main character syndrome but make it literary
adding a touch of the literary to an otherwise neutral moment
Hello lovely readers, hope you’re having a good start to the week. I have some nice news, I finished another book! I can’t remember who or where I told someone that I had only read one book this year but that is a whole lie. I finished Ikigai this weekend and went to write about it in my reading journal and saw the other four books I’d written about this year. Silly. I’ve had to go and update my bookworm, my new favourite book tracker app, with all the other books and their ratings. I am so not with it this year, ugh.
Anyway, Ikigai is so good! I learned how to do a sun salutation, and I have quickly implemented it into my daily routine. It’s such a good way to clearly mark the start of your day. I posted some of my favourite quotes from the book on my booksta if you wanted to take a look.
Today’s letter is a fun idea I thought of as I was reading the second-hand book I mention below. There’s a lot of main character content online right now but I feel like it has shifted into just someone who’s really self-centred. Before, it was about being the main character in your own life and romanticising the every day, right? So I wanted to take it back to that today, imagining myself as the main character in a book and taking this small moment I had this weekend and turning it into a descriptive piece in a moody novel. It was quite fun actually I highly recommend playing with this sort of format! Pls enjoy xo
As C1 makes dinner in our kitchen, I'm on the sofa, knees drawn close to my stomach and legs resting on our cushioned footrest. The smell of onions and garlic and spices politely drift into the living room even though the door is closed. I peak glances at him through the glass of our kitchen door, his freshly cut hair, his broad shoulders he doesn't think are broad, I hear the sweep of his grandad slippers on the tiles. I smile to myself. Sometimes life can feel as bland as a forgotten cup of tea or a lingering dread, like you're looking down on the edge of a crumbling cliff, for hours, days. But I look at him and I feel grounded, I feel loved. I know this feeling is like a rare stone, a secret passageway to another world only few know about. I treasure that feeling every time I sense a wave of it.
The sun is starting its descent in the west. The book I bought earlier in the day, when the sun was at its strongest, is in my hands, slightly worn and well-read. I don't think about how I had to go home earlier than planned because my anxiety manifested into something physical again. I do think about my disappointment that I forgot to bring my new 'worry stone', a crystal I just bought at a market during my recent visit to Cambridge, and how I don't want to be dependent on something that is probably mostly placebo, but that I don't want to be in a situation where I was earlier, worrying without a crutch.
As I eagerly turn the pages of my new mystery novel, a single ripple of peace flushes under my skin. I have been having trouble reading this year, the daffodils have nearly completed their ritual and I have only read about four books. I managed to finish one today, however, Ikigai, and I basked in the feeling of completing a book. Why stop there, I thought, so I grabbed another.
My eyes are not the first to trace these words, my fingers not the first to brush these pages. I turn another page to discover an indentation in the top right corner, quite a large one. Whoever read this before me was a dog ear type of reader rather than a bookmark type. I like thinking about the person who read this book before me, one of the perks of buying second-hand—as well as the cheaper prices.
Who was the person who read this creepy story before me? And who, perhaps, may be the next? I picture a woman, late 40s early 50s, sat in a comfortable chair with a tattered handmade patchwork blanket in her lap, maybe burgundy or the colour of grass at night. Not too dissimilar to myself so far. She wears glasses too big for her face and her lenses mirror a fire burning beside her. My mind quickly moves to the fireplace at C's aunt's house, then to the fireplace he made for us when we stayed in a small town near Manchester in an Airbnb once. My mind travels for a bit before I return to the imaginary woman.
She's alone in her messy but tidy in her eyes home. Papers strewn about on a dark wood coffee table, coasters piled on the edge, some buried underneath magazines with curling edges, but no coaster in use for her current cup of tea that’s silently brewing nearby, no sugar, barely any milk, there are letters she hasn’t opened yet. The window has been left ajar, just enough to welcome the smell of wet grass onto the carpet, for it to cling to the walls for the evening. She has several lamps on and the room is the epitome of cosy, in a well-lived home sort of way rather than a staged for Instagram sort of way. Her mug is wobbly at its rim and has a chip you wouldn’t notice if you looked at it from a certain angle. It reminds me of something I read in a book once, how the Japanese treasure things like cracked teacups because it reminds them of the imperfect nature of life and how only imperfect things are truly beautiful because they are the only things that reflect the world around us. I think of one of the chipped mugs in our cupboard, my favourite one in fact, that’s navy blue with a big yellow moon on its side. My heart softens, I’m not so upset about the chip anymore. I have something in my cupboard that is now a descendant of the universe, something beautiful and treasured with flaws, something like the people we love.
I stop thinking about the woman and her messy living room. I only read about two more sentences until I hear the clang of cutlery in the kitchen. Dinner will be ready soon.
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my mans, not me. v annoying our names start with the same letter. just wait until you hear when our birthdays are.
Thought your man's name was Xavier so wouldn't X have worked better?