routine. 

I have memorized traffic lights timings, stood over the same faces on the same spots in trains, tried to catch the busker’s songs by the ticket gate (though I have given only once), listened to songs on Spotify at work (making the hours bearable), pondering whether there’s a thing called collective consciousness of people at the same place (during train delays, or when the police shouts to make way for a kid on a stretcher).

The only non-routine thing about work days is the anticipation of after-work conversations. These over a drink, or a cake, but mostly nothing at all. 

I am currently reading, probably the fourth copy I have owned of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. The first one was lent to M in highschool (never to be returned again – I waited for him to come until the I had to board the bus home – he never did), the second one I had bought it with F in a book festival (this one is either given during book giveaways spree or I have not seen it), the third one I had found it in the Alumni bookshop for a dollar and given it to Q when she visited Wollongong (the coincidences in life). 

The thing about Salinger is his way with dialogue. Give him a dull setting, a still room with windows overlooking the street, a fishbowl, a sofa, and a desk with books strewn about, and two characters, and he will give you an excellent dialogue. A drama unfolding with words and minute movements, like a person holding a cigarette and scratching a chip of paint off the wall. At the end of it all one is left with a sense of disentanglement, or an obscure revelation being told, albeit rather slowly. 

(At the same time I am filled absolute glee re-reading Notes from the Underground).