time waster
It's the eternal I-have-something-really-important-to-do-so-I'm-just-gonna-waste-time-writing-in-my-blog moment.
It's 10:00 at night, and you have, well, a thing. To finish. For tomorrow. It's a thing like the one you had in college. Some people call it a project. I prefer to use the milder self-inflicting-brain-wreckage term.
So you remember how you came back home so tired [from having accomplished nothing particularly important during the day, except perhaps discussed superficial matters with your friend,] and how you proclaimed your absolute inability to help around the house when you got home because you had so much on your plate. Then you made the tallest cup of coffee or green tea [supposedly filled with magical awakening caffeine] to begin your assiduous overnight. Only to fall asleep five minutes after the first sip of your drink, atop the covers of your bed, dressed in your day clothes, [as opposed to pajamas] with not a blanket to cover you from the coldness of a March night, your laptop threatening to fall off the edge of the bed at your earliest involuntary kicking convenience.
But of course you must finish that project for the next day, so you wake up as if you had just had a nightmare, at three in the morning, panicked, your cup of [tea/coffee] still standing, still full, but ruefully cold. You explode in a vulnerable moment of tears, where you wish you could die, and whatnot, before you shake the drama like a polaroid. The picture appears and you clearly see that you need to make anything [anything] to present to your professor the next day. So you let your dad's old cassettes play some bittersweet Chopin as you begin work.
Today is one of these moments. Except you're not in college anymore [because you graduated, of course] and your job is not that big or stressful. Still, you remember, so I write.
Today, you [accidentally] open nameless websites that have all of these links that lead you to all of these new websites. And the wave is so high that you really cannot stop surfing. The net.
And as you place that same cassette in the recorder, you go back. You go back to that day. The way the sun shone down at you, as you sat on that bench when you left your professor's office. The way you replayed her disappointment and her reprimanding in your head. The comments she gave you about all the things you could have done; all the effort you did not put. You remember that your hair was wet because you showered early in the morning. You remember that you wore that perfume which you fell in love with, but which you now hated. You remember the nervous state you were in, scared of what was to come. You remember your wanderings on the streets of Beirut, looking at trees, and taking their pictures. You remember their smell, mingled with the stench of car exhaust as you walked on the pavement.
You remember a great many things. This is why a piece of music is sacred to you. It takes you to a world that your memory has forgotten. Between a music note and another lie the scribbled little notes that form your memory. And you cannot imagine ever tainting the sound of that music [by placing it as your phone ringtone, or as your alarm in the morning, for poor example]. You cannot imagine a person you do not particularly fancy, liking it or listening to it and taking it away from you. No, you do not.
This becomes your piece. Chopin becomes yours.
Yes, well. I must be off now. It's 10:08 already.
I'm cutting this short, but it's not like anybody is particularly interested in the happenings of my brain. And there are no pictures in this post, so there's not much to lure you readers into reading!
Tatralalala.
Sarette.
ps: Because I'm a nice, grilled-cheesy old fellow, I'm sharing with you two of the Chopin pieces I found on youtube:
And another: (Okay, I know, it was on The Pianist, and everybody knows it from there, but it holds a different meaning in my head.)
It's 10:00 at night, and you have, well, a thing. To finish. For tomorrow. It's a thing like the one you had in college. Some people call it a project. I prefer to use the milder self-inflicting-brain-wreckage term.
So you remember how you came back home so tired [from having accomplished nothing particularly important during the day, except perhaps discussed superficial matters with your friend,] and how you proclaimed your absolute inability to help around the house when you got home because you had so much on your plate. Then you made the tallest cup of coffee or green tea [supposedly filled with magical awakening caffeine] to begin your assiduous overnight. Only to fall asleep five minutes after the first sip of your drink, atop the covers of your bed, dressed in your day clothes, [as opposed to pajamas] with not a blanket to cover you from the coldness of a March night, your laptop threatening to fall off the edge of the bed at your earliest involuntary kicking convenience.
But of course you must finish that project for the next day, so you wake up as if you had just had a nightmare, at three in the morning, panicked, your cup of [tea/coffee] still standing, still full, but ruefully cold. You explode in a vulnerable moment of tears, where you wish you could die, and whatnot, before you shake the drama like a polaroid. The picture appears and you clearly see that you need to make anything [anything] to present to your professor the next day. So you let your dad's old cassettes play some bittersweet Chopin as you begin work.
Today is one of these moments. Except you're not in college anymore [because you graduated, of course] and your job is not that big or stressful. Still, you remember, so I write.
Today, you [accidentally] open nameless websites that have all of these links that lead you to all of these new websites. And the wave is so high that you really cannot stop surfing. The net.
And as you place that same cassette in the recorder, you go back. You go back to that day. The way the sun shone down at you, as you sat on that bench when you left your professor's office. The way you replayed her disappointment and her reprimanding in your head. The comments she gave you about all the things you could have done; all the effort you did not put. You remember that your hair was wet because you showered early in the morning. You remember that you wore that perfume which you fell in love with, but which you now hated. You remember the nervous state you were in, scared of what was to come. You remember your wanderings on the streets of Beirut, looking at trees, and taking their pictures. You remember their smell, mingled with the stench of car exhaust as you walked on the pavement.
You remember a great many things. This is why a piece of music is sacred to you. It takes you to a world that your memory has forgotten. Between a music note and another lie the scribbled little notes that form your memory. And you cannot imagine ever tainting the sound of that music [by placing it as your phone ringtone, or as your alarm in the morning, for poor example]. You cannot imagine a person you do not particularly fancy, liking it or listening to it and taking it away from you. No, you do not.
This becomes your piece. Chopin becomes yours.
Yes, well. I must be off now. It's 10:08 already.
I'm cutting this short, but it's not like anybody is particularly interested in the happenings of my brain. And there are no pictures in this post, so there's not much to lure you readers into reading!
Tatralalala.
Sarette.
ps: Because I'm a nice, grilled-cheesy old fellow, I'm sharing with you two of the Chopin pieces I found on youtube:
And another: (Okay, I know, it was on The Pianist, and everybody knows it from there, but it holds a different meaning in my head.)
***
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