So...blogging... the first page is always hard, like the first dazzlingly clean page of your notebook. "It's bound to be shite," the little voice is repeating over and over... shut up, quiet, I've spent way to long in here under the fan, trying to get to grips with this programme, why not just stick to the notebook? It's all pointless and no one will read. But there is a reason, though I'm sure it's an arbitrary one.
So I'm in India and that has nothing to do with the blog, except maybe I have more time, and maybe I feel more removed and less afraid, less ashamed to publish my thoughts, however banal and unsatisfactory they maybe to me and others. And perhaps it is the saris and the Punjabi dresses, the fact I'm too polite to reveal my shoulders in the street, doesn't mean I won't remove all my clothes on the page. In fact I'm urged by a racy desire to just rip them off.
Someone asked me today, "what is your aim?" In relation to volunteering (aimlessly) in an all girls orphanage, in Hyderabad, southish India. It's not enough that I'm different to those other 'ferengies', trying to create some Karma points, trying desperately to give some meaning to the pointlessness of it all. He has to ask what my aim is.
ReplyDelete"To enjoy my life," I told him, but afterwards, I wondered what the existentialist would say to that and the nihilist. I didn't know.
Should I have told him, oh you know to ponder over this and that...to break free from the perceptions and the assumptions of the people who know us...to move away from comfort and closer to truth...to discover if there is any truth in anything...to discover the meaning of and recipe for happiness...to learn to expect nothing from the world but give everything to it...to drift into a surreal and psychotic tunnel, from which I will emerge, having discovered my aim.
All these things are true, if only I had the discipline and dedication to see them through. The truth is that I also get to sing and dance all day, to act like I'm 10 again and I get a delicious curry, every lunch, made by auntie for all my efforts. I enjoy my life and I'm happy to say even without an aim, I have managed to remain free and evade the shackles of a miserable existence, to escape boredom, the tyranny of a 'normal life' and that time-old saying 'you need to face up to reality.'
Unreality is far sweeter. Though it gnaws at me terribly when I meet people here in India and wonder what chance luck of creation is it that I ended up in this skin, this life, with these opportunities, these unfair advantages.
Spoilt arbitrary bitch.