Hour and a Half

Mood: melancholic Now Playing: coldplay, fix you.

The place i live in is very quaint, but it's so far flung that most the places i need to be are so... distant. It's unsettling, y'see, because not only is it a harrowing experience to flag down an FX at 7 in the morning (oh wait, there aren't any at that hour) but it's also an experience to sit down quietly for about an hour and a half.

An hour and a half. I used to think that this time frame was as long and dragging as balls, but as time went by, it carried on a different meaning. It's the time it takes me to wake up every morning - to PROPERLY wake up every morning. It's the time it takes for a class in my building to end every Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's the time it takes to sufficiently feel the muscles in your body tense after a good session of Rockband. But most of all, it's the time it takes for me to get home from the university. Hey, if you do the math, i have sat around public vehicles for around 27 000 minutes in my four years as an undergrad. And that's excluding the summer classes, the impromptu sessions and other things that are worth mentioning, in due time.

But enough ranting. It's this gap - that hour and a half mark - between my destinations that signals my brain to turn off all signals and inhibitions and just... let go.

You know how these things go.

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There is just so much to say that i don't know how to begin. To tell the truth, i have been sitting here for about the entirety of a day, even when my day starts when everybody else's ends, and i have been waltzing back and forth between writing and erasing.

You know, just for the record, let me just say how important all of you guys are. Even as a writer, i must admit that there is a point where even words don't matter anymore, just because there are almost no words for this. I mean, is there a word for the confidence a trapeze artist feels when he knows that the other artist won't let go of him a hundred feet in the air? Or is there a word for the leap in a dog's step when it sees it's master after a long time? I don't think there is.

I'll tell you a secret. I get pretty conscious when people start to walk next to me. Because in all honesty, i'm probably secretly nervous when people around me are so close they could hear me breathe. I'm intimacy-tolerant - i have next to zero levels of social intimacy in me that it wonders me how easy some of us can link hands, elbows, or maybe shoulders or legs or maybe even hair with another. It puzzles me to think how hugs work, or how many Mississippis i should count before it ends, and along with it, the train track that is the rapid beating of my heart - not the smooth metro train, but rather the provincial one, the steady chuck chuck chuck of iron on iron. How does it end?

But you know, i'd like to believe that my breathing rises or slows down to match theirs, even when at times, the destination and the journeys it take to get there, well, goddamn take my breath away. And sometimes, it's not even in a good way, yeah. I know, it's so fucking unclear and all. But... yeah.

I know we both know that our destinations are not one and the same, and our journeys are both larger than life and ourselves and at times, harder than it looks, yeah. I know that.

Still, at this crossroad, where we're all practically in different trains headed to God knows where, i just.. hngh. Though you guys might not know this enough, i just want to assure you guys that - no wait. It's not an assurance. It's not a belief. It's just... there - that you people will never leave my mind. You people are the reason for a lot of things. And that one and a half hour away that separated us from that patch of grass, those classrooms, that little old liempuhan, that apartment or wherever place may just grow longer over time. But y'know, i find myself willing to master this train that is my being, and i find myself willing to speed it up to greet you a good morning whenever you may need me.

And besides, i have three very important words: just stations away.