I find it supremely odd. Well I find many things supremely odd, but I find it particularly odd when I sit down in my local Wagamama style noodle bar called ‘Itto’, which I have not blessed with a visit for many years hence, to find that the same waitress, from many years past, is serving me. She plonks the steaming bowl of Ramen noodles in my field of vision, the threads of steam climbing their way up into my nostrils, brightening my eyes and imparting a certain lustre to my cheeks. I compare this person here and now with the historical fragments in my memory and see no difference. I watch her as she dribbles swiftly between the tables like an Olympian, the dirty plates dangling on her arm like a circus act whilst she wipes the tops in busybody fashion.
Her clothes don’t seem to have changed either from what I remember. The same trousers that showcase her hips and fine form, her hair worn in a little bobbin and her Japanese style Kino top looking imperial and very appetizing. I notice that time has hardly settled upon her face. Merely having scraped her for her eyes look tired and worn. My mind wanders and then gives spark to an emotion that grows inside. Faint at first but growing till it can no longer mask itself: Pity. I feel pity for her. The same monotonous drudgery for the past 10 years! In the same restaurant! How can anybody do that? Why would anybody want to do that? – does she not wish for something altogether different?
What she needs is a mysterious stranger to saunter in and whisk her off on some adventure somewhere – You know, I could be that stranger. Sweep her off her feet, put blind-folds on her eyes, stick cotton plugs in her ears, stick a dummy in her mouth, a plane ticket in her pocket, and then 12 hours later – voila! : ‘Madame Waitress welcome to Bhutan!’ - But something tells me that she wouldn’t respond very well to such chauvinistic chivalry. Also we must not animate others with our own prejudices.
But then as she serves me, filling the basket with more fresh bread and all with a genuine smile and the attention befitting of a king or lord of the manor, I realize that my plan to smuggle her out is doomed to failure from the outset because she is happy and content with her lot. And there lies a revelation: You see, having a really monotonous job; as a waitress, or a book-keeper - all these employments, these acts of selling your time to the highest bidder, have one redeeming feature in common. And that is the fact that it is the drudgery inherent within such work that allows you to really saviour that day off work! If it wasn’t for the drudgery you wouldn’t enjoy the day off! How’s that for a catch-22?
There are 2 types of days off work (excluding weekends):
Type 1: This is the unexpected day off work. You wake up in the morning fully expecting to get out of bed, face the dreary commute in, followed by the sullen sulky walk as you drag your feet into the office. But as chance has it you can’t because you’ve just remembered about a doctor’s appointment, or you don’t feel like going in today and have phoned in sick, or whatever. The fact is you have a whole day that’s landed on your lap and it’s all yours for keeps! There’s a nice feeling associated with this. A feeling of having shaken off your shackles. In short a feeling of freedom.
Type 2: This is the expected day off work. It didn’t suddenly land on your lap. You knew it was coming because you filled in an ‘employee absence’ form. It’s still a nice feeling to have though.
So the point is that that feeling you get when you take a day off work will only be yours if you are in full time employment. What is a day-off work for the person who never works because he has other financial means to sustain him?
What is another country to the global traveler?
What is a nice restaurant meal to a gastro-snob?
What is a movie to a movie critic?
If your dreams came true, what then would you dream of?
That is why I always stumble out of bed early and, depending on mood and weather, will either sit at my desk or go to my local coffee shop (where a comfortable sofa, quietness and lovely staff always greet me) and write. Yes write. As in pen and paper. It is my job to write. In-fact I consider it my main job. Yes I do work, but only on a freelance basis which I must admit suits me rather well. Just as most people will not take a day off work on a whim, so in the same way I will not take a day off writing on a whim. It is work pure and simple. I can see many people chuckling at this, scratching their chins, trying to see this writing as work, but not convinced it is ‘work’ per se. But what is ‘work’ then? Well here’s a litmus test: You know you are engaged in something called ‘work’ when if you take a day off it you get a nice feeling in your tummy. Occasionally I too will take a day off writing and I too get a nice feeling in my tummy. So it’s work!
Writing can be a pleasurable thing, oh yes - when it is going smoothly that is. Then you feel as if your gliding above the chimney tops on wings made of magical stuff called inspiration and picking off ideas from the unlikeliest of trees; inspiration is gotten using the currency of experience and sometimes from dredging and canabalising other people’s ideas!
Then there’s times when you struggle to even string a decent sentence together. You find yourself holed up in some metaphorical fetid cellar; rank and unwholesome and devoid of any food for thought. Then writing can be humbling and bumbling, unexciting and stale, and most of all a struggle. Like walking up-hill on a dune with your feet sinking; taking timid feeble steps that grind to a complete halt and then you look around spying the vistas and wonder whether you’re doing the right thing. And that’s another topic ripe for discussion: the right thing. And the worst part is you don’t even know where you’re headed. The End. You never know when it will come. If it will come. All you know is that you’ve gotta keep going because it is what you do, what you enjoy more than anything else in the whole wide world. And that you know for a fact.
That is my lot: Ickety-bickety scurrying little rats life in the service of Lady Literature. But slowly, innocuously, scribble-scribble, drip-drip, word after word, you keep plodding on through the excrement of the past months produce. The sheer mass of what you have written before pushing you forward into the unknown future. It would be madness to stop now. Sheer madness! Every word here and now, every sentence, every stab on paper heralds a juncture in time, a fork in the road that blazes a path to the future. Perhaps ‘blazes’ is the wrong word here as it sounds heroic. There’s nothing heroic about writing. More like a shuffling-bumbling-stumbling venture. It confounds people. Scrambles their sense of what constitutes a ‘normal’ life and a normal occupation.
It’s a dog’s life I tell you. The smelly socks. The constant ink stains on your fingers. The sleepless nights when your mind fails to switch off and you mumble excerpts in your sleep. The scraping the bottom of the barrel for that smidgen of an original idea. The pernicketyness of the sound of a vowel. The mood swings of a comma. The semi-colons that attack you in your sleep and the empty blank sheets of paper that go on and on and swallow you whole like the Gobi desert. I wouldn’t wish this life upon my worst enemies. It’s a dog’s life don’t you think? But I wouldn’t want to do anything else either. I love it the more for it!
