Midnight musings
1. Sometimes, right after I type a message, I hit the home button to exit from the app, as if it would mean that the conversation would magically end. Most times it didn’t. I liked sharing my thoughts. I didn’t like what people have to say about them.
2. Dear people who sing in public, muttering the lyrics under your breath with a bright smile on your face as you stroll down the street, earphones swinging about and colliding with your clothes. You who hum quietly on the bus, your head leaning against the window, watching the world go by in a blur. You who power walk through life to an oldie unabashedly, ignoring those commenting with a laugh that it isn’t the 60s anymore. You who shout out the words to Britney with as much enthusiasm as a solo karaoke star in a quiet bar, you who look like you just emerged out of an MV and forgot the song ended. I envy you. Be grateful that no one silenced you with a stern look when you were a kid, telling you that you attracted too much attention. Or that no one threatened to kick you off the cool table if you didn’t stop. Or telling you off for being too loud, too happy, too in their face. Or maybe they did, and you went on singing anyway. If so, I still envy you.
3. Addictions are scary, because every day is a battle and you lost each one of them. Every day you start off feeling accomplished, thinking you’ve begun taking control of your life again, because you’ve put it off for another second, another minute, another hour. But never another day. Because at the 23rd hour when your fingers reach for yet another stick in the box you promised you won’t buy, you’ve lost again. Go to sleep. Wake up. Repeat.
4. I’m bad at love. I either fall too hard or not at all.
5. I always thought, that if I could have one power I would want to be able to teleport, because then I could wake up in my pajamas and show up to work the next second. I would miss plane rides, though. If all great epiphanies were born out of showers, I’d like to think that at least half of the best ideas for stories came out of plane rides, when writers in the modern day are stuck in a cabin for 12 hours, cut off from the outside world, with only their own thoughts to keep them company.
6. They say that when you meditate that your mind would go blank and you would feel grounded and at peace with yourself. I’ve never successfully sat still for more than 5 minutes, never really meditated, so I won’t know. I do get those moments though. When I’m at live music shows, when it’s just me and the music, I go into a trance-like state; I don’t hear the music anymore and I don’t see the people around me. The thoughts that usually collide like bumper cars in my head are reduced to a diminuendo, so light I’m barely aware they’re there. I can feel the gears clicking, my mind assembling the Lego pieces and putting together a great work of something, then stashing it away in some quiet corner, ready to whip it out when my life needs it. It’s one of the only times when I think — maybe there is a God after all.
7. Those who can’t write poetry, write spoken word. Those who can’t write spoken word, write lyrics. Those who can’t write any of these cough up paragraphs of broken-up sentences and half-rhymes, and then pray that someone would come along and categorise it for them. Those who can’t write at all write blog posts about people writing.
8. Today someone asked me if I was an expat, or a local, or an international school kid, or a third-culture kid, or a first-gen second-gen whatever, or an ABC or BBC. I said I wasn’t any of those things. “Then what are you, exactly?” he asked. I said I didn’t know. He wasn’t satisfied with my answer. Neither was I.
9. I have this odd belief, and it’s that the different humidity in the air triggers different memories. One autumn day last year, I was sure that the air felt exactly the same as it had four years ago, back when I first moved out and was carrying groceries home to my new apartment on Water Street, the taste of freedom still fresh and sweet on my tongue. Another time, last summer, I was hauling my laundry down to the shop across; I could swear, as the scent of fabric softener hit my nostrils, that I was back in Turkey, hanging up my clothes in the backyard, the sun kissing my skin.
10. Just like the world is divided into fat people and skinny people, the world is also divided into people with good skin and people with bad skin. Just like the way fat people has internalised the skill to size someone up with a glance, bad skin people also automatically scan your face for the number of zits you have, comparing the state of your acne to their own, estimating the thickness of the foundation you’ve caked onto your face. Just like the way fat people dread being in a bikini when summer rolls around, dread the first time they take off their clothes in front of their partners, bad skin people are terrified of evenings, terrified of staying the night at yours, when they strip their faces bare and lay it out for you to see. There are many stories in this world featuring fat people, but few that centres on people with bad skin. It’s still too unglamourous a topic to write about.
11. Do you still remember me? I forgot to remember to forget you.