The Kaleidoscope

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, inspiration comes knocking at my door. I look around, I glance behind my shoulder, I like being alone, I confirm my solitariness. And then I begin to write. But nothing ever materializes beyond a page. Then thoughts get arrested by the anticipation of an audience and the inappropriateness of it all. And then I stop.

This has been happening for many months.

J.S. Mill was right. One has to write poetry (in this I include fiction) assuming there is no audience at all. “Poetry is feeling confessing itself to itself”. But what kind of a confession is that then really? Even Catholics need the confession box and Calvin needs a Hobbes. What is the point of anything confessing itself to itself? Pray tell.

And yet the fear of being read and read into, the uneasiness of misinterpretation, the lack of courage is a reality that suffocates me. Where is my Hobbes? I used to have one. I don’t have one anymore. It is tragic. My Hobbes and I drifted apart when more than just distance came between us. Life happened and though it isn’t as tragic as it seems, it is tragic enough.

But I am digressing and I should try not to. So writing with an assumption that one can be read is a really scary proposition. I admire the guts of authors who write autobiographical works and get published. I admire the guts of blogs that chronicle a personal life without giving a damn. And hard as I may try, I don’t think I can even become it. That is sad. And have I lost out on you already? Yes you – you who reads my blog once in a while, my fortunate patron, the known and the unknown, the blurred past and the etched forever, the berating friend and the appreciative acquaintance – have you taken me off your RSS feeds already? Did you not have me in the first place? Did you plan to have me initially and then wrote me off as just another person who got married and became boring? I don’t blame you if you did. I haven’t tried to redeem myself much except just write a “oh-i-am-going-to-vent” post and then chickened out. Yes that’s all that I have done. Characteristically enough I haven’t carried out what I claimed, I have announced and then disappeared. It is unusual if I do finish something I take up till the end. I am the queen of incompletion, of half-heartedness, of initial euphoria and immediate disillusionment.

But I really do want to write for there is so much to write about. I want to pen down pages and chapters from my life. I want to mention the twisted story of the man with the heart of coal, I want to confess my lack of feelings for the boy who died, I want to say how sometimes when death doesn’t move you, you can question your monstrous self for years. For years and months that have passed, I have had moments of madness, euphoria, disillusionment, depression, betrayal, elation, fulfillment, epiphany – notice that there is nothing banal about these emotions, nothing as simple as happy, sad, indifference, no – these are the big words, the specific adjectives, the things that express the precise state of mind – I like it that things have been dramatic, larger than life, immensely exciting – things that can be recalled in an anecdote or make a fit subject for a late night confessional chat, things that can still make my gut twist, that can still make my throat knot up. I like it that I have had a fairly exciting life where I didn’t let impulse cower to the mind. Sometimes I regretted, sometimes I didn’t. But mostly I am just glad that the youth was a kaleidoscope and not a microscope where I didn't sit back to analyze but somersaulted with the colors.

And I want to write about the people and the episodes, all the shades of the kaleidoscope need to splatter across the white sheet of paper, the fear needs to be covered with a splat of dark humor, the puns and the digs need to be highlighted with a fluorescence.

So why do I fear the interpretation, the detailed investigation, the repercussions of such scrutiny? Why do I fear the microscope when I have already played in the colors?