I thought I had put myself beyond
the fence of control, yet I found myself rambling in the grips of suffocating
‘control’. The lingering thought about what I would write has enslaved me for
far too long. I have known I can bare my heart for everyone to see – my
nakedness for the voyeurs, my vulnerability for the assailants, my secrets for the
backbiters, my honesty for the deceptive, my humility for the conceits, my
devotedness for the cheats, my loyalty for the tyrants… What use would my ink
on the paper serve but to open a spacious space for pointing fingers that
loathe me, scorn me, intimidate me, critique me, support me, encourage me and
cheer me.
So what? Who cares if all eyes are
on me? In truth, it is only a wishful thinking or self-appeasement that I sit
straddled on this comfortable feeling of considering myself as the centre of
the planet, not even the earth for that matter.
My emptiness surfaces as I deep my
pen in the ink-jar looking out through the window of this coffee shop which I
have identified it with modernist writers. The fast paced movement outside
magnifies for me that there is nothing modern about writing sitting at a coffee
shop unless I could keep at standstill the racing young couples in their shorts
craving for every sunshine they could get before the long winter sets in.
This realization knocks on the
doors of my mind like a dream which I start to chase but ‘the buts and the
ands’ kept reminding me that I was wide awake. Shouldn’t I dream as those who
intone that they have a dream in their wakeful state and with the awareness of
all the intricacies of power and hegemony, enslavement and serfdom,
determination and willpower, dignity and rights…?
Call it Joyce’s epiphany or my
vision beyond the measures of dreams that dry right in the season they were
planted – drowsiness, sleep or slumber – I sensed it right there as the pen
screeched, a loud call for more ink for it grasped “I’ve miles to go,” before I
call it a day.
My gaze through the window at the
library door across the street was blocked by an elderly woman as she slowly
walked supported by four-wheeled walkers. The four-wheeled drivers back home
had always deprived me of calm walks of thoughts as they rushed and bumped into
me at every corner. But this woman sobered my frenzied pen to hold on to the
vision that was demanding me to iron the wrinkled road to its destination, to
cleanse it from plaguing dreams that could only feed despaired hearts, and from
ominous nightmares that keep frightened minds hostage.
The library opened and I started to
pack my things. I thought if I was just rambling or daydreaming. No, I
shouldn’t dream – that is the new rule with a mighty energy channelled into my
mind raising overflowing storms of thoughts that are waiting to be fused with
my ink unless it clotted, washed out or faded when it is out in the open for
the pointing fingers.
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