1.34pm 21 April 2008 Monday
As a child I loved learning idioms and proverbs. I glommed on the idea of using a short phrase to convey an entire idea instantly, and it used to tickle me to no end reading all the cheng yu and xie hou yu I could lay my hands on.
As a writer I usually have a scene in my head that guides the flow of the prose. In this case I have an image of a footprint in sand to correspond with my title but unfortunately the tide keeps coming in to wash my footprint away.
Usually words shimmer in my head as I write. I'm not a very organised writer so words that dance most vigorously in my mind appear on screen in a heap as my fingers do their thing across the keyboard. Most of the time I have an idea I want to communicate and the jumble of words relate to each other by this idea, and I organise the words to form a coherent sentence.
But the tide keeps coming in to wash this little footprint that was meant to be a long journey, away.
I have never stopped to consider how profusely I normally read, until my access to English literature was limited. It also follows that I have never realised the profound impact of reading, on writing.
These days when I write, I have to rein in my thoughts so that they trickle out slooowly as I find the right words to describe them as accurately as I feel them in my mind. It was easy when I wrote and read in a proliferate manner because the words were in a primordial soup I could easily fish out to form a sentence.
Now the same words I used to know so intimately are mocking at me from within their dirty little fish tank. I can barely discern their sillouette; I know they are there behind the grimy glass, in the murky waters.
I can hear the gargle of their taunts as clear as you hear someone speaking from land while you are underwater. Glop, gulp, gulg.
The ideas in my mind pound against the little hole I allow them until they run out of energy. Slowly, they leave the room one by one until only a wisp of their scent is left.
---
As I write, I wonder if I can find my beloved little streams of thought again. This blog has undergone quite a drought recently and perhaps with small amounts of rain, I can reinstate a nice little sunny meadow.
Do you think the cows, sheep and frolicking puppies will return at one point too?
