cringe compendium

A writer's block is perhaps the most dreaded aspect of the creative journey, and the dreaded part about it is that it happens to everyone, and it happens more frequently than one would like. Countless texts and pieces demonising it can be found, which only seem to further its inevitability in a creative's life.

However, to go against the tide, what if one thinks of the writer's block in a positive or atleast necessary aspect, rather than something that has to be eradicated at all cost? If the writer's journey were to always be a smooth sail, the journey would indeed get mundane after a while. The storm is deadly, but the sea is empty without it; so is also a writer's journey, for without difficult periods of empty pages and uncertainty, the writer will never experience the pain of writing. 'Pain' may evoke a negative connotation, but it is a human tendency to look for it. People remember their pain and strife more vividly than their joys. It is certainly good to feel joy and constant stability, but it is better to feel the sense of achievement after a tumultuous time, to see how one has grown and to see the almost metaphysical expansion of one's self.

Human beings are stubborn creatures. Despite being plagued by almost everything that dogs life on earth, it has nevertheless stubbornly tried to overcome them and, even more, conquer them. Humans feel emotions, and are slaves to time and circumstance like almost every other creature on earth. Yet what answers the dominance of this peculiar species at the present? Rotating thumbs? Bipedal locomotion? Socialisation?

Despite literature showing various evolutionary parameters that have been indispensably conducive to support the rise of man, humans are also stubbornly persistent. Despite lacking many biologically superior features like fangs or wings, humans did not seem to lack a sense of stubbornness. This stubbornness, or in euphemism, persistence of the human spirit, is one of the main factors of human evolution and dominance. The ability to arrogantly believe oneself to be capable of something more than one presently is, and to dispense almost all resources of one to serve that illusion- isn't that the story behind almost every achievement in history? All successful people may not be inborn geniuses, but they were definitely persistent. What seperates 'us' from 'them' is that they were able to fight against the tyranny of circumstance, whatever definition defines 'circumstance'.

Today, I had the pleasure of having oranges, for the first time this year. There's a thing about having oranges beneath the mellow winter sun that always makes me melancholic. I feel the most at peace, but I feel sad as well, for the peace is transient, and I am hauntingly aware of it.

I had oranges, and was accompanied by the winds as well. I sat at the terrace, alone, chewing, mindlessly staring at the terrain below me.

I had always eaten oranges with my family before. Times have changed so drastically,and yet I still felt like the same person who ate oranges at the same place with her father almost a decade ago. It was a beautiful day like this then as well, although I do remember to it to not be as cold.

Sitting in front of a daunting empty page has always been an artists' archetype. It has troubled the masters of the past, and it is troubling the upcoming masters of the present, and it will surely dog man in the coming years too. However, the inception of this entry can be credited to a much recent phenomenon, ie, the struggle to just write.

As I am writing this very entry, I am troubled by a lack of language and vocabulary. It is not the usual 'empty page phenomenon' too; I believe that i have degraded in terms of possessing the ability to express my views, even in the worst or most juvenile way possible. A second draft has seemed to become as difficult as a first draft, mostly because I don't know how to make the words fit together. As much as how I don't want to appear to be a Luddite, I can't help but express my concern over how technology has pervaded in my personal literary endeavors.

I don't read like how I used to, nor do I learn new things anymore, atleast not offline. This has really taken a hit on me personally. I don't blame the black screen or an element in the periodic table for this solely, because literature has still persisted even in the modern age. There are still books being published, and awards in literature being given out. But as a common man, I still think, meagerly, that if I had not spent time online, I would certainly have ended up differently, for the better or the worse.