Just Another Yesterday.

Fiction.

Ken sped his bike, just after the green light blinked from red. The cars around him moved in a parallel motion. His right and left; he was aware of the existence of the cars moving fast around him. He gave a signal to the left, made a turn and parked his Honda CB400. He walked over on the side street, goes to a café nearby and tries to relax. It’s 7.00PM – and nothing has happened. No messages received. No calls were made.

Nothing. It was just the perfect time to relax.

And then Mahler’s “Goodbye” piece was heard, but it was rather strange. Why did it had to be played now? If all humans are just an existence of physicality with their traits, did God made us as a rigid being that whatever we do – was or could be predicted?

The truth and the fact, never came to a surprise. Ken didn’t simply bother of what just happened a year ago. That summer, the hot sun and the chilly wind. It was never something he asked for that a woman would fall for him and within matter of seconds, she left.

It was understandable that she had matters left for her to solve. Just like missing jigsaw puzzles, she was missing a part of her and searching for everywhere. How do we really define ourselves, as ourselves? We all created an imaginative identity, like how a nation was created just like Anderson’s Imagined Community.

We give characteristics and shape how should a nation be, but just like us – we created a definition which we would stick onto for the rest of our lives. Whether he or she is a Marxist, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, the happy-go-lucky, the melancholic or whatsoever – it’s a choice that was made but perhaps, it was just a matter of destiny or what we were fated to become of.

That’s what Ken thought, that’s what was troubling him too once upon a time. If we ponder too much on our faith, how can we be sure our hearts are travelling at the right path? But perhaps, people. Some people, didn’t have the chance to really understood themselves.

All this, he puts it like a text written on his mind and analyzes each of the paragraphs. Like a forensic trying to find a clue. We are actually, what we are – literally. We are what we believe, what we are. Why do we need someone to explain who we really are when all these questions have its answers lies in ourselves? But that’s people. In their hearts and minds, lay many secrets that we do not know. Humans are a complex living being. Behind the blood flowing in our veins, the ever-hardworking heart, the psychomotor and the neurons in our brain, we are also a universe which our mind and capability to think was akin to the Milky Way galaxy.

Even so, why should love be a game of riddle? Why should relationships be based on predictions and hypotheses? We are so focused on being extraordinary when in fact, we couldn’t even become our ordinary-self. It’s like owning a big and unique building, but the base wasn’t there.

Ken takes a deep breath, rests his elbow on the table and his palms closing his face. “Had I made the right decision?” he thought. So helplessly, that he thought it would be the last he would fall in love ever with anyone else. Or should he just wait for someone to knock the door of his heart again. Or should he even be enjoying life in his twenties and think later.

Or should he just, be a bachelor for the rest of his life?

Had his mother was here, he pictured she would pat his head saying “my poor son” or had his father laugh at his own stupidity. That was the love and the warmth he so needed, but it was no longer there.

They are no longer here, in this world. They aren’t here but he knew the warmth, did exist once upon time.

Murakami wrote about how we are like the satellites, staying up in the orbit, passing at the same place but never to exchange promises and was just – simply alone. How would it feel, to be burned up in a piece of aluminum?

The work of politics he did, the struggle for a democratic society, the volunteerism he did and now Ken thought about stopping. Settling down at some remote place or an Island. He thought about staying with some Bajau tribe in Borneo, settling down life by the sea, marrying a woman there, fishing and farming for a living and enjoying the breeze of the wind.

He thought about Karina, a Bajau woman he met during his volunteering activity to build solar plant there. She was a timid woman, whom always had a casket filled with dried fish to be sold every time he saw her on the day and smiles with her eyes down by the silicon of the curtain from her house. It was the two last days, they talked and had fun. Played beach volleyball, played guitar and serenade together and build a campfire. But that was then, it has been 3 years. Either one of us or I, was just simply forgotten through time.

That is unlikely to happen. He smiled, despite every misfortune he had apart from breaking up. Little did, it helped him to cheer up. The challenging life he has now, probably would gave a newer kind of insight to his life.

Sara, the woman he loved certainly was not crazy. She was a wonderful universe of her own. Let anyone says or even herself tell that she is an imaginary. Perhaps people don’t see how they are. Or how we see how they are, had been wrong. In that case, was Ken’s conviction about her was wrong – he never and never will know about it. But the image of her, will forever burn in his eyes. Even Ken had problems, on trusting people on daily basis, as a result of events that happened to him.

The essence and plume of her smell, her hair bangs and its silkiness with that emotional hazy eyes of her. How can one forget everything within just one night? That’s what he thought. And if there’s any chances that she will come back, he also had no clue.

His coffee that he ordered arrived. His personal preference of café au lait; double cream and hot. The barista always knew what he wanted. Whenever Ken came to his Café, he would brew the coffee for him as if he was programmed to do so. Ken had been a loyal customer for too long. If there were little customers, they would chat up together while he brew the coffee. He blew softly to the foam and took a sip. Ken’s troubled face faded to a smile, like someone just watched a great movie as soon as it ends.

“Was the coffee not as usual as you wanted to, Mr. Ken?” he asked.

“No, it’s fine. Just another yesterday.” He replied.

It was already 8.15PM. He got out of the coffee shop and kick start his bike for home. The smell of the gasoline invigorated through his nostrils, with the light white-colored smoke pumped out of the two exhausts as he revs up the bike. His left fingers clenches the clutch, shifts to the first gear and sped.

The image of Sara, was greatly remembered. Her dress and kisses of that night. And that image stayed, like an old photograph stood still against time.

He thought, he may saw her again on the side street. This time, maybe on the junction. But it was too fast for something to happen. Just too fast.

“Just another yesterday".

Just an overwhelming feeling that I once felt.

Asyraf Amir. 20170331.