thoughts (fragments) at 2:33am

untitled by meyrem


maybe 2:33am is an okay time to start watching a scary movie. if someone were here i'd ask them for their opinion on this.


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i shave sporadically so that every time i (inadvertently) touch my face i'm surprised by what i feel.


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i worked for 12 hours today. when i left the gates were locked i couldn't get my bike. i walked through my front door i was sure i'd collapse irreparably. that was 5 hours ago. seems the day's not quite ready to fizzle out. this i can live with, i am all patience when it comes to letting the evening play out its fermata.


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she's hinted at it several times now. like i can show you that place, we can get coffee?. or have you heard about the XYZ movie?, looks interesting. i think it's playing at the ABC. i respond each time: sure, sounds great. but don't proceed beyond those three words.


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still alive? That's all the email says: still alive? i think about it a while. it's a relative question i decide. it's a trick question i decide. it's a loaded question i decide. then i undecide everything.


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three obnoxious jokes about the siege of sarajevo into lunch i realise i'm sitting besides someone from sarajevo who once told me the siege was my highschool. i know what he meant, that he was in high-school during the siege years, but the double meaning is too rich. sometimes i wonder if words don't pick us, reward our sincerest feelings with a perfect phrase that catches everything, all of it.


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loving you made me feel young.


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i still don't have a phone. at first it was a matter of finding the time to go and organize one. it's not that anymore. there's something delicious about knowing you can't be reached, that your time is your time and cannot be penetrated. i make plans when i want them, otherwise i'm cut off from the pace of... of... all externalities.


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a winter is slowly reclining around us. when i wake in the mornings it is soo dark.


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every now and then i remember that i'm working at a UN war crimes tribunal. (and i feel proud of my last few years in the purest way). (and i'm confirmed in the only lesson i've managed to extract from my life thus far: striving for excellence makes things happen. i don't know why, or how, but strange things exist in that space where you expend yourself fully for the sake of achieving something greater than you're capable of).


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for the first time since i was a child i'm not consciously terrified of the future.


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it's a feeling i've had a few times now, not so much a feeling as a realization. a little click 'it's time q'. it's time to maybe settle the relationship status definitively. it scares me, it's not a thought i've ever had before - in fact, it goes against everything i'm sure i believe(d) in: that that is something that can't be coaxed or willed. that it just grows from the ground up, twirls around you like ivy. one morning you look up and you're wrapped in a garden made of someone else's life and spirit. that's how i thought of it: as an organic amalgamation of lives and souls. not notnot something that's decided and pursued and ticked off a list.


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loving you gave me gravity - it kept the world in place so it wouldn't all float away from me


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almost every morning i stop at the bakery. i rest my bicycle against a wall and take off my gloves. the same girl serves me but slowly. everything in this country is too slow so i'm always a little flustered. it's early so the croissants are warm, the smell is a lip-kiss from heaven. i put the paper package in my bicycle bag and continue on my way to work, where i stop by the machine and get a 50c latte. that's my name for it - the 1/2 a euro coffee from the machine: i call it a 50c latte. it tastes better than the proper coffee from the cafe i don't know why. i return to my desk and make a mess that's impossible to clean up. crumbs everywhere - desk, clothes, carpet, computer keyboard - everywhere.

when the others arrive i don't stop i smile without removing the pastry from my lips.

i love loving my little rituals. happiness is too hard a thing to strive for, i've given up on it. but these little moments, bricks of happiness, i can build great things with them. (and things that aren't so large and ambitious that they fall on me in the end)


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she walks and brushes up against me occasionally, and i'm in a flirty mood so i take her arm and wrap it around mine, say there you go like i did her a favour. she seems pleased with the situation, we walk on. me kicking the conversation along for her sake, though i'd rather walk on in silence into silence (thinking about this feeling of having someone's arm in mine. this familiar sensation. dull echos.


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at 7pm one of the lawyers walks into the office i share with 5 other interns - they all left hours ago - he leans against the wall and picks up mid-thought: but where it gets tough is how we frame the credibility arguments so that we ... i grab a muesli bar and hand him one which he takes still carrying on right?, because at the end of the day, if we rely on the alternative argument we still need to ...
i feel like an adult. i'm not one of the interns, the interns went home hours ago, i'm one of the grown ups. after 5 it's only the grown ups still working. i'm having a big-kids conversation. By the way, i was thinking today we should file that motion anyway just to get it on the record, doesn't matter what they say, it'll be useful for the appeal i say, he nods true, good point ___it occurs to me, i feel... home - _the farthest most distant version of it i could ever imagine,__ but unmistakable : home.