And When I can’t Write, I Write!
It is 3 A.M. now. My room is dark. The bulb stopped working yesterday. I did not bother to act. Laziness, I wear as my crown. Sun saved me the trouble today’s morning, but I couldn’t escape the darkness of this night. Moon is merely an ornament, a pendent in the neck of night. Of what good can any ornament be to me? A deluded poet once sang ‘A thing of beauty is joy forever’. What is beauty? I long to behold. What is joy? I almost forgot. What is forever? I earnestly question. ‘Merely 26 years,’ a ghost whined from behind, and started sobbing somewhere in the corner of my room. I turned back, laughed and said ‘What use it is to sob, spirit! Now go! Sing in silence those songs you wrote.’
All seem the same to me. All seem dark to me. All the same dark. All, the darkest. The might of darkness within me is far too superior to the darkness any night can ever conceive. For now, I am a loser. For now, I am a wretched wanderer. For now, I am a lost loner. My failure, wretchedness, loneliness and the vagrant voices within, they all blister forth from the same boil, they all spring forth from the same seed. It is the seed of infertility, [sigh], the putrefied paradox of my life, the seed of my incapability to create, precisely, the seed of my inability to write!
Past three hours I watched videos on how to write. I believed they would help me cure my impotence. I thought that these little blue multimedia pills would stimulate, seduce and erect me. I thought they could help me ejaculate words that condense into works beyond marvel, literary wonders of the world.
‘Literary Wonders’, I sneer at myself. I called Keats deluded. Now I wonder who is more deluded. Sometimes I am amazed at my architectural prowess. How carefully and meticulously I construct my castles in the air, how tall they stand with their shimmering spires, how strong they are, and how well they defend my ephemeral kingdom from millions and billions of battalions of my imaginary enemies. Yes, I am the greatest architect in the land of delusion. Yes, my name is Howard Roark. And yes, I know that the real world can shun me, ban me, truncate me and castrate me.
Alas, the videos weren’t as promising as my delusions. Alice Munro’s energy scares me. There’s a strange radiance in the old woman’s eyes. Perhaps people call it ‘Hope’ or ‘Optimism’. Well if it indeed is what they call it, how could it even exist? Given that it does, how could I, of all, sense it? Derek Walcott spoke something to which the audience clapped. But to what effect on me? Firstly, could any effect affect me? After all, what do I crave for, to write a couple of sentences, to receive a couple of complements, to feel proud of myself for couple of seconds, to feel that I exist for a couple of minutes and to realize that I am alive during all those moments when I get to write. But since yesterday, I didn’t live, not even for a moment. I was dead. I am dead. I am bathing in the cold waters of death, nude from my hair to my feet. My laptop was my only light. It kept my vitals going while my soul was chocked, choked, chilled and killed.
My laptop is my savior, its glitter, my gold. Nevertheless, the demons, as they lie beneath my skin, lie in my laptop too. Least cruel is Ms. Excel and most satanic, Ms. Word. So here it is. This white page of Ms. Word is in front of me. Blank like my mind it is. Blank like the blank it should never be. With her white skin paler than a dead Jew infant, killed by A.H., Miss Word, the processor, is staring at me. She muttered something to herself, yet it was audible, in such finely tuned frequency that put my sense of hearing to a state of painful confusion. Did I hear, or did I not? With my unconquerable will, I managed to vanquish her evil purpose, though vainly, as I only found more evil lurking behind the chaos of her voice. “This loser just can’t write a word, I should have been in a better writer’s laptop, like Edgar Allen Poe.”
Now I am laughing aloud, so loud, I scared myself; either from the newfound insanity within me, or from the radioactive psychedelic traces of humor inherent to every dark and stinging remark. I also laughed not at the lame fact that laptops did not exist when Poe wrote, but at her ambition. Woman, evidently bold, seems to be more ambitious than I am. Humorous, though I find it to be, angry, I am at her insult. A good-looking clever woman’s insult delivers more affliction than the cruelest of kings could ever have unleashed. Such a woman’s indifference is unbearable, and absence, devastating. Her insult should have had such impact on me.
But to me, a hopeless soul, what am I afraid of? What could ever devastate the devastated? How could sorrow or pain scare the one who embraces them? Failure, wretchedness, loneliness, inability, impotence, how can they harm me while I approach them like a lover? How can they kill me when I reach out to kiss them?
I sought inspiration in videos, but I found it in my unworthiness. I sought ability to write, and I found it in my inability to write. I wished to write a couple of sentences, and now when I look up, I wrote far many more. I sought compliments from others, now I find satisfaction in myself. I desired pride for seconds, now I wield it for eternity. I longed life for few moments, but now, as I check my watch, I lived a lifetime. Now as I finish this bloody vomit of words, my retching shall die, I shall die. Death no longer embarrasses me. The sleep of death shall wake me to a new life in a new world tomorrow, in which I will perfectly remember this life, and after my next death, shall come my next life, in which I will still remember this life, and so on. This is how I render my words immortal, for I am a writer, and when I can’t write, I write!
