Shuckle

Back to Tumblr after a long while, I know this'll go over well.

There is hidden detail and richness in almost everything. One way to catch a glimpse of that richness is to observe the objects under a high magnification.

Going straight to the point, here are some arresting images and stacks of various tools, bristles, and a special drawing by yours truly.

Various Tools

The pointy tip of a generic screw. Looks a lot blunter than real life. Look at the metallic structure, the unevenness, how it has been worn and scratched with time. The light, the shadows, the detail, the small thread at the top.

The pointed-end of a small nail. A bit dark, obscure in the shadows, but you can still make out some of the details. The protrusion in the middle, the edges, the bumpiness.

A knob-like protrusion from the surface of a tool. Same old detail, same old intricacy, yet still fascinating.

A single coarse-brush bristle, at 100x magnification. Look at shape, the color, the shadows, the relatively smooth texture, the minute inconsistencies.

No Idea What This Is

The following is glass-like and fascinating. I found a piece of sticky, brown piece of trash on the table while I was working and put it under the microscope out of my infinite curiosity. However, I have no idea what it is. A piece of resin, a food particle?

Very chaotic, translucent, and glass-like. Look at all the tiny fragments, like ice-crystals, and the glazed, fuzzy feeling in them all.

Shattered, but look closely. Are those cracks, like shattered glass? Or bits of thread stuck in the goop? Look at the color, the light filtering through at different intensities at different places. A clear and wonderful shot.

Let’s set an harder challenge this time. Guess what this is and I’ll do a difficult timelapse. Though I can always deny your guess, the image being as obscure as it is.

Pink Bonsai — Or close Enough

Last article, I posted this picture at the end —

— and asked the audience to guess what it could be, setting myself the challenge to draw a microscopic tree if anyone guessed correctly.

Surprise, surprise. My friend guessed it not two seconds after I posted the article. I was not really expecting to draw such a small tree, but a promise is a promise, and @Bopitextreme, here’s your pink bonsai (or generic tree with red leaves, because I have no idea how to draw a bonsai, and I used a pink color pencil but the color registered as red so deal with it I guess).

For reference, this is the space I had for my drawing. This is one, single small-square from a cm-based graph paper. A single small-square.

Pink Bonsai, or close enough. I have no drawing skills to talk about, but anything looks good under a microscope. Just look at the texture, how the pencil strokes register at such a small scale, the white lines interspacing the color. I made the leaves by dotting the pencil repeatedly onto the paper, and it made those marks, those pattern.

Of course, this is one of many versions and trials, and it was tricky to get the texture right on the microscopic scale.

Behind the scenes coming soon, hopefully.

All images were viewed with an optical light microscope at 40x total magnification (Unless otherwise mentioned under the image). Images taken with a midrange phone camera, cropped, and adjusted. The first 7images are focus stacked. Focus stacking was done with Helicon Focus.

I was messing around with my microscope, observing any old thing I could get my hands on, when I plucked a bit of coriander from my parents’ salad. The resulting image might be one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.

It’s funny. The world around you is enormous beyond comprehension, formed of units minuscule beyond comprehension, and at all levels, at all scales, all of it, the tiniest of leaves and the vastest of nebulae, is beautiful beyond comprehension.

Today, we admire wet-mounted coriander and a small leaf I plucked from our potted plants.

(I apologize if some of the images are a bit too bright. I’m still learning the ropes of microphotography.)

A dancer’s pose. Bright and elegant, squashed under the coverslip, but still hearty. (40x)

Look at the veins. Look at the granulated greens, the specks that are darker, lusher, with more chlorophyll. Notice the slight fuzz, the curved edges, the vibrancy of it all. (40x)

Look at how cute this is. The wobbling edges, the shape, the bubbles that look like two eyes. Cartoonish and loveable, like a quirky Disney sidekick. But in all honestly, I have no idea what this is. This bubble-like structure formed when I squashed the coriander under the coverslip. My best guess is that a water bubble formed around a mass of fibers. (40x)

Close-up, still cute. The look it’s giving me is so innocent and unhurried. I like to imagine it wants to be my friend and take me on an adventure. I like to imagine it blinking those two flimsy eyes and gently floating towards me, calm, playful, full of life and spirit, unheeding of its fleeting and fragile existence. (100x)

