What is the answer?

Humility. 

Humans create consequences. We can't help it. We can call it "impact", we can call it "legacy", we can call it anything to dress it down. But everything we do on earth creates consequences. We cannot be alive and live on earth without leaving footprints behind. There is no escaping it.

But when we have humility, when we remind ourselves that we are humans, flawed and wonderful because we are, then we don't claim things that are reserved only for God... then we admit the reality of the dust and chaos we leave behind in our wake and allow other people to correct us when we have wronged others, and wronged ourselves. Then we can admit we can always do better. 

Yes, we must fight the best way that we can to leave a great legacy - but we will also leave a mess behind, and we cannot spend our lives airbrushing our footprints we leave just because we are so insecure of who we are. 

We are humans. 

On writing and life as a writer

I've always dreamt of being a writer. A solitary voice telling a story. I love other people and am in love with what other people can do – especially if they are better than me at it (which is most often the case). But I also love the purity of a story told by one voice. Salman Rushdie once said that writing is the most powerful because there is one man or a woman in his or her room, writing - and nothing in between this person and the world – and this is becoming more and more so the case as self-publishing becomes a better option by the day. 

I don't care so much for having anything to say. I just want to do justice to the people that live in my imagination. I want to allow the characters and the worlds to have a chance at life. The main theme of my stories have been and may always been the drive for humans to live - to stay alive. The strongest impulse in us that refuses to die. In the same way, I feel the characters that have come to me wanting to become alive and stay alive, and remain alive. As a creator and what a privilege it is to be one, formed in the image of the Creator, I feel a sense of responsibility to the worlds and the people – that, yes, are not real – but are not real yet because I haven't breathed life into them yet. 

I am not playing God, and I dare not play God. But I am fulfilling his responsibility of being in his image, of being a faithful servant of this garden that I inherited – the garden of talents, dreams and stories. 

It is when I am in this state that I feel truly alive. A solitary voice delving deep into the reaches of Imagination and resurfacing to gather the stones into a pile and design it so that others can see and marvel at it too. 

The work I do is not for self-aggrandising. I couldn't think of a more humiliating profession than story telling when it comes to self-promotion. The work I do is holding a mirror up. The work I do is reminding humans of who they are and why they are, and that life is worth fighting for, and maybe even giving up everything in exchange for. 

Been a minute

Wow, been a minute since I wrote here. 

I've just picked up some spicy fried chicken rice from City Cafe on Madras Street and have just gotten home and am about to start episode 3 of Homeland Season 8. 

I've been on a long break from Netflix and it feels good to watch it again, under careful boundaries. Netflix steals a lot of my time, and I;d rather spend that time working on projects that I am passionate about: Deep Blue. 

 This evening, over Key Leaders meeting at Majestic, I drafted an ending idea for the third episode of the book and for the first time I feel confident about the way the epic story (epic to me anyway) folds itself up. I am excited to work on it. 

 This year, my focus will be on finishing episode two of the book. I've been in conversation with Kelly Sheehan who is one of the members of Earth's End Comics NZ one of the premiere comics collaborators for the country. He's been very supportive and helpful. And my focus finally has become this project. 

I want to spend the rest of my life writing stories and creating characters and putting them in new worlds.

This is how I serve the world, serve humanity, serve the one's and two's who are also passionate about story telling – and maybe prove to myself and to others that it is good to live life to the full. Again, I am excited about where the story is going with my book. 

 Kelly also mentioned that his favourite characters from the book are Uncle Peters and Ray. Interesting. I didn't even think Ray was a proper character – but he is surprising me. 

 I'm going to turn this blog into a documentation of my work with Deep Blue. Only when you look back in years time at all these writings in this blog do you remember the value of writing in a blog like this. I am so thankful to the me between 2008 to 2011 that so faithfully recorded everything I could here. And somehow between 2011 and now, I became too "busy" too mature, too occupied... As though I had to prove something. 

 Here I am now, wanting to live a honest and full existence – and not wanting to prove anything – to others, to the world and least of all to myself.

New comics and works in progress

This blog has taken a long hiatus – and I want to say I have been consistently writing even though it hasn't been here – but really, I have been slack at doing that. In saying that, I've just been using my Notes app on my phone and computer.

But there's something great about writing here, documented on the internet for others and myself (in the future) to look back and remind myself of who I am now.

I spent an hour this morning at Supreme Supreme going through a story I had spent close to ten years writing. I find that a lot of me has moved on from who I used to be when I wrote them, from about 2005 to 2014. But at the same time, parts of me remember being that person who wrote them and it feels like a very thin foil exists between who I have had to become and who the writer of that story was. And I can easily slip back to being that person.

I dream of taking three months break from the life that I call mine now and live in the hills in India to re-write and complete the book Sirion Diaries. It may be called a different name, and may have a completely different taste but I know that the essence of the younger me that wrote it will live among the panels and pages.

I am excited.
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For now I am working on second episode of Deep Blue. 

What brings me to tears

What brings me to tears is seeing how amazing people are - and how amazing their gifts are, and the light that shines through their eyes when they are doing what they are created to do. 

What brings me to tears about these is when I realise that these humans are piercing into a different dimension and realm at the same time they are inhabiting this present realm in all their humanness and limitations and yet, here they are as conduits and vessels of excellence and love and joy and LIFE from another dimension, from Life beyond, from abundant life beyond what we see with our human limited sight - and still don’t know this. They still go home to cry about their anxieties, about their failed dreams, and not realise that in that moment of Life they become immortal and untouchable – if they knew enough to love Life they would never need to fear or be afraid. Life IS for them. Life is violently and unabashedly for them. 

There is this unrealised Reality that we touch everytime we see a dancer or an artist or a singer or a human enjoying the sight of a sunset. Yet they don’t know this. And to them it is mere work, mere task, mere roles they need to fulfil. 

We fail to realise that there is nothing more spiritual than art – and it brings me to tears that we let these eternal moments go by.