An Open Book

I've been contemplating starting a new blog for a while. Why? Because I've heard that all the good writers have different blogs for different kinds of writing. So I asked myself, what is my blog? Is it personal writing, is it creative? My answer: both.

But that's also the nature of my writing. As I've watched it transform and evolve over the past three years (wow, has it really been that long?), I realise that that's the one thing that's remained the same – whether I write prose or poetry. It's always, or almost always, about me, but it doesn't necessarily have to be just about me.

So, will I start a new blog? Yes. But not yet. It isn't yet time. For now, I'm just going to start over, in the same place, for my writing may have changed but the deflected raindrop hasn't yet ceased to describe me.

Let's begin, again, with introductions.

I would say I'm an open book; not too complicated to read, even. But there are pages of me I've torn away and stuffed inside those tiny pockets you find in the corner of girls' jeans. Like old diaries, scrawled in trying-too-hard-to-be-grown-up cursive writing that you're almost embarrassed to look at but that say so much about you – as a child and as a person. Or stories that I can't get myself to read again, or write again, because the ink resembles bloodstains and tears too much.

Or simply because these pages are too important, and like all important things, have to be kept away in places that are difficult to reach; so important that they have to be kept away safely till they're forgotten. And like all things in pockets of jeans that you can't reach, they wind up getting washed with the dirt. Like small change in notes of tens and twenties that you find days after you bring back your laundry – and you've either hit the jackpot when you feel a bump in your pocket one fine day and you realise you have enough money for ice cream; or no one is going to take faded notes that have lost colour and value in scratched lettering hidden beside Gandhi's bespectacled face.

And how can I present to you pages of my book with as little value as those torn notes and ask you to read them?
How will you read them?
Will you read them?
Will you find them?
For finding a lost note you don't know about in a pile of laundry is a lot harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

I am an open book with missing pages, and it is for the things you can't read, that I write.
I write and rewrite, of yesterday and of the day after tomorrow and I've put sticky notes and page markers to navigate through life; with notes in the margin that read "refer to page number..." as a map to point X – that I'm still searching for, hoping with eyes squeezed shut and in a little girl's trying-too-hard-to-impress-wishgranters cursive handwriting that I will find some treasure there.

So, take my book; filled with so many bookmarks, I don't know where I left off, and start somewhere – I'm an open book, not too complicated to read, even, but not so easy either. But keep coming back, for I'll have new pages I've found in pockets of old jeans that don't even fit me and I'll have trousers I don't yet fit into that old pages will get lost in, and my story will keep changing because my story isn't over; but I plan to keep writing it, anyway. 

Chasing Beginnings

Note: This is a story I wrote for a competition based on the theme "alternate reality". Mine is one in which people know everything that is going to happen but not what has happened to them so far. This is a story that is barely real, but I also like to think that in some way, it's my story (and not just because I wrote it).

My story has no beginning.

Every writer knows that a story must have a beginning, middle and end, or it isn’t a story.

My middle is a string of ‘and thens’, just waiting to reach The End.

Every writer knows that a plot can’t just be a series of events.

Tomorrow I turn a year younger and 10 years closer to death. I die in my sleep – a rather mainstream way to go.

Every writer knows that the end should leave the reader wanting more.

I want more.

More than knowing everything that will happen to me.

I meet the man of my dreams two weeks from now (I really did dream him), in 3 years my book becomes a Number 1 Best Seller (all I have to do is write it, now) and I die in 10 years in my sleep. And with my end all sorted out, I go about my day, like everyone else, moulding myself carefully based on what I know will happen to me, obsessing over ‘what if’s and ‘should be’s even though I know I can’t change the future.

So, I do my hair differently on the day I am to meet said man, I strive harder to write things worthy of being a Bestseller, question my self-worth and make myself feel better by spending my money frivolously—I know I’ll be rich soon enough.

But it’s not enough. I want to know more. Not just where I’m headed, but where I come from and if there’s more to who I am.

Everyone knows that a good writer must have a great imagination…

Imagine if there’s a world in which everyone knows their past and not their future, where everything you did could alter your future. If only portals to alternate realities weren’t fictional.

…to write captivating fiction.

