In Continuum.

Temptation

Before the beginning of this very long journey, a person told me to be wary of the temptations that may present themselves along the way. That person was referring to women at that point in time, telling me to be loyal and to stick to my girlfriend despite the many temptation of love and lust along the way. I have succumb to temptation, but not exactly the kind of temptation she was referring to back then. It is the temptation of writing, the square that I move my pieces back to almost every time. There are moments of realization that you cannot keep it going for a long time, a switch in paces and a change of gear in life, and you find that you want to give something a break, just to see how it sits with you. I've been without writing for a little over a month now, and things have been relatively bearable for the most part. I must admit that amidst the school, amidst the traveling and amidst the living, you tend to get lost within the ebbs and the flow of things. Writing suddenly takes a step back, and it can be a liberating feeling to be honest. There is a thin line between passion and obligation, and I cannot deny that there were times when I felt like writing became somewhat of an obligation of sorts. It isn't because I had to meet some kind of deadline or anything, because there were none other than the ones that I set for myself. One entry a day, one entry a day, one entry a day. That was the law, or rule, that I've been trying to abide to for some time now. Though, as you might have already noticed if you've stuck around for a long enough time, there are moments within the lifespan of this blog when I stopped writing before. So this, my comeback, shouldn't come as a surprise at all.

There are times in a journey, any kind of journey, when you don't feel like you want to document at all. There are some travelers who love to document every inch of their journey with whatever instruments that they can. Some rely on their cameras to do the job, taking pictures of everything from sunsets to ducks, from breakfast to toenails, from hungover friends to skyscrapers. If one is to try hard enough, I'd not be surprised if he or she manages to form some kind of 3D environment with all the pictures taken of this place. Similarly, I used to have a need or want to document every inch of my life in words, to find a little something in everything to write about. I wanted to remember, and I wanted to express it at the end of the day with words and punctuations, with paragraphs and essays dedicated to a certain memory. That is all good for a while, until you realize that the need to document your life sometimes overwhelms the part about living the life. It's like going to a rock concert with a camera, and you feel like you want to take as many pictures as possible, because it is supposed to be "a night to remember" or something like that. Some people believe in that, which is why they are shutter-happy, and they go on a picture-taking rampage at concerts. But at the end of the day, they go home and they feel like they haven't enjoyed the concert as much as they could have because they were busy taking pictures of it and forgot what it was supposed to be about. The band, the atmosphere, the music. It shouldn't be about the 3x5s, it never should be.

The same goes with writing, I suppose, the way that you are subconsciously trying to remember every single detail. I noticed that while I was in New York City over the weekend, and realized that I wouldn't have enjoyed the trip as much if I was constantly trying to remember and document everything for the sake of doing so. I wanted to experience New York City like a tourist, or a human being, and not some kind of journalist out there to do a job. It's not that blogging about it would ruined the experience or anything, but I suppose in a way it made everything feel somewhat routine. I wanted it to settle in for a while, like that period of time that I got between coming to Buffalo and starting school. I wanted to get comfortable with a certain memory or experience first before writing about it in full. I don't suppose any form of quality work could be derived from regurgitating half digested thoughts, if you know what I mean. It'd taste almost like a cup of coffee made this morning in a rush because you were running late for work. You know, that stale taste in the cup that makes it less of a coffee and more of a cup of hot water. Don't you just hate that? Anyway, the same goes with the act of documenting memories I suppose. It is different with photography, because photography is instantaneous, and you don't have to allow the memory to set in. It involves capturing a single moment with the lens, and the only limit to how much you can take is the capacity of your memory card or the battery life. And as for writing, there is a buffer period, and if you write anything within that time, you know that the end result is going to be a big mess.

