Blinking Seconds

The blinking cursor mocks you, indicating each second that has passed since you have started writing. Yet you can only sit in front of the glowing computer screen, eyes staring blankly into the whiteness of the page, hoping to uncover something within its depths.

۞

Why do we find ourselves sitting before such a computer screen, fingers frantically typing our thoughts? Why do we find ourselves scrawling illegible curls onto a small sheet of lined paper? All these actions taken from the standpoint of animalistic survival seem so trivial and inane. Neither writing nor typing would provide us with food or help us reproduce, so why is it then that we write?

Through writing, we remember. Through writing, we feel. Through writing, we remind ourselves of our purpose in life. Like someone we love and hold dear, writing finds its way into our hearts because we willingly give our hearts to it. When we write, we find ourselves exploring our mind and the ideas that float lazily there. Sometimes certain thoughts float to the surface, and following those delicate trails, we become able to find answers to our questions. Writing also helps us wash away the saddest parts of ourselves. Even the rhythm created when we move our fingers across keyboards and the thick lines carved into paper by our pencils firmly pressed relieve us of our stress by providing a physical outlet.

۞

You kept a journal, writing down everyday’s events. With each day, you created a memory on pieces of paper bound together by threads of time. The thickness of the journal became the duration of time and you found yourself living in a world of words on paper. Years later, you dove back into your journals, finding little pieces of memories long forgotten. These rediscovered pieces of yourself are one of the reasons that you write.

The first time you started a journal it sounded so childish, so innocent, and so cute. You purposely tried to sound bitter and cynical, but looking back, the words were merely silly – a silliness that stems from the exaggerated cynicism of a child. After all, a cheery twelve-year-old could not possibly hate everyone she knew. You looked at your handwriting. The big, loopy letters so painstakingly made have evolved over the years into a series of scrawny and squished squiggles that are now legible only to you. Sifting through that first journal, you found yourself reliving those days when your greatest fear was not seeing a friend for three days in a row and your greatest joy was insulting boys.

You told your journal about the day you got into college. How elated you felt when the letter arrived in a large envelope. How surreal it felt when you opened it, looking inside. How sad you felt when your best friend was deferred. She wanted it more than you and you wanted it for her more than for yourself. You wanted to cry for her because you knew waiting and uncertainty are some of the worst feelings in the world. The uncertainty provided enough disappointment for sadness, but not enough to squash all hope, so your friend was stuck in limbo. The mix feeling of excitement for yourself and disappointment for your friend tore at you until you did not know what to feel about your own good fortune.

As you searched through your journal, looking for interesting memories, you were warmed by the sunlight radiating from a few short lines about wandering in the neighborhood park, taking pictures, laughing, and playing silly games. Through reading your words, you remembered the photograph of the leaves you took that day. The vibrant sunlight illuminated the leaves and filtered through their papery thin bodies, making their web of watery green veins glow almost yellow. As you read, the buzzing bees and the blooming buds became reawakened through your writing and the memories of that day’s feel, smell, and taste saturated your mind.

۞

We write when we are the saddest, the happiest, or just feeling any strong emotions. We divulge our insecurities to our papers and keyboards, recounting the reasons why we feel. Ultimately, we find ourselves purging our anger and sorrow during unhappy times and magnifying our joy through the words from our fingertips on happier days. Writing is recording, but writing is also therapeutic. It allows us an outlet for our sorrows so that we can understand our minds, sort out our emotions, and move on with our lives.

۞

The day your grandfather died, you stabbed your words into the pages. He was your favorite grandparent and you admired him greatly. When you heard the news you wanted to cry, but the tears were caught in the corner of your mind where you refused to believe he was gone. Even though you never shed your tears, your journal became stained with their presence and your trembling handwriting betrayed your emotions. You wanted to go to the funeral but could not because it was an ocean away, and you could not miss so many days of school. Thus, you could only cope with you sadness by writing about your feelings. Later, you would dwell upon how you always seemed to forget he was gone, even months after his death you found yourself thinking you should call him and hear his voice.

