By: Ali Adib
The morning alarm goes off on the analog table alarm clock that I’ve bought to avoid using my phone first thing in the morning. After a couple of snoozes, I look at my phone to wake me up. The first thing I notice is a text: You have a past due insurance payment, please process the payment online or call us at… blah blah blah. I should just take care of this to get it out of the way, I think. So I spend the first five minutes of my day making an online payment on a mostly dark blue corporate interface. The first thing I’m supposed to do in the mornings now is to journal a few pages whilst drinking a glass of the so-called “Green Superfood” mix, before any too-early tea, coffee or food. I’m supposed to be kind to “the chariot of my body.”
I move my mass out of the bed; bathroom first. I didn’t brush my teeth last night, I felt too tired, but it still took me more than an hour to fall asleep. I brush. I walk into the kitchen, to my “Green Superfood.”. There’s a lump of ambiguous hair on the floor. I don’t want to bend and pick it up because the residual cold congestion in my right ear will again get trapped in there and impede my hearing for at least an hour. I bend over anyway, and put the lump in the bin. Beauty, cleanliness, and a clear space are good for the soul. I will be here working all day after all, and I love my space, I love taking care of it, being close to it.
My computer starts ringing because my phone is on silent, it always is. I am still not done thinking about my dream last night. How I saw a serene unknown figure — that somehow I knew was my friend — meditating on the ledge of the seventh floor of a building that looked like my bachelors engineering school. Suddenly, though, he fell off, hitting every floor before reaching the ground and screaming. The computer keeps ringing — it’s my dad calling, from a 10 and a half hour time difference away, where I grew up. I pick up, I always do with him, otherwise he may think I’m dead, or I may feel that he will be sad that he cannot speak to his elder son who left him for the comfort of Western logistics and liberal freedoms.
I have meetings at noon, want to take a morning walk to let the sun in my eye, journal, have my “Green Superfood” mix, make some tea, eat something small to get me going, meditate, a short core yoga session to push back in my belly that started to creep out 15 years ago, and then “work.” I don’t know how people with a 9-5 job do it, I mean I do because I used to do that, but it feels like a remote feeling now.
“Hi dad,” I say in another language. “Hi, how are you, etc.” He doesn’t know how to ask me questions about life. We are just not very good at it. Since I’ve moved to the U.S. I’ve heard many American friends who usually own a copy of Swing Time tell me that I should be better at asking questions. The same friends who, after I tell them about something that happened to me, often ask me “and how does that make you feel,” a question that still sounds foreign to me.
Just to hear my dad’s voice is a gift, I miss him so much that sometimes I don’t want to look at my own face in the mirror, because of the resemblance. We speak for half an hour, one that I technically don’t have. My to-do list, freelance work, meeting schedule, wholehearted friend calls scheduled for a specific time of a specific day, the scheduled jazz gig later tonight, the scheduled get together later this week that I’m hosting in the apartment where I live alone, the art that I’m making. The art that I love making. He talks about his issues with my sister, how they can’t agree on when and how to meet up for dinner, which underneath it all is about how they struggle to be present and open up to each other. How walled up they are with each other and they don’t know it. And I know it and get to watch the show from afar. I lecture him a bit, as usual, and he listens. I try to limit the length of each section of my speech, to keep my tone in check, to think of where he’s at every few minutes. I “try.” I tell him to be “open,” to try to see what she is feeling and why — “feeling dad, feeling! Not what she just says. Try to dig inside her heart.” She needs to learn the same, too, and I sometimes wonder if I really know that myself either. He asks me to call my sister to talk to her, mediate a little bit — to “impact” things, as he likes to call trying to sway her actions or views on reality.
I call my sister and we speak for about 45 minutes, 45 minutes that I also don’t have. I have a meeting at noon that I cannot miss, at least there is that to stop me from doing things I didn’t plan. Things that are not on my to-do list, things that don’t seem to have anything to do with the art that I’m making. She is stuck in her head, suspicious of dad and his intentions, she labels him, judges him a bit. We grew up judging, it’s a thing. I take deep breaths, try to not judge her back. To see her, see why she is suffering, see what I can do if I felt like her. I gently try to set up a dinner between her and dad, I tell her that no matter what you two need to hang out. To be together, there needs to be a space for you two to connect on a human level.
I text them both, on the WhatsApp group I created for the three of us five years ago. I tell them that I cannot organize the logistics from across the world, but please make a plan and let me know that you did. They do, somewhat reluctantly. But I have faith, which is the main thing that I have. They will be together. I believe in dialectics. I still have faith, the wars did not erode it.
I finish my “Green Superfood” drink. I rinse the glass in the sink, it usually gets pretty sticky afterwards, it needs to soak before it can be washed later. I haven’t looked at my to-do list yet. But I want my morning walk, I miss the sun, my beloved sun, the one that warms me up, keeps us alive. I want to take a walk.
I get a text from Magdalena: Hey, following up about the story I asked you to write. Do you think you can do it by the end of this week? Can I? Can I do anything? I’m hosting beloved friends on Saturday. I read on a wall on my last trip to Los Angeles “community is the cure.” Saturday is important, I live alone and I can host. What is urgency, what is necessary, I have a meeting at noon. I haven’t walked yet. I leave the text for now, too much correspondence in the morning already, I haven’t processed the unknown friend who fell from the seventh floor while meditating on the ledge in my dream yet.
I love my colourful sandals, that was a good buy. I put them on, it’s summer, almost at least. I lock the door behind me, only one set of stairs before I am finally outside. And finally, I am outside. It’s actually cloudy! But I know the sun is always out there, behind the clouds, so consistent, so loyal. I have faith. My walk begins, the trees, the leaves, the rubbish on the floor, the concrete, and the weed pushing out from the crack. I walk about 500 steps, I’m a new person. I text Magda I think I can, I’ll try writing today or tomorrow and will let you know if it’s worth publishing. But I will try at least.
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