Yesterday as I was walking on a bridge-a bridge that while being on it, you are as tall as the surrounding palms-I stumbled…not necessarily over something, it was just my feet that failed me all of a sudden and the next moment I was drawn forward. However, it felt as if I was pushed forward. I did not exactly fall…something within me did. Something made a move in my chest and how annoyingly it started; as if an insect has crawled under my skin and it continued and continued on and never ended. Something within me was awaken-I could feel it-some underground creature so eager to come to life as if it had never lived a day before and that push, that little tiny push worked as the final straw to bring it up…and how noisily 'it' was brought up. It screamed as it scratched my chest from inside! I felt embarrassed, thinking that every one passing by must have had heard it too. I don't know how much time it took me to figure the whole thing out only that eventually I did figure it out: the noise was not noise but heartbeat! I touched my chest with my hand and I felt horrible! I never realized how dead my heart was until I witnessed its resurrection at those moments… then I stood and watched the world-unlike before when it had always watched me. I watched people, the cars, people, the dancing palms and it felt like I was watching this whole magic show from some forgotten corner of a stage with the terrified, curious eyes of a circus puppet that has been given life all of a sudden!.. I wasn't embarrassed any more. I was scared; just like that madman in 'Tale-tell Heart' as if I had murdered someone-or something ,my own heart and the heartbeats-the shamelessly loud heartbeats- were there to expose me…I ran off just as the palms started to direct their leaves towards me in a threatening way. I flied away as if I wasn't wooden anymore. For a moment I turned my head back. No, no 'fairy with turquoise hair'; I was the loneliest Pinocchio ever…

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It's been a long time since I've achieved…so long that I don't really remember the last time that I ever achieved! But I do remember one thing: I have always needed a push… My English teacher used to tell me that I needed to be poked with a big needle so that I would write…achieve! And I used to laugh-some good, hearty laugh-whenever she mentioned this…but now…I can feel that she was right. Now more than ever…

























There are times when I justify myself, console myself saying that even Marquez needed the same thing (I've read somewhere some years ago that he used to go to the publisher telling him that he'd hand in a new work of his within a couple of months…but of course since there was no new work he'd just rush to his desk trying to fulfill his promise…trying to make the best of this self-made push!)The worst part is that I might get my push all the same but still…This idea always makes me feel frustrated ,always had, always will in a way that I just search around for something else to blame rather than my own 'comfortably numb soul': DISTRACTION! Yes sir, distraction; this infinite sea that drags me alongside …I am suffocated…I cannot breathe…lost in thousands of panoramic, foamy worlds; not being able to tell which is which...not knowing which is mine. Why should I blame myself then? How can it be my own fault and even Virginia Woolf needed 'A Room of her Own'! Take it metaphorically-take it in every sense you want-but we all need rooms of our own. We're just too dissolved in others, others' lives, others' actions, others' everything that we've forgotten all about our own art, our own souls, and well…our own hearts. Aren't we all Pinocchios in our own way?! Only some of us never mind remaining wooden for ever…

Once I heard someone on TV quoting from someone else and I just assumed 'that someone else' must have been someone great! Well, not only because he was being quoted but also because his words sounded great: ''A young artist, in order to produce his own art, has to concentrate, to focus on his own world….''

I'm not writing this to inspire you. I'm writing this to -oh, well- poke you with a big needle!! Because everyone seems to be needing it in a way or another…But anyway my only real consolation is summed up in something like what one of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, has said: ''The secret of getting ahead is getting started.'' So I think it won't be too hard for me to get started - especially that my heart has waken up!