Apricity

apricity;

            "It's been a long cold lonely winter... but here comes the sun." –The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun

The café is open until six on summer nights.

I stay there until it closes – after all, it's my only solace from the little pricks trying to pierce my bubble every so often.

The orange, almost pink, glow of the sun illuminates the surfaces of the wooden chairs and tables. The scant of coffee beans and vanilla icing linger in the air. It is absolutely silent – the animated conversations that once filled the lethargic air of the café disappear with the people who start them, like a fleeting memory.

Or so they think.

Apparently, it's impolite to eavesdrop into other people's conversations, even the most pointless, but my curiosity often overpowers my ethical standards.

            A list of products lined up on a stylish shelf near my table in the café.

A ceramic mug, $9.95.

Coffee beans in a crisp, decorated paper bag, $12.95.

A small gift pack, including a red and white tumbler and a box of English Breakfast tea, $14.95.

A large gift pack—basically a small gift pack, plus a black mug, $19.95.

Overpriced. Just like the superficial pleasures manufactured, wholesaled, and sold by human kind.

I'm starting to realize the double meaning of 'The Great Depression'.

            Saturday: At one thirty in the morning, I get a call from my mother. I'm still curious as to why she doesn't choose to call me at a more reasonable hour—maybe she's nocturnal, maybe she hates the sun and is now dedicating her life to live as a faux vampire now that she doesn't have to cook lunch for her daughter—but I decide not to ask. She'll scold me for prying in other people's business.

"I sent you something in the mail last week, did you receive it?"

"The invitation," I acknowledge – I remember being absolutely horrified when I found the gaudy card in my letter box, the words 'Our family invites you to their annual Christmas Party!' printed in gold on the front.

My invitation to the party is only one or many ironies when it comes to my mother.

"I expect you to be there," she says.

My whole childhood I have observed her ordering more than one hundred types of food over the phone for the entire night, her shrill panics echoing down the halls, reaching the thin walls of my bedroom. The Lady of the House only ever concerned herself with the fact that the French restaurant ten minutes away would not be able to produce three hundred servings of escargot in a day.

Saturday, 11 a.m., Advice on sleep from the National Sleeping Foundation.

They say that as you get older, you need less hours of sleep every night.

Four year olds should get eleven hours of sleep a day, while adults should get a minimum of seven hours in order to prevent sickness and malnutrition.

But by four, I slept like a nineteen year old.

By thirteen, I slept less than someone in their mid-forties. 

Now, I am twenty-three. I am living in a world of hyper-awareness, hyper-markets, hyper-growth and hyper minds, made evident by the sea of golden lights illuminating the CBD outside my apartment window.

Yet I spend my nights writing irrelevant nothings like this until I see the day's sunrise.

            Saturday: The day that I discovered the word apricity.

I find it while reading over a short story composed by a classmate from university, about a relationship as it blossoms after an encounter at an amusement park. A story destined to end with an innocent kiss between the two main characters as they enjoy the ferris wheel during a sunset.

"They didn't talk—instead enjoying the ride in a wavering silence, as a comforting feeling of apricity overcame them."

I remember grabbing my dictionary from my bookshelf, stroking my thumb along the edges of its yellowed pages, before searching for the word in question.

n. the warmth of the sun.

I think that it would be better to say "the warmth of the sun" rather than "apricity". Simplicity is enjoyed by all.

            A Monday, eight p.m..

I take a taxi home from Sydney's west after an expo. The taxi driver is a Middle Eastern man, with a beautiful wife and four kids. He lives in a lovely house—red brick, a wide front yard scattered with rubber balls and hula hoops. Treasures in childhood, rubbish in adulthood.

Of course, he doesn't tell me this. There's a photograph of his family on the taxi's dashboard, which he glances at occasionally as he drives. I find the private gesture heartwarming.

I call myself an adult, but still I find myself enamoured by the fleeting tunnel lights.

Sometime after I get home from the expo.

Miscellaneous thoughts of mine fill the gaps between great chunks of observation and fleeting admirations.

Has the Belgian café across the road taken it easy on its abominable prices? Perhaps a coffee with a big dash of chocolate could prepare me for another day of droning professors and far-reaching conclusions about literature, but it will have to wait until a regular doesn't cost more than four dollars, because if I buy one now, I'm going to have to move back to my parents in about a week's time.

Will Mum mind if I throw her invitation in the bin? Oh, who am I kidding? The escargots are her main concern, just like all the other years. She won't even realize.

As usual, they are questions left unanswered.

            Next Monday, 3 a.m..

Perhaps I have an obsession with 'apricity' that I never knew about.

Perhaps my all-nighters that start with the sunset and end with the sunrise is my first exhibit, followed by my extended coffee breaks until closing time because the sunset always looks best somewhere facing west—the café.

But not only that.

There has to be more.

I can't pinpoint it.

Wednesday, 2 p.m..

Perhaps.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Apricity is a brilliant word. Both sensual and abstract, basic and complex, permanent yet ephemeral; a true oxymoron in concept.

The warmth of the sun on your skin. It is certainly physical, especially when it brushes the tiny hairs on your arms, like a gentle mother's touch. But I realize that it far transcends the physical; it is universal in how it can so easily represent the pleasurable savors of life, often overshadowed by the dominance of supply and demand, the 'price' of happiness, the over-consumption of feelings that are converted into something commercial.

Apricity tells me that amidst this social, hyper-everything world, that the sun—or the light—can offer as much rapture, if not infinitely more, than an overpriced Belgian coffee.

It tells me that the sun is not and will never be a product—rather, it produces and has produced both the commercial world we have become, and the glimpses of happiness that still remain in conjunction.

It tells me that my "irrelevant nothings" render me less political, less insipid, less serious, and more thoughtful.

And I like that.