I used to write. Once. When I was a kid.
I told stories. I told my own stories. I told others’ stories. I took others’ stories, made them my own and retold them. I looked at people. I looked at the way they walked, built shoes around their feet, wore them, tried walking a bit and told more stories. I built settings, I created the players, gave them all slices of my mind, and recounted tales of all that unfolded. I saw myself on a stage – my words, my characters, my stories, my faces. Blinded by the stage-lights I couldn’t see the audience but I was sure they were out there somewhere. Sometimes faceless, sometimes not. I couldn’t see what they were thinking so I gave them my yardsticks instead and then hoped to be understood, rather than judged.
A few years down the line I read the words again and they remind me of times long gone. I seem to have grown a lot older in between. Sometimes, in the spaces between the lines, I catch a fleeting glimpse of me as I am now, like in a roomful of mirrors as I loved to say then. And I read on, more intrigued than anything else, at the distortions in my reflections. But now the glimpse is gone. And now its back. And so my little game goes on.
I hated reality. Reality, to me, was the antithesis of the perfection that one had to aspire to. Reality was mediocrity. Reality was about walking past smelly clogged drains, reality was about walking into loos that your neighbour in the hostel left unflushed, reality was about irrelevant specifics in others’ lives that I had to listen to so I could belong there. And so I wrote of feelings and thoughts and ideals instead, unaware that ultimately there was nothing more real than the world in one’s head and the way one felt about it.
I told stories of people with complex, deep-rooted anxieties but I didn’t know then that sometimes the simplest of worries, the most transparent ones, are the hardest to notice, or accept. And that these things didn’t get very well with the real world, as it were. I told stories of people not able to say what they wanted to say; I said the things I couldn’t bring myself to say, through my stories. But I didn’t know the feeling of having those channels forcefully shut then. Or of shutting them myself. I spoke of heroism but I wish I’d known how much courage it takes to walk like nobody’s watching, nobody’s wondering, nobody’s judging. And like nobody matters. I occasionally told stories of travel and escape but I know now the agony of walking past familiar haunts and fighting down old associations.
Years later, things are different. Friends are fewer but closer. Life is harder but often uncomplicated. There’s sorrow but there’s freedom. The castles in the air have crumbled now but my feet are finally on the ground and as Jack Johnson says, “…I’m nervous when I fly, I’m used to walking with my feet…”. And there’s honesty and joy in that.
It’s just that there’s nothing left to write now.
I told stories. I told my own stories. I told others’ stories. I took others’ stories, made them my own and retold them. I looked at people. I looked at the way they walked, built shoes around their feet, wore them, tried walking a bit and told more stories. I built settings, I created the players, gave them all slices of my mind, and recounted tales of all that unfolded. I saw myself on a stage – my words, my characters, my stories, my faces. Blinded by the stage-lights I couldn’t see the audience but I was sure they were out there somewhere. Sometimes faceless, sometimes not. I couldn’t see what they were thinking so I gave them my yardsticks instead and then hoped to be understood, rather than judged.
A few years down the line I read the words again and they remind me of times long gone. I seem to have grown a lot older in between. Sometimes, in the spaces between the lines, I catch a fleeting glimpse of me as I am now, like in a roomful of mirrors as I loved to say then. And I read on, more intrigued than anything else, at the distortions in my reflections. But now the glimpse is gone. And now its back. And so my little game goes on.
I hated reality. Reality, to me, was the antithesis of the perfection that one had to aspire to. Reality was mediocrity. Reality was about walking past smelly clogged drains, reality was about walking into loos that your neighbour in the hostel left unflushed, reality was about irrelevant specifics in others’ lives that I had to listen to so I could belong there. And so I wrote of feelings and thoughts and ideals instead, unaware that ultimately there was nothing more real than the world in one’s head and the way one felt about it.
I told stories of people with complex, deep-rooted anxieties but I didn’t know then that sometimes the simplest of worries, the most transparent ones, are the hardest to notice, or accept. And that these things didn’t get very well with the real world, as it were. I told stories of people not able to say what they wanted to say; I said the things I couldn’t bring myself to say, through my stories. But I didn’t know the feeling of having those channels forcefully shut then. Or of shutting them myself. I spoke of heroism but I wish I’d known how much courage it takes to walk like nobody’s watching, nobody’s wondering, nobody’s judging. And like nobody matters. I occasionally told stories of travel and escape but I know now the agony of walking past familiar haunts and fighting down old associations.
Years later, things are different. Friends are fewer but closer. Life is harder but often uncomplicated. There’s sorrow but there’s freedom. The castles in the air have crumbled now but my feet are finally on the ground and as Jack Johnson says, “…I’m nervous when I fly, I’m used to walking with my feet…”. And there’s honesty and joy in that.
It’s just that there’s nothing left to write now.
