Friday, July 06, 2012

the origin of blankness

Yawn! 

I feel like writing but i have nothing to write. right now i am blank and have no wish to fill it with something. i am not sure if i like this blankness but it is kind of comforting, like when you press your temples when you are suffering from a terrible headache. the pain goes for a while, relieving you. it comes back again but that doesn't matter, the momentary relief is what is worth the pain. the blankness pays for all the trouble of getting the headache. you may call it 'masochism'.

(i quickly googled the exact meaning of the word. it came with the following two meanings ...
  

mas·och·ism/ˈmasəˌkizəm/

Noun:
  1. The tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from one's own pain or humiliation.
  2. (in general use) The enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome.

well, my feeling is definitely not a sexual gratification not deriving pleasure from my pain or humiliation. i would rather go with the second meaning. it suits me well, perfectly fine. 

ah, yes, you can call this blankness the result of a kind of masochism. i went through extreme pain in the recent past to arrive at this blankness. now i don't want to let it go. but then holding on to something for nothing is also a kind of masochism. god knows what it leads to next. 

i would rather let this blankness go when its time is due, but as long as it is with me, it is a welcome break. i have been too engrossed with affairs of life, thought about too many things -- none of them directly linked to my needs. 

but then what are my needs? i don't know! sometimes i think i don't have any need. i approach life with a kind of aloofness that spooks me sometimes. nothing surprises me anymore! and worse of all, i am not angry with anyone. hell know how much i want to be angry with someone, but anger has disappeared. am i giving up on life? i would like to think it is quite the contrary. 

i see my change as the beginning of a new life, a life where 'success' is not the yardstick of being a success. i am also witnessing a subtle change in my body, i am getting thinner, like how i was in my college days. my cheeks are sinking in, eyes are getting colder, i feel like a creature with infinite patience. i can just sit in front of a waterbody and just watch. watch in the distance, watch the ducks in their mating ritual and then i look at my watch ... two hours have gone by without me noticing anything. what unnerves me sometimes is this feeling of not getting nervous. 

if it was some two-three years back, i would have panicked to meet my blankness. that's what shocks me now sometimes. i don't panic meeting my blankness, rather, am trying to give a shape to it. of course, i am yet to come across anything. i am rather sure that science will someday discover some kind of higgs boson particle that gives shape (mass?) to blankness, because blankness is a physical phenomenon, it exists, no need to hypothesise on it. 

but this is not the first time that i am feeling this blankness, i have experienced it before. and i know the aftermath of it. when i started getting filled inside i did some incredible  things that altered how i perceive life forever. i would rather not go into details because i just now have realised how difficult it is to write about your own life -- honestly. 

so i was working on this story that i had to leave after six months of hard work. i say hard work because i never read back what i have written (yes, i won't read this too after i finish writing this garbage). looking back at my work is an impossibility for me because i feel like hitting the delete button after seeing my ugly child. i'd rather give the responsibility to my friend Vincent who goes on to nourish the child (edit it). i care less. 

but i really worked hard on the story that i was working. i wrote paragraph after paragraph, sat everyday working on it. on days, i just wrote one paragraph, or just two sentences. i deleted the old graphs, wrote new ones, reworked, discarded and hid my face in my pillow in extreme anguish. it was about my life, neat, honest ... and thus ugly, revoltingly so. 

it was so painful for me to look back at what i have done in my life that i cringed in disgust and shame. ashamed of my cowardice, not morality. i don't have a morality (i never cared). i have been a great sinner, if you identify it with the material meaning of it, and i enjoyed every moment of it. but what hurt me, even now, are the trusts that i broke, the compromises i embraced to achieve a particular mean and the sheer futility of it all. i wish i was wiser that time.

but i thought at least i was bolder and more honest. wrong. 

i am not yet ready to meet eye to eye with my past and no, i am not honest yet. so, yeah, i guess, i am no wiser than what i was. it's all a sham. i will wait for my final days before i start acknowledging what i have done. till then, i won't, i can't. it's too painful and shameful.

ah! why did start writing about those incidences then? 

that's because i was pretty sure my days had come. 

i was diagonised, actually misdiagonised, with blood cancer in December/January. 

the doctor had given me about one and half years to live. three months just passed in a haze, depressed, philosophising, reading about death. 

only in march/april, i got to know that i don't have it. i also went through a lot of other tests to see how healthy my body is. 

it's as fit as a ten year old. i was relieved, but the fight had already altered my psyche. can we trace back the origin of this blankness to those past few months or it just appeared naturally? 

i don't know. time will have to tell. 

but right now, i can tell you one thing, honestly, sincerely ...

nothing matters to me anymore. nothing, and no one. i repeat, no one.

let this state continue forever. for i have a vague feeling this will lead to my ultimate liberation.

10 comments:

Vincent said...

Another piece of fiction!

ghetufool said...

ha ha :P

Vincent said...

This is worthy of Fernando Pessoa (in The Book of Disquiet); in one of his character's "Dolorous Interludes".

susan said...

I don't get the feeling this is a piece of fiction as it rings all too true in my heart. Then again, you are far too good a storyteller to ever distance yourself from truth.

ghetufool said...

well, i am enjoying it :)
since you two have different views and i am too glad to leave it at that, let's call it surreal :P

Vincent said...

Any fiction that lacks truth is worthless.

ghetufool said...

you are now confusing me ... what is your stance in this whole affair? cough out clearly!

Vincent said...

Does it matter? The author is the last person who ought to be confused, for he knows how true it is.

I'm sure we've discussed this over at my place: the difference between truth and fact. You have two readers who've enjoyed it. What more do you want? The Nobel Prize for Literature, obviously; but that's a few years down the track.

ghetufool said...

true. i will wait for the Prize. take your time, Sweden, take your own sweet time. we (vincent and i) are in no hurry.

susan said...

I think what is being discussed here is Truth - where the capital 'T' denotes a foundational aspect of the human experience.

Hopefully, the Nobel literature prize committee has better taste than the peace prize one. If so, I'm sure your time will come.

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