Of dilemmas and dialectics

Coincidence. Or not. But while Abhi here (take a bow Abhi... make yourself decorative) has been turning steadily extrospective (it is a word now, so shut up), I've been doing quite the reverse... in the worst way possible... I've been thinking about writing lately. I always did - off and on. It's just more consistent now... maybe it's all the nothing-to-do I have in my life lately. It's a little like the a-rhythmic whipping of the fan, the staccato barks of the clock, the delirious rippling of the curtains... sounds invisible till 3 in the night, when acting with pre-determined concert, they stage Le Danse Macabre. Offkey.

What gets to me though is this: what do I write about? They say everyone has at least one story to tell. Either they are all CIA field operatives or I lead a singularly dull life (refrain from comments please... you just might hit a nerve... and my nerves hit back... hard). So what is it to be then: two guys, a girl and a dog? A girl, a dream and a recorder? Or an old man, a piece of tatting and the Louvre?

Then again: slapstick or poignant? It isn't easier to make people laugh than cry these days anyway... most don't care either ways... I mean the last time I cried was when I read Catina. And the last time I laughed was a minute back when my ex-roommate jigged energetically to a ballad of tragedies in a towel. I figure it's easiest to confuse people - there has to be a reason Hitchhiker's and Famished Road made it to the bestsellers' rosters and took all those awards home for breakfast.

The thing with mood-writing is holding the mood for a prolonged stretch temporally. Alternatively, finishing the novel/work/magnum opus/general trash while the mood lasts... in my case then half-an-hour... at best. Nothing is impossible... but this does creep mighty close. But really. Did Maurier surround herself with goth lava lamps, wind chimes and Irish hollyhocks while in the throes of literary composition? Did she look up from her manuscript and pronounce in a death-knelled, mystical voice resonant with the sands of yesterday "chicken soup" when her housekeeper asked her what she'd have for lunch? Did Wodehouse hide rubber lizards in his aunts' slippers? Or were they not-rubber? Was there no firewood when Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights?

Woolf committed suicide. I think I would too in all probability. Seeing as how I'm already profoundly schizophrenic, deciding which part of me kills the other would be tantamount to playing favourites.

In the interests of fair play therefore, I hereby take up the ukulele. Neighbours be damned.