Of fear and a little purple flower

Writing is a frightening activity. In that phase, my emotions are unfurnished and blunt. In that phase, I feel the most vulnerable. The deadening fear of what will come out in words paralyses me. I cap up the words, often waiting for them to mellow down. As a result, often, there are no words that are eager to pop out. On rare occasions, when I can bear the courage to walk through the fear, I smell a feather blown by the wind, touching different surfaces, resting in some, fleeting over others. It is a much coveted feeling. And, it is this sense of the feather, that prods me to travel through the fear of creating.

It is no new notion that the umbilical cord that connects fear and creativity is not snapped once and for all. The cord between these two elements can not possibly be cut at one go. The cord wears out as one plunges more and more into the creative sphere. The most difficult task is to take that plunge. This is not a new revelation either. But, I guess, revelations are temporal and hence always have the possibility to be new and fresh.
***
There's this little purple flower that I picked from the streets yesterday. It was uprooted by someone and there it was - the flower, the stem, the little earth-covered roots. It was raining. And it knew that, it had, maybe another day at the most. Yet, it was so beautiful, sparkling with raindrops, drenched and almost dead and yet celebrating its bloom. Today, it has shrunk to this little purple mole. But, I see the little purple flower still.
***
Another day and another revelation had come.

A very good friend of mine suggested a life philosophy that I kind-of have taken to. The friend said, "Live life as an orgasm." And I had smiled. It is what writing is to me. The pain, and then, the pleasure; the pleasure that makes me believe that this is joy, and that, there's nothing beyond this moment, nothing beyond this word.

Writing is, truly orgasmic - emotionally, physically and spiritually.

The words that have been in the body when spilled on to the blank paper makes me feel exhausted. At the same time, once the words are out there, I feel less restless, more calm, more at peace and more energised.

I guess, all I have to do is to keep enjoying. And having orgasms.


 

Being Unsafe

safe/unsafe

I try a bit of free writing and I scribble the following after I type "unsafe" at the top of the page :

girl child.
freedom.

chocolate.

After much rumination, I fail to identify any continuity of thought. Still, I attempt to weave the stream.

The One Billion and Rising campaign, vindicating the right of safety of women, had just reached its media pinnacle on February 14th. And yet, I can not stop thinking of the violence and the oppression that the female foetus, the female child, the woman face in regions where this urbanised campaign is not even a dream. There is actually a multitude of worlds within this earth and this time; we do not need to go far out into the universe to look for multiverse. They are already here.

Freedom has been the tale of Schrödinger's cat experiment with a difference. Though you and I believe we can either have freedom, or not. In reality, freedom is the 'AND' syndrome. We have freedom to do many things, and, simultaneously, we do not have the freedom to those exact same things. We have the freedom to speak our mind, and, simultaneously, we do not have the freedom to speak our mind because too much is at stake already. 

For the chocolate, I think: irony. 

The free writing helps me to get to the point where I can look back at my beautiful flower-capered blog Lustrous Lives and realise how unsafe my writing dream would be if I were to cling on to the safe haven. 

When I started Lustrous Lives, I had arrived in Budapest with the baggage of having failed in life. I had left my M.Phil dissertation halfway and had killed the dream of being an English professor, possibly forever. Academics was my holy grail. It was the driving force in my life. And then, it was all gone. Lustrous Lives began as an escape from the ordeal and ended up being the salvation.

I wrote free-willingly about anything and everything that came to my mind. It was a time-killing exercise. And I willed to remember and record only the happy memories and the beautiful thoughts. It was a sane choice at that point in time. I survived the pangs of being an utter failure. That blog gave me all the safety principles that helped me to combat the new life in a new continent. It gave me family, love and support. It also gave me something that I wasn't looking for. I found a new dream. 

The dream appeared to be an illusion for some time and I believed that it was only a mirage. It gradually started to make me leap out of my sleep at regular intervals causing an itching that will only be satisfied by writing. I was still seeped in self-doubt. Questions loomed over my dream: What kind of a writer will I be? How can I write anything that will make any contribution to all the great works that have already been written? 

I always looked at the macrocosmic view and as a result, was left more and more inconfident. How infinitesimally small I am! - is all that I could think of. What had been my safe haven started becoming an unsafe zone to tread on.The more I wrote, the more I believed it is of no use to follow this new dream. 

Then there are leaps that we make for no logical reason at all. I have finally decided to follow the dream that has been haunting me. 

It is unsafe to dream because you have the probability of waking up from the dream into the real world. Maybe this blog will end up nowhere. Maybe I will end up being right where I am. Yet, I got to live this possibly 'unsafe' choice of attempting to be an author of some worth. 

Image: Safe/Unsafe by Susmita Paul (c) 2013