In Continuum.

Inspirational Dry-Spell

It is a strange observation, that I actually had more going on in my mind when I had nothing to do at all. The period of time between December and May, I found myself entertaining a woman who ended up breaking my heart three times over, leaving nothing behind for me to mend, and the rest of those times sitting in random cafes around my house and writing random thoughts. Two weeks into my new life, and though I can't say that I hate it, I am missing that old life that I had only a matter of weeks ago. Inspirations were the people walking on the streets, the way the sun reflected off the puddles on the roadside, and in the eyes of lonely strangers sipping on lukewarm coffees.

They were everywhere, just waiting for me to grab them off the trees like wild apples. But ever since this new life started for me - this academic life - a lot of my time have been spent revolving around that life. I don't get a lot of free time to myself now, not even the long boring journeys from home to school and back. It gets too tiring to observe people sometimes, and the shaking of the bus becomes nauseous at times. It is as if, by giving up a part of my brain capacity for the work at school, I gave up the ability to write altogether. OK, I correct myself. I can still write, but I am not writing the things that I am very satisfied with. Before this very post, I deleted about four or five undone entries because halfway through, I find them to be unsatisfying, incoherent, or simply repulsive. Oh, how I miss those carefree days.

This is what usually happens when I get onto a bus in the past. I board the bus, scan my EZ-link card, and then find an empty seat next to the window and then admire the scenery outside, even if it is dominated by the dull colors of passing cars or the sight of unhappy commuters at bus stops. I was intrigued and interested in anything and everything, because I believed that there was something to everything in this world worth writing about. It was a little ambitious of me to think that way, but at least that period of time, details in the surroundings never proved me wrong. I remember the look of the old lady next to me one day, just staring at my writings as I attempted to jot down notes on a piece of paper slapped against my thighs. Those were the days, even a droplet of rain on the bus window could turn into something fascinating on my blog, in my own standards anyway.

But this is what happens these days, as I get onto the bus. I'd be lucky to get a bus that is not remotely crowded, which means that seats would be aplenty. I'd find a seat, plug in the music and then fall asleep with my head against the window, all the while praying for the drool in my mouth to not flow out from between my lips. After all, when you are sleeping, you really cannot control this kind of stuff. And it is not like image is not an important thing when you are in that state either. I try to keep my mouth closed as tight as possible, but some times it is hard to battle with the Sandman and your focus falters. I attempted that yesterday, rested my eyes in the darkness of my closed eyelids as I tried to focus on possible blogging topics. But of course, with the constant vibration of my cushioned seat, I fell into a quiet sleep at the front of the double decker bus, only to be woken up minutes later by the violent shaking of the bus driver.

Apparently, the bus broke down and the passengers were being chased out like chickens in a burning barn. I pulled off my ear piece, and the sudden silence on the bus was a little strange to my ears. Still, the old driver was standing next to me with his blurry eyes staring into mine, telling me to get off the bus and get the next one. But we were in the middle of nowhere, and the driver cared little about whether it was blazing hot outside. He chased us off the top level like chickens, and then told us to get out of the bus as quick as possible. From the back, white smoke poured out from the engine covers, and we found ourselves to be in the middle of nowhere. Neither bus stops - the next one or the previous - were in sight, and we had to walk the distance to the closest one just to catch another bus. As we started walking, I had a chat with a girl, telling her just how bad my day has been, all the while asking myself where the inspiration to write went.

Wednesday wasn't good to me, it wasn't good to me at all. The quiz in the morning sucked really bad, and I am beginning to understand the hatred her past students have for her. In fact, there is a rumor circling that she was petitioned off her previous campuses. I allowed her to have a five-class grace period, before any true judgments are laid against her. But it seems like with this quiz, I wouldn't have to wait for five lessons to make that verdict myself. Her notes are utterly useless, and half of the questions came out from the textbooks - which she said were not important. I cursed her under my breath as I arrived at the next bus stop in the stifling Wednesday afternoon, asking myself if I should write this as a topic. But there wasn't much to write about anyway, and the fact that I was on an inspirational dry-spell was troubling.

It is as if the routine of life sucked all the creative juices out of my brain, and all that is left is a dried up shell that once was. Like I mentioned after, it is not about not being able to write, but rather the losing of the ability to write well enough. I stood at the bus stop with my arms crossed and the music plucked, frustrated at how the littlest details I tried to pick up, became blurry images and distorted pictures in my head. I wasn't able to concentrate on anything anymore, and the voices around my head faded into soft murmurs, exactly like the sensation you get right before you pass out. I guess it was the most extreme side-effect you get along with a writer's block. It was a sensation I have never experienced before, and I saw the world spinning under and over my head, all the while mourning for the loss of inspirations, of words, or ideas.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful. What should have took about ten minutes, took nearly half an hour to complete. And the constant breaking of the driver didn't help with the nauseous feeling in my head. With my head against the glass, I tried to re-focus, to readjust to the surroundings and tried to study everything, to observe all over again. A child, a child playing with something in his mother's arms. A child...a child, what is he doing now? What is that? I gave up.

I stormed off the bus, missed the lower step and almost tumbled onto the concrete pavement. But I regained my balance, and smiled at the old lady who asked if I was OK. But the truth was, I wasn't. I was running out of ideas, I was desperately hunting for something to write about, to type about. And if somebody like me say that he hasn't got anything to say, then it has got to be a big deal. But I couldn't tell the old lady "Oh, I am having the worst day of my life because I haven't got a good topic to blog about when I get home in about five minutes". She would've smacked me with her multi-colored umbrella or something, and then call Woodbridge to have me arrested. But it was a crisis for me, and even the ripples in the puddles everywhere failed to trigger anything in my head.

I hoped for something to happen, something major. Something dangerous, something funny, or remotely interesting. Every car that passed by turned just far enough for me to be in a safe distance, so being knocked down by a car was out of the question. The construction site was sealed off on all sides save for the main entrance, which is guarded by a security guard in a tin-foiled guard house twenty-four hours a day, and seven days a week. So falling into a pit in the middle of a construction site and then being rescued by the courageous workers was out. Neither could I save some beautiful hot blond from falling into one of those deadly pits either, because there were no blonds around to fall into the pit, nor were there any females. OK, the old lady who smiled at me at the bus stop perhaps. But she was walking away from me by then, and she didn't look like she needed my rescue anyway. Something funny...something funny...I needed inspirations, and I needed it fast, because I was already at the back gate of my house.

Sitting in front of the computer, the same suffocating sensation plagued me. I free-wrote on a blank piece of paper, and was just about to start underlining the phrases that I liked when I realized that nothing between line number one and the last line interested me at all. That was an pathetic attempt at sourcing for inspirations, and with that I tossed the notebook aside into the small mount of my blanket. I thought about the events of the day, all the little independent incidents that occurred one after another. The series of events, happening in incoherent order, and all the while, the feeling of having a writer's block never left me. Still, before the computer, I felt the same as I was while being chased out of the bus, while stumbling down the back steps of a bus, and then being stared at by the constructions. The same predicaments, to be without ideas...ideas...IDEA.

Then it came to me, and I started this entry, finally.