How deep do you want to sink yourself into it?
This was a question I asked myself one post torrential Sunday afternoon here in Hanoi. This city provides for many venues of melancholy and my apartment’s vast high rise view is no exception. So on a lazy Sunday afternoon which led Cullen on his usual Tom and Jerry frenzy and Thea on her Sweet Spy marathon, I pulled myself out of my thick blanket confused at why I keep the room’s temperature at 18 degrees only to cover myself up with layers of blanket. I haven’t had much physical activity either since the past week had been horrendously tiresome that the bed served as an irresistible invite. But instead of mobilizing myself I light a cigarette to celebrate the 3 pounds I have just gained from this sedentary weekend.
It was then that I drifted into a self effacing albeit short-lived existential drivel. This is not uncommon at all for my Sunday afternoons. I lamely asked myself, “All this, what does all this mean?” (Trust me, Viktor Frankl drove me nuts too.) Confused at my own question I took a second look of my view.
I played jigsaw puzzle in my mind with the small puddle of rain at my veranda’s tiles. Inordinately tucked in huge flower pots are my half-smoked cigarettes – I procrastinate even in finishing cigarettes. Through the glass windows I can see Thea secretly giggling over some Korean dude she watches at the computer in my home office. Farther in front of me is a city raring to aggressively claim its position in the Asian Business scene. Down the streets are motorbikes. As I further struggle for an answer I closed my eyes. The honking of motorbike horns sped through my ears and raced through my brain with irreverent steps.
I hear Sigur Ros’ Ágætis byrjun playing somewhere and suddenly I am transported to my old condo in Makati almost three years ago staring outside the veranda asking the same question: “All this, what does all this mean?” I remember not having the answer then. And now as I opened my eyes in an incredible fit of predictability and scoping from yet another veranda in another country, I still don’t have an answer. Instead I have conveniently resolved to yet another question: How deep do you want to sink yourself into it?
So I asked Thea, “Do we still have Oreos?”
