My Wednesday

Wednesday. The third day. Reassuringly similar week after week. We think to ourselves: if I can survive Wednesday, I'll be halfway to the weekend. Magnificent Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday. Or, possibly, Miserable Monday, Terrible Tuesday, Woeful Wednesday. If Wednesday is a good day, consider the week a success. If not, please let me sleep until the vacations. Monday gets the week started, Tuesday makes it tick, but what about Wednesday? Every Wednesday, my alarm clock rings at 7:30 and I'm in the metro at around 8:45. Lunch at 12, lesson at 14:30. Quick trip home. Out to the pink main building of the Adult Education Centre at 16:30. Back home at 20:00, often via Alepa for dinner. Blogging at home.

Or is Wednesday always like last week? The routine is the same, but what happens between the lines of my calendar? Anything at all. I realise the walls on my metro station are a dirty yellow and wonder to myself how often they are cleaned. I am surprised by somebody on my way to fill up the water bottle before locking myself in the classroom and taking out my music. My friend persuades me to prolong my lunch break and have a cup of coffee with him. The sky is blue outside and I decide to see what movies are playing this week, although I know I won't go because the prices have gone up so much. I dash to Wayne's Coffee for some spontaneous gossiping and catching up on life. On my way back, my friend I've known for about 14 years waves at me vigorously - she is taking the escalator in the other direction and her wide open smile is contageous. At work, I have a chat with someone new and friendly while picking the seeds out of my mandarina.

It's very easy to think every day is just like the one before, but it's also wrong. Everyday routine is an important part of life, but so is our imagination. I might be standing in front of thirty people, telling them what I'd like to hear next, but actually I am somewhere else. I am exploring a memory my mind just crash-zoomed into for no apparent reason: I am 16, wearing a HomeBoy T-shirt and taking out my yellow Nokia phone from my new gray trousers, reading an SMS from the person I met on the escalators today. I am younger, telling my parents I never want to become a musician because musicians have to make movements which music and that looks idiotic, and now I am back in front of my choir and I laugh at what I have said as a child.

Wouldn't that be a nice idea, to meet yourself as a child and say look, this is what you're going to become. You're going to wear glasses and drink coffee every day. Your pet hamster will die in your hands next year, and at the same time you will fall in love, and when you're twenty your life will go through a significant change, and when you're a little older you'll suddenly find an ambition and determination in yourself that you don't quite yet have. You will meet someone on your way to a rehearsal and suddenly won't find the line between friendship and something more. Someone important will ring your doorbell and walk into your life just like that while you are cleaning your shower's drain, and then, later, in another country, you will do something very brave but the floor will fall from under your feet (but I can't prepare you for that). On a bright summer's day, you will say goodbye, get into a car and brace yourself for tears, but it will take some months before they come. Just before turning 24, you'll be reminded that plans are useless because your feelings can't be put on a map and this is a good thing.

Maybe one day, this will be possible, but I wouldn't know that yet. Next Wednesday will be just another Wednesday, but who knows what I will be able to tell myself then? Only one thing is certain: the alarm clock will ring at 7:30 and the sun will set a little later, which means I'll just catch the last rays of light on my way to work.

This post is for all my friends I never planned to meet and for everyone who thinks life is predictable :)