That's blasphemy.
JiayingAm just trying to do the right thing; trying to do the writing.
"Let me live, love, and say it well in simple sentences." --Sylvia Plath
— Gertrude Stein
Have not written in a long time. Seems to me writing’s become a side dish. A side dish to busy schedules in school or work, best served in between classes and deadlines, quiet mornings and lonely nights, heartbreaks and angry outbursts.
Right now I’m walking while writing this. Sometimes, it feels as if most of the writing’s done when I’m not writing, if that makes sense at all. Maybe writing cannot take centerstage. Perhaps we cannot just sit down consciously and do the writing. I don’t know but I’m beginning to believe ever so strongly that the process of writing should be something that’s running constantly at the back of our heads, left to its own imagination and autonomy to steer its own direction as it pleases. A process that requires more marinating of luck, ideas, and epiphanies than actual execution. Maybe. I’m not too sure. But hopefully I’ll find out the secret to writing soon enough.
Sometimes when you’re just sitting down doing nothing at all, minding your own business, you start to feel this nagging discomfort in your fingers. You try to keep your fingers as far apart from each other but somehow it feels like the skin on your hands is just always a little to close for comfort (but to what you’re not too sure) and you tell yourself maybe you’re doing this all wrong. So, you try to put your mind at ease by thinking about something else or moving your fingers vigorously, interlocking them with hopes that somewhere between all that contact lies the answer to that strange feeling that makes you want to squirm the more you think about it. You know it has to do with your mind—this mind is playing games with you. There is no discomfort—but how is it that I now feel the exact weirdness in my toes. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel a little crazy when that happens—imagining phantom sensations and all that madness. But I guess the visceral body has more power than I would like to acknowledge, and that makes it slightly harder for me to mind my business. Fine. I acknowledge you dear body and skin, now make this antsy feeling disappear. Be gone.
Too much discipline involved in writing. One needs to discover ways of chaining the mind down while keeping it open, all the while with your ass glued to the seat.
That, my friends, is the craft of writing.
It’s the time of the year again, when posting tumblr entries come easier than the words required in my word document. Essays, Ass says (what). It’s fine. But I swear the blinking cursor is mocking me and my lack of productivity. I will show you, you crazy cursor which I chase in vain because you and I, we will never be done. We go way back. But you unsentimental fool, erasing words like they never meant a thing. Your impatience annoys me. Can’t you wait? Must you fidget and do that tick-tock dance while empty words and pointless letters dance around in my head, struggling to find their way out?
I hate you, blinking cursor.
Once you find yourself a good editor, never let him/her go.
Perhaps the muse which I thought never came had in fact graced me with its presence in the strangest of manners—this is not to say that I expected the muse to be orthodox in its visits—but I guess it’s always comforting to know that our muse is out there, somewhere. Suddenly, it makes so much sense why I am doing what I do—I love this. And even if too many people can’t see the sense in this, it does not quite matter. As long as I know and as long as you (my muse) know, I think we’re good to go for a long, long time. Stay with me. Grazie.
I don’t believe any one ever misses summer as much as when their hearts suddenly feel frosted with snow and they need that bit of warmth to start them up again. I don’t believe any one ever misses their summer smiles and happy tans as much as when they look at their lacklustre faces that have grown pale and tired long after summer is gone. I don’t believe that any one’s wanderlust ever grows into that hungry beast demanding and desiring more (of the past, and of the future) as much as when the eye which never learns revisits the time capsule of photographs. But I too don’t believe that missing is all that can be done, and missing is all that is left because mine is the insatiable heart which skips as many beats as need be, till my next awesome adventure.
Meanwhile, to remain grounded till my next flight (of fancy).
I guess some things never change. Somewhere in my thick skull lies the strong belief that I am a super-duper-essay-churning-machine-that-manages-to-get-good-essays-written-on-time, but as always, I need a little push or a kick in my face to get my rusty gears going. Ch-ch-chhh-chuck. I need to be struck by my Muse with some serious writing inspiration, and I think I need to be struck now. Or she could just whisper. It’s 1130 in the morning and I still have sleep in my eyes, and dream mist in my brains. I am officially a walking joke. Tomorrow I will be ushering fear to a brand new level if I remain where I am. Nowhere. If I be still, I am calm. Not in this case.