My characters have the wildest lives. They emerge on the planet carried by storks or smuggled by elves or even just found in a box.

The possibilities are limitless…

I once read a story in which a person came out from another person!

…if your own story is equally interesting.

         I’m still

Everyone says writers draw from their own lives,

                           Searching for

(Or from) what is lacking in their lives.

A story.

This is mine.

Chasing Beginnings

Endings are the things I’m most sure of. My mother died when I had 63 years left to live. In her will she left me her house, half of her money and a cryptic note which read, “You’ll understand when there’s not much time left,” along with a number. I had known I’d meet an old man who would tell me something important for a while before I read her note again.

I would soon have only 10 years left to live and there was so much to do and not enough time. I call the number.

“Name?”

A voice crackles from the other end of the phone.

I give mine.

“Child of Lerina Garcia?”

“Yes,” I reply, only slightly bewildered.

“Meet me tomorrow at 2pm at the tea garden. I’ll be in red.”

The phone disconnects before I can confirm.

But I had this meeting fixed for years and the old man on the phone knows as much.

I’m at the Tea Garden at 2 pm sharp the next day. My mysterious acquaintance has already been waiting a while. With no introduction or small talk, he sits me down next to him, stares into space and says, rather than asks,

“You are a writer.”

“Yes.”

“Like your mother.”

“Yes. You know her?

“She was a great writer.”

“You’ve read her work then?”

“You ask too many questions. You are a teller of stories. The answers you seek are yours to create.”

“It’s different when I write. I can’t make up my own story!”

“Why not? Tell me your story.”

“I don’t know it yet.”

“Create it, then. Go on, begin.”

“My story has no beginning.”

“Every writer knows that a story must have a beginning, middle and end, or it isn’t a story. “

“My middle is a string of ‘and thens’, just waiting to reach The End.”

“Every writer knows that a plot can’t just be a series of events.”

“Tomorrow I turn a year younger and 10 years closer to death. I die in my sleep – a rather mainstream way to go."

“Every writer knows that the end should leave the reader wanting more.  

Try again. Make it up as you go.”

My story begins like most stories do, right where everything began:

Once upon a time,

The Beauty Of –

I’ve been told I write a lot of sad stuff. While I admit that’s fairly true, I’d like to believe it’s because I write of things that demand to be felt. I write of pain, because there’s no escaping it and words soften blows sooner than time heals them. But today, I write of beauty, whose cries to be noticed are often drowned out by the blaring sirens and flashing lights of pain. 

I write of beauty that lingers in unvisited corner alleys and beauty hidden between leaves of trees; of beauty that is tucked away in the wrinkles of an old woman’s toothless grin and beauty that waits for your eyes to close before it creeps into your lonely heart and wanderlusting soul that constantly searches for a place to call home. 

Today, I write of that beauty, which lingers in me from the collection of things I see and feel – from the beach wind that finds a place in my hair or the sand that nestles between my toes to the laughter that resides in my cheeks. But there’s so much to talk about in one single post that is just long enough for you to have the patience to read, so today, I’ll restrict myself to just one. 

An evening flight – my favourite kind – and I had the window seat (but the plane was so empty I could’ve sat there even if I didn’t). We took off into the night sky, leaving painted sunsets as our good-byes and in that moment, hovering in the middle of pretty much nowhere and surrounded simply by space (and the aircraft), I was free. I was one with the clouds I dreamed to sleep on, or eat, with the clouds that formed pictures of dreams I hoped to reach. And as I looked down to where I had been, I couldn’t find the place or the faces I’d seen. 

Instead I saw darkness, bespeckled by lights – from buildings or cars, or ships, who’s to know? Somewhere in that light show is where I belonged, where I’d come from and where I’d go. But from where I sat, in the middle of pretty much nowhere, surrounded by space, all that mattered were the lights that shone from under the darkness and that somewhere, anywhere, I would find a place I could call home, even if it was right there where I sat, looking at the oblivious world go by. Suddenly, the distant planets and burning balls of gas I stared at from my balcony, didn’t seem so far away, because from the night sky as city lights burn, the earth looks like it’s full of stars, and to me that’s beauty. 

So, if you see a twinkle in my eyes the next time you see me, know that it’s just another form of beauty that lingers on in me.