I waited for the epiphanic moment- that time when the creativity would well up inside me and rupture forth onto the pages of what would surely be the world’s next great best-selling, society-altering novel. I imagined myself alone in a house near a running body of water that you would know was there but would not see. Rich, warm wood. Lots of natural light distorted by the swaying shadows of leaves outside massive glass windows. Inside, it would be the perfect temperature to wear a beige knit sweater. In this sweater, I would be bent over a simple desk facing the window, scribbling away as I attempt to capture and pin each word to the pages. All the writing would be done by hand in a Moleskine notebook. Some new-age minimalist instrumental music like Philip Glass on piano would be coming out of who-knows-where and I would sustain the torrent of creative energy with a never-empty, always-warm mug of organic Lavender Earl Grey tea with a touch of honey. The shadows, the fountain pen in my hand and the steam from the tea would be the only things that move in such a picturesque space.
Most likely, the season outside this artistic oasis of mine would be changing. As you already have, I imagined it being Autumn. Likewise, I, too, would be experiencing, or have just experienced, some epoch of change, leading to the rejection of a great deal of worldly norms and/or excesses. Metamorphosis. I probably wouldn’t be in love, but I would certainly at least have been in love and experienced more life in my twenty-three-or-so years than most people do by the time they have children and a mortgage.
The words pouring out of the deepest parts of myself would hint at the boundary between memory and the time to come- about looking beyond the universe. They would craft images that you could smell and touch and that would make your heart remind you of its physical presence inside the cage of your ribs. They would broaden perspectives. They would be inspired by Haruki Murakami and Isabel Allende and Aldous Huxley and J.D. Salinger and Gregory Alan Isakov. My words would reveal parts of myself, of yourself, that I, you, never really wanted to see, but would be thankful for nonetheless. They would change the lives of my readers. They would make their worlds better.
Because of this epiphanic instant, I would leave the universe with a thick piece of eloquent philosophy masquerading as an enchanting story that would defy the bounds of space and time.
After the publishing of such a masterpiece, likely under an alias, I would live out my life quietly, doing whatever I pleased on its royalties, maybe self-publishing cheesy romance novels or researching string theory. The literati of the world would ask “Where is she? Who is she? How can we prepare ourselves for what is to come next?”. These would be the ones who didn’t really understand that it would all have been there in that first and only magnum opus. Meanwhile, I would be at the Marques de Risqual vineyard in La Rioja, Spain, or tending to my small lavender farm in southern France or touring the botanic gardens of the world. They would be holding their breath and I would be doing anything but thinking of what I still had left to contribute to the universe.
Clearly, I am a realist.
Maybe something like the aforementioned torrent of creativity will happen in my life, but I recently decided that I can’t count on fate taking care of anything for me. However, in all reality, people don’t just up and create things like that. Using language as a tool to do so already limits our ability to fully shape the fundamental truths that guide life. Any language. I may venture to say that some languages are better than others at it, but that’s beside the point. I will never, ever be able to put it all into words. Nor will anyone else.
So, I won’t wait for such a glorious moment. It will never come.
Knowing that words will never suffice, that I will never shake the world with my writing, what you are reading is my attempt at another method of imaginative productivity. A more realistic one.
I actually do happen to be a realist, but I also happen to be a bit of a romantic. I also happen to be a live exposition of contradictions, paradoxes and silly juxtapositions. For example, I, a self-proclaimed romantic, spent a vast majority of my life believing I was incapable of romantic love. During that time I was still a romantic. Just to be clear, I don’t mean a chocolate-and-flowers romantic. I mean I like to embellish and catch myself wandering off to fantastical, quixotic places inside the labyrinth of my brain, deep into hypothetical situations like the one I have recently placed in your mind’s eye. Sometimes I get so lost in the romance of my labyrinth that I fail to differentiate it from reality. This, for a romantic realist, can be very confusing. More on that later. Probably.
But back to where we were. In my previously elaborated image, much of reality is blatantly negated. Take the first sentence for example. I don’t know the numbers, but of all the books that are published every year, so few become best sellers that the odds are truly stacked against me here, just based on probability. The setting is also complete bogus. I’m actually writing this from various locations in Spain- yes, still pretty dreamy, but do note that in Spain I live with a host family in a small room that doesn’t have a window. Well actually it does have a window, but the window opens up to the kitchen. The walls are white, the fan creeks, the desk is small and I always know what’s for dinner. This is where I do a great deal of writing- on a laptop, no fountain pen in sight. I drink strictly coffee in Spain. And tea cools off much too quickly for that to be a reasonable motif.
Speaking of Spain, I imagined myself endeavoring to write something great at least after returning to the US, a changed woman, post life in Europe. In reality, I will say that you have in your hands right now my endeavor to write something great and I’ve started it early. I am just beginning my time abroad and am much younger than I fantasized. I still haven’t been in love. Besides, I do happen to have a lot of love around me already. A lot of people I call home. I also negated to recognize the amount of time and energy creating anything truly takes and that, at times, this process can be exceptionally taxing- mentally, spiritually and physically (not to mention socially). As I’ve said, my long-awaited moment will not present itself, so I might as well begin writing now.
After all, I have a lot to say.
I have some pretty strange ideas about how the world works. And I’m not here to justify them. I do, however, want to attempt to express them in words because I like a challenge and because I honestly think they may be able to help someone understand their world more deeply. You know that story about the kid throwing the starfish back into the ocean and then at the end he tells the guy that “it mattered to that starfish”? If I’ve lost you with this reference, just google “starfish story” or something like that right now, it’ll take about three minutes to read if you’re a slow reader. So maybe one of you reading this can be my starfish. Not that it will be published anywhere, but who knows. The universe works in mysterious ways and wormholes are all around us.
This will not be a memoir (I’m too young for that), though it may contain some anecdotes. I’m thinking I’ll just spew everything I have to say about some of the more pervasive themes in my life and cross my fingers in hopes that someone, somewhere understands some of it. I know there are people out there who do- Haruki Murakami has taught me that. Maybe it’s you. But if you don’t understand what it is you will read (really understand it), I hope it at least proves entertaining or thought provoking or whatever. There will be tangents and there will be subjectively-based information presented as fact. I’m not going to apologize for that.
As you will find out in the time to come, I have a lot of extremely firm beliefs about life. One of them is that I do not have an unswayable belief about anything. Another is that everything is relative. In the pages that follow this one, I’m going to present these beliefs to you, my dear reader, and let you do with them what you may. At times it may sound like advice. Know that it isn’t. I want you to live your very own life- I really do.
For my own sake, and to force me into writing this thing in an organized manner, I’m going to assign things to sections. I may add some later on but the ones I’ve thought of for now, in no specific order, are Superstitions, Fundamental Truths, Expectations and Relativity. We’ll see how far that gets me for the time being.
For your own sake, I will skip out on the seemingly obligatory biographic precursor because you don’t need to know that and because I want to ensure that the literati of the world won’t be able to track me down once these pages of rich and profound wisdom reach the general public (a joke). By the way, I think I can be pretty funny at times so feel free to laugh. Laughing is good for you. Laughing at yourself is the best. And I want to feel like I’m making you laugh, even if it’s at me. I am always in need of more humility (not a joke).
Kulani Sol 