I need to get this right, and I will write.
After some brainfood. Triple-Nom.
I think people assume that with extreme happiness comes the complete void of sadness; that the two should exist on opposite spectrums on a linear scale of emotions. I think they are wrong. Sometimes one can get overwhelmed by this sudden surge of feelings that your heart feels like it has shrunk thrice its size but somehow at the very same time, it feels as if it has gotten three times larger; you are overcome by a series of strange impulses that run from your chest (it seems) all the way to your fingertips, like how a stroke should feel or something, I can’t be sure but it certainly feels that way at times—like the wrench of an heartache which has found its way mysteriously through your veins to your fingertips. It’s unwarranted, and so I think this visiting emotion should take its leave. Soon.
I should be able to articulate this in words so straightforward but I am tongue-tied. Sometimes the simplest of feelings become the hardest to convey. You know, the kind of feeling that makes you understand what Ingrid Michaelson has been singing about all this time; and you begin to wonder why it took you so long to see that sleep could have such a pretty face; the same way this mexican jumping bean sends your heart skipping in all sorts of directions; your nervous clicking is the calming sound of your presence for me; remind me of your occasional song; your ways are more than words; and maybe this does not make too much sense but suddenly it’s clear and simple—you who should not understand this would not; and you who should, naturally would. And hell, that’s all that matters.
I suppose we are all always in transit, some sort of, at least. Strange enough, we know just how tiring or pointless this limbo can feel; still, we go through it, the same way we go through day and night—like the naturalized course of Time—perhaps with a blind faith that whatever we are waiting for is worth it, eventually.
I can only pray that I don’t live a life in and of transitions. Then again, it might not be the worst thing. As always, I remain undecided.
Why is it that the housefly always seems to deliberately buzz so close to one’s ear, enough to irritate but not enough to cause too much of physical trouble? You know how the buzz of a housefly always remains as a lingering itch that you can never reach because it no longer exists, and perhaps it was never there to begin—the fly plays psychological games with you, with me. The Sly Fly. It feeds on our fear, and our paranoia—after the fly by, its job is done, as we spend the rest of the night with a pillow on our ear—When will this Sly Fly strike again? Nobody knows. It probably would not anymore. At least not any time soon, I think. But it does not matter, it has planted that seed of fear or at least, annoyance, within you. Now the Sly Fly rests a few metres away from you, watching you as that seed manifests into repetitive brushing of your ear. What have you done to me? I suppose it’s a problem—perhaps the fly only happened to brush by my ear just that very once, perhaps it’s meant to be a sign that my ear somehow attracts the Sly Fly in one way or the other. I should now be wary of flies, or the idea of me sitting in a room and be alert to the idea that there might be a fly lurking somewhere in the room waiting to attack my ear. It’s just a fly. It just happened to fly really close to your ear. That is all to it. Still, we let that affect us, and we start to create significance out of absolutely meaningless encounters with the a fly.
So what happens when you run out of luck? She would ask me, always with an element of shock and annoyance. There seemed a need for her to believe that I lived my life jumping from water lilies to water lilies, always escaping death because I chose timely moments to skip carelessly from plant to plant—moments when turtles happened to swim directly underneath these organic floats. She was wrong. Nobody floats all the fucking time. But she never looks over when waters are knee-deep, because that would mean she has to reach in and lend a hand. Luck does not exist. Seems safer to abide by rules governing the State of Mind. Fake it till you make it. Hopefully, that’s enough to get one through whatever trenches that lie ahead.
So what happens when I run out of luck? I won’t. Perhaps not until the day I lose my mind. Even then, it might not be the worst thing, would it?
We have a problem. We are obsessed with the Truth. This ultimate Truth that governs every little detail, moment, action, of our lives. Maybe there is no absolute Truth, only versions of it—assuming there is an “it” to begin with. Still, we are obsessed with origins, reason, and authenticity. There is no space for fiction any more. Does art for art’s sake not exist anymore? Every single thing has to have a meaning—a subtext, a context, a jab that actually stabs you right there where it hurts.
But dance—explore the footwork of poetry, prance around the fountain of words, dance with me a little and maybe you’ll begin to see the aesthetics of words strung together, carefully negotiating a nexus that means something and nothing at the very same time.
This is a dance that never ends, because the possibilities are limitless.
