Meta-blogging.

It's all the craze these days. Meta-blogging and meta-fiction and all other things meta. For the few who may not have heard of it, it is a kind of writing or activity that self-consciously addresses the act itself. Sounds deep, huh? Overused as it is, deep is no longer a word that can be used to describe it.

This once, I'm not going to let it bother me. The path I tread on may oft used, but the journey I make is my own. Or so I want to believe. The way I see it, (and the way many before me have seen it,) people write either because they like to write, or they want their works to be read. More often than not, it's a mixture of both. People may also like the very act of writing, or maybe they like to see their own ideas written down, crystallized in an imperishable form.

(Hmm. Writing about meta-writing would be the third level then. Already I feel cooler.)

Reality is probably absolute, but ever so often, what is forgotten is lost. As if it had never taken place. When we go after things as ephemeral as thoughts, it becomes increasingly harder to define what 'real' is. So, maybe we write so that we remember, so that our future selves do not forget so easily. For one thing, such exercises just might help us stop ourselves from running around in circles, swimming in that same fishbowl, year after year. For another, it might act as a frame of reference, as the Constant. So little seems grounded in our present, so little seems absolute and imperishable that often we have no choice but to look to the past for something more definitive. What is better, I say, than to have your past thoughts etched in virtual memory? What is better than having your future selves come back and exclaim, "Yes! This is how I felt once. These truly were my thoughts."

It is scary, how we live so vicariously through our past. That somehow, things which happened years ago seem more real and more important than that which is happening right now. That somehow, I am more comfortable lamenting Gone are the halcyon days of my youth, when the halcyon days of my life as a young adult might just be passing me by. That somehow, a memory is less sweet if it isn't properly remembered.

It's like taking pictures on a trip. We get so busy trying to capture the world in all its glory that some times we forget to actually enjoy it. We get so busy trying to smile at cameras that we forget to laugh and have a truly good time. Yet somehow, I cannot help but feel a sense of loss when I am unable to properly remember (and somehow quantify) how much fun I had at some point in the past. And then be disgusted with myself for feeling so.

I don't know if you noticed, but I stopped taking refuge in collective pronouns at some point.

It is an injustice though, to think of blogging merely as writing. (I mean no slight on writing by using the word 'merely'.) Blogging is considered by many as an expression, an artform, as social dialogue, blogs acting as windows into people's souls.

Tsk tsk. Never judge anyone by their blog. Blogs aren't spontaneous thoughts, they are well rehearsed and often revised. People are often frank and forthright in their opinions not just because it is right, but because then they can get away with not being frank or completely honest when it suits them. Blogs showcase a very select subset of the author's attributes. That in itself would be fine, no one thing can tell you everything about someone, but here... it is the author who does the selection. Blog readers are informed very much on a need-to-know basis.

Of course, you could choose to build your own picture about the person behind the writing by using only those things which were let slip without notice. Perhaps the picture you form is a little truer. The clever author, though, would allows things to slip out. As if by accident. If you have a blog, you know that much of what I say is true. You've done the same things at some point or the other. I know I have.

I could now go on to sermonize about how deception is integral to human behaviour and reduce you to someone as cynical and disbelieving as myself. As a favour to humanity at large (or the insignificant fraction of it which reads my not-so-humble words,) I will not. It isn't the altruist in me who makes me do this, but simply that I don't believe that it is deception which is the underlying motive. It's closer to role-playing, what most people do with their blogs. People project self-images that aren't just meant to be seen by the public, but by themselves as well. They are most cruel, the differences between someone's self-image and that which is seen by the public, and perhaps this is but an honest attempt to bridge the gap between the two. Lies that reveal the truth and all that. Only, when the veil slips, when the mask shatters, all anyone can think of is deception.

Why do I write? No one reason can ever be enough for anyone to keep writing. Sometimes you want to be read, sometimes you like to write, and sometimes writing takes on a cathartic mantle, making you feel just that little better, just that little cleaner after purging (and not forgetting) those thoughts from your system. And sometimes, you pretend to be doing your future self a favour.

If I am permitted to take off on a tangent, I'll say that all this kind of ties in with my views on allegory in fiction. To me, fiction is the great escape from reality, from problems current and woes real. For any piece of fiction to be a true escape, it should be able to compete with reality, for which it needs to feel, well, real. Now in allegory, by definition, references are made to things and ideas which are outside of the reality that the writing is trying to establish. This act in itself, makes the fiction seem less real. Ergo, an escape that's not-so-great.

