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Excerpt from a book in the making.
This is the beginning of a book I’m currently working on. I’m sharing it in hopes of attracting a few readers, so needless to say, I hope you enjoy the writing, and find it worthwhile to stick around from this most humble of beginnings (literarily, not literally).
Whatever thoughts the writing may inspire — you’re more than welcome to share them with me.
Once upon a time a wonderful moment found its way to the world. One radiating with some level of curiosity, some willingness for exploration, and perhaps, if even just in the slightest, some voiceless feeling communicating, however silently, that the world could be different. That moment passed a second ago. Resembling most of life in that way, slipping away under the breath, unfolding mostly unnoticed until time itself starts to run out on the very first day we seriously contemplate that ever precious final breath of ours. It happens until we are reminded again, and again and again.
This inattention is a shared predicament, unaffected by personal preferences and historical origins, by everything really, even you. It’s a blessing, they say in celebration. No wait, it’s a flaw to be condemned. No wait, they simply take it for granted, seem to ignore this fact, this all mighty fact, visible from all angles of every corner of the world, stretching past barriers of language and borders of territory, finding ways to be seen even by the blind. Wait. No way. They’re being entertained, enjoying themselves, forgetting themselves in their entertainment, consuming themselves in their entertainment, consuming their enjoyment in their entertainment. The they? Don’t worry about them, they’re just someone, probably.
Somewhere between arriving legally and then biologically in adulthood, that’s when he realised this, when the silent powers firmly wielding his experience started to make noises. Whenever that was. And as the morning sun was starting to bring the night to an end, those noises at once stopped beckoning in the far horizon and hastily moved forward, intruding on what up until now had largely remained a peaceful existence filled with leisure and tribulations of just the right sort. Stopping just before him, they started dancing in ways that resembled whispers. Life can be wasted away, all too easily. Right. As per usual, springing out of those thoughts came an array of new ones, infants, seemingly staring back at him, anxiously screaming to be held despite leaving no traces of sound in the world around him. That seems to be the nature of thoughts, they multiply, cross pollinating the mind during a miraculous process of creation we hardly ever recognise. He stood in silence, thinking.
No matter how often he heard people around him say time has flown, no matter how many times he repeated it himself, time always just ticked away at his life, moment by moment. From the time of his birth, a mere five years after history was supposed to have ended, to this very day, where the thoughts now started moving somewhat orderly, naturally and elegantly settling into their own places in what looked like a rehearsed choreography, throughout all of this time, there never was any stopping this forceful nature of singular moments. There never will be, they simply come and go. Much like his thoughts they could be embraced or neglected, he could always halt on this journey of his in an effort to pay closer attention, but at times the price of doing so seemed costly since he ordinarily found himself racing ahead on the road of dreams and distractions. You could say his identity was built on always going somewhere, even during all those moments when it felt like nowhere. And it had satisfied him until this day came along, until the magnificent performance of those thoughts. Until they they were, wait they’re not moving, they’re still, completely still, just there, against the backdrop of an open water which no longer concealed part of the sun. They must have found a home in this atmosphere, almost as if some higher power had painted them on the sky at just this right moment, knowing he was standing there in silence, thinking, observing, enjoying the light as the sun forced its trajectory upon the world.
Their shape was triangular, imperfectly so, but picturesque nonetheless, with a slight tilt caused by some thoughts on the edges, bumping and bruising each other, deeply engaged, seemingly doomed to a battle in the outskirts caused by all those individual efforts to reach the center of attention. At a finger snapping speed lines suddenly formed on the edges. Those not yet locked into place found themselves in a frenzy. What a chaotic scene they’re causing. Bouncing around, up and down, from side to side. They could have done so a million times or only a couple of times, there was no telling because the movement of any single thought was camouflaged by the collective disarray. He calmly observed the chaos. Arms crossed behind his back with one hand grabbing onto the opposite wrist, breathing slowly with intention, matching the rhythm of the wind. They seemed to notice his demeanour and slowed down their movement. For the first time he noticed how the edges had formed a mountain. A wave stopped just short of him, catching his attention. The water drifted back into the ocean, not in retreat, but in preparation. Another wave formed, washed ashore, and then initiated a new process of preparation. Then came another one, and one after that. The cycle ebbed and flowed for a few minutes. He looked up again and this time, without setting foot into the water in front of him, a wave touched his entire being with the intensity of a lightning strike. Not in a havoc-wrecking kind of way, but a comforting one, like a gentle reassurance offered by a giant invisible hand. Inside the mountain, the remaining thoughts which moments ago had frantically bounced around as if their existence depended on constant movement, they had stopped, calmed down it seemed, and formed a sentence. Appearing brighter than the sun itself, it was just hanging there, hanging in there, really, hanging on for dear life in anticipation of finally being fully embraced. Wholeheartedly, passionately, seriously. I want to be a writer.
