Meanderings....

There are time when you can feel absolutely and completely alone while being surrounded by a sea of people. Your face becomes an inscrutable and unyielding mask that puts on the prescribed emotion as if on cue. But inside....its another story. There's a storm brewing. All purple rage and grey gloom.

You let your thoughts wander. Arbitrarily they make tangential connects. I was thinking just this instant of what Truffaut said about Renoir's films - "they're as simple as saying hello." How beautiful....how eloquent. And the next thought that trundles through my head is about the two goats in the phtotograph I saw and how they seemed to be smiling at me. Decidedly odd....

Solitude always meant something good. Something very peaceful. Something you experience as sharply as a moment of clarity and yet, paradoxically, as languidly as watching the sky change hues at twilight. In such a state the inane and the obvious details become infinitely more absorbing than the most bizarre other-wordly occurrence. Flies on the wall acquire such mystique and charm and grace that one could entirely forget their otherwise annoying existence.

Such is happiness - which i believe to be a sensation that originates deep inside the belly - a warm fuzz-like creeping sensation - always sneaks up on you and yet always manages to baffle, surprise and exhilirate.

Blogging : in retrospect

I just realised that my blog is now a year old and doesn't have much to show for it! I have also realised that I dont use my blog in nearly the same way as do most avid bloggers worldwide - the sort who have taken information-sharing and web-logging to new levels. For me it still functions in much the same way as a notebook or a journal except that it is accessible to those who wish to go through it. The whole idea for me was to keep writing. To remind myself what a joy it is to express oneself through the written word. And to reaffirm my faith in my own literary abilities however limited they may be.

There have been many points in my life where I have (unsuccessfully) tried to maintain a personal journal. The sort that you hide from anyone and everyone simply because the palpable fear of discovery and the somewhat perverse pleasure of knowing something no one else knows provides fuel to the keeper of secrets. My journals were mostly mundane records of the daily trials tribulations of living. Peppered occasionally with instances of heartache and trauma, most often played up in writing to the level of intense melodrama. So much so that even the most banal argument could seem like something out of a Greek tragedy.

When I look back on those pages written with such diligence and candour, I often find myself grinning at the words that had burst forth in an unusually distraught moment. It amuses me when I realise again and again how time erodes much of the walls we build around us. The girl who filled those pages with intense emotion sincerely believed at the time that her life had ended for sure. Or in another instance made it abundantly clear that at that moment she was the happiest she would ever be in all the days to come. Even as I laugh at the childish proclamations of love lost and arguments won, I recoginise similar emotions in myself today. They have changed in degree but not so much in the intensity.

I am aware though that in sharp contrast to the days of journals and sercret diaries, I am far more wary of my own feelings and how their open expression leaves me vulnerable and exposed. So as the old walls become worn and weather beaten, we build new walls. And so it goes....