||Of pen and papers...||

Alive at four in the morning, I cupped words and let them fall onto the pages, hoping that i could perfect the description of a toothy stranger I met down the street or justify the splendor of the rain that dropped like pick up sticks from the heavens. I paid attention to details and rummaged around for magic inherent in any occurring event. I looked at the sky a thousand ways, made up stories from observing the passengers boarding the MRT, cried too hard, laughed too loud, analyzed and sat on every rain and carried love as gigantic as the ocean. I succumbed to obsession and the awesome madness of grabbing life by the scruff of its neck and shaking it until all of its truths and treasures emerged out of its pocket.

Then, one day, the pain went away. It was as if I slid from the cocoon, dusted myself off and walked away from this emotional riot. It was the catharsis, I figured out. I wrote about it so many times that the pain had become no more than a concept, an old conversation piece, a writing material. Even when I was brooding over my failed relationship, I knew that I was going to make a beauty out of this disaster by writing it down. I knew that art was always larger than pain and more lasting than a moonlight kiss. But there would be times I would still get sad, especially at night when the whirring of the electric fan was more enthusiastic than the subdued thumping of my heart, when it would just be me, a blank computer screen and the memory of her steady hand.

Indeed, writing is an act of bravery, a self-flagellating experiment that and as I learned it first hand, it could be really lonely. But its a different kind of lonely --- its a beautiful kind of lonely.