i - lower case me - does not have a thing to hide, yet shyness is but a mild approximation of my nature. yes, bent, not curled, but shy? yes shy. meek is what one of my professors used to call it.
you have seen me in public, you have seen me challenge big men with either strong muscles or unruly egos, and you do not want to believe a word of what i say. fine, you do not believe, that is your problem. my problem is another, if it is a problem what i have. shy and very competitive i am. one of those is enough to paralyzer you, both is like fucked-up-big-time-now. i like the kind of insanity that i can create!
last sunday i stumbled on an aspect of my nature that totally startled me: i am so very competitive and impatient that games, especially online games bore the living daylights out of me. at least i can not find any other explanation for this fact. my son has tried on many occasions to explain to me his games, and literally has held my hand while he shows me how the games work. still, i got bored or at least i found no interest in the online games. this fact has also led me to conclude that as far as a geek, i am not a real one. all fallacy! i am a geek and as geeky as they come, but what is true is that my geekiness is not in coding these days. i had my days of high on code, but those are gone long ago. if you visit the definition, like most modern days definitions, they are not black and white and the dictionary will only give you an historical accounting of the meaning of the word. it is a good word for me, it is complex, it is descriptive, it is an abstraction of the imagined. last week i was called both geek and visionary. i know it to be right, and i have one hell of a time just being with it. although i parody myself in claiming limited imagination, deep down i know that i do not lack either imagination or the ability to project and explore that which seems unexplored. i repeat that which seems unexplored.
knowledge is a beast with seven heads, fifty three hearts and a looping conscientiousness. an impossible phrase to define knowledge is only to reflect my own frustration with humankind's inability to either use it or grasp it.
where does this shyness come from? i say that the shyness is the expression of a deep seated shame. shame. shame is the painful emotion arising from the conscientiousness of something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances. all right, that is what the freaking and beloved oxford english dictionary says about it. what does it mean?
you tell me, but to me this makes no sense and it feels true. i have this deep shame for all the mental abilities that i have been graced with. i have wanted to write ever since i could, and i have tried. publishing has frightened me. publishing under pseudonym affords me a level of experimentation in plain sight - it is the very opposite of hiding - that i could not reach otherwise. the bottom line is that every single word here is all a probing into just being me. so far i have discovered that not only am i shy, but i also have no qualms about challenging and questioning ideas only because i do want to understand, i want to grasp it, and i am impatient. playing an online game that renders the visuals for me is much too slow compared to reading a book - or writing a story - and letting my mind render a virtual reality far richer and more brilliant in detail than any glorious high tech digital reality. i want to be there leading the front edge of what i see, i do not want anybody else telling me what i see. i do not understand what drives me to want to create images never before seen with just plain words, i just know that that is exactly what drives me.
i wish that i knew so much more. i think of the man's bent toe and i am reminded that he is pure inspiration, and all of that is inspiration is represented in that bent, not curled toe. from his imperfections i derive the power to unfurl my mind and being and make those dreams of story telling a reality. one bent toe.
when last week i spoke up at a conference and contributed a tiny little bit of my thinking, Cairo Otaibi was not in the room, and i stood there with the experience of being that just one and same person surrendering to that inner self that i have come to know a lot better.
"There are three basic rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are."
William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
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