Hum Tum, passim. Meaning: scattered everywhere. Meaning: if you look closely enough at the margins of any ordinary day, you will find the faint trace of an index finger, pointing from me to you. And back again. End of Index.
You looking away from the lens. Me looking at you looking away. It’s the most honest thing we ever made. The index classifies it under: Truth. Index Of Hum Tum
An index is supposed to be orderly. Alphabetical. Clinical. But Hum and Tum — Us and You —refuse to be sorted. They bleed across the columns. They refer the reader to every page, and to no page at all. Hum Tum, passim
A classic entry. Page twenty-three of our internal lexicon. You said rain was a melancholy of the sky; I said it was a celebration of the earth. We didn’t speak for three hours. Then you pulled me outside, and we stood getting soaked until we forgot who was right. The index here is not a word, but a wet sleeve touching a wet sleeve. And back again
It sits at the very back, like a forgotten appendix. No page number. Because we never turned to that page. But the index lists it anyway, in faint, ghostly type: Love. See: Hum Tum.
“I can’t sleep.” “Neither can I.” That’s the whole entry. It appears twice in the index—once under Loneliness , once under Home .