I don't suppose anything is good at high dosage, no matter how you see it. You cannot expect to listen to a Beatles album on repeat everyday and expect it to sound good by day twelve. It doesn't work that way, and the same goes with writing. I don't feel like there is a lack of things to write in my life so far, because there has been plenty. It is the idea of diminishing returns, like the taste of a chocolate bar in your mouth. The first bite is great because you were craving for it, and then the second bite is even tastier. By the sixth bite, you get into this motion and you realize that the sixth bite isn't exactly as gratifying as the first, though they are pretty much the same for the most part. Writing works the same way, and it is like this living breathing animal for the most part. It is dynamic, and it shifts around without bounds or leashes at all. You cannot cage this animal in a place for a long time, because like us human, it becomes tired and agitated with its surroundings. You cannot constantly feed it with the same food, because it wants to be able to choose what it wants to eat, when it wants to eat, and how it wants to eat. Writing is the animal that does not sleep, and it lingers in the back of your head like a prowling lion. Yet, it remains in the dark sometimes, in the shade of a tree on a bright sunny day or in the shadows of the grass in the night. It doesn't appear until it wants to, and you cannot possibly expect it to appear whenever you drive by as a tourist in a safari. It's like going out on a whale watching tour, and you shouldn't expect to see whales out in the sea every time it moves out. Sometimes, the whale just wants to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

So, the temptation of writing came back to me, as you can see. I am pleasantly surprised that I still have it in me, I suppose. This must be how an old-time boxer feels like at the age of sixty when he realizes that he still packs a punch. There was a time when returning to writing makes myself feel old and rusty sometimes, somewhat like a bag of nails. It takes a while for you to get back on track, to feel that momentum build up all over again. It takes some time, sometimes, unlike now. I suppose you cannot get rid of something that is inherent in you, you know, something that you are born with. I feel like I have the gift to translate my thoughts into words pretty easily, and there isn't an inertia in trying to do so for the most part. That is also why when it comes to essay questions at school, I usually don't have a problem with them, save for the aching in my fingertips by the end of it all. Writing is second nature to me, like a siamese twin who wasn't there (I actually typed "sesame twin" at first). It is something that is in me, and I know the italicized "in" back there conjured up the imagine of an alien life form in my body, didn't it? Anyway, I cannot deny what is inside of me, which is why I have succumbed to the temptations of writing all over again. It feels good to see my fingers dance over the keyboards again, not to mention the way words magically appear in front of the cursor.

I suppose tonight, since I am in the mood, I shall try to catch up on a great many things that has come to pass, and see if I can catch up with myself in terms of writing. This is going to be a strange habit to be falling back into again, but I suppose it is better than pouring smoke into your lungs, any day. This isn't the first time that I have stopped blogging, I realized. Over the past couple of years, ever since 2003 to be exact, I have stopped blogging periodically for a handful of times. I've stopped for a week, to a month, to an entire year before, and I suppose those breaks only served to gather my thoughts properly. I don't feel like I want to oblige myself in blogging this time. No deadlines, no minimum quantities, no rules. I want to blog whenever I want to blog, or when I feel like there is something to blog about. I don't want my blog to end up like some kind of news agency when they have to come up with materials to report on, or like filler songs in an album. You know, news about a dog with three legs, some story about a small town baking the biggest cheesecake in the world, filler stories to fill up spaces in a newspaper when the news are coming in slow. I don't want entries on this blog to end up like that, the same way we skip filler songs in an album because they are just not nearly as good as the title tracks.

New directions, I remain unsure of that idea. People always say that with a new start, comes a new face. You are supposed to approach something from a different perspective and everything. But people also say that you shouldn't try to fix something that isn't broken, and it's not like I left blogging with a bad taste in my mouth anyway. I ended it with a song that has been lingering on the front pages for the longest of times, and I do assume that this little break in blogging has drawn away many readers that has stuck with me from the very start, especially for the fact that I usually do it unannounced. I've always grappled with the dilemma, between writing for myself and writing for an audience. In a way, we are all trying to find balance between the two, and it is a constant struggle sometimes. As much as people want to believe that they are keeping a blog for themselves, there are times when you want to let the world in, you know? Anyway, I don't suppose there will be a radical change in new directions, and this blog is still going to be the way that it is - long, dreary, and very "me". This blog is still going to retain its length and breadth, and things will be, in no ways, discounted in any way. I suppose that will be where I am the most comfortable, with writing and with myself, between writing for people and writing for myself. After all, why can't the two be of the best marriage?