perkaraperkara

In pictures. 

A hypothetical question, yet a foolish one. As we sat against the wall, trying to string words into sentences while drinking tea, he asked me, whether I would consider it. I laughed at the hilarity of this question. Unmöglich. Memories, especially nice ones, should just be kept into a jar, and to wish for something more — is stupid. What’s nice is almost always bad for you.

 

I haven’t told him about my dreams yet, that I tend to follow them like a prophecy to be fulfilled.

1. Tak ada banyak masa untuk menulis sebelum pergi ke kelas dalam 20 minit, jadi dalam bentuk begini sahaja. Mungkin patut kurangkan masa menonton 13 Reasons Why.
2. Dah 3 bulan menggunakan akaun Netflix daripada rakan sekelas. Saya patut rasa malu dengan diri sendiri.
3. Bonn bandar yang terlalu bersih dan teratur dengan bangunan serba baru, manakala Brussel pleasant dan menggembirakan. Terlalu French.
4. D, atau Dayang Sifar, penulis Filsuf untuk Noob telah menemankan saya sepanjang 3 hari di sana. Miri hospitality is nice. Dia sedang cuba menyiapkan tesis Ibn Rushdnya, dan saya tak faham atau mahu faham medieval philosophy.
5. Berjalan-jalan bersama rakan yang menerangkan sejarah bandar Brussel dan tokoh – tokoh univesiti dan Frenchification of Brussels lebih mengujakan daripada masuk ke museum tanpa tahu apa-apa. The heart of Europe.
6. Sebagai result, saya menemukan diri saya di rumput, di taman, di tengah-tengah Grand Palace, di tepi tasik sambil makan ayam goreng, aiskrim, kentang goreng, nasi goreng Indonesia ekspres (yang tukang masaknya orang Vietnam), dan waffle dan hot chocolate, berbual tentang hal-hal kebiasaan, dan Maryam Lee.
7. Masuk ke banyak kedai buku komik, semuanya berbahasa Perancis. Rupanya One Piece, Gundam dan Naruto masih popular. Terjumpa Naoki Urasawa’s monster, dan kami tertanya-tanya samada pelukisnya banyak menghabiskan masa di Germany dan Brussel.
8. D menulis untuk Fixi dan lain-lain untuk survive, katanya. Saya cakap, semua orang menulis untuk survive.
9. Saya sedar, keberadaan F di sini mengganggu saya untuk belajar. Dia kadang-kadang boleh berbual terlalu banyak tentang micro-world dapur restoran Pakistannya lebih daripada saya boleh berbual tentang percutian saya. Dia pulang 2 jam lebih awal semalam dan as a result, saya terkejut dan mematikan segala impian untuk jadi produktif malam semalam.
10. Sebenarnya, observational pieces lebih menarik daripada esei atau novel. Recommended readings?

 What seems to be like a fine start to the week, with classes proceeding smoothly was ruined by a night of boredom, and a smoking session at E’s place under the pretext  “I’m celebrating”, sans the tobacco.

I’m not good at this –  pretending to be sleep when F comes home, mustering enough energy to have a conversation, putting up a normal face the next morning without giggling at silly things then feeling my absolute worst when trying to trace back whatever the fuck happened.

Some days, I hate myself, some days, I don’t. But on particularly bad days, like this one, when one’s wit is used up (you ever get that feeling that no matter how much your brain tries to process an information, it just cannot work — that there are so many things clogged up in there?), I just feel like dying. This and an over-reliance some of the friends have put on myself (or it might be just assumed), I just feel like shirking away and hide and possibly die and shut off my brain for a few days. F doesn’t help, he just adds to things M needs to process on a day-to-day basis.

But off to Bonn in the morning.

 

He told me, jokingly, that maybe his going to Frankfurt in May is rezeki kahwin kot, Mai. It’s strange that I do not get called Mai these days at least year.  There are different pronunciations for different people; Maisara, Meesarah, Sarah, Myzara, Maisra. But I am used to this, anyhow. F calls me Mai in the public sphere, but Sarah in the private sphere.

He has a job now, which covers the span of the entire evening, involving washing dishes or learning to cook Pakistani food, I do not really know. Navigating life is not easy here, one has to make do with what one has. I am left then, with the entire night alone, which is even alone than being alone. Absence, when expected, is harder than a total period of living alone.

Some days I go to Nata’s place to either bother her with her latest baking attempt (yesterday was some cheese pastry) and a cup of coffee, then I would text E just to see what he is up to (“the sex market in Europe is fucking expensive”), or just walk along the streets grocery shopping bumping into familiar figures you always see on the bus or on the sidewalk.

