Ritual
The New Year's brought me delirium, for my body had forgotten how to properly rest. After the pandemonium that was Winter 2024, it seemed almost unbelievable that I got to spend December in peace, in the company of people I'm fond of, without even an emergency deployment to be made. For once, I have no pending task, no project to speak of (I have decided to retract and recenter before throwing myself into another string of jams), and the world wouldn't collapse if I sleep in or read books without checking my phone.
Which means the darkest recess of my mind could take hold, its tendrils reaching out. I thrashed between periods and worlds, zigzagging from one thing to another, waking, dreaming.
For many students, tomorrow will be the start of a new term. As a child, I have always liked school. Not the classes themselves, which I found boring at times, but the whole academic complex, libraries, back to school ritual. It was always special. We got to replenish our supplies: fresh ink, new notebooks full of possibilities, sometimes cool new bags to replace the old tattered one. I was always very hard on my bags. And the new set of textbooks. I was the kid who had read the textbook back to back before the term had even started proper, so I could daydream and doodle in class.
I still miss school, even after what happened in college. I particularly miss school now that I'm back to analog tools, as it provided ample opportunity for me to enjoy my stationeries. Scheduling as an adult is laughably easy compared to the days with 7 classes, 3 club meetings, 2 part-time jobs, and 2 personal projects. With only a couple of jobs and a couple of personal projects to juggle, I no longer have to track time to the minutes. These days, I've gone back to one catchall commonplace book setup, no more a separate planner. And let's face it, even though I write a lot out of class, I write a lot less without hundred pages of assignments and homeworks to submit every week. I went through pens blazing fast I had to buy by the dozens, so my former favorite pen was the best one you could buy with $0.15 (they're still my daily driver, stashed in every bag I own). The upside of not going through them as fast is I could get nicer ones now.
As an adult, we are the master of our own time. Yet, just like the allure of buying mountains of chocolate bars seemed to go away right when we have the means to do so, we tend to let the time we used to cherish slip away from us. Holidays come and go, washed out and unmemorable. Before we realize, years went by. One, three, five, ten. Like Ava's piece on Christmas, I have grown to appreciate rituals I used to deem artificial and arbitrary. Ritual. Something to prep. A signifier.
When my father was my age, he already got two school-age children. He had always seemed way beyond his years, been working out of home since he was a teenager, but these days I wonder if he too felt like he was a boy playing adult. If the snacks and toys he brought home for us on a whim (to my mom's exasperation) were things he would have liked to have for himself. If he was ever tired to provide. I knew, at least, that he longed for adventure. My father, who went aboard stranger's ships to lands he didn't speak the languages of, was moored into a desk job ten hours a day for two decades out of familial obligation. His death was untimely, but sometimes I thought it might have been a relish. At last, he could be free.
He insisted we got together for a BBQ for New Year's, the last one I spent with him. It was a bit sad actually, just the four of us half-grumbling and the grill was too unwieldy to clean. Our front porch wasn't particularly comfortable. In less than a week, he was gone. He tended over the charcoal ashes, and in less than ten days, he was reduced to bone and ashes.
I went out for dinner and found a Chinese restaurant that sold my favorite banquet dish in single portion. It felt somehow bizarre, somehow wrong, that the dish wasn't gigantic and placed on a lazy susan in the middle of the table for everyone to share. It felt extravagant to have just a bowl for myself. Yet, it was just as warm and filling as I could remember. I hadn't had it since my brother's wedding. Chinese weddings are hard to come by when everyone around me who could be married are married, and the rest aren't Chinese. I joked to a friend that we should just pick a day and make all these. They might have been traditional for a wedding, but nothing would stop us from hosting a banquet just to cook together, enjoy the dishes we miss, celebrate whatever.
Ritual. Ritual. Ritual.
The word is burned in my mind, taking on a new life as memories unfold. I see it everywhere. In my delirium I have it associated with friction, with analog tools, with observances and delights and hassles and touchstones and landmarks.
With people found and lost.
With the passing of the time.
With life lived.