On a Quest for the Floating World
I’m on a quest.
After months of sleepless nights, tossing and turning, and talking in my sleep, I’ve discovered that I’m on nothing more than a quest.
I used to blame my curse of insomnia on the distressing feeling that there’s something out there that’s missing in my life; that some psychological bomb submerged in my head was constantly ticking and waiting to go off.
The strangely obvious truth, however, is that the root of my restlessness was insanely evident all along – I’m on a quest.
I’m on a journey to discover “The Floating World”.
You may not quite know this world that I relentlessly yearn for. Yet oddly enough, you’ve been there. All of us drift to the floating world night after night, endlessly seeking its comforting marvels.
The Floating World is a world we all escape to when the sun dips past the horizon and the moon glows like a lantern in the sky. It’s a world where we are all free of the physical world, its responsibilities and the trivial concerns that gray our hair. In this surreal “place”, we leave behind all our problems, work and stress. It is where your soul can drift freely and mingle wherever the wind may carry it.
You don’t plan.
You don’t think.
You don’t worry.
You just…flow. You flow wherever the crying wind may lead you.
Every night, we all escape to this world in one way or another. We have to. Some drift further than others. Some take longer to get there than others. Yet when that sun comes down, we all yearn for it. We thirst for the quenching feeling of unadulterated relaxation and peace of mind – we gasp for oxygen.
You may think I’m crazy.
You may be one of the people who don’t believe in its existence. That’s fine. But I want you to go out tonight. I want you to wander out into the streets, the coffee shops, the bars or even the beaches and do nothing more than…observe. Watch as the people slowly seep in from work or school or wherever they maybe coming from. I want you to watch them loosen their ties and their characters as they mingle, laugh, drink and smoke.
You can feel it. You can see it as the sheesha smoke coils and weaves to break free and tail the wind. You can hear it in the laughter and the way the wind howls as it changes direction. You can almost taste it as wine glasses cling in cheer and celebration. You can watch it all happen from your balconies or feel it through your music…and before you know it, suddenly you’re drifting too.
It exists. It exists in that barely tangible place between dreams and reality, where all the drawn lines are blurry.
Every night when the dusk creeps in upon the land and the mad world we live in, I cannot rest until I go out into this world. I will not sleep until I’ve had a chilling cup of coffee or have liberated myself with the bubbling of sheesha pipes and the course of the wind. I won’t rest at ease until I step out onto my balcony and observe the world from above, letting my thoughts drift out with the open air.
I seek it.
I long for it.
And I must capture it before the sun again rises, and robs us of our freedom.
That, my dear friends, is what I am on a quest for. That is what I yearn for. I yearn to capture it and its beauty. That is why I am sleepless. I seek to seize it, indulge in it, before it dissolves and surrenders itself to the sun and the burning morning light.
I am an artist of the floating world, and I am compelled to bring this world to you.
Join me.
“The best things are put together of a night and vanish with the morning, what people call ‘the floating world’…the finest, most fragile beauty an artist can hope to capture drifts within this world after dark…” -Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
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