On Boredom and Routine

I don't know how many nights I have spent at this forsaken spot in Sassine Square during the past ten years or so, but a good estimate would be "most of them".

The coffee shop changed. The people who used to come in here changed. The cigarettes shop changed. The taxi drivers who used to drop me off home after long sleepless nights changed. And yet, I am still here. 

My friends joke about it sometimes, they say I am a construction column in this square. They say they could give directions based on my position in here. The second building to the left after Mireille they would say. 

Even when I do have plans for the evening, I end up here afterwards. I can't seem to be able to detach myself from this place. 

This piece of land holds many memories, many souvenirs, good and bad, and the way I see it, I can't move on and leave those moments behind. What if I never get to experience similar moments again? What if in case I move away the memories would fade and I would have no other way to recapture them?

Unemployment only feeds my addiction. Insomnia creeps in on me like a lost shadow, a desired one. I have no reason to wake up tomorrow. I don't have to be anywhere at any given time. So I am here. In the forsaken coffee shop. 

I read a bit. I play some virtual poker. I meet some friends. I have coffee. Then I have Diet Pepsi. A cookie too perhaps.

I am immersed in the music buzzing in my ears. I am enjoying quirky melodies. I am not sure what my taste really is anymore.

I secretly wish something would change. Here or elsewhere. Mostly here though. All of me is screaming for innovation, for surprise, for a thrill of some kind, of any kind.

What is it that I would really like to have most now, I ask myself. Is it money? Is it love? Is it success? Is it merely a job? Is it health?

I ask myself and I don't find the answer. I am not sure what I am craving. I am not sure what exactly is it that I want most, most badly.

Would any of the above do? Would one alone be enough? Is any even possible for such a bored soul?

If a soul is still in there indeed.

I just need change.

The other day, I decided to shower without scrubbing myself. It is a random embarrassing fact I know. But at the spur of the moment, it felt so needed, it felt so secretive, so innovative, so fresh, so liberating. Would anyone notice? Would I smell or something? What would not using a loofah for a day bring to the day? It brought nothing of course, but in the heat of boredom, it felt like it would. It didn't though.

The next day, I decided to take it a notch further. I didn't wash my hair! It is the extent you would go to if you were me. For years, I haven't left the house without washing my hair. I felt itchy the whole day, but that was about it. Nothing else happened following the unthinkable act of not washing my hair.

Tonight, I am flirting with the idea of cutting my hair short. But I won't do it. I don't have enough guts for it. I am such a wimp.

Today I heard dad's war stories for the nth time. I hate to admit it, but to the resonance of those stories, I wish a civil war would take place. It does seem very exciting, thrilling even, all the risks and such.

Page 144. Just a note in order not to forget to mark the passage in the book. I can't seem to find my marker in the mess of my huge purse.

Oh how many sentences and paragraphs have I highlighted so far. To what end? The question hangs in the air.

My mother wanted to take advantage of my time off. She asked me to place my collection of postcards in 2 big bags so she could get them out of her way, and away from me. Not that I ever look at them anymore, but still, now they are far and I can't look at them if I felt like it.

I am just nagging. About nothing and everything. Nagging is in my genes.

I wonder when my phone is going to ring next. Probably tomorrow. But who will it be? What will it regard? A job perhaps? A date? Yeah, as if. 

I dreamed that I was driving my father's car the other day, and I was colliding with other cars to the point of almost causing accidents several times. I looked it up, I couldn't find a definite interpretation but for all it is worth, driving in your dream represents your path in life.

I am also dreaming a lot about cats lately. Before that it was mice. Go figure. A chase maybe.

I should get that tooth fixed, but the appointment keeps getting cancelled. Either the doctor's parents are in the hospital, one at a time or simultaneously, either he has a union meeting, either he is having kidney stones removed all of a sudden. 

Good night. Well maybe not immediately, but eventually.