Another fibrous bubble. Again, no idea what it is, but it looks darn cool beside the leaf. (100x)

Zoomed in. Looks weird. Veiny. Notice how the structures pop out, like veins, the spots of pinkish-red scattered about, and the grayness of the rest of it. I like it, but what is it? (400x)

Another leaf. Look at the vibrancy of the colors, look at the scattered pattern of the green. How the darker green is spotted and sprinkled over the lighter background. Look at the vein, like a highway cutting through a lush forest. Look at the light, the greenness, a bit unfocused, yet vital and sprightly. (100x)

End of the leaf. Lighter colors here. I love leaves. We all love leaves. We’ve probably evolved to do so. Look at the shape, the leafiness of the leaf, at how the vein fades into the leaf at the end. Simply Marvelous. (40x)

Stem end. Darker. Veinier. Thicker. Look at how the veins shoot off in different directions, at the symmetry, at the hollow where the stem would have fit. (100x)

All crystals were viewed with a compound, light microscope. Magnifications are listed alongside the pictures. Images were taken with a midrange phone camera and cropped.

I’m continuing to gawk at intricate structures under the microscope.

It’s easy to forget how tremendously complicated and fascinating even the banalest objects are. Under the microscope, we can attempt to appreciate the structures that form everyday objects and get a sense of the world around us. Yet, even the microscope can only capture a slice of reality, only go finger deep into the ocean; the value of magnification can always be cranked further up, and under each layer there will always be another.

Just a jumble of fibers, what else was I expecting? But look at what a wonderful jumble it is. How the fibers curve and intertwine. Sparse around the edges, tangling up in that one spot. At first glance, I thought it resembled a sci-fi creature; a spider, perhaps.

Notice how there are a lot of fibers at one spot, and only a few in others. Notice how most fibers are dark, but others slightly lighter. Notice how some are in focus, while some blurred and pushed to the background.

It was difficult to locate isolated fibers — they were all so caught up in each other — but I managed it. This image is lighter than the others, less congested, more breathable, and I like it.

This is cotton under a microscope, but with the lights turned off. Bizarre and eerie, isn’t it? It has a ghostly energy; the background has the vibe of a typical horror movie. I discovered this completely by accident (my microscope lost power while I was observing) and the results have been spectacular.

This is a grain of rice. I heard somewhere that you never eat the same rice twice, every grain is different, and you should enjoy the uniqueness of each grain as you eat. A wonderful notion, and I had to witness it myself. Turns out you don’t need a microscope to see that each grain is different, but they were a wonderful specimen either way. Sidenote: I can testify that mindfulness while eating is, indeed, magnificent.

Microscopes do curved structures injustice. Compound microscopes only focus on a single, ultra-thin layer. So when looking at a curved structure, you only see a single slice regardless of how well you focus, and everything above and below is blurred out. There has to be a technique to overcome this, I’ll have to figure it out.

A fragment of a grain of rice. Looks like a bullet. Look at the little dark spots, the tiny disfigurations. I like tiny disfigurations; they add character to an object.

Cooked. The image doesn’t do the structure justice at all. It’s barely a white blob. Resembles a mountain from some angles, but I wanted to share it to give you context for the following images.

Again with the light turns off. The eerie, uncanny vibe is back on. I especially like how more details splash out in this dark image than in the light one. You can get a clearer view of the texture; it looks gelatinous. The slimy ghost of a grain of rice.

The yellow shone in this image. Look at the formations at the edges, the ones in focus, and the larger, unfocused blob. Notice, also, the miniscule hairlike structures. What we eat here is almost never pure, and it’s up to us to change that.

All crystals were viewed with a compound, light microscope with an eyepiece magnification of 10x and further magnification of 4x (sometimes 10x), bringing the total magnification to 40x (in most cases).

Pink salt, also known as Himalayan salt, is a rock salt mined in the Punjab region of Pakistan and is said to have numerous health benefits. More importantly, when the salt is dissolved in water and recrystallized, it forms enthralling structures, as seen under a microscope.

I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Cubic, like Sodium Chloride crystals. It’s wonderful how even and uniform the structures are, chaotic though they sometimes look. Recrystallization is a process where solute (salt, in this case) molecules come out of a solution as the solvent evaporates and adhere to pre-existing crystals (seeds) to form larger crystals. It’s phenomenal that such a process results in such uniform shapes.

