Dark Horse Arts and Sciences

Anticipation of pleasure is, in itself, a very considerable pleasure.

                                                            – David Hume

Hot coffee served on the table; the beautiful odour skimming against my smelling sensations; my mind wandering about unfathomable subjects; my fingers curling themselves as if I am delving into a deeply layered matter; a fountain pen in my right hand, ready to burst out all the emotions on a piece of paper as I have seated myself on that corner of the café glancing outside through the thick atmosphere induced by the incessant rain for the last couple of hours. 

Then I shoot a glance at the manager for a refill when my eyes fall upon another pair of curious yet thirsty eyes staring at me from that corner of the café. Capturing through its biconvex lens, my eyes encapsulated a poignant and composed personality with a cup of coffee in her left hand and Norwegian Wood in the right hand, flipping through its pages slowly and smoothly as if she’s absorbing each and every word as if those words are only written for her and her only. 

She shoots a glance at me with her sad yet eccentric pair of eyes which makes me kind of nervous. I remove my eyes from the trajectory of her curious glances as I try to focus my way back on my coffee and writing. But I can’t focus that much as my eyes are getting impatient to look back at that strange yet picturesque woman. But I try to refrain myself from the same as I keep staring outside for some inspiration or idea for my next novel. After some time though, nothing did I receive but a blank space filled with empty void. 

My eyes again fall in that trajectory and what I see makes me more nervous and anxious as the woman still keeps gazing at me with her shady eyes and her coffee seems to be over and she’s only sitting with her book, no snacks or anything. Now I even try to comprehend what it is that she is trying to seek. Then she throws at me an amiable smile with her dimples instigating two small dips in her pretty yet sad face. Her smile isn’t what a usual smile looks like. Behind that infectious smile, I could sense the presence and storage of immense internal pain and agony as her eyes kept saying out loud, “take me with you, take me with you somewhere no one can’t find me or even guess.” Her eyes seem to convey some message to me as if they are trying to escape from a prison-like isolation. 

We keep looking at each other without any verbal exchange. Occasionally she throws a smile at me and I also return the same. As time is passing by, the atmosphere between us is thickening with a fog of tension and anticipation; anticipation of meeting and having a conversation with each other; anticipation to delve deep into each other’s self-secluded private worlds; anticipation to impress each other with silly jokes and dark sense of humor; anticipation to make love after all the small talk; anticipation to feel each other’s body frictioning against one another’s naked and warm physique. The air is getting heavier with all the pre-conversation tension and it’s eating me away. 

I want to approach her right away and strike up some conversation. Otherwise, I’ll probably go insane sitting here all alone with my already cold coffee and empty pages of the diary. 

So, I leave my seat and move towards her slowly at a tortoise-like speed. But then she leaves her seat too and starts walking briskly towards the exit door. A sudden urge of urgency starts running through my veins as I see the rain has already stopped, maybe that’s why she’s going to leave. This is the moment. If I don’t approach her at the right time, she’ll probably leave the place and we may never meet again. I start following her, but in vain. She leaves the café through the exit door and gets in her Mercedes, and departs from the range of my vision; nowhere to be found; just like a bird after being freed from its cage.  

In that tiny amount of time, my blood pumped faster than ever as I could hear my own heart beat, beating through the sheer anticipation and excitement of the circumstances present before me. But I lost. I lost the opportunity that was presented before me after such a long time. The excitement of encountering someone new has now vanished into thin air; just like smoke after a fire. It’s gone.

For that period of time, I visualized a lot of stuff, which in the end, materialized into nothing but mere imagination and flimsy fantasies. 

I went back to that corner of the café and got drenched in my cup of coffee and the empty diary; with a lot to fill up in those void white pages. 

With a bit of melancholic tone, I began writing-

“Life gave me a chance today to have someone new by my side, but I lost it due to my slipperiness and procrastination. Someone could have been mine had I only gathered up some amount of courage at the right time at the right place, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, not because I didn’t want to; but because I didn’t have the confidence to confront someone totally strange and new to me; someone I had no idea about. I always get attracted to people who read  Murakami as they must be highly imaginative and open-minded people in the world. This time seeing her reading Norwegian Wood made me want to talk to her anyhow, but I couldn’t. Talking to her about Watanabe, Reiko, Tokyo life, loneliness, love, sex would have been an amazing experience in itself, but leave it, it didn’t happen. Now I have to stop mourning over my inability and start writing again. It has been my friend all over these days and it will be, forever; not an iota of doubt about that. It’s my place for solace and harmony; something that has bound together all the broken fragments roaming all over the place randomly inside me. It’s my pillow for crying. It’s like the shoulder of a friend who tries to convince you that everything’s okay even if it isn’t. It’s everything and nothing for me. And it will remain that way forever. There’s certainly no thick air between us. Only a thick tethering connecting our two wholly different realms.”