The smell of coffee and cigarettes takes me back to Dubai in the late 2000s.
When I was a kid, we were fortunate enough to be avid travellers. On two trips to Dubai, we stayed in this particular apartment, just a few blocks from a mall. It was a comfortable place; the staff were kind and we had access to everything we needed. I remember the little car park in front, the beige walls of the reception and very vividly turning my nose up at how strong the ‘coffee and cigarette’ smell was on your way into the building.
Fast forward over 10 years later and I have come to associate that smell with adventure and freedom. It triggers memories of ‘Toys r us’ and finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on my Nintendo DS in 3 days, memories of being forced to finish a medium sized pizza each from Pizza Hut because we kept complaining we were hungry and then got full immediately — the pizza was horrible. Memories of being a kid who couldn’t swim but having a blast at Wild Wadi.
I had an objectively wonderful childhood. Apart from everything that’s wrong in the world, it could be the reason adulthood for me is the nightmare it is right now. The universe is performing a balancing act and is forcing me to watch while my eyes bleed.
Water calms me down.
I am mesmerized by the intensity and duality of the ocean. How water just seems to exist doing its own thing, guided by its own rhythms.
2017, sitting on a pier in St Tropez, alone, breathing, allowing the emerald of the water to sparkle around my feet, I record a voice note.
‘I have concluded that I am the ocean.
The ocean and I are one entity, for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, I exist in waves. Waves of emotions and feelings and thoughts coming and going constantly. Everything might be calm on the surface but underneath there is always some sort of internal dialogue going on, and when that internal struggle finally shows itself, it builds and builds and crashes and consumes. Then I return back to lapping softly on the shores of existence.
The second reason is the fact that I am not one to get influenced by people. You can either sink or swim. After years of bouncing around from place to place, I discovered that I had to form my own path pretty fast, exist in my own bubble if you will, because constantly falling into other people’s perceived realities was going to leave me confused and insecure. People are so different. You may not agree with my ideas, but if you are able to acknowledge them for what they are and can co-exist with them, you will float and I will carry you, softly, gently. If you thrash against them from a place of insecurity or allow yourself to be overwhelmed and overtaken by them, you will sink, and I cannot save you.
Thirdly, I recognize that I am an experience. You are most likely going to make more accurate conclusions on who I am and what I like from your experience of me, not necessarily based on what I say or do not say. I am dynamic, constantly evolving. If you are to know me, you must continually renew your experience of me and I, of you, the way you must renew your experience with the ocean in its different forms.’
I end my voice note with gratitude. For music, for headphones, for a warm bath, for food, for kindness, for a job, for curiosity. This is one of those few instances where I recognize that these are the good days, while I am in the good days.
Fast forward to later that year. Just having completed an all nighter at uni, I proceed to walk the 40-minute journey home at 4am in the rain, listening to the Sun’s Tirade. A perfectly apt end to a very awful week, but in the midst of my tears, the 40 minutes I spend in a state of motion with Isaiah Rashad is one of the most comforting experiences I have had in a while.
Were those also the good days?
I think back to a few years before that in sixth form. I would leave my dorm and go on these long solitary walks, exploring as much as I could of my little town, unafraid of getting lost, seeking adventure in the mundane. I came across this bridge. It was a pretty simple structure, yellow and red and unimposing. The bridge went over a sort of canal. The water in the canal was not clean. It didn’t match the blue sparkles I had come to associate with the divinity of water.
Yet, I sat on a bench by the water often, watching the people walk past, some hurried, on a mission, some with not a care in the world, hand in hand, hand in pockets. Watching the ducks waddle past, sometimes feeding them. I would sit for hours and just think. Sometimes I followed the canal, past some weeping willows, past a huge park, past a church, I would just keep walking, music my trusty companion, until I got back to the town centre.
Remembering how these little adventures were my escape from the pressures of sixth form, the loneliness of unbalanced friendships, the mundanity of a pretty structured school routine, were those also the good days?
How do you live in the present when the present is too hard?
It is so difficult to be grounded and feel each emotion as it washes over you. When it is joy, you cannot be too elated because you know pain will follow it soon and you need to be prepared. When it is pain, it hurts too much to sink into the feeling so you have to numb it somehow, and when you cannot, you wallow and shake and scream.
A few days ago, I heard this song, ‘Nobody’ by LEISURE, and for some reason it evoked a deep sense of loss and sadness. They say nostalgia normally evokes positive feelings. It activates pleasure centres in the brain. According to one study, nostalgia is linked to resilience — a pat on the back from science.
But I am tired of being resilient. I know that life must go on, but can it at least grant me some softness?
I have now come to understand that this feeling is not so much nostalgia as it is melancholy. A quiet desperation, a measured despair, easily moved by beauty and by kindness.
Nothing has ever held more truth for me than this extract from an article titled ‘Melancholy: The best kind of despair’ written by the School of Life.
Nostalgia presents itself as a wistful affection and longing for the past. But even with all the events and experiences that I’ve had in the past that now warrant feelings of nostalgia, it seems that melancholy has always underlined them. Does that mean that this feeling will never go away?
It’s incredibly fascinating how this is not some sudden realization, it seems my subconscious has identified with this for a long time. According to my journal, on the 15th of December 2019, a test I did concluded that I had a ‘melancholic temperament’. At the time, I wasn’t really sure what the significance of that was, I just thought, and I quote, “I have never seen a more accurate description of me”.
Yet here we are.
Fascinating.
Anyway, enjoy this visual.