Look at the center, it’s hollow. There is an abscess, meaning the crystal did not grow from the inside out. Stupefying. Look at how the layers are stacked on top of each other, the fractures, and the smooth sections.

A chaos of cubes. Several crystals fused to form this jumbled patch. Looks as though I prompted an AI and it overdid the details. Look at the sheer complexity, intricacy, and detail. There is so much going on in nature that it’s beyond us, even, to fully grasp and appreciate something so minuscule it’s basically dust.

You can get lost in this field of crystals. Try it. It’s awesome.

Those structures look like pyramids viewed from the bird’s eye — or is that just me?

A greater magnification. Look at the shadow, at the symbol it represents, and the white cross it incidentally forms. I don’t know why nature arranges itself into uniform, repetitive, predictable patterns, but I am grateful that it does.

This is at a 400x magnification, ten times greater than the rest of the images. A tiny blade-end of a crystal, barely visible in the unfocused fog, growing from what looks like a string.

Is there a red fabric shedding thread in my room? Almost all my crystals have had some amount of red thread in them as impurities. I’ve already stated my views on impurities — wildly positive. I believe the string enhances the quality of the images, rather than disrupting them. Furthermore, this is one of the most convoluted crystals yet, the recrystallization process must have been tumultuous.

A small, fractured piece, floating freely by itself, just a little ways off from a (comparatively) behemoth mass.

All crystals were viewed with a compound, light microscope with an eyepiece magnification of 10x and further magnification of 4x (sometimes 10x and once 40x), bringing the total magnification to 40x in most cases; and 100x and 400x for one or two images.

We all love foam. It’s soft, fun to play with, and keeps our delicate belongings safe. Turns out, the structure of foam is miraculous once viewed under a microscope. This makes sense: foam is a fibrous matrix of interconnected tissues that is bound to be intricate and captivating at the microscopic level (and isn’t something I discovered completely by accident because I was out of crystals and was trying everything I could get my hands on).

So, ladies and gentlemen, foam, red and white.

So fragile-looking, so thin, so delicate. As if they’d crumple under the slightest touch. Which is true, they do. But together, with each of the fibers holding the other up, they are surprisingly resilient and possess a (relatively) high tensile strength.

A greater magnification. Hazy, as if the background is sheathed in fog. The microscopic ends stick out like the sharp blades of snowflakes. And the white, unfocused void, well, that is something I’m not ready to tackle yet.

A little closer up. See how some fibers reach out and interconnect into pentagons or hexagons. Notice how others only reach into minuscule oblivion, their ends sticking out. Yearning, perhaps, for a connection, or for an old junction long ripped apart.

I love repeating structures. The walls are almost hexagonal. The fibers light, thin, and interconnected. Almost representing bubbles or froth. Maybe a hive, or a zoomed-out, black-and-white image of a brain, the neural circuits and synapses a chaotic jumble, yet at the same time possessing a natural symmetry. Notice also the blurred structures in the background. This same image repeated layer after layer throughout the entirety of the foam, but the microscope could only focus on one layer at a time.

This is from a piece of red, packaging foam, pretty tough to the touch. My first thought was red onion cells, but it feels more akin to human tissue. Red-tinted. Thin and flimsy to the point of transparency. Delicate, yet possessing a sort of wafery complexity.

Wonderful, vivid, elegant, and red. Look at the tiny, fluttering lines, the fibers, the curvatures, and the overlapping layers. Look at the delicacy, the vibrancy of the color, and how the light filters through the bottom. Zoom in to see the tiny inconsistencies between the cells, bits of dust, probably, but who knows what exactly is trapped between those folds?

I used to do casual science experiments, still do. A year or two ago, I did an experiment that created a bunch of Sodium Sulfate (or Sodium Chloride, don’t remember exactly) solution as a byproduct. Due to absolutely forgetting that they were in my cupboard, the solution evaporated over time, forming thick, white crystals.

On Tuesday, my usual microscopy day, I decided to whip out those crystals instead of a new, planned-out batch. Turns out — they’re pretty bland. Translucent and white, they don’t offer a lot at first glance. Regardless, I managed to get some decent pictures out of them.

