Breakfast

"And how do you think the word 'breakfast' came about to be?"

The music dims to a hush at the intrusion of the third party. Louder. Your hands reach out to your headphones and turn up the volume; the thudding, eccentric beat of the music replaces the palpitations of the organ residing in your chest. This is done all the whilst your body rotates in an awkward, shuffling motion away from him, your eyes never once straying from the page filled with words disarrayed in black, inky scrawls.

"Well?" he probes in that maddeningly jolly voice of his. "Do you?"

You answer his question by acquainting him once more with the sight of your frigid back, hair that tangles like copper filaments, and a simmering -smouldering- silence.

"Come on, just take a guess. One! It'll be the last of it, I promise!"

Seconds. One, two, three pass.

"So...?" He trails off, drawing out the 'o' like the puerile child you know him to be.

You can feel him gazing at you expectantly and you sigh internally as one does when Gregory Hude makes any course of action. His jovial, bubbly ways irk you so- the way a single red ball amidst a sea of white balls may irk an Obsessive Compulsive. You are the dark, and He, the stubborn, scintillating star that even the dead of night can't dim.

The compacted library is closing soon, too soon. It seems to you that the entire length of your stay in the far corner, well-hidden upon entering, has comprised of mindless babbles, trivial anecdotes and loathsome interrogations- a far cry from the anthropological, semiotic and ethno-science that is supposed to occupy your time. Now, all you can make out of these ethnographic studies of conversation is why, why, why, he is still here, shilling out questions of 'faith', 'life', 'donuts' (donuts or doughnuts?) and now 'breakfast'.

You feel the movement of his gawky body as he stands up and bounces- for his walk is never just a normal walk, but akin an energetic kangaroo- behind you, before entering your line of vision once again. His raven, bedraggled hair flops to a still, like an echo gradually fading into a silence.

"Are you really just going to ignore me? Again? For the umpteenth time!"

Admitting to defeat, you start piling up your notes, concluding it futile in attempting to study any further, and gather the rest of your belongings before making your way towards the exit.

In your brisk walk out of the library, you hear a short gabble of protest on Gregory's behalf at the abrupt dismissal, which is soon cut short by him diverting his attention towards a group of rowdy boys. Cheers roar in the background at his greeting, and it isn't long after before you, like the aforementioned echo, dwindle away in his airy, momentary span of attention.

***

Like your father, your sense of direction has never been very good. And as the years loses its youth, you slowly, but surely, begin to lose your way again. Like a compass that has lost its electrons in the magnet; the fine, delicately balanced needle refuses to align itself back with the north-south magnetic field of the earth. Life goes haywire as time races around the clock, and the gentle hushes of the waves grow louder and louder, crashing against the shore thunderously like a tsunami threatening to break through. A constant, gnawing uncertainty grows. A constant, gnawing desire. You wonder if madness is a condition of living in reality, especially when the idea of wanting to be more like Gregory Hude starts chipping away your last, tenuous grasp of sanity.

***

Someone like Gregory Hude is someone you are not.

Black and white are polar-opposites, yet the colours side by side create a beautiful contrast. It is timeless, original and compatible. Whilst you and Gregory Hude are opposites, you are not like black and white. There is a dash more complexity and a dollop more ambiguity in the mixture than that. The two of you are rather like the opposing ends of a spectrum, where it can never be merged. In layman's terms, if one wants to get from point A to point C, they need to understand that there must be a linking point B, and there is no point B in the mix of Gregory Hude and you.