"I can't seem to write, sleep or do anything properly. My mind seems to be more scattered than usual as I sip on my coffee, with the warm air tickling my face. My head hurts trying to come up with things to write, things that actually meet my expectations."
She wrote these lines on a whim, just as she deleted them too. Her writer's block was just getting worse and her aimless and tedious life wasn't helping either. She seemed to be in a loop, where she just couldn't write something up. The train was full as the clock slowly approached 6:00 PM. Rush hour was dangerously bulldozing into the platforms, as her heart ached for the wrong things in life. Nothing she did seemed to make her forget. The more she tried to move on, the more she got stuck in that one loop.
Now when she finally had her life together, she felt a void. A void that something is going to come and take her world by a storm.
Was it the fact that she was alone? Or was she just truly lonely?
She always liked to delude her mind into thinking it's her loneliness which made her alone. But being alone is not a consequence of being lonely. Being alone is a state of solitude where one confines into their deepest most blurred parts of their life, trying to acknowledge its existence and make way for its entrance, embalming it into one's roots. Isn't this where the world individualism comes from? That one defining moment, where you chose to let your confinement and inner self-worth to form something tangible and acceptable? Acceptable, not only to other people, but also yourself.
She seemed to be questioning everything these days. Especially the kinda questions, she couldn't seek answers to without opening portals of anxiety and self-doubt. Maybe this is what growing up was all about. Accepting all the loopholes and portals that at first terrify the living crap out of you, but as you learn to swim in its vastness, you also learn to accept your inner demons and befriend them.
How did she want to be loved? What kind of person does she want to love? What kind of person would she want to be? How will the world remember her?
All these questions churned inside her heart, her core, her very soul, trying to get something out. Just like you churn butter, her soul was trying to churn out a map of existence. An existence where she wouldn't be so lost. But her mother always told her, "The process of churning takes time and efforts. You churn in continuous motions, steadily with firm hands. Sometimes your hands will want to give up and stop. But that's when you see the milk curdling, the foam of the milk, the thickened milk sticking on the ladle, and that my love, is when you know you need to continue, even if your arms might just fall off in pain. That is life."
She initially had never understood that analogy. But sometimes she wondered how her mother, for a person who hadn't stepped out of their tiny hut, knew so much about life.
She always thought that some earth shattering experience would turn her life around and suddenly everything would make sense. But in that anticipation, maybe she missed it already. Undervalued the moments she has had. Has she already lived the one moment, that one defining instance of her life? But missed it in anticipation for the significance that very moment?
Was it the moment her nose fit just right in the nape of his neck? Or the moment her parents held her together when she lost her pet dog or even the fact that her brother stayed up with her the whole night watching cartoons because she had a nightmare?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized the things she understated, waiting for things to happen, just as they were actually happening in front of her eyes. Her life was an intangible art where her feelings were the paint and her experiences the empty canvas.
Maybe that's why science doesn't like arts. Art is not tangible. There's no clear boundaries and limits to it. Similarly, arts yearns for the factual, calculated paths and ultimatums that science offers. She always thought that arts and sciences were the greatest lovers of all time, but for the balance of this fragile mankind, these two love each other just enough to be the co-exist side by side, and not together.
To be or not to be?
In the end, it's this chaos and rumble and that always made sense as her fingers slide over the notebook, etching letters and numbers across the page. Maybe she has finally won some time against her writer's bloc.
-fin
She wrote these lines on a whim, just as she deleted them too. Her writer's block was just getting worse and her aimless and tedious life wasn't helping either. She seemed to be in a loop, where she just couldn't write something up. The train was full as the clock slowly approached 6:00 PM. Rush hour was dangerously bulldozing into the platforms, as her heart ached for the wrong things in life. Nothing she did seemed to make her forget. The more she tried to move on, the more she got stuck in that one loop.
Now when she finally had her life together, she felt a void. A void that something is going to come and take her world by a storm.
Was it the fact that she was alone? Or was she just truly lonely?
She always liked to delude her mind into thinking it's her loneliness which made her alone. But being alone is not a consequence of being lonely. Being alone is a state of solitude where one confines into their deepest most blurred parts of their life, trying to acknowledge its existence and make way for its entrance, embalming it into one's roots. Isn't this where the world individualism comes from? That one defining moment, where you chose to let your confinement and inner self-worth to form something tangible and acceptable? Acceptable, not only to other people, but also yourself.
She seemed to be questioning everything these days. Especially the kinda questions, she couldn't seek answers to without opening portals of anxiety and self-doubt. Maybe this is what growing up was all about. Accepting all the loopholes and portals that at first terrify the living crap out of you, but as you learn to swim in its vastness, you also learn to accept your inner demons and befriend them.
How did she want to be loved? What kind of person does she want to love? What kind of person would she want to be? How will the world remember her?
All these questions churned inside her heart, her core, her very soul, trying to get something out. Just like you churn butter, her soul was trying to churn out a map of existence. An existence where she wouldn't be so lost. But her mother always told her, "The process of churning takes time and efforts. You churn in continuous motions, steadily with firm hands. Sometimes your hands will want to give up and stop. But that's when you see the milk curdling, the foam of the milk, the thickened milk sticking on the ladle, and that my love, is when you know you need to continue, even if your arms might just fall off in pain. That is life."
She initially had never understood that analogy. But sometimes she wondered how her mother, for a person who hadn't stepped out of their tiny hut, knew so much about life.
She always thought that some earth shattering experience would turn her life around and suddenly everything would make sense. But in that anticipation, maybe she missed it already. Undervalued the moments she has had. Has she already lived the one moment, that one defining instance of her life? But missed it in anticipation for the significance that very moment?
Was it the moment her nose fit just right in the nape of his neck? Or the moment her parents held her together when she lost her pet dog or even the fact that her brother stayed up with her the whole night watching cartoons because she had a nightmare?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized the things she understated, waiting for things to happen, just as they were actually happening in front of her eyes. Her life was an intangible art where her feelings were the paint and her experiences the empty canvas.
Maybe that's why science doesn't like arts. Art is not tangible. There's no clear boundaries and limits to it. Similarly, arts yearns for the factual, calculated paths and ultimatums that science offers. She always thought that arts and sciences were the greatest lovers of all time, but for the balance of this fragile mankind, these two love each other just enough to be the co-exist side by side, and not together.
To be or not to be?
In the end, it's this chaos and rumble and that always made sense as her fingers slide over the notebook, etching letters and numbers across the page. Maybe she has finally won some time against her writer's bloc.
-fin
