He had asked once of me, if I had thought of writing my biography, to shelf my life so that others without any direction could at least follow the steps I had taken to be where I am.
I never answered his question. WordPress is there. One can easily blog about everything — from one’s hobbies, discoveries or expertise to disdains under the Sun, or the Moon … the Pleiades or the Sphinx. I never thought of people not having direction.
They do.
They often follow the risings and settings of their breaths, at least, if not the tides of the Oceans, the seasons, or the birthdays and deaths of their family, and that of their extended friends collected over the years like foreign stamps, kept closer and tighter to the bosoms like their favoured necklace, or gem.
I have nothing of the sort.
My name has no decoration to it, nor the form simple any opulence adorned. In this naïveté, it is just a name. When I leave, only the name stays in the records of some government office … AainaA-Ridtz, previous taxpayer, permanent traveller … thick as coffee, achromatic as night; or on expired passports collected over the years, pictures showing little age, or data reflecting perhaps a centimetre or two of change in height.
A form with limited description, I could be anyone.
Nothing special. No history. No husband. No children. No wealth. Perhaps a presence, I have been told, and planets, stars and waves have presence.
Nobody wants to read a biography filled with lies. One can’t learn much from lies, or exaggerated mannerisms. A biography should be felt, shallow if not deeper than say, the Tonga Trench. Presence is to be felt, and one rarely translates that into words. Perhaps, if a reader knew me, as a person, he or she, might consider the missing piece, and I’d be no longer around, by then.
People have their quandaries, unless they step out of the mundane to seek that which is missing, from within … and I don’t showcase myself, for all to resent. One either understands beauty or one understands other than beauty. When I do, it’s often for a position in a company, a corporation, or organisation seeking for someone to fill a vacancy. In South East Asia, one often needs to blow one’s trumpet to get to something … a house on credit, a car on credit, a friend on credit, clothes on credit, entertainment on credit. If one doesn’t have anything, one might as well stay in the jungle.
I live in the jungle.
Besides, I never took to liking trumpets. Brass things are loud, and I love silence. I make do with the jungle, and its orchestra. It’s not fabulously pretty, but it is there. It doesn’t bitch behind my back. It needn’t have to. It is busy in its busyness sprouting, and decaying. I don’t spare the luxury for backbiting, and that is why I think it is futile to write a biography.
A mémoire perhaps, a biography can only be written by the Divine.