True fiction, in my opinion, is that which you enjoy for what it is, that which engulfs you so completely, that you never ask what is going on in the author's mind and how thoughts are being formulated. You don't ask what plot element the author is going to introduce next, but ask instead how the characters are going to react.

True fiction is not just when the characters don't break the fourth wall, but when you forget that a fourth wall even exists, separating them from you.

Allegory.

It never really pays to think about what to write, you just have to start writing. It used to work really well during classes... when I couldn't bear to listen to whatever rubbish was being taught, and was physically incapable of falling asleep no matter how bored I was. Instead, I could draw, I could write verse or a story, or sometimes... I could write an essay. A critical discourse, passionately yet objectively putting forward my arguments and my thoughts. It was a stimulating exercise, this. Now, now I have lost all the ability to write well in third person. Even in my fiction pieces I tend to write in first person. This, while making the pieces seem more personal, makes it lose a lot of wisdom in the process.

Also, I stopped attending all that many classes. And off late stopped having so many classes to attend. I can now become sleepy in class, and need to fight to stay awake in a few. Unproductive, that. And pissing off.

Thus we come to this. With some time to go for lunch, I opened up Notepad in an effort to pen down my thoughts, hoping that something worthwhile comes out.

Allegory in fiction, though I have little experience with it as a writer, is a really good device. (Look at me. Referring to myself as a writer and all. Hubris it is, pure hubris.) It gives someone the power to talk about what they want: a situation, an emotion or a relationship; in a manner that allows the readers to grasp and appreciate the gravity or the subtler nuances of the subject, yet keeps them far away and prevents them from knowing the precise truth behind the allegory and in the author's personal life. If the author is good, that is.

On the other hand, allegorical fiction is sometimes thought very little of. The main reason for this being that the subtext in the piece of work far supercedes the actual bulk of the material in importance.

Then again, the opposite is more often true. Take Philp Pullman's His Dark Materials set of books for example. (The first of which has been made into a movie, The Golden Compass) It is tale set partly in our own universe, and partly in a parallel universe, one where people's souls have a corporeal form, as animals. It is a world where the Reformation never took place, and the church (the Magisterium, as it is called,) is as brutal as it was half a millenium ago. It's also the strongest body in the world, governing all aspects of life and policing them all. While the whole series can be thought of as a modern day, atheist version of the Book of Genesis, there's more to it. The subtext is all about the dangers of authoritative religion, be it Christianity or no. I guess the basic purpose of organized religion is to impart a set of good values and temperament to its followers, and once it fails to do so, it should either get the boot or some serious reworking.

I digress. This is not a post about the dangers and the idiosyncrasies of organized religion. That would have to be a much, much longer piece and I do not have the patience for it. I doubt that you would, either. An atheist preacher is among the lowest of hypocrites. (Now you know why I hate Richard Dawkins.)

The subtext adds meaning to his prose. The anti-religious overtones can be quite jarring at times, but if read in the spirit of things, it's quite alright. The subtext makes it more than some whimsical tale, set in a mystical world where Zeppelins are still in vogue and fundamental physics comes under the mantle of theology.

I'm flexible, but usually I subscribe to a more Tolkienesque opinion of allegory. In that it should almost never be used, and certainly not in an overt fashion, for it draws the reader away from the true beauty of the prose, as and how it is written. Appreciating fiction for what it is, not what it implies. The Lord of the Rings is a classic battle between good and evil, where good is good and evil is not just the other side of the proverbial coin. Evil also gets a rather Catholic treatment in the process, where evil characters were essentially good at some point in prehistory and fell at some point after.

It isn't too surprising then, that Pullman dismisses the Lord of the Rings as mostly trivial and not worthy of comparison to his own book. It was unpolitic and a little foolish of him, as a significant chunk of his readers would include Tolkien-loyalists who would be miffed at this dismissive remark of his, to say the least. However, if the comment were stripped of contempt and suchlike, the crux of his argument is that the two: his own work and that of Tolkien's are different and essentially incomparable. He prefers comparing his work to CS Lewis' Narnia, and with good reason.

In the end, it isn't a question of whether allegory is good or bad. Or better or worse. It's just a personal preference as a reader and as a writer.

PS. Note the time stamp. It is accurate. I started writing this yesterday, and continued writing it around 2 hours back, just before the Med Chem test. Alas, for I could not finish it then.