Wow. There it is. There it was. Well actually it wasn’t, but wouldn’t that have been a great origin story? One taken straight out of a religious scripture, or a movie, or a music video, or maybe a youtube video, or what about a well produced TikTok, or what about, listen carefully now, what about something as old-fashioned as a book?The truth is that the truth tends to be less compelling. Life rarely is a movie in the way we desire, so when this realisation finally dawned on him, of course he wasn’t standing in nature, peacefully welcoming some otherwise inhibited, other-worldly vision, enjoying the harmony of nature, resting out in the open, breathing. No. It didn’t happen like that, although breathe he did, sitting comfortably in front of his computer in the office, attending the weekly organisational meeting. His boss was doing the talking, telling everyone how great this week's performance had been. Expressing gratitude for the work that had been put in across the board. Sales, Management, Customer Success, IT Development, Marketing, every department received their roses in the form of some customary flatter. Every week it was the same, sort of. In the beginning, the inspiration intended to transfer from the boss's mouth to the heart of every single employee actually worked. He felt it, just like his co-workers probably had when they first arrived at the company. It was done for everyone to fall in love with the process of playing their individual role, chipping in with their contributions to improve the chances of the company surviving, and ultimately, their own survival. After some time the effect wore off. Repeating the same tale of course creates culture, molds it into a sturdier matter, reaffirms it, like dropping new paint over existing lines on a great canvas, separating this from that and us from them. They are markers of identity and definitely useful at times, but at a certain point, a story will have been told straight into redundancy. At which point it’s only intriguing for those unfamiliar with the story or perhaps the storyteller. He found life boring during those moments when he knew what was coming. And he knew what was coming just now. The weekend was not around the corner, but one elevator ride away. In less than 20 minutes time would once again belong to him, until three blinks of each eye would somehow make it Monday again and half of his day would be handed over to others.
Sitting there, on the 3rd floor of some office in Copenhagen, no longer listening so much as waiting, the boss changed his slide and an unexpected figure appeared on the screen in front of him. The usual late afternoon drowsiness immediately disappeared. Was that? Kobe Bryant? The boss was a basketball fan, a former player as well, who at one point in time had willed himself into the junior national team. But that’s a different story, one he loved to tell. It fell off his lips so often that it must have been his favorite, and if not, then at least solidly placed in the top three. In the past, he had used Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls to tell the story of the company, how the employees filled different roles, how they were winning, as a way to honor the competitive spirits within the ranks and the unique abilities on display. Without a word about it from the boss, while looking at the picture in front of him on the screen, the young man used to see himself in Dennis Rodman every friday. Rebounding was his occupation, his work consisting of retrieving the misses of the sales department. Calling it customer success didn’t remove the service aspect of the role. But now, there was no Dennis Rodman, not anymore 23 and the Bulls were so last year that the references had to be updated. Here, in 2024, it was only right to tell the same story through a new person, the greatest basketball player to ever put on the jersey with a 24 on the back. The boss was saying something about Kobe, but the young man had left the office and entered his imagination, catching not a word of the speech. Kobe happened to be one of the young man's role models, one of his muses, a symbol to cherish, someone in possession of an attitude worthy of aspiration, at least partially. One of his tattoos proved this admiration. In the font used on the Lakers jerseys, he had worn the number 24 on his right arm since shortly after the legend passed away. A coincidence? Fate? Perhaps? It doesn’t really matter what you call it, because what followed has already transpired and the future is yet to pass its judgment.