Kaut Kad
The Word That Arrives on the Way Out
Someday is the word that arrives after you have already been there for a second.
I was at a gas station on the way to work, phone at my ear, finishing a call while the pump was running.
Next to me, two men were standing by their motorcycles. Not young. Grey hair, a stomach, grey stubble. Two classic bikes. They were smoking and talking. Slowly. As if the rest of the world was somewhere else.
I was on a call. They were not.
I was in a rush. They were not.
One space. Two tempos.
For a second, I was one of them. That happens to me sometimes. I see a scene and I place myself inside it for half a breath. I was the second biker. The phone was not at my ear. The road was waiting.
Then reality came back. The pump. The call. The clock.
And the word arrived.
Not in Russian. Not in English. In Latvian.
Kaut kad.
Someday.
I did not choose it. It came on its own, on the way out of the scene, not on the way in. It was the sound of a door closing behind me.
I noticed something about that word. It belongs to the people who are still on the way.
The two men by the bikes were not saying it. They were not thinking about someday. They were already there. Their someday had already arrived. That was why they could afford to stand still.
Most riders I see on classic bikes are not young. For a long time I thought that was a coincidence, or a stereotype. Now I think it is something else. It is a form of proof that this point is reachable. Just not quickly.
"Kaut kad" is said by the one who is not there yet.
The one who is there is quiet, and smokes.
That is the part I want to remember. "Someday" is not distance. Distance is when you have not seen something yet. "Someday" is when you have already been inside it for a second, and stepped back out.
You cannot say "someday" about something you have never seen and you do not know about. You can only say it about something you have already touched, briefly, and put down.
Which means every "someday" I have is a small piece of evidence. Of something I have already been, for half a second.
I drove to work. The call continued. The bikers stayed at the station with their cigarettes.
And the word stayed with me for the rest of the day.