The Substitute

I need to write and talk...they are those natural extensions of my thoughts that doing them is as important and vital as breathing.

Then why have I played hookey with the blog?

I simply found another way to replace my need to blog.
There is this person I have known from the mid of last year, who I was interacting with on a strictly, only a little more than, a Hi-Bye basis.

Suddenly, I started mailing him...these really long mails full of my politically incorrect and frequently incoherent and extremely unrequired statements. They started off formally, with polite status updates and questions on what each other was doing. Then I got free and extensive while the he is still being polite and formal.

Sometimes I wonder if I should take hints and stop mailing since the other person is not so thrilled or eloquent in his responses. Other times I ponder over the fact that, if my mails were unwelcome then the chain wouldnt still be alive. Pity can only give you very little tolerance. Believe me, I know; I have tried to tolerate many people many times and understand the limits of tolerance.

Letters used to be the substitutes for essays and books even. There are so many "Collected letters of..." type of books, because more than some sycophantic biographer or egotistical autobiography, its the way we communicate with some other person, that shows us about ourselves.

I am never going to actually distribute "The Collected emails between Rain and this guy" out to the reading public or even in this blog. It wasnt personal and there was nothing shocking in the content, the only reason I dont want to is that there is another person involved and he might not like his conversations made public.

What makes mailing this guy as satisfying as writing a blog post is that he is neutral and un-prejudiced. He lets me talk about what I have to say without saying whether its right or wrong...When he says something I do not take it as an arguement against my ideas (even when they differ entirely) and just listen to another point of view (that is a big thing for me)

He is not close to me at all for me to do any of the following -
take him for granted, read too much into his words, second-guess him at every turn, get nasty (take things personal) when we disagree.

Also, there is no restriction on the topic. He is intelligent, well-read, funny, mature and wise so discussion on any topic under the sun makes me come out more well-informed than the time we went into it. Lucky Me!

So its convenient for me, enriching even, that we are exchanging mails. His sitch might not be so hunky-dory. I am a little hard to take even if you're the most patient and tolerant person in the world. I dont see how he gets anything good out of this anyway...

As all things come to an end...its the time for the natural demise of this mail exchange, our electronic text conversation. Nothing dramatic, just that he is going to be moving on to other things work-wise and otherwise and cannot be expected to spend 5 minutes a day, writing to me.

To me its like watching something good die. I mourn for it mildly, even though its not really over because I know its going to go away. Fade until it comes to nothing. Those mails were sometimes the only good thing I had to look forward to, since I came here. Now that I have access to my blog; I hereby replace the mails with the blog again.

All-Natural me, no substitutes,
Rain