The Writing in my Head…

So…here I am, at the computer at the ungodly hour of 5 am. Yes, yes, I know a lot of you are awake for a myriad reasons; my aunt in Bombay has already been awake for an hour waiting for her tap to drip water! For me though, 5 am is not a decent hour at which to begin the weekend. And yet more and more often these days, I find myself waking earlier than I ever have before, no thanks to my 2 yr old who thinks nothing of calling out ‘Mama’ from his crib at all hours of the night!! He gets up all chirpy, eyes still tightly screwed shut, arms stretched out, wanting to be cuddled, asking for his sipper of milk, which I provide bleary-eyed, and then promptly falls back to sleep! Go figure! Another advantage of extreme youth and of extreme age, this ability to drift in and out of sleep with ease, from what I’ve noticed by the way, so I have something to look forward to! But since I am at the moment, neither extremely young nor extremely old (I refuse to say the M-word! Oh go on – you know you know it!), I’m left semi-awake after these little episodes at odd hours of the night or day, staring at the computer screen (coz what else is there to do when you’re up at 5 am and sleep is as distant as Mt. Everest?), with time on my hands and the writing in my head.

Let me explain…this post for example…it isn’t about anything at all really…just me, passing time writing stuff that’s floating around in my head. Sort of. Oh alright, you found me out! This is actually a carefully thought out post that I am writing at 10 am and pretending I wrote at 5 am just to see if I can get more comments from all those silent readers out there! Gotcha! Forgive the inanities…they are all I can come up with so early in the morning before coffee kick-starts my stodgy brain.

Ok, on to the good stuff 😛 One of the things I discovered after I began to start blogging, was how I’m never out of ideas but always out of time and energy! A lot of it has to do with my natural laziness (a very Sagittarian trait!), for which I have as yet no antidote 😉 So, I find myself writing in my head…poems, ideas, thoughts, titles for the books I plan to write some day, lines of imaginary dialogue…you get the drift. While this may seem romantic, let me reassure you (before your jealousy over my secret romantic rendezvous’ gets out of hand ;-)), it is nothing short of agony. I exaggerate not! For one, all the stuff is vague and nebulous at best, ‘dream-like’ if you get what I’m saying; and if it is coherent, I don’t always remember it in the clear light of day – again an irritatingly ‘dreamy’ quality, so that when I sit down to write seriously, I’m…uh huh you guessed it – BLANK!

I can just hear all the tut-tut ting you guys are doing right now, thinking, “Is she for real? Can anyone really be so stupid? ” Yes and Yes 😉 The inconvenience of inspiration for me is its ability to strike best when my readiness level is at an all time low. So my best thoughts, arrive suddenly, thoughtlessly, when in my semi-awake, low-alert state, there is no paper around to capture those elusive, much awaited lines of an incomplete poem or scribble the title of my magnum opus and other assorted flashes of genius! It’s a cruel World! I discussed this with my aunt, ‘coz that’s what I do when I need clarity. She understood (she’s like that, my aunt – she gets me J), was suitably sympathetic, even offered practical suggestions which I should have thought of myself – a simple matter of having a book and pencil on the bedside table ready to capture said flashes! I tried, I did. I just kept knocking the book and pencil off, as I fumbled in the dark, along with a hundred other doodads (bottles of lotion, my glasses, a bottle of water, the sipper I mentioned earlier, ear buds, a nail cutter, several novels…the list is endless and gives me an idea for a whole other post ;-)). It was hopeless. I wasn’t ready then however, to do the logical thing. Yes, I’m like that – I rejoice in the irrational and resist the logical for as long and with as much vigor as I can muster! I have since surrendered (this post is ample proof) to the inevitable. When it occurs (it always does, it’s inevitable remember?), I do what I’m doing now – get out of bed; tiptoe downstairs in the dark for fear of waking the peacefully sleeping house, (untroubled by said flashes of genius, lucky dogs!); switch on the microwave and the laptop; start the makings of an extra-strong cuppa while waiting for the appliances to do their thing; and finally, fortified by the coffee, attempt to transcribe the hotchpotch of ideas, thoughts and words in my head, before they disappear like so much early morning mist.

Now that I’ve accepted the craziness that is inspiration, I’m beginning to enjoy these odd sojourns with myself :). I enjoy the quiet of the house (you would too, if you lived with a toddler and several opinionated adults with loud voices, myself included, of course ;-)), the feeling of solitude (I’m telling you there are times when human contact is highly overrated!), and the peace that allows me to think cohesively. I enjoy listening to the first signs of dawn – birds chirping, the rush of fresh air that enters the room, when I first throw open the window, rich with the earthy smell of moist soil and the fragrance of dew-laden grass and flowers, the slow beginnings of light on the horizon, the misty beginnings of a new day. I’m beginning to enjoy it so much, this might just become a habit. As habits go, I’ve had worse 😉

There, all done, just as the house begins to stir. Really, timing is everything!

See you, when next the writing strikes!

Have a good weekend people  🙂