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.
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.
