There’s beauty in creating your narrative from words already printed on a piece of paper. I’ve quite got the hang of looking at the words with an entirely different point of view and creating something that I can call my own.
Here’s another Blackout Poetry that I created yesterday.
“I was searching Death and found it smoking cigarettes in the backyard.”
This is something that I try to do everyday and it gives me immense joy. I generally work on this while having my breakfast and it often makes me not want to get up!
I was on an evening walk with my sister a few months back and we came across an abandoned house. I have a fascination for abandoned houses, cars and things that have no value for other people. I often see stories beneath the decay and the destruction. It makes me want to know its story and about the people who owned it and decided to then disown it.
Last night, I was going through my photo gallery and found this picture I had taken on that evening and I felt like making an entry in my journal.
An abandoned house: Captured on 17 Nov, 2019
Have you heard of the rumours about the Wind inside the empty house at the end of the street?
Journal Entry : 4 Feb, 2020
It’s been a while but the tale I’ve heard is true. My neighbours believe that the Wind was trapped inside the windowless house. Once, she tried to escape. A chunk of the side wall collapsed but the Wind couldn’t leave. Her cries were heard in the entire street but everyone slept in silence.
Now, as I pass by this beautiful house, I can hear her singing at the beat of the rattling window frames. It really sounds like whistling, but I imagine she sings as she floats in the dark, thinking about the good days she spent with the clouds in the sky.
I suppose the leaves provide her with enough solace to go on with her existence, but the melancholic sound of her singing makes me think it’s never going to be enough.
How could it ever be enough?
Is there anything that can ever replace the freedom of flying at your own will? If there anything that can be more painful than the invisible bars that trap you? Is there anything worse than confinement and captivity?
I hope with all my heart that the Wind remembers who she is, and what she is capable of. I hope she hasn’t forgotten that she is unconquerable and fierce. And one day, she’ll break all the walls of the house and will meet her Sky, once again.
Some times I wonder, when exactly can you start calling yourself a writer? Is it when you get published? Or is it when you start writing? Or is it when you can write regularly, almost every day?
If it was the latter, I could’ve never called myself a writer!
Although I try to make an attempt of writing every day, it’s something that seems forced or produces results which I do not like. Maybe that’s the process of being a good writer and not just a writer.
However, I make it a point to do something, at least one thing a day that can satisfy my creative glands. Whether it’s writing, photography, make or ideate for a comic strip, or art. And while thinking of ways and looking at what other people do to get their creative juices flowing, I came across the art of blackout poetry on Austin Kleon’s profile.
So as an experiment, I tried my first blackout poetry yesterday.
Reader a leap into space exposes the courage to change.
I absolutely enjoyed doing it! It seems easy but it really takes effort to change the narrative you’ve read and re-work on words that are right in front of you. But, I intend to do it everyday and then eventually move onto writing regularly. I hope you like it!
For 2020, I decided to read at least 24 books. And although I started Shantaram in December, I think I can still count it as my January read because oh, it’s a real big book. And what a wonderful one!
Generally, I make journal entries whenever there is an ache inside me to write or reflect. I have never shared one before. But this is an entry I made while reading Shantaram and no other occasion would be more perfect to share it.
“If I were asked to describe today, this moment – in one word – I wouldn’t have been able to say what it is, even at the stake of my life. Is it because I am feeling all too much at once or is it because I feel numb? But shouldn’t numbness come with a vacancy of thoughts and an uncomfortable quiet in the head? There is no quiet in my head. There is a whirlwind of thoughts.
I was reading Shantaram and a couple of lines, a thought really stuck with me.
‘In the beginning we feared everything – animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky – everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost anything else.’
The potency of fear is so strong and so profound that it becomes the charioteer of our lives. Afraid of height? Don’t look down. Afraid of the dark? Never embrace it. Afraid of commitment? Stay away from it. And I don’t know how many of us haven’t seen the other side of fear.
I am perpetually fearful. Probably that’s the word I was looking for earlier. I fear a lot of things – something as trivial as not waking up early in the morning and missing out on a couple of hours to work on myself. I fear falling in love because I fear getting hurt or being punished for feeling too much.
I fear being lonely. I fear being dependent. I fear failure. I fear that I won’t be making films. I fear that I won’t have anything useful to write. I fear that what I write wouldn’t be worth reading. Sometimes, I fear myself for being either too brave or too stupid to dream of a future that’s so different.
I realise how tiring these dreams and fears are. How tiring it is to want something so bad that it aches. And as I sit here in the night, I wonder if all of this is worth it. So much anguish, so much anxiety, so much fear, so much pain, does it make me too much of a human?
Were humans supposed to turn out to be like us? Like how we are? Too much of everything and yet too less of humanity?
Shouldn’t being human mean loving freely, smiling openly, laughing loudly, and crying with all of your heart? Where is that?
I see measured smiles, wide hopeless eyes, stifled cries, more hatred and jealousy than love, or is that a mirror I am seeing?”
Urvashi Maru 