tsvetoslav shalev

The breakage and the mending of the heart should be treated as part of an object’s history, not a flaw to be hidden. The object then carries its own impermanence on its surface instead of pretending to be unbroken.

It’s June 8th, and the time is 9:16 a.m. A wet and sunny Monday, the kind of humidity you’d expect in Hong Kong or Singapore but not here, and not this time of year. A sweet cacophony of birdsong, of distant engine noise and barely-audible speech carries on the air outside. You find me at peace, yet I really shouldn’t be. Sooner rather than later, what little savings I have will dry up, like the previous night’s puddles of rainwater. Instead of writing this, I should be applying for a job, or building my portfolio, or practising for an interview. And yet, my heart is not in it. When I think about the hours I pour into learning, into exploring ideas — none of which maps to anything I can put a price on at this very moment. I can’t help wondering what my purpose actually is. Religion, I am told, could provide an answer. Yet the price is steep either way: to let it in, I’d have to grow disillusioned with the shared, objective reality we’ve negotiated with over the ages; that, or suspend my disbelief entirely and take its man-made stories as given. And I can do neither. Not yet. And, if by chance I successfully commodified what I love, I’d probably burn out sooner rather than later, in vain attempts of pleasing an amorphous audience.

There it is again, that word: love. It takes me back, to a lunch break during high school, from decades ago. I never liked leaving the classroom — its safety, the peculiar quiet which takes hold, once most everyone files out for a quick smoke break, or to shoot the breeze. No, I’d rather stay at my desk, half-dozing or leafing through study notes. I am scratching nonsense on the back of a notepad. L. Then O. And then — I hear someone call my surname behind me. A classmate. One I have an unspoken crush on.

Are you about to write LOVE? I’d never have expected that from you.

No derision in her voice. The opposite — she’s beaming, delighted by the word she thinks she’s caught me writing in secret. At the time, the idea of love isn’t even on the edge of my mind, and yet here she is, having glimpsed it in me anyway.

My answer is quick. Almost clinical. No. Why would I? I was writing LOL.

The glow that surrounded her innocent face mere moments ago dims by a degree. Her smile narrows to half of its former self. I’ve handed her back the version of me she already trusts: the settled, loveless boy she thought she knew. She believes me. Almost. I suspect that a part of her retains the possibility I just denied — that love had been nearer the surface than I let on. For I am, after all, whoever she decides I am. Loveless, by design.

I am back at my place of silence. At the age of 39, reduced to the state I was in during my early teens — living in the house I grew up in, surrounded by my games, my music and my books, my parents and my dog Jessie. The carefree dreamer in me is long gone, replaced by the shaky scaffolding of thinking in systems, linear time chipping away at what’s left of me. What’s left of us all, in fact. Reality, reliably indifferent to our woes. At my strongest, this realisation feels comforting. Not today, no, but maybe tomorrow?