“Terrible force of life, I embrace Thee…”

-of the many forces, only love surpasses all.

 

I often wondered if truly we existed only in one plane, or if this is the only reality there is. There are things that I cannot explain or make sense of, like places and events and people whom I feel strongly familiar with.

 

I had a dream several years ago that I was in this old Spanish House, with a family, three kids and the youngest daughter was sick. It was a place probably in the 16th or 17th  Century. I cannot see faces but can feel that I was wearing a long gown-like dress and belonged to a middle class family. It was a huge house with a veranda and a front porch colored in mint green. The man who was beside me ( I cannot see a face either) was a dignitary and he was telling me not to worry about the child. He was a gentle soul whose confidence matched kindness.

 

I even told my husband about this dream, and of course he told me to shrug it off, which  I did. But most of the times, I zoom in and out of reality because of these things. I believe in God, and I believe in having one life, a here and now. Somehow, I really find it difficult to explain why some things or feelings happen without reason. So I just let things be and make these inspirations for my writing.

I often question if this is just part of my overly “creative” thoughts. Or perhaps a residue of all the books I have read. Yet the happiness and pain, the emotions, the frustrations, agony, excitement, is somehow so real that I cannot even put them into words. Although this can be, just a break in the fabric of my being, and the risk I am taking is quite high in to unravel truths behind all these “weird” and unexpected occurrences. Sometimes it also shatters my rather quiet life. I want to shut it off of course, because who wants to complicate their lives anyway? Now that I am at the helm of a life changing situation, it is not time for these things to happen to me. And probably the last thing I need. Strangely, even if I try my very best to stop, all the more it becomes stronger and pulls me off tangent. So I just embrace it and express it through my craft.

As the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez described in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, sometimes the content of great books are quite illusory, and perhaps quite unreal accounts of the era when these books were written. Somehow writers are able to escape the flatness of reality through putting details that are not, and may have not really happened but somehow had to be placed  to successfully render the whole picture of what was transpiring in the stories they have written. However, I feel that there is something deeper than this universe that causes man to sort of “imagine” things and realities.

In my case, I always relied on my instincts and emotions. These are my drivers for my writing and art. It is either an interplay with the happiness, sadness, strangeness of how I feel. It never fails me, and continues to help me passionately express how I feel. As a writer, there are many bouts of “out-of-body” transcendental experiences, where I have to zap in and out of real into reel. Maybe this is tantamount to lunacy but, the level of crazy in a writers head is sort of the “demarcation line” between his craft and his genius. I think this is the same with other pioneers of the art who have gained an excuse for being strange and weird, guised perhaps as their genius.

I do not intend to be penalized for how my creative thought process happens, but yes as I mentioned, sometimes there are incidents in life that leaves me baffled and surprised myself. I usually get a “high” based on these emotions and experiences and translate them into poems, writings, and sometimes art. I cannot explain it myself but it really works that way. So when emotions run dry, so does my art.

I think these two things go hand in hand – inspiration and creation. I am thankful (but a bit scared too) when I feel, meet, people, places and life experiences that help me express my self, even to the verge of entertaining “weird” realities in my life. That I think is what a writer’s life is all about – empowering visions with words, sharing a view of various aspects of life, complexities with the rest of the world, through a lens that the writer deems more effective.

-“There are no regrets for the love that we share,
for the price that has to be paid,
for the cross that one has to bear.
Love does not know any bound,
neither time nor space.
It is enough that in one lifetime,
you get to find a mirror that shows your exact self.

Bliss.”