I always love writing and reading as a kid and still do. My limited memory (perhaps reconstructed even) reminds me of a the fist 'adult' book I received when I was eight or nine about Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr. and perhaps then was when I feel in love with the written word. I think it's the only think I've generally been both comfortable and ironically occasionally not so at ease with. Over the years, I tend to string those sentences in my own head rather than penning them down on a piece of paper. I thought if I write them down, they seem so cold and distant. It has taken me a long while to also feel the confidence to write what I know and understand. As noted in my blog here, I sometimes have difficulty moving beyond the surface level. But that's me and I'm trying.
With that, I am using this space to experiment with writing.They will all be untitled. A lot of it is personal, be it my own or of those I know. I write what I know and what I feel.
José Saramago, the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist recalled [of his grandfather who suffered a stroke and was taken to Lisbon for treatment], "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling."
Saramago writings focused on the human condition and isolation we faced in contemporary urban life. While his prose is long, to me what is fascinating about his writing is how his characters all continue to struggle with a need for simple human connection, relationships and discover meaning and understanding of their respective lives beyond societal structures. Which is what I think writing serves to do. To help us find in the midst of our contemporary urban wilderness, what is most important to the soul. It is not a grand ideal, I think. It's just been forgotten.
