I accidentally dropped my pile of books and what-nots beside my bed one night. If that didn't happen, I wouldn't have remembered I was sleeping beside my journal for the past months. I took my dust-covered red notebook [and yes, I am not exaggerating] and checked the date of my last entry, September 2007.The first quarter of the New Year is about to end and I realized that this was the longest time I set my journal aside untouched since I decided to keep one when I was 12. Despite my busy schedule, I always make sure that I write an entry a month--or every other month, the longest. But, even if I realized that time that I almost stopped filling up the blank pages of my red notebook, I still didn't have the urge to find a pen and start writing at least something. Apart from that, I also realized that it has been a long time since I last wrote for my online blogs too! Whatever might have happened? I suddenly asked myself. I took a long look at my journal, as well as the other notebooks that I filled up throughout the years. Sure, I am busy--busier, in fact, since I just started my semester in graduate school. My present job also requires me to write most often than not, so that pretty much keeps my "creative juices" flowing--and me mentally exhausted usually at the end of the day. But I am now technically on summer vacation, so I really don't have that much load and paper works and assignments to think of.
But still, there I was not having the urge to write.
I tried to read my past entries, hoping that they would at least give me the answer I was looking for that night. I am tired, I read from one entry. But here I am still holding on to nothing.
There are times that I wish this didn't come at all...
If killing or hurting oneself is not a sin, or doesn't mean quitting, or would make me look pathetic to everyone, I would have done it a long time ago.
One of the most unforgettable theories I learned from my college professors was writers are the persons who are closest to tragedies and misfortunes. In fact, most of them welcome it since it paved the way for them to write. It feeds their craft. My professors also happened to be notable writers in the country and yes, they too are a walking example of this theory. Furthermore, the greatest and most unforgettable writers in literary history also shared the same sad, sorry fate. Yukio Mishima, who was considered to be one of the most prolific writers of Westernized Japan, committed seppuku, or the ritual suicide by disembowelment, as soon as he finished writing the final line of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Sylvia Plath also decided to take her own life by converting her kitchen to a gas chamber, with her head inside the oven [let us also add Ted Hughes's infidelity, plus her almost countless bout with depression and electro shock therapy]. The supposedly romantic Christopher Marlowe[yes, I find his works romantic] was a reputable rakehell and died on a brawl in a bar. Ernest Hemingway placed a bullet on his head after realizing he existed in nothingness. Virginia Woolf heavied her pockets with rocks and walked to the river and never resurfaced alive. My list can cross to different genres, and even exhaust to other forms of art, but the bottom line here is, their output thrives on their "unhappy endings." As much as I want to admit that I have come to love the art of painting pictures through colorful words, I wanted to veer away from the thought of ending my story with a tragic, pointless death or a tear-jerking, pathetic life story.
I suddenly felt that I am treading the same path. I am not trying to seek sympathy, nor trying to liken myself to these remarkable persons. It is just that my present journal speaks only the sorrows of my soul. Whenever there is a gap on my entries, it is an obvious sign that I was savoring the colorful wonders of life that I find it difficult to contain and lock in my journal or blog. My first--and only published fiction, to date, depicted a persona of a girl falling in love with a black and white photo and eventually realized her intrusion of a sweet, intimate moment. My collection of fiction in my thesis evolved on the state of letting go and struggling to tread on the path of aloneness thereafter. My online blog entries serve as my shout out to cyberspace, hoping that by doing so would fill up the vacuous feeling of fighting over an emotion that chains up my being for as long as I can remember. I reckon that by writing about it would save my sanity rather than wait for the right moment to vent, which is least likely to happen.
My muse for more than half a decade suddenly came into the picture like, an apparition from nowhere. Like that black and white picture of a beautiful man that suddenly came to life. The muse who never failed to fill my head up with adverbs and adjectives to describe the sinking feeling of longing, loneliness and aloneness. I may have written some entries that pictured out that elated feeling of being complete, like that famous multivitamin commercial that raves to have all the nutrients and vitamins the body needs. But, what flooded me the most were thoughts on how painful it was to hear nothing but silence, to see nothing but black and white, to know nothing of the purpose of my existence--and vice versa. Some people thought I am being masochistic, especially on how I harbor this heavy chip on my shoulders. Some reckon it as stupidity and martyrdom. I think I am just patient with a high tolerance for pain. But just like anyone who carries a heavy load, or waited for so long, I also am beginning to feel tired, and on the brink of giving up, even. And my dusty, red notebook is a sure sign of that.
Only God knows whether my journal will continue to collect dust in my bed, or if my pen will bleed into it again. My fervent wish at the moment is if Providence fated me to continue living like this, I wish that someway, somehow, I would be able to show to the world that in the end, the tears and the bondage were all worth it. And since I, too, am still uncertain on how to prove this, I decided to remain silent for the time being.
And I hope that when sound waves starts to break in again, I will see life in a different light so that my pen will finally write colorful and bright entries in my red notebook.
gotta rest for a while,
just to bring it back...-Sometimes, Nine Days
