So I dig so much on this ordinary day that I fall asleep, with my head bent over my iPhone which sits idly besides the drink of the day. Moments later, however, I wake up again, this time looking down at my navel, instead of the Facebook, and the dirt that has gathered in its folds for what could be centuries, which I have forgotten about. Soon I get absorbed in digging my nail into my navel and pulling out the dirt, but soon I realize I need something sharper and more pointed than my own nail. I separate a piece of pineapple attached to a small umbrella securely stationed on the edge of my glass, throw the pineapple into my drink of the day to drown, and use the sharp end of the umbrella’s handle to dig the dirt from my navel.
Meanwhile, I continuously interrogate myself about my identity. Who was it? I ask. That girl who went on hunger strike for three days to resist revealing the name of their neighbor’s teenage boy who dropped love letter into their backyard? The woman who changed her last name to her maiden name when she divorced her husband? The other woman who changed her name when she moved to this country? Or this woman who is digging deep into her navel? I want to know her name. I need to know who the doer behind the deed of digging is.
But I don’t know—perhaps because it is an ordinary day, so ordinary that no one wants to associate her name with it. And as long as the digger continues refusing to reveal her real identity, my act of digging cannot be grafted to me as the actor. Nevertheless, I continue questioning this nameless woman in my scattered mind until my mouth, as frothy as this drink of the day, is shaped up, like my navel—until the digger is lost in the web of holes, until the questioner who wanted to know who she is in this country is buried under this alien ground, until the woman waking up this morning with the full knowledge of the world except her own name is drawn in this virtual day and cannot seek this last piece of information so as to identify herself in this littered world as a strewn, ordinary person.
Only at this very moment when the digger is completely drown, I stop feeling scattered. I then raise my eyes from the drink of the day, not needing to have a name, not needing to be settled in any country, not needing to identify myself with some people while distinguishing from some others, not needing to be someone identifiable—not needing to be somebody at all.
This is when I find myself connected to the day which no longer feels ordinary. No matter who I am or what my name is, it is a fine day.
I feel so good about myself that I am going home to make my own drink of the day and invite the world to come over to party and celebrate the day together.
