I Have The Universe Waiting For Me

Often I stay up late, to live another life. In this second life, nothing needs to be perfect, or even right. The second life exists for the words and ideas in me, rather than the rest of the world. As soon as I think of a word, a phrase or a broken line. I’d jot it down on paper or type it into my computer. Most of these, of course, will be stillbirths. But years later, a few of these little ideas will court each other, flirt and when fate permits, copulate and give birth to a prose, or a poem, or just an article that won’t sell. Selling doesn’t really matter. As long as I sell something of value in my first life, there will be bread on the table and electricity to keep the house lighted. Ah, what’s more important, there will also be the broadband that opens the far corners of the world to my imagination. It is the new birth that matters. How else can you give birth to your off-springs without the obligation to pay the obstetrician, or the private hospital.

I can hear my wife turning in bed. Without looking, I know whether she is on her back, or her side, just by listening to her breathing. Sometimes, my dog somehow knows that I am still up and gently bangs my bedroom door with her paw. These short intermissions bring me back and forth between my two lives. That reminds me of Chuang Tzu (an ancient Chinese philosopher) who dreams that he is a butterfly. On waking, he ponders that whether his human life is nothing other than a butterfly’s dream. I also think about Brahma, the Hindu god who sleeps and dreams of all sorts of happenings in time and space. These happenings all come to pass when Brahma startles and wakes up. This particular Hindu religion postulates that the many universes and histories are merely strings of dreams that Brahma has when he is sound asleep. Before long, he wakes, startles, falls asleep again, dreams again, and a new universe and a new history start all over again.

Writing is a similar metaphysical experience. On certain days, when I am really into a certain time and space in the world of writing, my real life becomes obsolete. The price of crude oil could have gone up by 6 per cent or the price of gold down by 5 per cent, these would be immaterial to what happens next to the central character of my short story. He is counting on me, nothing happens to him before I make up my mind. How can I let him down? He might even vaporize between time, space and boundaries between reality and fiction, if I suddenly can’t think of anything else to write, or forget to save the document. Like the universe disappearing on Brahma’s waking, his world vanishes as I wander back to my first life.

Writing doesn’t make me a better person, it makes me the most important person for the particular universe waiting on me to be re-started once more. How can I not get back to my dreams again? Everyone else and everything else is ready.