been a while, and i don't know what to talk about. except i had this feeling that maybe i want to come back. i thought of jazz, because my phone beeped, and i was asked in a text message, 'what is jazz p? i mean, what is it to you?'

i was in the tube-lit kitchen in my house, playing with tea leaves, waiting for the water to boil before i put them in. 2 AM it said, and i thought, hmm. jazz. in the night, everything seems much warmer, when you think of it. the cold white glare of the tube light is not important, except it gives you a headache. i hurry hurry hurry the tea, and i feel like my mind's fractured enough to imagine another person, who is probably me, and who loves me too. i feel that now, a quiet combustion of atoms, as they swirl warmth around me. what are we if not chemical reactions with ourselves?

with jazz, everything seems so much more. much darker, much warmer, much moodier, it's an in-between moment. i can't listen to it in the morning. in the morning it makes me restless, and in the night it makes me wish for company that can never be.

but in the space between evening and night, what some people call late evening [just the way they say 5 pm is late afternoon]. it's when the evening light is fading, shadows lurk between orange-gold sunlight, and lamps are being lit by the beaches, and the roadside cafes are readying to tap into a more enthusiastic service routine, jazz could live inside me, and my feet will fall on the wooden floor in exact time. laughter will be heard floating over it, and again, floating over the laughter will be the the music. not like grand mountain ranges rising in crescendo, but an ebb and flow of waves around rocks. sometimes it changes, and crashes into the rocks with a ferocity you were not expecting, and then it murmurs and soothes your nerves by stroking your skin with its warmth.

it's the moment in your affair when it occurs to you that something is just right, and enveloping you in a warmth that is all chemical reaction, but you just created it out of nothing but some jazz. some throw-your-head-back-and-laugh laughter. some touch me and we'll combust moments. smiles slanted in the afternoons that lead to them. glasses clink around you, quiet laughter floats up over the smell of whiskey.

that's jazz. it's whats in between evening gold and night black. it's twilight. it makes sense.