Only By Chance

I'd managed to get a decent rest and wake slowly, my eyes adjusting to the later morning light and my mind free of overbearing, scattered thinking swirling around in my skull as it certainly does at times. Last night I tossed and I turned for quite some time before smoking a joint made up of scrapes of tobacco from the fireplace shelf and stems of weed snapped and broken up into a smokable product. I chewed another half a pill along with it, enough to cause a temporary numbing effect, and after finishing the remainder of wine I managed to doze into a restful slumber. I stirred a morning coffee from the jar I'd been given by the help service that offers food and toiletries and bus tickets, those sorts of things for people in need. There was no kettle in my room and no kitchen for us to use, so I made a lukewarm coffee with hot water from the bathroom tap. Returning to my room from the wet street outside where I'd smoked two cigarettes I fell into a state of unwanting. My consciousness told me I had to play guitar and I ignored it for a moment. It told me I needed to write down a line that I'd just thought of and I ignored that too. I decided I needed to do nothing at all except simply watch the drizzling of rain fall from the clouded view of the sunlight-struck windows in my upstairs room. To pause and observe the supposed necessities that my brain conjured up, when all that was needed was to be, brought peace. It was becoming quite obviously easier to sit with myself and allow myself to be present, right here in the heart of life where nothing peculiar or spectacular occurred. Many days in the past week since I'd arrived I had enjoyed people watching in the way my Mother had taught me. This, and watching the birds and feeling the sun and thinking of the clouds and reading a book and tasting the wine, all things I could do, to be. I am here.

The young black girl I had met in the city appeared to me once more the day before today. She had not spoken to me at first but only silently walked in my direction and placed a bottle of water before me, when my idea had been to drink beer for breakfast. I drank the beer still but the water overwhelmed me with calm and clarity. She had placed it there as though the spirits had told her I needed it. I waited at the bus stop after receiving food and watched a small white bus drive past, with none other than the same girl seated in it, staring through the window at me in a brief moment of passing, yet still a deep and unhindered blink of knowing for the both of us. It was clear to me that she'd found shelter from the city streets and acquired comfort in the west in the same way that I had. She looked at me and I looked at her and I thought about our conversation, sharing how the sunshine on our skin made us feel. I knew that both she and I knew, that I was going to be okay.

Still the day was passing and it was almost like I hadn't done anything. I've spoken about it before, or at least written about it, that laziness is true. And that love is true, too. Laziness today is proving productive as I increase my guitar skills, write stories, read books, drink wine, and make advertisements for guitar lessons and maybe other things. The rain outside my window has now passed, and been instead replaced with sunshine, allowing me to sit yesterday's wet clothes on the window sill and hang out to the rays to dry. Sometimes pausing is true, where rushing is not. Why must we all hurry so quickly when building something beautiful? My life is a monument, an impeccable piece of art that is not to be forgotten, but remembered instead. Therefore it shall be built with a great, and certain unknowing that will live on. Love is true.