Sodium Sulfate (probably) at 40x magnifications. They look like stalactites, or geological structures out of a sci-fi planet. The shape exudes a sense of enormity, of strength and massiveness, despite being remarkably time and fragile. Note the blurred crystal at the back, the darker crystals at the front, and the tiny disfigurations.

This, like another similar picture, resembles a chaotic ocean washing onto a bright shore in a sweeping wave. There is a bit too much going on here, but I like the metaphor.

Not blue — I used a blue filter to give it more character. And it worked. Still Sodium Sulfate, but the color does it justice.

The original. Looking at it closely now, on a bigger screen, I wonder if it really did need the blue filter. Look at the complexity of the crystals, the waxing and waving translucency. The dark spots, the character. Maybe I was wrong, maybe it holds up on its own.

Dried out Calcium Hydroxide on a watch glass. Yes, I hate that it is mostly out of focus too, but look at the pattern. Look at the tiny dots, the spaces in between. Look at it repeating throughout the field of view and imagine it repeating throughout the entire watch glass. Nature is mesmerizing in its repetitiveness. Bunch of the same, yet all of them different. Tiny dots wonderfully collaged together, insignificant individuals making up something far greater and far more beautiful.

Same thing, same field, just a tiny impurity in the middle. I love impurities. A contrast in the regularity of a structure. It is often flaws that give something character. What is it? It is an unpleasant yellow, marked with even more unpleasant black. Yet, it is the center of the stage, distinct amidst the field of Calcium Hydroxide crystals, which, now that this is in view, fades inconspicuously into the backdrop, becoming the backdrop itself.

I recently purchased a Microscope. It might be one of the coolest things I’ve bought. I have a whole series planned for it, but let me just start with a short, simple post.

This is from one of the larger crystals. Look at the blue, the disfigurations, the sharp, uneven shards. What was so smooth to the eye appears a lot more rough, more stuck together. Look at the tiny shards exploding from the center, thrust like swords, crystal flowers budding in a conquered landscape. The blurred background, the circular view of the scope. My pricy investment was worth it.

The little ones are a lot more chaotic. A lot more jagged, asymmetrical. The sides exploding in whatever direction was possible, and then more sides from those sides, the molecules in greater flux, attaching where ever they can. But they're still beautiful, and I still love them.

Hazy. Taken at greater magnification than the others. Four cornered crystal, just like the larger ones you can see with your eyes. So difficult to see, but so pleasant to view. A tiny microscopic version of its much larger but still small cousins.

One of my favorites, but then again they are all my favorite. Look at it stand out from the one behind. Its long, like a hanging column. Almost transparent. Growing. Lovely.

Greater the resolution, more hazy and unfocused the picture. But just look at the complexity and order of the crystals. Look at the chaotic geometry. The bright blue. It takes so much physics to form the tiniest, unassuming object. All this and more needed to make all of this and more.

An end sticking out, forming, but dried out, it will never have the chance to form again. It looks like a dragon's head to me. Or just, molecules solidifying and expanding in this particular direction.

Hana didn’t believe in ghosts, she didn’t believe in vaccines and she didn’t believe in people who told her she couldn’t camp wherever it pleased her to. Camping was to come back to Mother Earth, to embrace the wilderness, to live life as was natural for humans to live. You cannot regulate nature and you cannot regulate Hana, and that philosophy had never failed her.

Except for now.

Sorely. Direly. Extremely.

She had no idea her hometown even had wolves. But it did, and in front of her growled the living, breathing, salivating, hungering proof of it.

The wolf licked her arms. In her desperation she kicked at it and missed. The wolf moved its salivating tongue to her ankles, decided they were tastier and sank its teeth in. Hana screamed.

She screamed. She screamed and she kept screaming and she screamed with such intensity and power that the wolf unsnapped its jaws and hastily took a step away. Even though the numbing pain, she was briefly awed at her sudden screaming superpower when the realization hit she had not uttered the ungodly shriek that had unnerved her predator. She had screamed the other screams, sure, but definitely not that one.

She forced herself to wipe the tears out of her eyes and followed the gaze of the wolf, and, even though she had known bears were a staple to this part of the world, she was still astonished to see one in flesh.

The wolf snapped at the bear, yelped, threw Hana a longing glance and, checking its priorities, made itself scarce. The bear seemed disinterested in Hana but thoroughly sniffed through all her belongings, including the candy bar in her pocket, and walked away with a few pieces of jerky in its claws.

