By Yasmina Osama
I’m changing. I’m switching. I’m jumping from one film frame to another, although the frames are too fast I don’t even get to take my breath in between. I’m noticing the change myself, sometimes perhaps even enjoying it as it goes along with my particularly dynamic nature. I’m not acknowledging the change out loud, though. I am already hearing about it from all my surroundings. They’re shoving all their emotions, bare and flat as a white tile, into my face. They’re not all liking it, I see. I can see the surprise in their eyes, when I decided to throw their version of “Perfect Little Miss Sunshine” of me in hell, let all be damned!
It’s like you’re noticing the commotion, and the displacement, and the chaos stirring around you, but you’re being perfectly quiet and serene and reassured on the inside, just like the perfectly death-like stillness of the eye of a tornado despite all the madness going on outside of it. It’s like you’ve got your own harmony tinkling gently inside of you: only you can hear it; only you can make sense of it; only you can acknowledge its beauty. It’s re-arranging itself every time you change your identity, to be perfectly complementary with the present version of you that keeps changing and switching just like a TV’s frames.
We’re not living in a Platonic universe, though. Life is more of a rough mirror’s diffuse reflection.
I’m seeing too many inquiries about the new me, because people tend to fall behind in the adaptation part, the quick wittiness that has to do with mildly accepting the new me. I’m not trying to claim myself as the centre of the universe. I’m just trying to tell people how to deal harmoniously with all the other dynamic selves like me out there.
Where is the people’s shock coming from? Routine.
The heavy routine that, over many days and years and centuries, forces its way into the lives of nonchalant human beings that choose, with their own will, to indulge in it as an easy escape from the seemingly morbid riskiness of change. Damn change. Routine is the old dusty monochromatic painting that needs one hell of a reckless artist to blotch it with all the millions of shades of the colour spectrum, shock the crowd, and even compose his own symphony of all the startled “Ohhhhs!” that’ll be thrown in his way. As I said before, life is not the Platonic universe.
Change. I’m changing, and I’m noticing it on myself, and getting to enjoy the fact that I will be the first human being to stare it in the eye before the history tells its story to the millions of people later on. I’m the first one of those millions to know about it. I’m even giggling while staring its reflection in the mirror.
But suddenly the giggling stops. I start asking myself the serious question: “Is it just a phase?” Is this change temporary? Imperfect and diminished? Short-lived like a summer fling? A midsummer night’s dream, the classic Shakespearean way? Will this phase linger for longer until it becomes the “Forever Me”? Will this phase qualify to be the identity I will stick to for the rest of my life? The one I once and for all settle upon?
Only then do I flashback to the old me. I miss it. I hate it. Even if it’s already wrapped tightly in the past, it never ceases to be a part of me. It crumpled me down, then built me up all over again into a more mature, wrinkled and experience-soaked me. The old and new me remind me of the Yin-Yang, where the black never ceases to be a part of the white, and the white never ceases to be a part of the black. They’re hugging together into a solid block that quite simply narrates my own story, masterfully using only two colours that couldn’t have been more different from each others.
Image I’m a roulette. I go round and round till eyes get dizzy but never look away. The small ball goes round and round, too, eventually settling in one of those numbers, in one of those colours. Will the tiny sphere land on the number I placed my bet on? Maybe the first time the roulette goes around, maybe the second time, maybe the millionth time. But sure enough, I’ll get to my number, to the final version of me which perfectly fits my existence and keeps rewarding me with heavenly satisfaction every remaining day of my life. Only then, I’ll feel my existence whole. I’ll reach my own Nirvana.
“Come with me, I’m leading you where Melodies colour the air/And love finds a way Or so we pray.”
The last line is from the lyrics of Audra Mae’s song “An Old Italian Song”.
