building

Morning, and a gentle morning rain. i woke up to an exuberant chweep-chweep-ing -- it was an olive-backed sunbird, perched on the edge of my window. i'm not sure if it was one of the pair that's nest-building under my back porch. But i'm glad to see that the nest-building is proceeding apace, and that they are making good progress.

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It's quite a wonder, how these little birds have managed, in the space of just over a week, to make a nest that looks set to be goodness-knows how many times their size / volume. It's been such a slow and gradual process. It takes so much patience. There's something that i have to learn here, i suspect.

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i've been thinking about writing, and about how, for the last few years, i've seen it as a calling. Perhaps all writers feel that way in the heat of inspiration -- but i can quite honestly say that my sense of a call came, not because of how i felt while writing, but from something else that i can only describe as a divine intrusion or invasion. This sense of vocation -- because of course that's the old-fashioned word -- has changed over time. i no longer think that i'm meant to be writing full-time, and i now feel that i need to find some other community other than the one i've known these few years to nourish and nurture the writer in me. 

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When i started out, things came easy to me -- the writing itself, recognition, all the things that most writers seek and want. i wanted the writing, of course: it was where i felt at home, in a deeply profound sense. When i was working on a piece of writing, everything else seemed to fall away, and all was peace and often a quiet joy. The recognition, however, was a rather different thing. i knew what i had to do, and i did it, because not to do it would mean that the writing would not get out to the world -- and i had things to say, and wanted others to hear them. But i never liked it, even though for a time, it gave me a sense of accomplishment to know that i knew how to play the game.

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The writing itself has slowed down over time. i think that good writing can only be born out of the fullness of having something to say, and i feel i've said what i had to say, or rather, wanted to say. i now want to say something else, something quite different from anything i've said before, from anything anyone here in Singapore has said before. But i need to find a way, and i suspect, i need to live into something very different before that can happen. And while that waiting is happening, the wise thing to do is to not try to force the process. To be, rather than do -- and let life take its course.

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i wonder if callings change over time. Most probably do, because everything changes over time. i know that i will always be writing in some form or other -- even if it's only this blog. But life changes, and we adapt along the way. For now, at least, my sense is that the call is still there, but in hibernation. And to try to awaken it before its time, would be damaging for me. i have no intention of walking down that well-trodden artistic path towards self-destruction. Art is not important enough to me, i guess -- life is more important, and family and friends, and my faith. The public writing -- the writing to publish and all the things that came with that -- was only ever a means to an end. Which may sound like sour grapes, but is not. It's just the way it is with me.

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