There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.
No, I am not contemplating the nothingness or thing-ness of human existence like dearly beloved Sartre above. I am sharing with you an experience that assailed me as I walked down the street with the man I love, in a city that I am trying to claim as mine. My relationship with it is similar to that of a disgruntled host who offers his home not with delight but with resignation, and an annoying relative who receives the hospitality of the former not out of desire but out of desperation. Actually, my affair with the city lies even lower on the scale of passion, because instead of disgruntlement or annoyance, there is just... is-ness. A shrug here and a shrug there. I am in it and it is around me. The city isn't pleading with me to accept it, nor am I begging to be embraced by it.
Like Sartre, while my feeling of nausea was also brought on suddenly by the appearance before me of a group of five adolescent girls who dressed, talked and walked similarly, that was merely the tipping point. The last straw, if you please, on the back of a camel already burdened by a heap of sameness.
Boredom and anxiety can be quite complementary. I can say that with confidence because I felt both these feelings come together to form the frown in my brow. This similarity of hair & skin colour, indistinguishable voices merging into each other by virtue of saying fairly indistinguishable things filled me with a sense of fatigue and anxiety as it struck me that I was swimming in a sea of homogeneity. Hmmm... fatigue? Fatigue and boredom aren't the same thing. I was bored, fatigued and anxious. Fatigued because I had been splashing about in new waters, and bored because I had momentarily stopped splashing and was just floating in a sea of homogeneity. That's it. I was floating like algae floats on water, asserting it's distinct existence, clutching to the surface for fear of drowning and being consumed by the depths below.
And anxiety? That was because I realised that my refusal to let the city in, metaphorically speaking, was because I would then have to let in all that the city contains. I have nothing against the buildings, the trees, fountains and the streets. I have a problem with those who work in the buildings who are the same as those who sit under the trees who are the same as those who look at the fountains who are the same as those who fill the streets.
I felt stifled by their sameness. Maybe it's because I come from what is known as the 'land of diversity', where walking around in a marketplace for five minutes, you cross paths with people dressed differently, saying distinctly different things, sounding different even if speaking the same language! In contrast I find the present surroundings sickeningly homogeneous. I am not making this up, seriously, but if you give a sentence or paragraph to ten different people to read out loud, the impression I have is it will sound like the same person reading it over and over again. How can so many people sound exactly alike? Similar pitch, rhythm, voice quality..... something about that disturbs me I tell you. Makes me very uneasy, this obliteration of individual uniqueness.
Such were the thoughts I was grappling with. Thoughts, and oddly enough, a viscerally felt sense of asphyxiation.
Many may think I am overreacting. But those who crave individuality and diversity will perhaps understand.
Words spoken by a classmate during my very formative journey through a Masters programme come back to haunt me. He looked at me one afternoon and said "I have worked out the essence of your existence". Curious, and prone to sarcasm, I asked him to share his insights so that I too may learn of my essence. He looked straight at me, smiled his large African smile and said "You thrive in uniqueness"
In light of recent events, I can't help but wonder if he was right.
I guess I will have to drag variety and uniqueness out from the deeper recesses into which they have been pushed, and toss them back into the world out there before I can be surprised and thrive once again.
Till then, maybe I can come up with ideas to amuse myself with this mundaneness.
Oh well! As most people around me would say "Cheers darling!"
B-)
