Understanding "A Prayer"

Rarely, if ever, would a writer explain the forces behind his work. Rarer still are those times when the forces are unknown. So be it with the earlier post, titled "A Prayer". A dear friend asked me what inspired my idle hands and idler mind, to pen such a prayer. I started out telling her that the inspiration was absent and went on to explain the inspiration!! :-o

A dear blogger, brought out the connection between the picture and the prayer. I am glad that I fail hard at being perenially abstruse! :-)

I am told it is dangerous to lay bare the mechanics of the writer's mind. I understand some of the causes of such fear, but I feel that people, and at a much later date, I, would benefit from such an exploration into the innards. Those who aren't interested or wish to leave it as something "intangible" or "magical" would do well to realise that such an exploration doesn't do away with the spirit and purpose of the Muse or the Charites. It doesn't strive at disrespecting their role or present to the reader a mechanical way of creating something which, based on the comments, is considered profound.

When I started writing the prayer, there wasn't anything on my mind beyond the idea of an ironic prayer. While writing it I could only see Albrecht Durer's "Study of Hands" in my mind. The fable surrounding the Hands is considered a fiction and the records show a less romantic version behind the making of those hands. But, once the Hands stayed in my mind, thereafter, the words sprang from those very beautiful hands... To answer a blogger's query: The post is as much mine as the sweet scented air belongs to a garden.

While I was convincing my friend and myself, that there wasn't any inspiration, I realised that there really wasn't. Undertones and floaters in the mind do not count as inspiration although they might feed the mind long enough to have many uninspired pieces. Thus, it was with the post titled, "A Prayer".

I had heard several prayers (in various languages) where the suppliant entreats his God as if he was not quite in the wrong. Often the devotee feels that all the fault is in the world around him. Often the prayer is to change the world, while the individual does little towards it. There are other kinds of people of course. People pray out of fear or with the hope of reward and other such contrived reasons, but the core is still puny and imploding.

In such a thought was I caught when I looked at my life one day (nearly every one day that dawned) and looked at all my wonderful constructed ideas and theories, and I realised that they are brilliant on paper; living them needs a lot of guts and conviction in their truth. So where was I? What is life? What is one doing? Is one being, in the least, honest to oneself? Where, from here?

These and many other undercurrents of past incidents and constantly recurring thoughts braided themselves into a post.