There is a different kind of sadness gripping my heart these past few days. I probably got this from listening to too much lo-fi hiphop beats, or to the latest videos of Levni Yilmaz (I’ve always been sad watching his videos, which I’ve been doing since 2009, yet feel some sort of pleasure by doing so). I consoled my wife and she offered the best she can, but the feeling won’t budge inside me. It remained there like some caterpillar using my body as its cocoon.
There are times when I find myself solitary strolling silent streets at night, looking up at windows wondering what went wrong. There is something about curtains that gives me a sense of urgency and privacy. Like people are always fighting or fucking behind them, as if saying “Something’s happening and you don’t need to know. You don’t have to know.”
I look back at past decisions thinking if I made the right choices. I do this not because I regret what is currently going on in my life, but I do this because I can’t help but wonder how different things would have been had I decided differently. After secretly smoking a cigarette, it will dawn on me that there is no such thing as a wrong choice (and by extension, no such thing as a right choice). We simply choose. I chose, to this and not, not that.
There comes a point where a seemingly linear narrative of life branches out into a chaotic doodle-esque pathway, like some abstract painting of a blind man in a dark room at night.
An old man desired for the younger version of him to do better. The “better” is only better for the former and the latter, for the latter would always be young, always high and dry, a little bit drunk, inside that time frame the former can never go back to. If the latter had been better, the old man would not desire for “better”. To quote Zizek, “And so on and so on.”
City lights sparkle as headlights stream from the streets below. I see myself atop a really tall skyscraper smoking while drinking some beer. Always, there is the desire to jump, but (always) I will not do it. There is a sadness inside this heart, but if we always lived in the caress of happiness, then what are we all so happy about?
The thing about growing old is that day by day you realize you are growing old. It’s not the fact that gets me. It’s the fear.
To paraphrase Oasis: “Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide of life and its utter meaninglessness.”
But in hindsight, there really is nothing to be sad about. I’m sad about the past because I wish I didn’t drink that last bottle or smoked that last joint. But without it, I wouldn’t have desired for new experiences to live for, right?
*Title is from the song by Frankie Cosmos
