The Philosopher and the Cook (#1)

How can you believe any of it? My, weren’t we all full of hopes and dreams, and thoughts that finally, we’re young enough to afford to be different, irreverent. Idealistic. We’ve seen the names change, one by one, two, three… and in the time that we’ve had to be idealistic, everything’s already disappeared.

Really though, there’s not really any point of chasing up with this. Sometimes, it feels like a high stack of cards with irrelevant names and numbers. Half the things pinned on our walls don’t really exist anymore. Don’t get us wrong though – you’re more than welcome to join this ineffable cycle of the same exact things. Nothing’s changed at all – just a different stretch of road, a different coat of paint, and a different way to pass a few more transient months.

But don’t you feel a little silly now? Fathoming synonyms – there are really only so many ways for you to say “simple”. Uncluttered. Stripped-down. Homestyle. Intrinsic. Fuss-free. Hell, it’s all semantics. But then again, if you thought you could get away with that, why is it such a surprise that they thought so too?

Borrow this verb from there; take this seasoning from here. Be inspired by a certain turn of phrase; pay tribute to a particular family of flavours. Parody a literary work; it’s a playful take on a classic item.

Can’t you see the light now?

The Plan

What they say – take that for granted. No one means a word they pipe out from their mouths or ink out from their pens. They don’t believe it either. At the end of the long lost day, it’s still just that same phrase they thought they’d pull off a certain novel they’d read; a particular phrase they’d learnt and used again and again.

They can go on forever here. Until it’s old and tired but they won’t let that happen. Until they mean the word they say. Or keep the word they say. Either way, they lose. So better not. Better not if they want to keep going.

But they’ll pass. It’s always elevating, escalating, up up and away. To nowhere. What else do you know that we don’t already know that you don’t already know we know? Don’t forget to breathe. Don’t forget to fold up the magazine. Don’t forget to blow on the coffee, stretch your back, say something salient – just like everyone else does.

Good Morning

These are things too. Down that same road up the black street, the view from the corner of the eye stretched along all the way still to go. Paused for breath. Just waiting for the same spark again. To say that it’s alright, that it’ll come to pass, that it will.

Months later, the road creeps still in the recesses of nowhere. Like a battered twig that’s been sitting out, blackening in the rain. The determination it took to get rid of those scraps of paper we folded up into tiny squares withered along with it. The words became general. Universal. And all we had left was the desire to keep walking down that black street.

Narcissism, maybe. Or the inability to reconcile the thoughts and the actions, the abstractions and the actual.

How much energy does it take to fill a sunken ship?

A brown board pinned with rectangle-fuls of all the past places. Where we balanced glass bottles in one arm and paper bags in the other; where we pushed our fingers to leave red imprints on the base of them. All these. One day the mist in the air will yellow them at the edges and rot them away. What will you do then?

Exactly

Remember the walk? The ground of granite passing by in a stream of unconsciousness. Quiet unconsciousness. And all you could do was to keep your head up and breathe in the morning chill. Against your own thoughts, against your own mind. Then, you felt a lot better.

And remember the sights? When all the ink drops of the night before melded into sheets of white paper to mix and match over cups of coffee in between puffs of air and tall glass tumblers. And all you did was kept on going, making more ink drops, sometimes interspersed with lines and sometimes dotted with scrawls. Then, you felt your best.

But remember the thoughts? That the beginning was here and that time was something that would show up at the door again. When the cycle ignited in its million steps and the Mondays, Tuesdays, Weekdays, done days turned into repeat… repeat. Repeat. Remember? You scrambled. Tried to dangle. But could you get back into it again? The piles of papers sitting by the windowsill and the bottles standing by the left. Try to tell yourself that. The piles of papers sitting unflipped by the windowsill and the bottles standing stagnant by the left. Try to ignore that. And now, you feel the same.

Any Point

Said something about the canisters and walks and then the raw potatoes by the fireside – still not feeling the heat; where’s the heat? It used to burn on the side of the ears into the morning and then you’d have an excuse to make up some excuse. So you can say once the sky goes a little bit darker – God knows.

Still the same one though. In all the words that have passed through the pulses and the veins and the sayings of the what-nots and all those other things. In the back of the head, it’s the been-there-done-that but still want to go there and do that. All over again. Even down to the last syllable. Gray, clear night. Let it rain, shall we? Just so you can see to the other side. Haven’t seen that in a while, save the day you decided to give it a go and stare onto that scrap above you. Bad circulation – breathing in what you breathe out; regressing.

The thing with it though, was that the ground was all dewed up and – forgive it if it’s the same old – the image was and is. Just crossing the road. Can’t stop the black drops and in only a few more. This street cross that street. It’s there. Not a print. Actual.

To Everything...

To be completely honest, it really didn’t seem like that long ago. Was it? Still by the pond in a white helmet; been there so many times but this one always stands out in the recesses of the mind. Even when flipping through the cabinet of unlabeled albums – dusty, musty – that image still does.

But now. It’s a voice. The wires that run across half a day, filled with what the plans will be for today and tomorrow. It’s a voice. That will meet new people, see new things; grow. Not by the pond anymore and not in a blue hoodie or a backwards cap, scuttling about. Or any of those things.

Before I even knew it, you’re the voice now. It's time to sing the most beautiful verse.

Young...

Doing what we’re doing to do what we will do.

Walked for an hour’s worth of passing cars and maybe-empty houses, pit-stops for white smoke and maybe a cup or two just to rest the ankles. Another one of those. Rest the head to the sound of a dead man who’s not quite dead yet. Or wait until it all creeps up to the back of the eyes and then it’ll disappear for no good reason again. Never good reason.

Perhaps they should bury the hatchet. In a box under old wall-scrawlings-turned-essay-notes, irrelevant glossies and a whole file of 5.30 articles. No dice. Prefer the tumbling kind. Didn’t make sense but at least it did; at least red was still blue.

Then it all gets extraneous. They’ll always have that feeling. Maybe that book was right after all. It just never talked about the gray though; never taught about the gray. So what will they do about the gray?

(At least 6)