Hello World
The beginning is a wonderful place to start!
Welcome to my first post on Substack about writing and journeys and… well read on and you’ll see!
“Every Picture Tells a Story” – Rod Stewart
If you’re like me, you have thousands upon thousands of photographs, maybe more, in every medium possible. Of course, there’s my phone, loaded with not just the daily clicks, “I have to have that for Instagram,” but all the pictures transferred from my previous phone and the ones before that. There are the SD cards, mini and macro, of old digital cameras that ruled the scene before phone-cameras got so good. And from the previous century, hard-copy photos and strip upon strip of negatives carefully saved for reproduction.
From even farther back in time are the stacks of black and white images of my childhood.
And the reams of photos of my parents’ lives before I came into existence.
Photos of their childhoods. Photos of grandparents; photos of people even my parents wouldn’t have been able to identify! And yet, somehow, I just can’t get rid of them. What if…? the question niggles. Someday, I’ll want to look at them. Someday, I’ll wish I’d never thrown them out.
So, instead, I thought, why not use them in a blog! Dust them off, dig them out, bring them to light and give them new life. Thus, came into being this series, where I will use images to talk mainly about my writing journey, but will include travelogues, reflections on daily life, memoir, a sprinkling of my art, recipes, writing tips, but above all photos and the stories they tell.
So, thanks for being here. I hope you will look around, read my About Page and consider subscribing. My aim is to create a community to support and share. I need all the companionship I can get on this often-lonely sojourn. Once a week, I will post a new photographic ramble. I’m excited about this opportunity to journey through visual time and can’t wait to see how it will affect me, how you will react, and what insights I might gain. Certainly, nostalgia! Hopefully therapy. Or, at least, the ability to let go.
In the future, I hope to add new sections on memoir and fiction.
And now for a tale—about how I almost didn’t come to take the scenic route to writing.
Every Pencil Tells a Story?
Frankly, it hurts to remember this particular anecdote… something tells me it won’t be the only one to do that either. Maybe this is where the therapy comes in. But, if you will, travel back to sixth grade with me. I was nine, painfully shy, in my fifth or so school since my parents had moved around a bit.
This school was different from the others. For one, it had been founded by a regional queen, and situated in one of her palaces, right next to a scrumptious hill that provided us kids with boulders and trees to clamber on and paths to explore. Often, we plundered scraps of white marble discarded by the workers constructing the temple on its summit.
I was particularly in awe of the founder of the school, also the principal, who was a writer, a storyteller. Her books on Indian mythology were textbooks of ours. I still have them, tattered from eons of thumbing through.
The principal had founded this school for her three daughters as a place where physical punishment was taboo. Radical at the time. Teachers were encouraged to keep their students engaged through interesting subject matter. Imagine! English was my favorite subject, and though this was because I adored the teacher, I was beyond excited when she couldn’t make it one day and the principal subbed for her.
Picture my thumping heart, my sweaty little palms, as the principal decided to give us a writing exercise—Write an essay about your pencil. She would read out the one she liked best!
Oh, I knew I could write. I had this down. I was going to knock the slippers off this diminutive, cotton sari clad idol of mine, with my brilliance and oceans of creativity.
My pencil, huh? I contemplated it. Yellow. Sneakily sharpened with a razor-blade because it was cool to do so, even though my father forbade the practice. It had the scent of freshly shaved wood, and the lead was a sharp prick against my tongue. I rolled it between my fingers sensing the odd combination of smooth enamel paint over the hard edges of its pentagonal shape. Faded silver writing was etched along one side, no longer legible. The remaining nubbin of a once-pink eraser, that left nothing but black streaks now, was wrapped in a strip of metal dimpled and striated to keep it in place.
I considered my strengths. Observation and descriptive writing. Fine. I’d describe this dooby down to the grain of its wood. I’d put in details only those with the eye of a cat trailing a cobra would notice… I chewed on my cheek and got down to it, even describing the scritch-scratch-swish of the lead against the paper.
And then it was time to turn it in. Excruciating the wait, as the principal settled down at the teacher’s desk to read the mini-essays. Of course, she’d given us a reading assignment while we waited. Of course, I couldn’t imagine doing anything but scrutinize her expressions below her dragged-back hair that escaped in wisps around her forehead, and her eyes encircled by the thick black frames of her glasses. I peered between the white shirted shoulders of classmates, from where I sat at the back, as she read each sheet, licking her finger to separate it from the rest, dropping it to the pile on the desk when done.
There! A smile! She almost bounced up from the chair, face gleaming, eyes alight, like a little girl who’d been given the best birthday present ever. “I have it,” she said, and held up one of the essays. I squinted at it for any distinguishing mark, but with my adamantly uncorrected short-sightedness thanks to my mother (more on that in another post), I didn’t stand a chance.
The principal readied to read.
I gave up trying to breathe. My hands froze as my heart tried to exit my body by way of my ears. Which made it difficult to hear…
Still, with just the first sentence, I knew it wasn’t mine. Air whooshed back into my lungs. I slumped down in my chair, prepared to hate every word.
But as the principal read, I lifted my head, straining for more. Utterly unlike me, looking at my pencil as an outside observer, the author had turned the tables, or the pencil on the reader. It was the voice of the pencil, and a hilarious one at that. Crabby. Mad at her owner for chewing on her butt, losing her eraser, squeezing her too hard…
Yeah. Brilliant.
As the rest of the class giggled or guffawed, I had tears in my eyes. I sniffed, unsure if it was at the creativity of my anonymous classmate, or the fateful realization my nine-year-old self made that day.
That I’d never be a writer. I just didn’t have the imagination.
Clearly, at some point in my life, I changed my mind! This is part of that journey.
I’d love to hear from you—thoughts, comments, reactions, memories, all are welcome. It’s hard to write into a vacuum, but wonderful when the vacuum is dispelled with responses.
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I really enjoyed reading this Rilla and can definitely relate to struggling with confidence as a writer!!! :)
Love the travel through memory with words and pics.