personal hi(story)

"this my excavation and today is kumran
everything that happens is from now on"
- bon iver, 're: stacks'

i've been wondering why i haven't written much over the past few months (at least outside my blog and work). writing has not come to me easily. i sometimes wait for my fingers to tap on the keyboard, take hold of words and more often than not, resulted in producing incoherent sentences and paragraphs.

the best way i could explain it is being in a white room with furniture of the same color and shade and everything is bathed with white light from all directions. everything can be seen and yet, nothing can be distinguished. in the end, nothing can be described.

and yet, much of it is my own doing. i allowed myself to be in it, immersed in all that whiteness and not allowing the contrast to set in. years ago, i chose not to write when in a writhe of pain and instead write in a place of deep joy. this was one risk that i wanted to take, not realizing that this journey has its own confrontations and battles.

for one thing, i knew that once i set on this path, i could never write the same way again, even if i wanted to. it was a tiring way of writing and the fire that fueled it was almost empty anyway. secondly, coming from joy was entirely new to me and yet, i didn't know how to harness it. my pen quivers and at the same time, i had no idea what to write -- a seemingly real self-inflicted paralysis.

i know that this is a reflection of my personal history -- a soul that now stirs to a different beat and one that writes from a different source. there is a thread that connects one to the other -- a life that sees things newly.

and with that i understood.

all along i was standing in my own excavation, in kurman, where the dead sea scrolls were found. i stand where all my mystery lies, words that call to be unearthed. like an archaeologist finding his great discovery, i find my own great truth. this is my day. 'everything that happens is from now on.'

(and the contrast suddenly appears.)