To be able to write one often needs to amplify things up, see them from up close, step back to see the context and change perspectives just to be sure that you have not got it all wrong. The constant to and fro does a little something inside your head. Nothing is pure, nothing is sacrosanct. Everything close looks dispensable from a distance and everything far seems a little more desirable. Anyway, the point being that in one’s constant attempts to gain perspective, one forever loses it.
Remember the side view mirrors of a car? Things are closer than they appear. How close, exactly? How far can you push before you court disaster? To live a life of sanity, one needs to believe in the tangible. Not everything is an idea, not everything can be picked up, experimented and put back in its place. But where will we be if we didn’t do exactly that?
To write is to experience. An experience too strong may become too heavy for words and one too shallow may not evoke the right words. One needs to fiddle with the thermometer of life and find the right temperature that melts the ink inside the head.
Sometimes, maintaining balance is such a struggle that one has to keep one hand on the lever and write with another. The scribbles make sense at times, at others they don’t. So long as the do’s outnumber the don’ts, the writer is in business. Once the proportion is skewed, one has to embrace the insanity. But such are the hazards of the job!
