sayajay.net

everything seems to have started: summer school, job, and new lease (on my apartment). also, i've revamped this site a little... planning to be a sheep and switch over the PHP and MySQL (from ASP and MS Access).

at the risk of jinxing onself, i have to say that all seems well... at the moment anyway. the silence and focus that peace of mind somehow affords is a good feeling. as is always the case, the price of solitude is the unavoidable trap of excess thinking. this often seems to be accompanied by bouts of idleness where my mind races randomly from one thought to another.

this first week of class has been a little trying. class goes from 8:30am to noon. then i go to work from 12:30 to 4:30pm, have some dinner, and study for next day's lessons till about 11:00pm. amazing focus lately... though i must admit that it seems to be fading. then again, it's probably just a once weekly friday night feeling.

i remember my teacher reading us the transcription of a personal essay written by jorge luis borges (i'm particularly fond of his short stories). anyway, borges says that if you're stuck on writing, you could be reading in the meantime. so, there's this book that i've been starting to read. this is the third time i've started reading it - i always seem to get to the middle part of the book... then i stop (for some reason or another)... a month later, i pick it up again. i don't really like to start reading from where i left off because i don't remember what's happened before hand (since i haven't read it in a while). so, i start over. i think now's a good time to finish.

but, i've been thinking about writing, but there's this huge block that won't seem to go away. i've written random things here and there... but i guess i've been trying to find my "muse" - something that would somehow inspire me. perhaps it's because i've been too focused on what i need to do since last semester, and now what i want to have been doing. some of the time, these two things seem to coincide... but not lately. something's always left behind or neglected in the aftermath.

there's this "tall tale" about how writers become inspired - it's kind of like a tooth fairy thing, except you have this thing called the Muse. i forget the myth exactly, but it has something to do with the writer laying in bed, and Muse coming and filling his head with ideas while he sleeps. unusually enough, i've read stories that write about this myth. funny, eh?

the only rendition that i remember at the moment is the one from J.M. Coetzee's Foe. this woman named Susan who gets stuck on a desert island (kind of like robinson crusoe). she escapes from the island after a number of years, and so she naturally wants her story to be told to the world. she seeks the help of a writer named Foe - who just so happens to be having trouble writing susan's story "accurately." she tries to inspire him:

'Permit me,' I whispered - 'there is a privelege that comes with the first night, that I claim as mine.' So I coaxed him till he lay beneath me. Then I drew off my shift and straddled him (which he did not seem easy with, in a woman). 'This is the manner of the Muse when she visits her poets,' I whispered, and felt some of the listlessness go out of my limbs.

...

'It is always a hard ride when the Muse pays her visits,' I replied - 'She must do whatever lies in her power to father her offspring.'

i wonder where my Muse is?

meh, maybe i shall find her in my sleep sometime this summer.