- How are you doing?
- Well, let’s see…
I currently have music playing on YouTube Music, open on the Zen browser. It is the typical local-bus mix of songs. ‘Chand se parda’ playing right now. YT Music is generally really good at grabbing the mood of the song you choose to play and shuffling similar songs from then on.
I switch between three browsers on my work laptop. Chrome for the vouchers that I verify; Zen browser for mails, reading, and occasional music; and Brave for YouTube since it has an in-built ad-blocker. While I do have YT Premium too, I don’t want my algorithm to be messed up with study videos and others. Besides, logging in with my primary account on so many browsers is not recommended either.
It is almost 12pm, which marks the end of morning session. The official lunch time here begins from 12:45 to 1:45. However, I personally feel unobligated to work from 12 to 2, diverting my attention to either studies or random browsing of the internet. Lunch itself is done in one of two forms: either a light meal at the café here around 11:30am, if breakfast had been skipped; or a proper one around 1:30pm from the nearby United restaurant.
There is a dull delight, or a relief tinged in joy, when the clock hits four. While it is logical to assume that a hectic day would meet its closing time with a deserved joy, an unproductive day longs equally, if not more, to end too. The lethargy I feel from the banality of empty hours is torture of another kind. To act and engage is man’s only positive response toward such dullness; I try my best.
The ride home is often infuriating. At over 100kg, my in-charge whom I drop along the way, is not an easy passenger to carry for my ten year old bike. The traffic makes it worse: plenty, unruly, and in rush. Since I wear one of my airpods inside my helmet, I am forced to play music on shuffle if I want to bring a little distractive amusement while maneuvering my bike in between lanes. And songs on shuffle is often disappointing, and particularly enraging when you can’t skip it.
Recently, however, I resumed listening to podcasts again. The first thing I did was to unfollow all the previous channels which I listened to. They had made listening to podcast unappealing. I landed on ‘Heavyweights’ as a new recommendation, and so far I like it. Each episode is about the host talking to someone on the speaker phone and try to amend an event from their past. It is part thriller and part emotional drama. He talks agreeably well.
Once home, I try to lie down. If I have food ready, I put it out of the freezer to eat later at dinner. And then I either take a nap, or preferably stay awake watching a movie till around 7pm, whereupon I eat my dinner and leave for my evening outdoor walk. If I don’t have a meal ready, I prep the ingredients upon reaching home, and when the gas is let through at 6:30pm, I start cooking.
My evening walks, only a couple of weeks new, are infused with Marci Shore’s course Intellectual History in Europe since Nietzsche from Yale Courses on YouTube. I listened to Class 11 yesterday, about Husserl and his Phenomenology. After his son dies in WW1 fighting for Germany, he is asked about how he’s feeling. Husserl replies ‘the war is bracketed’ and continues to work on his philosophy.
This course, all in all, is a great find, in that it is satisfying my itch for a foundational knowledge about thinkers and ideas put neatly in a dynamic timeline of history. Shore herself is a great lecturer: engaging, humorous, and light hearted. She does tend to repeat herself, though, a little more than necessary. It keeps me engaged, involved, this one class per day, while I swimmingly, without much struggle, complete my goal of 10k steps a day. Or something close-by at least. I’ve gotten fat. I need to shave off some weight.
What follows is a cup of tea with a few smokes. The environment has become increasingly unpleasant, with the construction work on university road getting worse by the day. But it has to get worse before it gets better, they say. Yet the quiet I miss sitting at the roadside, sipping tea, is compensated when I go on the roof. No body there, only remote hints of the city noise, and me on the broken chair I borrowed from Karam. It feels nice up there, alright… ‘the situation is excellent’ as Mao would say.
That is later in the night, my time on the roof. After coming home from the workout, I take a shower and lie against the wall with a pillow behind my back, and struggle to read Proust’s third volume The Guermantes Way. Ever since I finished my last bunch of books, reading hasn’t been pleasant. The books I am reading, as well as the way I’m reading them (reading time being sacrificed by exercise) leaves a distasteful mark on me regarding this activity. Tevye and his daughters, Notes from underground (rereading), and Federalism: a very short introduction are the other books I’m currently moving in between.
Yet I am also waiting in that time. I am waiting for her call. The phone rings, my heart sings. I go to the roof, set my chair, light a smoke, and pick the call. We affectionately let know each other about our days, and make amusing conversations from events that might’ve occurred. We recollect the merry past, and tie our hopes together for a future. As it is time to say goodbye, we make sure that each of us is leaving assured of the animated and vital feelings we hold for one another in our tender hearts – hearts in love are always tender. Tomorrow is promised; we are here. I remember Ishiguro’s title for his novel Never Let Me Go.
Satisfying is the return to bed. Those last minutes before sleep, as I play something on my phone to watch, and as my eyes begin warming by the gently marching sleep, is sweetly enough. I lie content and appeased.
My dreams are vivid lately. A juxtaposition of distinct events that happened in the past, appear in novel and surreal forms. The unconscious expresses itself with full force as I lay half-dying there. I wake up dazzled. I am left with only the symbolic hints and distant impressions of something forceful having occurred outside my conscious jurisdiction. The dazzlement, however, fades as I say ‘labaik’ to the day with haste. What Kundera said: people don’t respect the mornings.
For breakfast, I alternate between boiled or fried eggs, with fruits on the side. Mangoes are in its last days, and sweeter therefore. Apples, pears, and bananas are in full season and rightly delicious. I play news headlines while having breakfast, so to have something to contribute in our chatty discussions in office. With minimal efforts, I wear what is available and leave with my slippers on (we enter our office bare feet, so wearing shoes is unnecessary). Another day begins, and by its end, something would’ve happened. What Lewis said: it is funny how nothing changes day to day, yet upon looking back everything is different.
Freud coined the term ‘narcissism of minor differences’ for our increasing particularity with minute distinctions the more we have in common. These minor differences, then, represent and distinguish our egos, our individuality. Otherwise, it dawns everywhere, everywhere dusk falls too. Everybody lives, breathes, eats, shits, thinks, and sleeps. Yet the devil lies in the details, they say; and so does the evidence for our moods. The most intimate gesture (and in this case an answer to ‘how are you?’) one can have is to let an-other inside one’s head, one’s days, and allow them to live there for a moment or two.
Bas mujhy yun hi ek khiyal aya
Tum sochti ho, tou sochti ho kiya
-Jaun Elia