I’m quite accustomed to writing things that fulfill a certain purpose. Essay-type answers to IB questions, formal mails to this or that teacher for xyz reasons – all of it has a goal, an intended recipient, a message, an intended outcome. Even my own personal pieces generally have a particular message they want to convey, a certain impression I want to leave the reader with. I’m a planner first and foremost, and so I want every part of my writing and everything I’m writing to be crafted towards achieving an outcome, with nothing superfluous. And though, of course, I never really reach that standard in my eyes, I try my level best.
However, there come times when I write just to get something out of my chest. Not off my chest, mind. These aren’t things weighing me down, but rather things trying to get out and causing me a weird emotional suffering until they do. When I’m done with these kinds of pieces, I’m often confused as to why on earth it was this, of all things, that I needed to say. Who am I talking to here? What exactly am I trying to say? I know the answers to these questions as well as the next guy.
An example of this is the essay below, which I wrote on the tail end of an existential crisis that took me on a brooding tour of my school’s campus. I wrote it down as soon as I got back to my dormitory in the same document I used to draft my first college essay, and it’s rotted there for months:
A gloomy grey sky greets me as I walk out the door. I pause, look at the lazily flapping leaves above, and turn left. My feet moving as if of their own volition, I walk forward towards the fork in the road.
How do I help him? I don’t know what to do. I wish my mind would budge from its state of bewilderment, that I could just figure out a way. He wasn’t listening to anyone. Self-destruction is a lonely road, and it’s a strange thing watching someone you know turn to dust in front of your eyes. I can’t be near people right now, they’ll just give my thoughts a cursory glance before diving into their own. A few drops of rain hit my face, the early birds disintegrating for their trouble. A turn right, and the road to the swimming pool stretched out before me.
What kind of world does these things to people?
To the right, they’re shouting and running to and fro, hockey and football. A girl walks out of the swimming pool entrance and looks down at her phone. These early monsoon days carry with them a silent pulse of energy, as we pace beneath the heavy clouds and tempt the gods to send their wrath upon us. A song is playing in my head, and it’s beautiful, and I don’t know what it is or why I’m hearing it.
I’ve reached the swimming pool before I know it, and I’m no closer to an answer. A turn left and up the slope. There’s nobody there. The world is so beautiful sometimes. Those pink flowers in the trees look like little cups waiting to be filled by the rain.
Left turn at the mud field, there’s one more person there. He’s walking far to my left, slowly, looking at the ground. I make my way down the small slope and walk across the field, exposed in the open to the gaze of none. Then I stopped, turned, and walked to the person, a boy perhaps a few years younger than me.
“Hey man, what’re you doing here?” I ask, raising my voice for him to hear me.
“I run rounds,” he said, still staring at the ground.
“Not worried about the rain? You might want to go inside soon”
“Nah…” he mutters, turning and drifting away.
Ants scurry around on the ground beneath my feet, the holes into which they disappear transforming a muddy field of grass into a lunarscape. The occasional drops of rain force them to wind back and forth to avoid an early end. I step around them, careful not to inadvertently crush a few – they’re just minding their own business, after all.
The end of the court, a left turn and to a stairway back down to the road from which I came. I walk down, stepping lightly past a guy and a girl with arms around one another, staring into the distance as the raindrops begin to fall more steadily.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow, and I’ll tell him what I’ve seen, what life is and what makes it beautiful. It’s all the small things that pass us by when we go through our lives with our heads down, trying to sprint to the finish line. Humans, with all our insecurities and moods and oddities, are beautiful, and the world is beautiful to match. And I’m a part of this kaleidoscope of emotion and action, of colour and shadow, of flowers and ants and the rain, and so is he, and I’ll help him see that with me.
I feel a passionate love in my heart, a warmth in my chest for life and all of us humans stranded in this beautiful world, a certainty that no matter what happens I will always have this to fall back upon.
And so I smile softly to myself and sprint back to the door of the dormitory as the clouds burst in the heavens above.
I don’t remember which friend this refers to at all, I don’t know what the “thing” was that the world did to that friend, I don’t know if there’s any person this is supposed to appeal to. I’ve showed this to a couple of people to get their opinions on it, but I’m mostly asked what on earth this means in response, and I don’t really have an answer for them. However, I’m putting this piece on the blog because there doesn’t really have to be a point for this kind of thing. I’ll let this essay/descriptive piece/whatever on earth this is speak for itself with its own hazy, faint, confused voice, and maybe anyone who comes across this post will see something in there to take away, something beautiful in its own right.
This piece creates an emotion in me every time I read it, a delicate, faint, joyful, lonely, nostalgic sorrow. What it means to you, the reader, only you can truly know. And that, I think, is the point. Thanks to anyone here for taking the time to read this, and I’ll see you in the next one.
The Galley with No Name 