Diminutive and stoical silence transcends around me. I wait for moments aplenty staring into the glaring silence of my computer screen. A plethora of thoughts slosh inside me waiting for me to sketch them out. Unfortunately, I am at a loss. Not a loss akin to the vagrant wanderers on nameless streets, not a loss akin to the absence of meaning to the depressed soul, but a loss that an artist feels when he runs out of canvas paper. I am an artist who ran out of canvas paper.
Writing has always been easy. From Infancy, I have found comfort in the flat stiffness of paper and solace in holding a blunted pencil scribbling away my thoughts. Writing has always been cathartic; it helps me unwind and helps me brood over my own thoughts and observe them from a distance. Writers have always done this; we transport ourselves to a different dimension and reflect on this current one. These reflections can be refined and some can be extremely erratic. My thoughts have often been the latter.
I have often been faced with a peculiar conundrum when asked to define myself. Am I really a writer? What have I written recently and more importantly, are my writings of any substance. Well, I take a pen or pencil and I write words and that should be enough evidence to qualify me as a writer. I do not feel ashamed to label myself as such and moreover do not feel dishonest. But if you ask me whether my writings have been substantial enough, I would be faced with a harsh reality, the brevity of which weights down my confidence in declaring my identity.
You see, my writings are not really writings, but more a pondering rambles of my state of mind. If I feel elated, my writings reflect a brightness and elation that would be difficult to ignore. However, if I am despondent or melancholic, my writings transform and change into a different beast. They transform themselves into monsters and beasts, each foretelling a story soaked in a different mood. I used this to my advantage, writing erratic and refined stories mired in tradition and besought with all the dreams that I had left untold. From my youth, I had a natural inclination towards masking my thoughts and ideas. I liked to maintain a mysticism about myself and being reticent helped considerably. The childhood was also marred with stories that I did not wish to retell anyone but also wanted not to forget lest I find myself repeating the same errors. Hence was born the Poetic sentence and my baptism into Poetry.
I am not a natural Poet; I have never studied the forms and the structures of this glorious style of story telling. I do not know the difference between a quartet and a sonnet. But still, I have written poetry my entire youth and through most of my adult life. I find an incredible ease in twisting a basic idea and presenting it in a new format. I wrote poems about sorrow, about love and also about all that was lost in life. This gave me a great source of pleasure. I could finally not hide under the mask of a writer. I could strip all artificiality from my skin and expose my true identity, I was a poet, Well, I still am a poet.
Poetry has a infinity to it that is hard to describe. You take a basic story and you cloak it in words and retell it in a voice that is distinct and omnipotent. This had a lasting effect on my writing. I became extremely verbose and started expanding basic sentences. Of course, this had a lasting effect, both positive and negative. The positive effect was that my language skills improved considerably. I began to develop a voracious appetite for the literature. I began devouring words and works about words continuously. It was a rewarding experience, the basis of which defines my existence to this very date. The negative effect was that my literary skills became confined in the narrow walls of poetry. I couldn’t write a sentence without reflecting on the veracity of its literary content. This has to change.
The past few months have been a revelation. I have emerged from my own shadows and discovered myself in ways that I did not know exist. I have begun to write more often and produced works of a more potent poetic quality. However, I wish to write a more current and relevant body of work, because despite its beauty, poetry is largely confined to the tired minds of diminished wanderers. We are gentry of a population yearning to escape the rituals of life and we embrace a craft that is not universally accepted. Being proficient in this should not preclude anyone from embracing a different path. This blog is my attempt at achieving that. I could have done this within the boundaries of my earlier blog, I could have. But my though process was different. I am not working on poetry on this particular canvas. I feel like “dreams for an insomniac” severely constricts me from exploring more adventurous themes. I do not want my work to be judged, especially when its in its infancy and developing. I want to work on honing my writing skills, not in the poetic realm but more in the long form.
This is the first entry in what I hope should be a regular trend. I will try to write more often, creating essays and stories of different lengths and obviously of varied quality. This is a place where my mind, the eternal wanderer will reflect on life in all its glory. It will muse upon stories as varied as the tireless winter is to the glory of the summer sun. It will be my attempt at creating a distinction, in my craft, in my dreams and more importantly, within me.
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