Hana ended up making it back to civilization and got her ankle treated. The doctors said that she had been incredibly, astoundingly fortunate that the wound was not too deep, but they still buried her lavishly under antibiotics and painkillers, both of which she gratefully devoured.

Regardless of what you believe about greetings in the start of a letter, I genuinely hope this letter finds you in good health.

You’re right. I am not exactly doing well. I am writing this letter to thank you for everything you’ve done till now. Having you around brings a little joy to my otherwise numb soul. Your company is something I’ll cherish for whatever life I’ve left.

The letter you sent, though it was not your usual self, a little harsh, I might say. But, it had that warmth and care which I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before. Till this date, all the affirmations and consolations you gave, I’ll be very honest, I took them all in like a blackhole. They didn’t change anything, maybe, died somewhere inside me. But this letter came in like an epiphany. Something I had always known but still couldn’t make sense of, until I read your words.

I had been tiring myself, trying to be that one girl whom everyone loves. I’ve become a people pleaser. And yet, it seems to me that nobody acknowledges me. I’ve masked myself behind a hundred fake personas, did everything to the liking of whoever was watching me but to no avail. Everyone thinks that I’m a lost cause, a disappointment and I do too. You say you’ve seen a glowing potential inside me? No. It is all dark and empty in here, it always has been. And trust me, you were never a bad friend, don’t blame yourself for my shortcomings.

I am sorry I could never keep up with your words, I was not even worth wasting your time on. Nothing ever affected me. I know how frustrating this must be for you. I’m sure you’re annoyed with me.

But, I will no longer be a pain. Your letter struck me with something I always needed. A realisation that I have to stop being someone I’m not. And behind all these facades, no soul exists, it is completely hollow. Yes, that is the real me. And thus, I’ll finally embrace my fate.

Farewell.

The convention of writing a letter is to start with a greeting. An empty statement of hope towards the recipients' good health. With your permission, I will forego that convent since your previous letters have made it beyond obvious that you are already in a deplorable state.

I remember the day I made your acquaintance very clearly, and I remember it because annoyances have a way of embedding themselves irreversibly into my mind. I don't remember the place, the time of day, or even the occasion, but I do remember being annoyed. I remember being annoyed at the maddening, infuriating, and overall depressing quirk you foster. 

Even I- a shy, awkward, bumbling, unassuming child as I was- could sense that lovely potential glowing inside you. I could sense the monumental entity that would one day soar unimaginable heights. I could sense the person you could be, and was left to stand on the ground in involuntary envy and appreciation. As our acquaintance lengthened, I was forced to bear witness as you mercilessly throttled that Jan-to-be, as you asphyxiated her, suffocated her under an entire grave of misconceptions. Instead of nurturing her, you ousted her like a weed.

All your life, you have striven to be someone else. You have striven to be someone society would adore and accept. You have quailed when society looked down on you; celebrated when they praised you. But you have never, never considered that you could be someone else: you. 

I have been a bad friend. I consoled you in your despair and participated in your celebrations. Now I will do what I should have done in the first place. Slap you across the face (vicariously) and tell you what you need to do. I will tell you that you need to be YOU. 

I could go on a rant here, detailing and defending all my arguments for being you, for telling the leeches in this world to screw off. But a bucket of icy water is far more effective at waking a sleeper than all the gentle persuasions in the world.

Stop living as someone else, stop trying to make others proud. Make yourself proud. Period.

I hope this sting gets across to you, however much it may deplete me in your eyes.

Kind regards,

Your loving friend

Opalescent sky  Pregnant with a million moons  Of them, just one mine 

For you, the moon may be a peaceful chalice brimming with a tranquil joy. Or it may be a pale smile, its radiance a soft, soothing kiss. Maybe it is the harbinger of a sweet message; a postman delivering the longing gaze of a beloved staring wishfully in the same direction. Maybe it is nothing, just an insignificant apparition far away. Maybe it is everything, the entire universe condensed. Maybe it is evil; a hideous smear upon the charcoal sky. Maybe it is pure; an eternal sentry standing silent vigil. Maybe it is a symbol bearing a secret significance. Or is it simply factual? A mere hunk of rock falling in space. Or rather, is it all of them, at the same time? What is the moon, if not a million moons? Each the same in the night sky, but so different in each eye. Just another web, woven out of all our minds. What is the universe if not eight billion universes? Some encompassing light years, others only spanning a few, familiar blocks, and some just reaching up to that one unforgettable face; the same story written differently in each our lives. We gaze up to look at that one pearl embedded in the pitch black, but perceive it in so many contrasting colors. Isn’t it wonderful how our minds can interpret the same world in a billion unique ways? 

