Mekong Red

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Maybe it's embarrassing, but I never knew what stars were what in the night sky. The stars don't like us in London you see, we've done too much, so much so that they hardly shows their face anymore at night. Three stars, maybe four, but other than that, a blank space and a lonely moon loom over the London nightlife.

On a dark night, a thousand miles from home, we left our university accommodation and walked deep into the night, putting a long day behind us. A peaceful little village, far out in the countryside with a nostalgic smell of manure that by all means should be disgusting, but only brought fond memories of childhood visits to the motherland. No sooner had the front door shut when, out of coincidence, I looked up. Then, we all looked up. It was the night sky.

An uncharacteristic silence filled the space. You live your life day after day, sometimes you forget that there exists a world outside your confined space. We all stood there for a couple of seconds, in awe. Slowly, we started walking again, but we never quite stopped looking at the sky.

With only distant crickets and swaying leaves to muffle our boisterous laughter and talking, we wandered, looking for a lake a friend told us was nearby. Manoeuvring about in the dark, with only our phones to light where we step, trying to avoid the muddy patches, wet grasses and misplaced rocks. From what I could only surmount to extreme luck, after a couple dead-ends and wrong turns, we stumbled upon a path that had been nothing but grass, which as we walked, seemed to turn to dirt, then to gravel, and finally to rock. By then we realised where we had reached the lake.

We sat ourselves down by the rocks at the waterline and laid our heads down. I noticed a peculiar arrangement amongst the stars. It had seemed as if there were three stars aligned perfectly in a row.

"What is that?" I said while pointing.

"That's Orion's belt." He replied.

"Oh. So that's what it looks like."

We talked for a while but naturally our voices began to fade to a halt. Complete silence as our heads rested against the bare rock, no wind, no crickets, nothing, not a decibel to be heard. I swear for a moment, the moon and the stars shone brighter than ever before and the night sky looked as clear as day.

×

It was once known to me what I wanted to do. Now, nothing is known to me, except that I know nothing.

Days pass by, clouded in a misty haze, living each as they arrive. The realisation dawned upon me with a weight almost too heavy to bear. I am lost. Tomorrow, I usually know what I'm doing and within the next week I have a faint idea of my plans, but next month? The next 6 months? Next year? Ten years? Nothing.

As I grow older, the path that lays beneath me has slowly changed. Branching paths are blocked off and doors are slammed shut, meanders in this winding road become all the more straighter, the next step and the next, walking forward without comprehension, without passion, without purpose, in a straight, monotonous line.

I'm afraid of what's ahead of me, but I am too apathetic to move away. For better or for worse, I have resigned myself to continue walking down this path, only hoping, that the end is beautiful and that the journey will be worth it.

×

I've been on the internet since a young age. Retrospectively, too young. Nevertheless the internet has been an inseparable part of my being, yet the one thing I make sure to do is to have as quiet a presence online as I possibly can.

I'm a private person. While the doors of my home stay open, it is my door that stays shut. Of course, that doesn't stop people from coming in unannounced as often is how parents and siblings usually are. This privacy means that I have little to no compulsion to share my thoughts or to comment and reply online. Even the most egregious rage bait has yet to make me move. This privacy, however, also means that I have no desire to bring attention to myself and the very thought of being perceived in ways that I have not purposefully projected, brings a great sickness to my being. As a result, I feel that I've squandered a lot of my university experience, keeping to myself and friends that I made early on, not expanding or seeking sociability elsewhere.

Late last year, I experienced a moment that made me feel as if I truly had to change, to be more friendly, to be more open, to challenge myself, face my problems and rectify my past mistakes and regrets.

I had a presentation for one of my university modules. Worth about 25% of our grade. Me and my friends grouped ourselves together and had to present a poster that we had made. I had to wake up at 6 am and had only gotten a measly 2 hours of rest. As usual I woke up, more tired than ever, and routinely checked my phone.

Henry Kissinger dead at 100 plastered all over Twitter, I thought that evil bastard would never die! A moment of exasperated celebration came over me, only to be brought down to Earth by an onslaught of text messages in the group chat regarding our presentation. I readied myself and headed off to University, I remember thinking that the clothes on my body hugged just a little bit tighter than they usually do. I remember the room was a median sized classroom with not enough chairs and tables for everyone, lined in rows across a grey-blue, chequered carpet flooring. We displayed our posters onto the wall with blue-tack and the adhesive had failed on us, leading to a dishevelled angle. You might think this story's about the presentation, but by a matter of miracles, it went decent enough. No, this story is about the eyes.

I laughed with my friends, I cracked jokes with my friends, I showed emotion, and that's when all hell broke loose. Peering eyes seared their gaze onto me from the corner of my own. I looked to see who it was, only for them to have turned around just as my own head did the same. An innocuous thing, but with grave proportions. It sank me. I felt as if weights were tied onto my limbs and I was pushed into the ocean, slowly drifting into the blue-black cavernous abyss, gasping for air as my lungs filled with water. What did they see? What do they think of me?! As I sank in this ocean, I sank deeper into my chair, sank even deeper into the train seat, and sank the deepest in my bed. Funnily enough, looking back, I don't think they were even looking at me.

While in bed, where I do my deepest thinking, I thought, what a shame it would be were I to die before my time and there was nothing to tether me to this world, only to be forgotten in a single generation, maybe two if I'm lucky. To have only a handful of friends come to my funeral and the ones that do come, to have only a ghost of an outdated memory of who I am because I didn't bother to keep friendships going once we no longer met everyday in a classroom or at lunch. I want more for myself and I want more from this world, but it will only come if I put my hand out, and take it.

I know for certain I will have regrets, and to be honest I've accumulated a few right now. What's important however, is that I try. For even a step forward is still progress.