February 22nd

There are days, you are relieved that the hours run out, and there isn’t much more time so the day can not throw more atrocities at you. There are days you thank whichever entity you believe in, that day belongs to the past now because you did not see that coming. You did not have that coming. Isn’t your fault.

And there are days -sigh- that do not care for the linear flow of time.

I have such a day. 

In the evening I am thinking of the symmetry that keeps butting in. In the morning and in the late afternoon hours, there are birds singing unusually loud. Red ball followed by a child on the street, in different locations, at different times throughout the day. I’m not able to tell if it is the same child and ball, or different ones, because I swerve my car into the other lane. I’m a lucky person, in adversity the luckiest. I sigh relieved that there is no oncoming traffic. Still, it gives me a fright.

Suddenly, I have the feeling that the day tries to fold itself up, and the “symmetrical coincidences” try to breed. 

I eat a piece of olive ciabatta with butter, feta cheese, and cucumbers in the morning and buy them in the evening, then I remember to buy them in the morning and to eat them evening. Minutes pass, and new memories form. Like phantoms, like transparent paper copies overlaying, dissolving, and solidifying into a labyrinthian mystery, where every new turn means more of impossible events in the past and the future. I remember I am doing everything at the same time. I go to work and stay at home. I dress and undress and vice versa.

I sit at lunch and think about the conflicting memories and me seemingly being on a one-way loop track, repeating a version of the things I remember I had been and will be doing. I am in awe more than anything. The overwhelming feeling of a Deja-vu keeps me company. Does anything I do matter, or change something?

The day is going on for so long now, I cannot remember if it’s five hours, five minutes, or five weeks. Am I thinking this for the first time, or for the thousandth time? Birds singing, a kid with a red ball, a blue sky with a hawk and a crow chasing each other, olive ciabatta and feta cheese, fish and chips, grocery shopping, and consuming and refilling. It seems futile. I do what I do, I am. I am. I keep on doing what I already did, as if for the first time. The afterthought of sourness, I already have done this before. So many times, I’m trapped here, in this revelation. I decide to go to sleep, but my mind is chasing the impossible geometry of time and space. I do what I do. I am. I am a lightning bug in a jar. I do what lightning bugs do. I shine in the dark, to talk with the other bugs.

That is the last thought before it’s morning and the day starts anew- and there is still feta cheese and ciabatta.

There are days that exhaust you with strange surprises, plot twists and turns. As if the hours are a living organism, with a survival instinct, with needs to feed and to breed. As if it is a hare grazing and running from a hawk attack.

The crows are unusually loud this morning, seemingly laughing at something. I’m distracted from eating my feta cheese and olives, just for a moment, by the feed of social media vids. Oh, this looks nice, mouthwatering even. It is the recipe for fish and chips, that seems to be easy and good at the same time. Five minutes more and I will prepare for work. There is half an hour drive through little crowded villages, several roadwork sites, and a stretch of highway.

Before the highway, through the last village, a blue ball rolls into the street and a father picks his daughter up. She is set on having that blue ball. I mentally thank the parent for being attentive and being careful. The wind blows the toy out of my way. I do not have to stop or change lanes.