Melancholia is a beautiful word. But a shite state of being.

It's Sunday at five (pm), and I swear, I've never been more melancholy in my life than at this moment.

My mind is out of control with a buzzing sound and thoughts that are smashing into each other like a bunch of 13 year old girls front row at a Katy Perry concert. The age old Sunday questions are coming up.

"What am I doing with my life?"

"I feel like I am just going through this thing (life) with no ambition, cares or passion. What's my passion?"

"I want to stop drinking so much."

"I feel so alone. Is that normal?"

 "Next time I go out on a Saturday night, I SWEAR I will not eat a whole loaf of bread when I get home!"

"Should I have a cheese toastie for dinner tonight?"

Lately though, these classic Sunday night questions and feelings have come creeping, like Rihanna's crazy stalker, into my mind at random times. That's right, even on a Tuesday. The cloying sensation of melancholy mozies over and attaches itself to my side, so that it's my constant companion. The desire to cry or scream or sleep is wrapped under two to three levels of normality. But they push closer to the surface every day.

Sometimes I feel like there isn't enough air to breathe. Sometimes I feel like the world needs to get it's shit together. Sometimes I feel like everyone has got their shit together but me. Mostly I feel an overwhelming sense of restlessness. Like I'm cast adrift, and am just waiting helplessly to see land again. I don't know where to begin to find it, because I have no idea where I am.

I don't feel depressed. It's more that I feel desperate for something, and I'm not even sure what that 'something' is.

I love my life, but I'm shit scared of it.

Spanish class

I take a beginners Spanish class most Monday evenings. I walk in at five to five, and take a place around the table.

Nobody talks.

In between the hesitant "Donde vives?" and "Como estas?"'s, silence reigns, thick and heavy with hours worth of unspoken words. Eyes are glued to the whiteboard or our tutor, as if we live in fear of illicit eye contact or, god forbid, genuine conversation.

When the 10 minute coffee break arrives, some dash off for the toilets, some outside to escape the boiling community centre room and stand about in the crisp evening air. Most sit in their chairs, staring intently into their phones, making silent, virtual conversation. Can you please get the washing in? Are we gymming tonight? How was work?

As I sit back down with my herbal tea and Homebrand biscuit, dreading another hour of "Ser or Esta"'s, I look around, in the hope of catching someone's eye and starting conversation. But the odds are stacked against me, so instead I stare vacantly into my teacup. I wonder what I will have for dinner that night.

A new love.

Stretched out side by side, we exchanged confidences, whispers, smiles. Curled up, she fell on my chest and there unfolded like a vegetation of murmurs. She sang in my ear, a little snail.

She was so clear, I could read all her thoughts. Certain nights her skin was covered with phosphorescence, and to embrace her then was to embrace a piece of night, tattooed with fire.

Subject to the moon, to the starts, to the influence of the light of other worlds, she changed her moods and appearance in a way that I thought fantastic, but it was as fatal as the tide.

- Octavio Paz from My life with the Wave

Move the beads of your heart.

Maala pherat jug bhaya,
Mita na man ka pher
Kar ka manka chhod de,
man ka manka pher.

-Kabir

You have been counting rosary beads for an era,
but the wandering of your mind does not halt
Forsake the beads in your hand,
and start moving the beads of your heart.

The Seeker.

Rest,

my searching spirit.

For what you seek,

is not lost.

Your chance will come.

And when it does,

it will be,

so beautiful,

you will wonder why,

you ever,

searched,

at all.

To love is good

To love is good; too; love being difficult.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

For this reason, young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward beating heart, they must learn to love.

But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is- solitude, intensified and deepened loneliness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate-?) It is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out, and calls him to vast things.

Rainer Maria Rilke,

May 14, 1904, Rome.