You found your words again on the day you visited your grandfather’s grave, the first summer after his death. You described to yourself every piece of sensory stimulation you remembered. How the summer heat oppressed you. How you could smell your sticky sweat. How the grave was almost lost in the jungle of grass and shrubs. How the incense’s smoke rose into the air like ribbons. How once again you didn’t know how to cry. You wrote about the butterflies you saw, butterflies your aunt and uncle said were spirits of the dead. You realized then that you almost wished that you could believe in heaven, because then, you would see your grandfather again.

۞

Recording memories is not the only reason to write. Writing also helps us define our lives and our existence. We write because we want to believe we are creating something meaningful. The words we scatter on a page, the letters we scribble on a sheet of paper, the sporadic movements of our fingers over a keyboard all ultimately serve to convey a certain portion of our identities. Like creating a good piece of art, creating good writing is a process in which we hope to touch our souls, to hurt our hearts, to shock our morals, and to maybe even make us laugh. We want to look back on our words and realize we have created something more meaningful than we originally planned and more truthful than we ever imagined.

۞

You sift through your old writings, throwing away the pieces you find worthless. Those are the pieces that mean nothing to you because they convey no emotion. They no longer hold value in helping you reveal life’s truths. You treasure the pieces of writing that are controversial or painful. They reveal truths you were once afraid to dive into, the truth behind human emotions. In one of your journal entries you questioned whether your father liked you. You had determined already that he loved you because it was his role, so there was no doubt there. But, you told yourself, ‘like’ is more subjective than ‘love’. He had no obligation to like, or even to approve, of who you are. These controversial thoughts stimulate your mind, making it easier to explore into realms you never dared to wander.

You also value the pieces that made you laugh – the inane little vignettes that you composed on a whim which make you giggle every time you read them. You wrote down silly dreams such as owning a giant house filled with cats and foster children. Even though the dream is something relatively serious, you never successfully blocked out the image of the little old lady who lived in a shoe every time you reread that passage. These glimpses of humor serve to lighten up your mood so you were not trapped within your cage of doubtful questioning.

You love good literature because it hits you and makes you hurt. Pain is something that touches you, despite how it exposes your heart to the mercy of the author. Pain helps you understand yourself more than you ever have. It reminds you that you are indeed alive, that you can feel, that you can cry, that you exist. You loved Kafka’s Metamorphosis because the writing conveyed so much emotion. You saw the conflicts between social classes and felt Gregor Samsa’s pain when he realized he would never change back. You felt yourself curl up as Gregor died and you almost cried at the horrible joy felt by his family. Despite the pain it placed upon you, you love the story. Pain from good literature stimulates you and wakes you from your drowsy state.

You also find yourself seeking out funny things. You love reading pieces of absurd dialogue that makes you laugh so hard, you are limp and gasping for breath. The loud, explosive, obnoxious laughs emitted from your mouth blow away any darkness wishing to creep into your mind. For that moment of unadulterated light, you love to laugh.

Sometimes you fear your masochistic love of good, albeit painful, literature. Your love rereading the scenes in which characters die, finding beauty in the transience of humanity. Sometime you question this attraction, wondering if it implies a hidden masochism. Other times you despise your love for funny things, wondering why you love such absurdity. Ultimately, you cannot deny how you will always love Dr. Seuss’ crazy books in which desires and dreams are reveals. Through a combination of tragedy and comedy, you see sorrow and joy, hatred and love, and all the simple and complex emotions – human condition stripped to its bare bones. The basest of our physical state is spread neatly before you and you are inevitably attracted to it. This attraction holds the taste of fear and anticipation, touched a bit by a few whiffs of joy and excitement.

۞

To create writing that shoves people into that state of attraction is the goal of writing. No matter if it is writing for oneself or writing for others, the ultimate goal is to portray humanity. Through writing, we can remember the comedies of life, to laugh together. Through writing, we can record our feelings, to remember the emotions that coursed through our bodies in fits of anger, joy, sadness, and pain. Most importantly, through writing, we can find the essence of humanity purified and crystallized into a single piece of emotion scattered on a page of paper.

۞

You stop typing, and read over your words. The cursor still blinks, marking the seconds that pass, but you don’t mind. The words have come and you see the images spread before your screen. The fluttering butterflies, the glowing web of leaves, the scrawny handwriting all override the threatening blinking of the cursor which, for now, no longer haunts you.