Wednesday, July 16, 2008

WRITING AND ITS LOOPS

writing is seriously a way to get some clots removed from the sense-making channels: some clots, that could possibly drown the burst of any striking new nodes to reflect on. and it is difficult to write naturally when you discover that you have been laying the plucked clots out onto your pages and that your pages have now become worn nets that keeps all your dirt and have let the thoughts lap out. in fact, i shouldn't then be writing. as raphael says, i need to hold it back, keep it hidden, and remind my self that i could be read, and that being read entrusts a rather onerous responsibility along with its pleasures - the responsibility to be in order, a need to defend myself from chaos and whim. it's to will and bring into being a schedule of logic - a mock-up of reason. strictly, writing therefore is a strenuous mode of communicating; not that reason is strenuous, but, more the demand of processing herein, more the strain. i know i haven't said anything new; neither was that my intention - i just needed to lay out what i've probably been thinking.
a divinatory accomplice of the will to transcend (the mundane and the dying phenomena), the act of writing in its execution cannot aspire to shed its baggage of spirit-uality that easily. and that perhaps, is the reason why the urge to write, the pleasure of having written something as it was meant to be written, or the later chagrin when the words no more seem to be what they stood for when they were written - all seem so filled with life although they do not claim any immediate connection to living. in fact, writing and life cannot ever relate themselves in uncomplicated loops: we cannot aspire to 'write life', because it is always the 'lived' (and not the living present moment) past that is recorded in writing. added to this, writing is much technique. it is not 'natural' that life be written; life is, 'naturally', only lived. writing at its best documents a remembrance of the series of now-blurred patterns. a serious written script is an effort to bring an Existence to its most honest nakedness; shorn off of its protective fabrics, in this burning nakedness, it could be called 'a spirit'. it is here that the will to transcend pullulates; the key to the matrix is imagination, the afterworld of reason and logic. unlike Survival, 'transcendence' is not in the purview of Reason, and so Reason cannot supply us with any incentive or consolation or explanations with regard to the end-purposes of Living.
in one of our conversations, i remember how raphael so wanted to explain what Eternity means; how every thing animate and inanimate, lived, living and to-be-lived is merely a stock of shadows that file by, passing from nothingness to nothingness and is uncared for. to proceed with Life is to move closer towards the most tangible proof of its transience: Death. and death, ironically, is confronted not with imagination, but with all possible armory that reason and logic render.
in anthropomorphing the nature and spiritualising writing, the human race is perhaps trying to come to terms with death and the will to transcend. and the most wonderful part in the whole process is the earnestness that we put into this: the earnestness of one that looks deep into the mirror right before he has ended.

__________________________________________________
to hari: you might find it rather too audacious to have written such a piece on writing. waiting for the toll... honestly. this was a rushed article, and it is too late to go back and re-do it.

to raphael: may our one-off campaigns pay up sometime!!

7 comments:

man in painting said...

A writer is an archeologist unconsciously digging his own past.There is definitely a part in my brain seeking immortality.Another part trying to 'look at itself'Another area which needs "to get addressed".At times they work together..sometimes they are at war..Me collecting my own fossils.. and presenting before myself explaining the features.i can claim that the unidentified body wasn't mine but it putrifies inside and will make clots in the hidden tunnels beneath the bed of grey matter..
Yes Writing is all about removing clots..
As you said i am also not going to re- check this.. because it is too late...
Arun,thanks a lot.
wishes.

ARUN said...

@man in painting.
thanks for reading the sentiment. i know that i have totally overlooked the history of writing, as it were, and have veered off to a discussion therefore incomplete.

Zeinab said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Zeinab said...

First of all: I really loved the intro (am writing and commenting in separate windows, forgive me). And then, if you can, please forgive such a delayed response, I was really busy the past month. And no, you don't have to go back and change anything, this one was really a culture-shock to me (you've shown me you can be really good when you're not playing to the gallery).

I missed you a bit; I actually was fishing for some new posts in the beginning of July. Too bad I looked to early, or not at all. (The loss is entirely mine.)

What you have written must be saluted as an elegy; it is almost In Memoriam Scribo. I say that because, if you'd written this 15 years ago, it would resonated throughout my veins. But now, I think the primacy of the (written) word is challenged everywhere.

It is a superbly written piece...and best of all you left that detail about Raphael (he's a rare creature who can sense eternity and immortality even on the sunlit highway at noon). My only sorrow is that it is hard for me to have to dismantle this one, as you will soon become one of them (the academy). But I rather felt like I was reading me. How I wish you'd write like this. And I'd rather not like to find issue with it, it's a really good piece. You have settled on discussing things which are dear to me too.

You have described the gulf between life and writing (depiction of any sort) in a small but moving passage. You've caught the nuances and melded quite a few ideas into it - ideas which are a luxury even to think of (transcendence, for example). You've read a lot, and previously your writing made me wonder whether it was worthwhile...? But this really is something deep from within.

I loved reading this apology for writing... even though most of what you said runs counter to the very structure and avenue of the Internet (we can go back and change the things we have written), and the clots do not remain that way, the blood flows and the sluices clear up. But that's what I like most in imaginative writing: subjective, gross things which really give you the feel and warmth of a life you've left standing out the door.

For the other reading need (`exact reading'), I have my UNIX manuals handy, no writer writes like Stevens or Kernighan for the sheer quality of it. But for this one, thank you.

Keep it up in this fashion, and, believe me, even if you write very little, it will really add up to something wonderful.

And thanks again for writing this for me and for Raphael and for all of us male egoists. This is what separates XX and XY.

(PS If you really want some criticism - well it's a bit difficult to criticize a subjective piece - well, I might have to read this a few times over. )

And don't worry about the deleted comment, it was just me going back to delete the first version of my comment.

Zeinab said...

And forgot to add: it's a heavy piece, congratulations, and thanks again for putting something worthwhile on blogspot for me to read...

ARUN said...

@ zeinab
whenever i read your comments on the other writings, i always ran a magnifying glass on them - to locate a minor piece of compliment, if any were present. here suddenly the lens caught more than it could hold; what i was wishfully thinking, is 'real'ly there - and im overwhelmed.
thank you
and happy that i could find something that intersted the both of us :)

man in painting said...

I just came back..read your article again and just want to wish you all success and happiness..
do write something..
take care
mip