A blog and an anthology

I spent the afternoon catching up with one month of blog entries I’d missed reading. Vivaldi was playing in the background, and after a while all I could feel was music flowing in through all my senses. I was reading Abdul-Walid.

His writing reminded me of my English course in my second year at NCJ, where “Things fall apart” was one of our texts. Our English teacher – I miss his name now – was in love with the book, and I cannot forget the manner in which he swooned over each African proverb he came across in the text while reading it to the class. Like a fan intoxicated by the poetry in the air at a kavi-sammelan, he would go “wah-wah” each time, leaving us in no doubt – whether we understood it or not – that we were in the presence of genius. It was only much later – long after the exams were gone and I no longer had to think of conjuring up half a page of text explaining the relevance of the novel’s title – that I really enjoyed the book. And somehow, I now tend to associate Abdul-Walid with the essence of African wisdom I carried out of that book.

He writes:

“The hippopotamus does not attempt to school the crocodile in the art of swimming.”

” There’s a debt to pleasure. At times, the payment plan is tolerable. “

The recent edition of The New Yorker featured three “debut-fiction” writers, one of them an Afro-American of Nigerian origin. When I first saw the photograph of the three authors, I instantly turned to the contributors page to learn more about the young black male in that photo. Could that be Abdul-Walid? I wondered. The first sentence was about his origin (Abdul-Walid is also from Nigeria!) but the next one dashed my hopes: this man was a Jesuit priest, and I cannot imagine Abdul-Walid leaning towards any institution, leave alone an orthodox church.

But I should have looked at the story first – the prose offered clues that could not be mistaken. It lacked the sharpness (acerbity?) and melody of an Abdul-Walid sentence; I also could not find much poetry in that prose.

* * * * *

The Harper’s collection of articles I picked up last month from the library is turning out to be a collector’s item. Spanning 150 years of the magazine, this eclectic collection contains host of well-known American authors. There’s a letter from E.B.White to Henry David Thoreau, two diary entries (one from Adam, one from Eve) by Mark Twain, a justification for having dropped the Atom bomb, an argument in favour of art for art’s sake by E.M.Forster and many others I haven’t yet read.

The chronological order gives the reader an idea of the major themes or ideas passing through each decade: for instance, the 1940’s section has many war related entries.

It’s going to keep me busy for months, which means I’ll have to purchase a copy.

Barber

Had been to the barber today. The good old chef was
in a talkative mood. “Would you like an Indian summer cut this time?” he asked.
“Quite a few Indians are asking for it this summer.” When I declined, he came out with his usual question: “It’s been approximately six weeks since you were here last, isn’t it?”

There was a new girl working there, and he was up to his
usual antics, flattering her with compliments (“How clean the floor looks
now!”) and getting her to blush. It is a recurring pattern. When a girl is new he is at his flirtatious best and gets quite a warm response, but six weeks later I see the same girl ignoring him altogether. It doesn’t seem to discourage him, though. Today he sprayed some water on the plump Turkish lady, who calmly wiped her hand with a towel and
continued talking.

The place was full of old ladies, as usual. I’ve gotten used to them now, but in the beginning I was amazed at the pains these octogenarians went through to decorate the few dozen strands of hair that remained. I tried imagining my eighty-year-old grandma sitting there, with curlers sticking out of her head. Almost made me choke. (Later, I was reminded of Baby Kocchamma whom Rahel found “living her life in reverse”).

* * *

Watched “Seven years in Tibet” in the afternoon. The rugged Tibetan landscape takes your breath away. An encounter between East and West, such as one shown in the movie
(where Brad Pitt’s pride brushes against Buddhist humility and compassion), always has the potential of interesting outcomes. Although at a point one feels that Brad Pitt will be the one who would take home a part of the East with him, it turns out that the Dalai Lama has a lot to learn about the West too, from Brad Pitt. The parts depicting Tibet’s troubled relationship with China, and the eventual Chinese occupation leave you disturbed and feeling sorry for this peace-loving nation. In one scene the Dalai Lama, watching scenes of a revolution being projected on a screen, asks Brad Pitt: “Will people watch Tibet too on the screen someday, and wonder what happened to it?”

 

Entering diary mode

A few definitions from Dictionary.com:

Diary:

1. A daily record, especially a personal record of events, experiences, and observations; a journal.
2. A book for use in keeping a personal record, as of experiences.

Memoir:

1. An account of the personal experiences of an author.
2. An autobiography. Often used in the plural.

Blog:

1. To author an online diary or chronology of thoughts.
2. An online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page; also called Weblog,
   Web log
3. A personal Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to
   the user, also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user; also written web log, Weblog; also called blog.

How appropriate are these definitions, and what have I been writing here?

* * * * *

L has some interesting views on blogs. “We now have more writers than readers”, he said, during a conversation some weeks back. “And most of them do not know how to write.”

This offhand remark made me think again about the nature of blogging.

It is true that there are now many more people who jot down their thoughts, but can we classify most of what we see in blogs as “writing”? To me, most blogs seem like asynchronous conversations, where people write of things they would normally talk about at a social gathering. When you meet someone, you narrate a funny incident, discuss local or world news, show a recent photo you’ve taken, or talk about that trip you recently made – these conversations are now also taking place through blogs, with people writing about their experiences, sharing photos, linking to interesting stuff they’ve found, and so on. To say that there are now more writers than readers is like saying there are more people who speak than listen. Speaking and listening are elements so common to social interaction that few think in terms of people who “know how to speak”; similarly, it is pointless to say that most bloggers do not know how to write, because a lot of them are not “writing” in the literary sense of the word – they are merely sharing their thoughts as they would do when they converse with others. Their imperfections are more visible in this medium because the conversation is all there for you to see and dissect.

Unlike real-world conversations, the conversations over blogs are asynchronous – you post a message and only later someone comments or writes about it. This element of extended time (to write, and to respond) gives such conversations a depth that is usually lacking in real-world conversations. It slows things down and makes people think, and that is what I like about this medium.

* * * *

Conversations are fine, but I want to get into a diary writing mode.

Most blogs I’ve encountered are not diaries. Every now and then a diary-like entry turns up, but they are predominantly conversations: short articles, episodes or news items linking elsewhere.

When I think of a diarist, I think of Inkspill. I think of entries such as this, this and this.

I want to try and write more dairy-like entries. One characteristic of a diary (which differentiates it from other forms of personal accounts) is that it is written without a specific audience in mind. To retain this trait in a blog is difficult due to the constant awareness (brought about mainly by comments) of people reading what you have written. I want to try and keep away from this awareness, so I’m going to turn off comments for a while.

Although a diary is written without an audience in mind, it does not mean it should be unreadable, or be left unread. To keep a diary interesting (while sticking to its private themes) is a challenge worth taking up.