What do you do when you don’t want to do anything?

What do you do on the days when you don’t feel the magic, when you don’t feel magical and everything feels and nothing feels, and there are no feels, I don’t feel – all gone, drained like rain out of clouds, soil out of cliffs, the will to live out of a life?
What do you do, when nothing inspires, when you are unmoved like the wind on a sticky stifling sunny day – life shines bright, so bright that it blinds and cripples and you are crawling your way into the dark for some shadow for some shade for some escape from this relentless brilliance that hurts more than enlightens?
What do you do when you don’t want to do anything? How radical is the idea of inactivity?
Of just laying on the bed and taking up space , staring at the ceiling, or listening to the song of your heart, as time flows by, and you listen to its song – you listen. You do nothing. You just stare, probably waiting for the day to end because tomorrow has to be easier and this day is stained anyway. Even though it’s only 1.25 in the afternoon.
Only 1.25? You squeal.
Just 1.25, I repeat.
So many 1.25s have passed us by, but today it feels like time was a bee caught in amber, slow then stuck then fossilised.
Just one of the days, where inactivity feels more natural than moving about, seeking for something to do. You’ve given up today, trying to fill your days with action. Enough, already. Not today. I can’t. I quit.
They say don’t give up
No one talks about rest, and the nothingness that accompanies it. What are we without verbs? Phrases. Incomplete. Only a subject and an object. A verb makes a sentence a sentence, that which is whole complete perfect. What’s a phrase to a sentence? We are taught to aspire to be a sentence, treating a phrase as something of a passing grammatical phenomenon, to be taught because it exists but also to tell you, you mustn’t be this way.

***

I just read Safiya Nygaard’s blog explaining her absence from video and these words from her blog struck me –
“I don’t know if it’s just the feelings of isolation or the growing sense of failure or what, but pretty much since quarantine started, and we’ve been separated not only from our families but also business contacts, employees, and general daily routine – I feel like I’ve fallen into my own thoughts and emotions, and it’s taken me months to figure out how to get myself out of that hole. I’ve had such a hard time waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, getting my day started, and feeling productive. It feels like what little structure and routine I had just flew out the window, and the days started melting away. “

I felt that. I’ve been feeling a scream develop inside of me for so long now that my body seems waiting for a release, to scream so loud that I burst, dissolving into the air like stars. I’ve been feeling so frustrated.

I tried to blame the Instagram algorithm. I tried to blame those accounts following me for not being like other followers of other highly engaged accounts. I tried to blame hormonal imbalance. I tried to blame the blooming moon. I tried to blame so many things as a way to name the cause of this massive discomfort that hasn’t left me. I’m so sick and tired of being uncomfortable in my own skin. So sick and tired of everything. I don’t want to be productive. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to read. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to text. I don’t want to call and say hey, I want you to get me without me uttering a word, interpret my silence as you please. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to dissolve. Disappear. To run away from this growing sense of disappointment that’s eating away at my soul. I am sick unto death of feeling envious, resentful of those that appear more successful than I which I equate with happiness. They all seem to have it working so well for them. I seem bitter because I am. More than that, I’m tired of running so hard, that my head hurts, my lungs burn, and my legs are about to cave in, taking away the rest of me along with it into one heaving heap. I feel like I’m waiting for that happen just because it’ll be something in this one long stretch of unbreakable time. Maybe I’m just that bored but I am actually looking forward to give exams just so I’ve got something to do.

***
As I’m writing this, I’m actually thinking of converting this into a post for the blog because I’m sick of Instagram. I loathe it with such intensity, like a religious zealot hating on alcohol and women. I loathe it, because I believe it to be the source of my misery while failing to acknowledge that it’s not alcohol that’s problematic but what it brings out of people, either mellowing the rough or roughening up the mellow. But it’s crazy, that while trying to write for myself, a part of me is also thinking about sharing it online for the world to see, anticipating the responses – few and sparse – and once again the cycle repeats. Art – content – no comment – dejection – art – repeat.
At Least there is art at the start and end of it. Art is an end. Art is the means to my end. Art is my means to the end. What is the end? Peace. Truth. Understanding.

***
From my window, I can see a lone star. But if I lean in, take the effort to bow before the window, I can see the moon, slowly waxing its way to its own fullest glow. As though, all of us seem to look up to the sky only when the moon is this way. But when she’s disappearing into the dark, she’s truly in the dark. The sky is empty, and we don’t care to notice the stars, the clouds, or even the faint outline of the moon. She never left. But to our eyes, she did because if one isn’t active, turning the sky into a carefully curated performance, informed by posts, and stories, the world forgets you. You are lost to the dark. But the same fickle world wouldn’t hesitate to take multiple pictures and sing paeans of your return to form. Your comeback, ah what a return! That’s what we want of ourselves. An arrival with a bang, a blast, that stops the world in its fidgety rotations and revolutions. But why all this talk of arrival, when there was no departure? Is disappearance an exit, or a magician’s anticipated performance? Must it even mean a thing? Must it be a thing?

***
Good for you, dearest Moon. While you are en route to becoming the stuff of poems, I am feeling like an amavasya night. Dark, with the promise of regeneration and healing.

***
I’m tired. Bye.