Farewells

We often take our own natures and predispositions to be more special, more peculiar than those which we ascribe, in an abstract sense, to others. And poisoned by this very affliction I find myself being affected by farewells in a way which to me is more nuanced than how I think other people get affected by them. But perhaps it's nothing more than my own introspective nature coupled with the fact that I have increasingly more amount of time now to think about things, something that I do not necessarily disapprove of.

I find that it is not concrete memories and sure pictures that we miss about people but it's their vague associations with the trivial things that they leave behind which are curiously the most poignant sources of nostalgia. As the world around me presents itself with the same clockwork precision and designed rhythm as it has always presented itself except for some minor omission effected by a departure, I begin to see the particular omissions in darker hues and bolder colors than warranted by mere appearances. I'm amazed by how little things change, how the day is still resplendent with the same glorious sunshine, and the night still bejeweled by the silent moon in the window, how the minutes and hours keep dying off with the inevitability of orchestrated dominoes and how little the natural progression of things pays heed to a new absence. And I almost feel that it's this very cruelty and apathy of time which makes me want to care a little more for sake of the memories. In the surety and blandness of order I feel drawn, almost by sympathy, to those faint marks and distant sounds which constitute all that farewells are made of. Because they are just that - mere shadows of infinitesimal defects in the pristine canvas of life. Jagged edges of time folded on to itself, wrinkles in the space which repeats itself every day.