Coffee or tea?

I used to write morning pages in the past. Recently I've forgotten about them. So, here goes. The first morning page in like... a year? Or two?

This one is dedicated to the clerk in Heathrow Airport terminal godknowswhat, who sold me Chuck Palahniuk's Diary.

Ever since he got back home, Inderpreet had been feeling odd. Sure, he had enjoyed unpacking his stuff, going out with his old friends, and doing the same things he used to go for 24 years before he left. Now he was back, he was 26 years old, and all the things that were really fancy before, had somehow lost their shining surface, and left him with rust. And he never really liked antiques.

Inderpreet lived in a small flat with his friend, Tomalley. There were people who called him Tom Alley or T. O'Malley, but Tomalley was just Tomalley. Inderpreet called him Tomalley. Like Toe-Malley. Never Tom. Tomalley didn't look like Tom. Tomalley didn't speak like Tom. Tomalley just wasn't Tom.

During the two years Inderpreet had been gone, Tomalley had been living with an unhygienic rascal called Harrison. Eventually Tomalley got sick and tired of cleaning up Harrison's dishes and other dirt the guy kept leaving around, so the shock Inderpreet faced in his old apartment was, well, shocking.

Harrison had been gone for two weeks. Tomalley had thrown him out as soon as he had found out Inderpreet was coming back. He didn't know where Harrison had gone, and he really didn't care. Two weeks wasn't enough to clean after Harrison, and Tomalley gave up and prayed for Inderpreet's forgiveness.

Inderpreet forgave Tomalley and Harrison, but it was more like he didn't care about the mess, because the mess was just a tiny dust-covered corner in his life full of shock and disappointment.

He never liked returning. Going to new places was fine, if the coming back occurred in a week or two, like traveling. You go to a place, you come back with souvenirs, and you redecorate your life and show the pictures to your friends. Then you go to sleep and you're feeling happy that you've been somewhere.

The first time Inderpreet had been gone for a longer time was in high school. Spending a month in Germany as au pair in his cousin's friends's family had changed everything. Inderpreet had become restless. He hadn't liked the work much, because he didn't like children that much. He did like the feeling of being in a place where everything was new, though. He liked that he didn't have to go through all the places in a week according to a schedule he'd made so that he had time to see everything.

One month gave him time to actually live.

The next time was at the university. Inderpreet went to the University to study Fine Arts. After two years he added Psychology. Then he added some computer stuff. Then he took a year off, worked in the local arts museum and its café. Then he went back to the University, and decided to graduate, and ended up writing his thesis about coffee in life of the artists.

Inderpreet didn't actually like coffee. He was a tea person.

Inderpreet graduated at the age of 23. At the age of 23½ he sent an application for a job in Paris, but the message somehow ended up in Japan, and one morning just before his 24th birthday a Japanese woman with a really strong accent called about his application that seemed a bit strange, but interesting.

Inderpreet got on a plane the next month, trusting Tomalley with the apartment, saying he'd be back in a year or two.

And the two years passed, and Inderpreet found himself standing at the airport he had left two years ago, feeling that he had come back to his home country which seemed too familiar, like a distorted nightmare you had every night when you were a kid.

He had brought only one suitcase to Japan, and was surprised how he had actually managed to bring only one back home too. He had given up trying to fit all his life in a suitcase, because in the end everything was in his head, or at least on his computer, or at least he had donated all his stuff to Takashi-san, his workmate, who had a slight gambling problem, and despite his relatively high salary and late working hours was always out of money, and lived a very ascetic life without pretty much anything in his apartment. The first time Inderpreet had gone to Takashi-san's place after a night out, he had realised Takashi-san didn't have any furniture, and had only 2 pairs of chopstics, one glass, one coffee cup, and one rice bowl. Now Takashi-san has 8 rice bowls, 2 matching sets of tea cups for 5 people, plates, forks, knives, a frying pan, rice cooker and some extra mattresses. Inderpreet even gave Takashi-san his cook books, hoping the poor fellow would eventually learn to cook for himself.

The first morning Inderpreet woke up in his old bed back at his apartment, he kept staring at the ceiling for about 2 hours without doing nothing else. He was wondering how Takashi-san was doing, and how he himself would be doing, and how the light from the window looked so different than in Japan.

Tomalley knocked on his door a couple of times in the morning, apparently wanting to share a pot of tea, but Inderpreet was too tired and annoyed and most of all disappointed to be a social animal. The jet-lag wasn't that bad. The cultural difference was.

After the front door had closed, and Tomalley's steps headed down the stairs towards the street and work, and a pint after work, Inderpreet got up and made a cup of coffee.