It’s funny how the classmates falls into their own little tribes, the Indians/Pakistani/Nepal alliance, the Latin Americans with their partying kind, and the rest on the sidelines, neither here nor there. At least culturally. But I have always been sensitive with these little pakatans – I am glad I do not have obligations to participate, but at the same time, I am a little bit sad that I am not cut out for them.

F says to me that I just don’t care too much about people, which is true to some extent, but I would like to think not everyone needs too much love and attention all the time, right? But all the same, I love the few friends that I have, and enjoy our long conversation, whenever they happen, if they happen.

Spring has come, and I have a point where everything plateaus, even expectations of something useful to come. It has been a week after all, and all blends into the same thing. F has been here for a month, and right now he is away at some Punjab restaurant with hopes for a job, whatever pays. This and a potential job in Hamburg, which both of us sort of fantasise about.

People become old news very quickly, and I have somewhat forgotten and normalise to my new surroundings. I just need to be out and breathe the fresh air a bit more, now that spring has come and the days are getting longer and daylight saving time is on. The flowers have fully bloomed, and I have an essay to submit in 12 hours and a German exam to sit this Friday. F and I made plans for Hamburg on Saturday, and maybe a picnic of sorts on Sunday morning. I need to constantly make myself happy.

F told me something yesterday, that it is nice to see sometimes a side of me that I would never show to another, childish (or infantile, I would call it). I tell him I am always jealous that he is always happier when he is with friends. But I choose what I say and how I present to them. Okay, I say. He smokes a cigarette a day these days, when he discovered an ashtray that I have mistaken for a bowl. We imagine ourselves as Frank and Claire, and stare outside the window, sometimes at the sky, sometimes at a neighbour whose window we just noticed, sometimes into the dead branches.

When Anas called me last week, which I saw coming at some point, I couldn’t help but to recall what I did to F before. But of course, we had a happy ending, of course. She left me at the peak of my love to her. I wanted to make myself ready, prepared, you know, before I meet the family. Why couldn’t she hold out a bit longer, at least? We were this close. She had been cold to me for a while. I tried to change, and I did, but it was too late, apparently. There were never any problems. What she saw as misunderstanding, I see as two people stating their opinions. I told him I didn’t know what’s going through her mind, but to leave her figure her own self, and to pick himself up. F glares to me while I say all this, sometimes taking turns typing. Tell him I’m here if he needs someone to talk to. 

I’ve thought myself stronger, but falter, again and again. I guess we try to compensate and substitute lost things, lost habits and rituals for even lost people to nullify its absence, but rather than making ourselves feel better, it feels even more horrible inside. I take comfort in small pleasures such as the sun rising and the rays of sunshine and blue sky splashing into the room, holding another’s hands and enjoying silent companionship that isn’t weighed in reality. But what I seem to want is just to escape myself and be calm and content and grateful and move on ahead.

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

F is here, now, and I greet him like I’ve always used to. He looks silly in this coat of his, I told him he looks like a girl, he says I don’t care, even if you say I look like a girl. I like it, I’ll still wear it. I said fine.

I’ve been wondering how this moment should play out, the walk home together, dragging these overweight bags carrying all the food that I told him to bring over. He is nothing but a mule, he would say, but of course I would say otherwise. He misses me too much, and proceeds to sleep with me the moment we arrive home.

Memory works strangely. There are first moments and then there are moments which strives to overlap and overwrite the previous memories. From being alone to being together, I try to make sense of this other person in this bed of mine. Of course, he is sleeping soundly now upstairs, clothed in both blankets, and I scoff at how he has things so easy with me. And of course, he feels likewise for me.

At this moment, I am trying to slip back into this married life mode: I wear my ring, I wake up earlier and take the first shower, I go downstairs and have my first cup of coffee before he proceeds to wake up, I make some food and he will cook the eggs – because he is simply better, we have these little fights over choices of words I have for him (You have too many inhibitions, you are too weak for me, I need you to abuse me, you think too much). I insult him and his feelings too much, but to tend to these wounds I have to.

F says I have changed too much, letting myself too loosely for these two months. I curse at everything. I become more egoistical. I’m too hard headed. I’m too feisty. My English is too German. I try to drown questions with just laughing. But I simply think I am just readapting.

We were carrying furniture from one of the classmates to another house today. The men were all there, including E. I introduce F to everyone, and laugh afterwards because it was awkward. E says I shouldn’t do that, it’s not nice. I just cringed when F greets E and said, I’ve heard so much about you.

Everyone loved F, of course. I too, but differently. I realize I need him, but I must… learn how to love him better.