This word is the opposite of what I’ve felt today. Today I woke up and for the first time in a while, felt an urge to write that was so strong I began planning the logistics of my return.
Ever since I finished my university term, I have revolted from any semblance of a to-do list, tasks or notion of productivity. My friends call it rotting. I wouldn’t agree fully with them, I’d say there is something in this way of living I like. The way I never think of the next time I’ll be in bed, endlessly tormented by tasks I should have done today, when I make my bed in the morning. In my behaviour is something of an avoidance of the nighttime, because the nighttime is when my stress levels about pending tasks and lecture slides to review would peak during term time. There is an inevitability that I embody that makes me feel disgustingly entitled to have a tomorrow. The thing I have been thinking about if how much reverse programming I need to do with myself, and how to approach it. I wonder how much writing about it will help, if at all.
I finished Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie today. I have a habit of sometimes skimming the page before I begin reading line by line, which makes me worry I am impatient. My heart ached for a certain ending for Ifemelu though, so when I found myself on the book’s last page I deliberately covered the rest of the page and read line by line. I savoured that last page and was very sad to have closed the book. I feel as if I’ve lost a friend now.
I’ve always wondered. Why don’t I dislike the main characters in fictional books? Is it something of a loyalty-programming in me, that I feel obligated to like the person telling me this story? Or maybe it’s something that makes books marketable. But what really got me thinking was if it is because any bad things the characters do are something I am able to attribute to something. A breakup or loss they’ve just experienced, that no other character in the novel knows about. So though I can explain away the behaviour, the novels’ characters cannot. It made me think about if everyone in life is reedemable from any questionable or bad things they’ve done. We all have backstories, one’s that could explain at least some of our vices. When others call us names or make blanket statements or assumptions about us based on what we’ve said or done, they don’t know our backstories. Maybe if they did, they would know not to colour us as villains.
There were thinks about Ifemelu I didn’t resonate with, but everything she was doing made sense to me. And I attributed this understanding, even tolerance, I had for her to the fact that I knew her backstory extensively.
I love that book. When I began the book, I resented it a little bit for being so descriptive that I wondered why it would focus on such drab, inconsequential things like the way Princeton smelled. And now I want to start tracking how places smell and describing my surroundings just as Adichie did. Her writing is truly enchanting.
Languorous. Comes from langour, which describes a heavy slowness. A kind of lethargy, listlessness or stupor. I imagine it refers to both physical and mental states. Merriam-Webster suggests it does.
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