One hundred days ago, I started writing again – egged on by some unnameable djinn of my unsatisfied youth. I took pencil to paper (occasionally, but more frequently, digits to keyboard) and started writing again – rediscovering the undulating joys and sorrows of words, like an old sailor rowing his small dinghy past the crags and coastlines that he once knew well.
I say “rediscover”, because for a brief period in my youth, this was all I ever wanted to do – to read joyfully, and to write soulfully: to breathe in the mysteries of the universe, to bask in the crypticism of existence, and to exhale outwards for others whatever small particles of wisdom I was able to assemble from the dustmotes of Life.
What can I say? Many years came in between myself and I – years filled with the longing for warm embraces and silent kisses, for the hollow thrill of rising in the estimation of one’s peers, for the sheer and desperate act of merely staying alive. Many years of wanting to start, some days of actually starting, and on those rare days, being quickly embarrassed into silence by my own sense of futile ambition.
Then one day, I started writing again. And again. And again. Each time, I would tell myself, quietly and firmly: this is for yourself. No one but yourself. Because we are all silently rowing our own little small dinghies in the darkness of being alone – every word, every sentence, every exhalation is a furious defiance of the inexorability of Time, to say I exist, dammit!
I breathe in again. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat, every day, every week, every year, evermore.