Jigsaw

I had my first workshop writing critique session today, and I must say it is beyond encouraging to know that it has received generally favourable responses. It has always been such an enigma to me when it comes to writing, because I always feel like I might be over-complicating things which really do not intrigue people the slightest. There are so many stories out there that have been written (and waiting to be written) by people who want nothing more than to share the imagination and magic of their minds with other people, and hope that somehow this magic fascinates another soul.

I have not been writing here as regularly as I have thought I would've, which I must say I have no excuse for. However, I find myself more observant and attuned to my senses recently, and therefore have had impulsive bursts of inspiration and literary moments at random times during the day. They sometimes come like shadows - slowly, creeping - into my mind but make home there as more than just an incorporeal entity. Other times, they come as vivid impressions and tangible visuals that I find myself taken aback by the sheer beauty of these images.

This is a paragraph from the writing I have submitted for the workshop:

I stared straight ahead through the foggy windshield and saw the lights interplaying between red and green. Through the glass they looked like magical orbs; almost iridescent, but not quite. I imagined there must be an oblivion beyond that screen, where white wasn’t just white, and black wasn’t just black. Everything that existed there would bear a tinge of grey. Grey, like the clouds hanging from above and shadowing the light of day. In that world, nothing is vivid – not the thoughts that serve as memory, not the words that were whispered to me, and not the face I last saw - before the impact sunk in brutally.

Believe it or not, this was inspired by a journey I took on the bus out of school recently. As I sat at the upper deck of the double-decker bus, zoning out to my music as usual and staring blankly ahead, I realised that the windshield (sort of, because it doesn't have a wiper) had fogged up because of the heavy rain that has just dwindled to a slight drizzle outside. Through that frosted pane I could see the traffic lights in the distance, and they displayed orb-like qualities due to the refraction caused by water droplets on the pane, and I knew immediately that this was literature material. Even then, I felt like I could never do sufficient justice to the magical moment that transpired before me.

But isn't that the beauty of it? Words, images, and music, even, can evoke but never capture the unique emotion that one feels in times like these. They can't be reconstructed, manufactured, or reproduced under any circumstances; always close enough, but never exact.

No, these moments were not lost forever. They only filled a void in our soul where they were destined to fit - piecing the jigsaw puzzle that should never be completed.