Karl's life

My sister called me today. “How are you?”, she asked.

I was sitting on the sofa, the window behind me wide open. It created a draft with the window in the corner of the kitchen. It was a hot New York day and every few minutes a gust would roll through the room and over my clammy skin.

I was reading a book by one of my namesakes. It was Karl Ove Knausgaard’s autobiographical novel and was the second book of the series. He leaves his wife, moves to Stockholm and meets a new woman name Linda. They have a child. He resents his life. All he wants to do is read and write but he has to care for his child and look after his irritable wife and her drunk mother. He is obsessed with national identities and laments the sterilization of modern life. I don’t think he’s a good person. But he would be the first to admit that. And that’s why I like him.

“I’m good, just sitting on my sofa reading,” I responded.

“You sound happy, what book is it?”

“Just one I got off the bookshelf in the apartment, actually there is a passage in here I underlined I think you would really like”

I flicked through to find the paragraph about how people crave the stiff rules of a bourgeois lifestyles because it takes away the pressure of choosing what to do with the infinite opportunities presented by life. Like a heroin addict that only thinks about finding the next dose. It’s a prison but a relief for those that fear the responsibility of thinking for themselves.

My sister and her partner were in a difficult period. Her boyfriend Jamie wanted to priotise earning enough to send their future kids to the ‘right’ school. Still in her twenties she thought it was too early to fall into the designated roles their parents expected of them. I thought this passage might spark some insight in her. That’s why I underlined it.

“You made a mark in someone else’s book?”. She hadn’t listened to any of what I read out.

“Well, yeah I always underline important passages. That’s how I read books?”

I couldn’t understand how I had done anything wrong.

“But it is not your book, you defamed a stranger’s book. I would be horrified if someone came to stay at my house and took a pencil to all my books.”

Defamed? I thought to myself. I had spent hours and days reading and then carefully underlined the passages that meant the most to me. How is that defamation? It is it the opposite. It is dutiful, respectful, thoughtful. At worst I thought it was neutral, at best I thought my landlord would be pleased someone had paid such close attention to a text that presumably had some importance to him.

I argued back. “But I am not just a house guest, I am renting the apartment and he consciously left all of them here. He lent them to me and expects me to read them?”.

Something was welling up inside me. The embarrassment had started as a small ball deep in my chest, but grew larger as the conversation continued. I grew clammier. How had this never crossed my mind? Yet it would “horrify” my sister? Someone who grew up in the exact same household as me. If I couldn’t tell the difference between defamation and care, what else had I got wrong?

Was it overly familiar when I hugged my friend’s Mum last weekend? I had only just met her and had hugged everyone else on the way out. It would be disrespectful not to hug her, but it felt a little awkward. She was an elderly Jewish lady? Does that matter? Surely not? Everyone hugs regardless of whether you think Jesus is the son of God. You can’t shake hands, that would be too formal. And a kiss definitely wouldn’t be right.

“You should go back through the book and rub out all of the underlines,” my sister recommended.

It didn’t matter what I thought. If she thought it was defamation, there was a chance he would think the same. But there was no way I was going to spend an hour of my day rubbing out wobbly pencil lines and the brackets around paragraphs I have already forgotten existed.

“Nah, I’m not doing that, I doubt he will ever read it anyway,” I responded.

I was walking down the street to the office this afternoon when I saw a couple walking hand in hand towards me. I noticed them from fifty meters and stared at them for the entire 30 seconds they approached. They didn’t acknowledge me at all. They couldn’t give a shit what I was doing. They were only thinking of each other. And that’s why I smiled.

The man’s left hand was holding her right. His pale face was hidden behind large sunglasses. He was taller than her, wearing black jeans and a white shirt that was cut off at the sleeves. The frayed edges of the shirt had turned in on themselves. His skinny arms extruded from the gaping holes and were almost entirely black with ink. No shapes were identifiable, just a few dots of his white skin glaring below.

His hand gripped her’s firmly. Her arm had just a scattering of tattoos. The expanses of uncovered skin made them recognisable. A dove with an olive branch in its beak. A shattered mirror with a woman crawling out. An apple hanging from the branch of a tree. “Biblical, self reflective, hopeful”. I thought to myself.

Then I thought about how they met ? Whether they had the tattoos before? Or if she got them to impress her boyfriend? In the early throws of a relationship anything seems sensible, everything romantic.

I have three tattoos. One to impress a girl that never loved me. One to impress a girl that once loved me. And one to distract myself when that girl stopped loving me. I smiled all the way to the office, the peak of my cap shielding my eyes from the gentle sun and the cup of green tea warming the palm of my hand.

I am aware of the noise in the street. The hum of the traffic is supported by the chirping birds. Then a horn blares out. Followed by a scream of a man. He’s a annoyed but not hurt, probably some cyclist trying to skip a light. Now I am definitely awake. My headache confirms that.

It is a tight one. It wraps all the way around, starting under my eyes, creeping up my nose to my forehead and drilling into my temples. I don’t feel well rested. I reach for my phone to see the time. I know it is going to be too early because of the low light and ache in my body. “6:45am”. One text, from my brother. “Mum says you are going to be back next weekend?”

I think about responding but decide not to. Each morning I expect to see something on my phone. Reaching for it is the first thing I do. It gives me a thrill that someone has thought of me while I sleep. If there is nothing there, I assume that no one has thought of me. Which is odd because I think of people all the time without messaging them. “I miss you”, “I don’t like your girlfriend”, “I love your girlfriend”, “I think I am better than you”, “I am jealous of you”, “I am scared of the day you will die”.

I know this headache will recede. It always does, I just need a coffee and a glass of water.

This is my diary. I will write here everyday. I have always wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere outside of my head but never had the motivation to do it consistently. Making it public gives me that motivation. I won’t promote the blog. It is not about adding readers, boosting my self esteem or trying to look impressive. I will just be as honest as possible. I live in New York. I just turned 30. I am single. And I am sitting on my couch looking out the window at the One World Trade Center. Whenever I look at that building I think about where I was when the towers came down. I was seven years old and at school in England. My mum picked me up and explained what had happened. She was distraught. But I wasn’t sad. I didn’t understand.