I received many emails from a new set of blog-readers. Some were nice, some curt, some sexist, some thought my writing was thought provoking, some thought it was mundane dross - what most of the mails did not skip was : 'that I was K, a single woman, looking for a man, with a seriously contorted sense of love, and someone who unabashedly writes about her affections for the 'pen-named' people in her life' (I shall visit this point again). That apart one interesting email, spoke of two different posts regarding 'my parents' (I shall visit this one, too), and the e-mailer's response to my flow of emotions, was I would say, aaaah.... touchy
A flurry of thoughts passed my head .... with much zapping of electricity. Surprisingly, it was not out of anger but out of a deep understanding. Like finding something very precious when, randomly cleaning your wardrobe. I found it - I found what fellow blog readers wanted me to be - they wanted me to write my life, my identity as a single, as a woman, as a worker, as a blogger.
It was like a funny thing, I studied in geometry - circles intersecting circles - and there is often that one circle that nearly overlaps all of them...
It is time to bust the myth of writing, mine, in the least.
I believe that I come from the tradition of story tellers. Not writers, per say. I come from a long lineage of myth makers and liars and experience thieves.
{I am that child in your school who, made up stories about her damaged ligament because she was too bored to do Karate, or the one that coughed up and pretended to have a heart congestion, only because the Hindi period was too boring to suffer. I was that kid.}
A Mixed Bag is not about anything, least of all, me. It is about a zapping mind, it is about feelings collected and vomited, it is about making love happen, and the wrath of loss. It is a MIXED BAG for heaven sakes, and it is a not the, like thousand other mixed bags with timeless treasures.
There is little solace, and much danger in believing that you can write only about yourself, or from your experiences... It is a myth maker's duty to create, to build on, to go beyond - to make tress walk, and frogs talk, and Ogres weep... And it is a story teller's duty to never over adorn the fabric of the story, to never let the essence (read: fragrance) over power the essential.
Finally, every post is a story, it is a stand alone. It may have a part of 'me', but that is only because, it is comes from me. It is not me. I am not A Mixed Bag. As the ancients say, "it is a liar's first trick; 'Never lie, but never tell the whole truth'."
Now, I visit them!
~ I have left out a lot of intimate sexual detail, that somewhere lies on a word file called 'junk mind'. The dammed thing is so good, it elates me to know that some one's going to jack off/flick the bean on it!
~ The parental posts may not be about my parents, may not be about me, at all. Just in case, my parents read it, they may not know what the hell I am talking about!
Think, dear reader, think... all is not what it seems; there are many holes punched in, many may's to combat. The uncertainty of distinguishing, makes for the magic; and the magic is provided by the Muse. I take no credit for it.