Myriad tales of  Unique minds; woven into  Endless string of time

The pouring rain inspires me to write. But it’s not really an inspiration, is it? Writing is not something you are inspired to do.

I was staring at the rain morosely, as one does when the relief of the promised holidays renders you purposeless, and with the clouds came the reminder to close YouTube and open a fresh Google Doc. Writing is almost like urging yourself to complete a freelance job that you aren’t exactly compelled to do, yet such that you must do it anyway. But it isn’t quite like that either, not completely.

Looking out of my fourteenth floor window, I was watching the puddles on the roofs of others ripple with the falling rain and my eyes chanced on a woman squatting, almost hiding, in the midst of a patch of potted plants. She had the exact figure and features of a woman, the exact make of a human, save for a lack of animation, save for whatever it is that gives an object life. 

She was a statue, and she scared the bejesus out of me.

I guess I have to write now. I must. Except that I don’t want to write about hoverboards or hovering aircrafts or birds that hover through the rain. I do not want to write about maglev trains that hover above their tracks and accelerate to unimaginable speeds or about mean tortoises or mean pelicans or words that do not mean what you think they mean or the mean that means average. 

The waning rain intensifies and my eyes keep stopping on that statue. I suppose it is an idol of some sort, it must be. The placement of it is peculiar. Why is it sitting in the middle of all those plants? That must be a tedious and cumbersome storage facility, having to sidestep all those branches to get at it; and if it is a dump, which it most likely is, why in the middle? Why not in the corner or on the other end where other clutter has already accumulated? Why an idol? Why there? I’m overthinking this. Its surroundings and my elevated vantage point makes it look larger than it really is. Maybe it's religious, a blessing for the plants perhaps. Maybe that spot is more accessible than it looks from my biased field of vision. Maybe it's a hiding place. Maybe its placers gave it much less thought than I.

The rain gives rise to other sights as well. It gives rise to similes and imageries and activities. It tints the window view of a city a certain emotion. But I don’t want to write about those either.

I have to write. Writing is an office, but not in the temporal sense. It’s like a cosmic duty, like an that angel exists to do the bidding of God, like a potato that exists- before anything else- to be a potato. It is like fulfilling a post not because you want to, not because of salary, not because you are forced to, but because you are. 

The rain has thinned to the point where the water falling down the drainage pipe makes a louder noise than the collective raindrops. Tangent: is rain just a collective noun for raindrops?

My eyes flit about, watching the rain and the city being drenched in it. I am mostly watching the rain, not the city; and my eyes mostly get caught on the two sights, the statue of the idol and the other sight, neither of which I wish to write about.

I see why sloth has been listed as one of the greater sins. Nothing gets done when there is a lot of time to do things. Nothing is particularly relaxing when you have a wide scope to relax. 

Can we talk about how easy it is to lose sight of the individual. You don’t watch a single raindrop. You don’t think of a specific person when you’re viewing the skyline of a congested city. You don’t hear one spectator when the whole stadium cheers. You might mourn the death of a person, but you never mourn the deaths of people when a large group dies as a whole. You mourn the day, the event, the tragedy, but never really the people, not specifically, not really.

The rain is now barely a drizzle, but from my seat in front of the laptop it might as well be sunny outside. I have grown used to the sight of the idol statue, though definitely not the idea of it, and the other thing has also ended, and thank God for it. 

The skies have cleared, the stream of clogged rainwater issuing from the drainage pipe and imploding on the ground below is now the majority of the background noise. It is a nice noise, a soothing noise, as close to a spring or a babbling brook as you can get in a city. The roofs are now clear of bathers, no one wants to bathe in a drizzle, and the idol statue still remains petrifying and largely unknown. 

“Sometimes others need it more than you!” snapped the heavily-coated, half-drenched, elderly woman as she hurtled into the taxi Noah had stopped.

