Balcony Piece V
I thought I had put myself beyond the fence of control, yet I found myself rambling in the grips of suffocating ‘control’. The lingering thought about what I would write has enslaved me for far too long. I have known I can bare my heart for everyone to see – my nakedness for the voyeurs, my vulnerability for the assailants, my secrets for the backbiters, my honesty for the deceptive, my humility for the conceits, my devotedness for the cheats, my loyalty for the tyrants… What use would my ink on the paper serve but to open a spacious space for pointing fingers that loathe me, scorn me, intimidate me, critique me, support me, encourage me and cheer me.
So what? Who cares if all eyes are on me? In truth, it is only a wishful thinking or self-appeasement that I sit straddled on this comfortable feeling of considering myself as the centre of the planet, not even the earth for that matter.
My emptiness surfaces as I deep my pen in the ink-jar looking out through the window of this coffee shop which I have identified it with modernist writers. The fast paced movement outside magnifies for me that there is nothing modern about writing sitting at a coffee shop unless I could keep at standstill the racing young couples in their shorts craving for every sunshine they could get before the long winter sets in.
This realization knocks on the doors of my mind like a dream which I start to chase but ‘the buts and the ands’ kept reminding me that I was wide awake. Shouldn’t I dream as those who intone that they have a dream in their wakeful state and with the awareness of all the intricacies of power and hegemony, enslavement and serfdom, determination and willpower, dignity and rights…?
Call it Joyce’s epiphany or my vision beyond the measures of dreams that dry right in the season they were planted – drowsiness, sleep or slumber – I sensed it right there as the pen screeched, a loud call for more ink for it grasped “I’ve miles to go,” before I call it a day.
My gaze through the window at the library door across the street was blocked by an elderly woman as she slowly walked supported by four-wheeled walkers. The four-wheeled drivers back home had always deprived me of calm walks of thoughts as they rushed and bumped into me at every corner. But this woman sobered my frenzied pen to hold on to the vision that was demanding me to iron the wrinkled road to its destination, to cleanse it from plaguing dreams that could only feed despaired hearts, and from ominous nightmares that keep frightened minds hostage.
The library opened and I started to pack my things. I thought if I was just rambling or daydreaming. No, I shouldn’t dream – that is the new rule with a mighty energy channelled into my mind raising overflowing storms of thoughts that are waiting to be fused with my ink unless it clotted, washed out or faded when it is out in the open for the pointing fingers.
