Looking Through the Mirror

"...to turn inward..." writes Orhan Pamuk in his essay 'My Father's Suitcase'; that is what writing is about and what the writer does.
Ideally we all need to turn inwards though it necessarily may not be transformed to words or images that express our inner being. We may never express who we are (or may never even discover it ourselves…!). In fact most of us never do.

For, those who do and successfully at that, perhaps their gaze is not unidirectional; they keenly observe the outer world around them. Perhaps it is a connection they create between who they are to the outside world and who they are within themselves. And may be this is what the essay also says when the author talks about the nature of writing (I still haven’t finished reading it!).

I have lately been observing and experiencing another kind of “turning-inward”. And that is the kind that blocks the outside world for that period of this inward focus. It is the kind where the outside world is consciously severed from the inner. One may call it fantasy, or escape, or both. Certainly, in my mind, its escape. I have desperately sought this escape myself lately. That is how the routine in Japan has changed me…

Every one that I see each day while I commute to work is huddled inside themselves. And I understand the desire to do so. Every day is like déjà vu. You know what hour and second you will step out of the front door of your house and exactly how many steps to take to reach the station, where the exact same people are again running late like yesterday and the day before and the day before yesterday (and so on…) to catch their trains, like you have your own train to catch, which comes to the platform at the exact same second every day. No matter how hard sometimes you try to change your schedule, walking slowly to intentionally be late to work or just to see how it feels to get on the 7:14am train and not your regular 7:08 am train, you end up running like your fellow commuters and find yourself standing at the platform waiting for the same train you have taken every single day. And thus you reach your destination on the exact same time as you always did. That is what is expected. People are like little components of a huge machine that cannot and will not stop. Occasionally some disgruntled pieces fall out. Strangely the machine still moves, though a little inefficiently than before but still moving, huffing and puffing, “Gambaro!” (lit. meaning; Lets work hard!) it says. For what purpose it is urging is unclear. Many of those who stay to remain as part of a whole unending continuation, seek to “turn-inwards”, to find solace in their own company for they are their own best companions.