you met me at a very strange time in my life

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[1]

spending quarantine feeding my fomo by constantly checking on instagram to see how much and which trends i’m missing out. but then i remember i never really was trendy. what emerged was not fear of missing out but another anxiety of not being capable to grow, to move on with life. could it be that the feeling that my surrounding evolves at a much slower pace compared with the change of role i felt entrusted to along with the birth of the boy was just a sign of unpreparedness? five years after. oh. shoot.

[2]

what weighed me more while being confined to this shoebox i call home is the things i owned (collected) but even that did not stop me from wanting, from continue hoarding of what i thought to be too many. there were nights i spent thinking of purging and decluttering stuff – at some point considering extreme minimalism – as the desire to have a clean tidy neat, maybe nearly empty, space surfaced and surged. but i once was told that humans are just basically advanced lizards. our brains will never be satisfied and naturally cause us to want more and more and more, therefore there is no guarantee that i will not immediately cram up the empty space with more inessentials before plunged into the vicious cycle starting with “the unbearable heaviness of clutter” as nyt once called it.

[3]

i’m ok. actually. trust all of you are too. let’s exchange hellos sometimes. xo.

into the caverns of tomorrow

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it looks like we have arrived at that particular time to review the passing of a year again. i have as usual dutifully surrendered to the gloomy december mood when i realized that i haven’t done anything for any of my resolutions this year. i haven’t enrolled in any class, haven’t begun cycling again, haven’t become a more patient or matured person. this year in fact set another low.

the passing of an office colleague in september reminds me that death comes in waves. my mom, the colleague, then the sudden demise of a sister of a best friend, a cousin. of cancer, cancer, chronic gastritis, airplane crash, respectively – causes of death that when i was little i thought only occurred to people i didn’t know. i feel that each time another wave of death comes it inches closer to my feet.

no.

that didn’t make me want to commit to a full life or religious transformation to achieve that ‘peace of mind’. instead my old friend the darkness crept in and this time i have a constant thought of death (oh, hello you, post-menstrual blues). having to cross an awkwardly angled railway crossing twice every working day obviously does not help. on my ride with a total stranger going home, i keep wonder what if and what if. totally unhealthy.

the grief. i was never that close with my mother but last month when i played tourist and visited my hometown i found that i have lost the whole city when i lost her. my father is moving to another city – a totally foreign one to me – and my brother likely will also move out of our home to his own home in the near future. soon there will be no family home to come home to during ied or any other holiday. maybe this is how it feels to be disconnected, to be uprooted, the (lower) middle-class ngehe way. yes-i’m-that-sentimental. let’s just hope for a brighter year ahead. and less stress from work and life in general.



raison d’être

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the flame that had lightened the last leg of my teen years fluttered a little when i wrapped up a task recently. while it’s rest-assuring to know that it is still there i was bewildered by how deep i now have to look inside to find it. it wasn’t due to growing up i’m pretty sure – am i slowly dissolving?



and we’ll rise over love and over hate

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“to those who can hear me, i say, do not despair. the misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.

“the hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

“don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men! machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! you are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men!

“you, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

“let us use that power. let us all unite!”

-the great dictator

















… to breath only air where life should be

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i was reminded again that her wardrobe had more colors than mine as i sorted and packed nearly all of her clothes, most of them had not seen the sun for more than two year, into cardboard boxes. i felt nothing but thought that death is overwhelming and that i should continue to keep a small wardrobe and ensure that il mari knew exactly how i organize the house – oh, such a doomsday prepper. death, also came with a strong bitter aftertaste. i had always thought that she would live a long life, maybe longer than my own but, no, it was considerably brief. things went down hill pretty fast. you could tell that reaching the end she was tired, she was exhausted. then, regrets crept in, rubbing salt in the wound. you should have… you should have not… you should have… you should have not… obviously all too late, she’s no longer here although i so very much wanted to believe that she, in any way, is.