Coffee

Every night I work up the courage. To do something more than just let a small smile break free from my face. To call you, to stop you in the hall. I realize now that I’ve never really spoken to you. We’ve spoken, but always through a medium, from a distance, through a third party. Never facing one another. Direct, personal, honest. Every night I plan out what I’ll say, how I’ll say it and I fully convince myself of my ability to pull it off.

Then I go to bed and in the morning I’m once again too petrified to even look your way.

Do you want to know what I would do? What I would say? The details change every night, but the essence is the same. It would not be some epic romantic encounter. It would be quiet and unassuming. I would say that though we have never spent time together, I just want to be around you. Even though we have never spoken, I just want to talk to you. And I would say that even though we barely know eachother, I would regret if I never asked if wanted to get coffee sometime.

So do you want to get some coffee and just talk? Because every day I’m just waiting. Waiting on you; but mainly I’m waiting on myself.

It’s The Smell

It’s the first thing you notice when you step outside. Not the foreign letters and languages that flood your eyes and ears. Not the sea of skin tones against the dry landscape. It’s not the smothering heat or the frantic movements of the passersby. It’s the smell. The second you step outside, it warmly rushes into your nostrils, filling them with distant yet familiar aromas.

A strange combination of wood-smoke, burning garbage, strong spices and body-odor pervades the air. It’s sweet, delicious and nausteating all in one breath. You breathe in the whole nation. The foul and the beautiful. The insides of your nose burns slightly, but you like it. The smell is thick and it seems to clog your lungs but it’s refreshing because it’s new.

You stop to breath it in some more. It’s new. After 4 weeks, it will still feel new to you. When you go home, every campfire, every garbage truck, every crowded subway will remind you of that smell, but none of them will be complete. They will be fragments. Pieces of a whole that can only be found back there.

And so, as you stand there breathing, you make a promise to yourself to return, if only to breathe some more.

Alone in the Crowd

Sometimes I feel so removed. As if the world continued to move around me as I remained static. Still, unmoving, overlooked and ignored.  But how can I feel like this? How can I be ignored when I am the one that has removed myself? It was a willing, conscious decision that I made, so why do I feel so left-out? On a night when everyone is together, I stand alone, looking on or walking away.

Sometimes I wish I was a part of something. Even though I know that this is not where I belong, sometimes I wish that this is where I am supposed to be. Even though I know that I am most at home in my head, sometimes I feel the need to live outside of myself, to live the life that everyone else is living.

But then I would no longer be an individual. I would become just another face in the crowd, a forgotten voice in a sea of languages. Maybe that’s what it means to truly be an individual. Acknowledging my own pretension and my condescending nature, maybe being an individual means being alone, even when all you want is to be a part of the crowd.