“But my wife’s in labour,” his voice, calm and cataclysmic, did not penetrate the frosted windows of the accelerating taxi.

Hail buffeted his pajama-clad shoulders. He continued searching for another vehicle.

It felt good; only if I could’ve done more. If only I could have orchestrated an ending, a completion, a complete conclusion. 

I know it’s late. I know we don’t talk much anymore. I know that’s mostly my fault, entirely my fault. 

I know it has always been you who has had to bear the burden of an unfulfilling correspondence, it has always been you who has had to reconnect, to compromise, to comfort. And I know that it has always been me prioritising me over you, over everything. I know you have every reason to dislike talking to me; I know I have given you every reason to come to loathe our conversations, to come to detest the time we spend together. I know you have no reason to maintain this relationship. 

I have stretched your generosity too far, stretched it taut to its breaking point and beyond; stretched it, not letting you snap it even, paper thin to a dismal, pulpy wafer, like an over chewed strip of gum that I sucked the sweetness out of and that got stuck in your hair. 

I know I have no right to be here, I know I have to be gone soon, get out of your hair, leave you alone, maybe even for good. And I will, I will be gone shortly; but I know I won’t be able to bear leaving without seeing you one last time, without saying I love you one last time. I know you won’t say it back, would be ludicrous to expect you to, yet I know that I have to say it, that I must say it. I have to tell you that, despite everything, despite all the self-aggrandizing self-pity, despite all the conceited, self-centred selfishness, despite all the egotistical, self-obsessed, self-absorbedness, I have always loved you. In my own vain, self-important, narcissistic way, but I have loved you nonetheless.

I had to let you know that I still love you, and always will. 

Yes, I promise I’ll be back in time. I promise. Yes, honey, I promise.

Yes, I’ll be there before bedtime. Yes, yes, yes, I remember that today is father-daughter movie night, I’ll be back in time for that, love, I swear. We’ll watch the, uh, new, uh, that together. What is it that you kids are into these days? Yes! That!

No, no, don’t be mad, I’m sorry I forgot, I won’t again next time, I promise.

Look, daddy has a lot to fuss over at work, honey. I can’t remember everything your generation is up to. My brain can only process so much. 

Yes, I double-promise, I’ll be here in time. This venture is important for daddy, okay? Mr. Fukushima is a very, very important client, these Japanese always are. Think of all we can do with the extra revenue, we might even be able to pay off the mortgage for good. 

Sorry, sorry, no adult talk in front of young Fibi, I forgot. My bad.

I’ll be back soon, okay honey? Yes, I have your lucky lego piece right here in my pocket, snuggled up right up next to my heart. I’m going to need all my luck tonight. Yes, ice cream for movie night, gotcha, and sprinkles too? Sure, hun, let me get this deal and I’ll buy you a damn ice cream parlour.

No, of course not for realsies, don’t be silly, and remember to brush your teeth extra good tonight, I don’t want to come home and see you asleep with dirty teeth.

No, no, no I didn’t mean it like that! I will be back before bedtime, I promise; I just want those pearly whites to shine in your smile for ever and ever. So don’t you neglect brushing, young lady, and I mean that for always.

Yes, I’ll read you your bedtime story after the movie. Yes, yes, I do remember that your dolls need a new home, as well as some new friends. Maybe they should’ve paid their mortgage as well.

Nothing! Sorry! That was nothing, I promise.

Yes, yes, I’ll be back, I’ll be back pronto, back in a flash, I’ll be out this door and back again, back before you can say ‘I wish daddy was back’. How about that? Goodbye, darling. Lock the door tight, okay?

Okay! Babye now!

.

.

God, how will I make it up to her this time?

I could swear that I am forgetting something. My neurons are reaching for their neighbours but cannot quite form a connection. The neurotransmitters are being released from presynaptic membranes but are diffusing across all askew, failing to trigger the cascade of chemical information that leads to a thought, or a remembrance. I can feel the chain of my thoughts simply missing one, insignificant link, a connecting link of no real importance to the memory, but a chain with one missing link is no longer a chain, but two incomplete chains, and there I am simply unable to wrench the memory out of my mental drawers. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, forgetting something crucial as if it's completely peripheral.

I'm forgetting something.

But what?