It's Monday morning... but with 6 minutes till noon, the term 'morning' is just semantics.
Such indifference... the 6 minutes between morning and noon isn't world apart, there's no twilight like dawn and dusk, and especially under such gloomy sky, the indifference is even more apparent and at the same time more subtle.
I woke up earlier than usual, maybe it's because I was informed the night earlier that I won't have my own car to use for the day, and the laziness trait that runs inherently within my family is too big a concern for me to actually not to ignore.
Still, the term 'earlier' translates to clocking in at work with 1 minute left to spare before I have to start preparing some troublesome formal explanation for being late.
Sitting under the artificial, neon lights during day time like how it was for me for the past 1 year, every trip to the restroom or the pantry, passing through the only access to sunlight is worth treasuring. Normally, when the sun is strong in the middle of the day, the light seeping through the curtains is good enough a relief for me.
... yet today I am met with indifference, but I would rather be outside than in here. It almost seemed like there's a storm brewing behind the gloomy sky outside, but at the same time it's just drizzling, if not, very light rain at best.
... but when you're standing from 30-40 paces from the glass panel, when you can't see the rooftops of the surrounding terrace house, it almost seems like there's an ocean outside, and you're in a giant ship.
... and my mood today has been abnormally foul. Maybe it was because I had to run up the stairs with to clock in on time, maybe it was because of the weather or even maybe it's because of the kind of work I had to submit to the other departments that has nothing to do with my actual work other than telling them what is it that I have done, or that I will do. Maybe it's all of them put together, or maybe it's all a bit of each and every one of them.
I had to find some means of escape from this form of slow and melancholic destruction of my mind. I've just sync 2 songs into my iPhone yesterday night, thinking that I might need them for today. What I have prophecised came true, I needed those 2 just to feel that the world is a sorry place to live in, but it's alright.
I've been looping my favourite song of the 2 for the past 2 and 1/2 hours, Ikue Asazaki's Toku no Shima Setsu. Don't ask me what is it about, because I have no idea. It's just the perfect song for me right now.
Her voice is raspy, precisely how the other reviewer has pointed it out, but at the same time it's unnaturally haunting. I don't know how it is soothing the rage in me, but it's doing a damn fine job. Why am I raging? I don't know. At least, I know it's being contained.
The song brings a hint of sorrow behind its tunes; singing of hardship of the early days... like days without your 2000 bucks portable computer or wireless internet, or public phone booth for that matter, though the lyrics may be singing otherwise. The accompanying piano and the voice of the other singer; that other mysterious woman, make this piece complete.
I looked at my colleagues with contempt, and it's not their fault but mine. I looked at them today, and I felt that I needed to stay away from them, for my sake and for theirs'. I was in a selfish emotion, that I was right, that everything else that offended me needed to disappear. And this voice of her's advises me of humility and selflessness, but I'm sure as hell she's not singing about nobility, or being noble, or being chivalrous... or other saint like ideals.
She's just singing about stuffs I don't understand, but I could relate... and the resilience she showed in the face of such repeated hardships.
Her voice reminded me of someone who was close, but never lived long enough. Her voice taught wisdom; empathy.
From rage I'm slowly sinking away to something else. Pity, alot of pity for this sorry world, and from there I had a world of respect for the woman who owns this voice I'm listening to... to the perseverance she's singing of, not of triumph, not of glory, but the adaptation of a difficult life.
