Balancing Act
i can’t remember the last time i was able to sit down and write. it used to be that i would scribble on the corners of papers, napkins, or even just compose poetic prose while walking to class. at any rate, it seems that the creative juices have somehow been sucked out of me. i haven’t written in months and i actually forgot i had a blog until a friend emailed and encouraged me to post again.
it’s funny. i’ve found that i go through phases of self-awareness. at times, i feel as if i am held by an invisible force in the center of a whirlwind - sounds, colors, words, lives spin around me in a blur……like in the movies, where the confused and yet ultimately triumphant main character stands in the middle of a busy street and gazes intently as the world spins around him like an abstract painting. life is rushing by and it’s all the hero can do to keep up.
people notice – more and more you seem to be staring off into oblivion, pondering something, and someone interrupts your thoughts with a kindly “are you okay?” you nod and make amends for your distracted state of mind.
when i finally do get a moment to myself i simply do not want to think about anything, much less engage in expunging my thoughts onto virtual or corporeal paper. ha. nonsensical as they’d be.
Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated—thrown aside—a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions.
-William Carlos Williams
It used to be that my favorite time of day was right before i went to bed….that sinking feeling where your senses slowly melt into darkness, almost a proto-dreaming phase where images and ideas from the day present themselves as potential amusements and bemusements for the night. But somehow it got to the point where i made myself tired enough to fall immediately to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. i had already spent the entire day mulling over these issues – why should i have to think about them at night too? i knew that if i allowed myself to think, i’d be awake again, doomed to a few hours of insomnia.
But such stages of high stress, which every college student (anyone for that matter) must experience, are ultimately dissipated by a process of slow release. “Sweating it out,” i guess you could say, until the onions soften and all the flavors meld back together.
then there are those times, those glorious times, where you find yourself standing on the edge of a precipice….balancing yourself on a narrow ridge, trying to decide if you should jump into the deep, dark canyon because it is inevitable anyway….or make a break for it and run away (if that’s still even possible).
Terrified to jump because you’re afraid of what it will mean, but resilient not to run because you’ve had a taste of that sweet darkness and can never go back.
in this, perhaps, i refer to what some call an “eman rush” or a “finding your purpose,” almost out-of-body experience. insert your desired cliche. you get a taste – at the same time a glimpse of expectation and the wafting scent of memory – of what you promised yourself some time ago – of what you instructed yourself to accomplish and achieve. you push on, harder, faster, more dedicated than you were before, ready to *take control* and brave the new challenges because, they will in the end, be sweated out. and there is a point to all this madness. we do not all travel in vain.
Such is life, i suppose. the exchange of sorrow and joy, or as Allah (swt) describes it, the exchange of darkness and light, where the one light eventually triumphs over the many darknesses. [6:1]
for now, my goal is to be at least an extra in the movie of my life. we’ll work our way up to heroine, director, producer, screen writer.