Looking Into The Gaps

№: 7

192.2020

As a means of expression, I see writing to be a medium to clarify my thoughts, to work through experiences and to conceptualize meaning and make sense. When I wrapped myself around my sheets at the happiest times, or when I hugged my body during the darkest of moments and even when there was nothing else to do but stare into thin air to try and eke out a sense of the world around me, I took down notes. Whether that is the most characteristic of me, some will say yes.

Ask me what I think is the most pressing issue for me, and I pause, then stutter between, one: the upside and downsides of my “born-tao” (brought up in the city) childhood growing up in an ethnically diverse community and two: bridging the gaps in technology, education and empowerment for women, men and the poor in the society. Where all this becomes possible is through understanding what it takes to build an idea from concept to product and to then leverage the designs that are not only elegant but also consider other points of view.

The simplest way I can describe the intersection between having an inclination to write poetry and code is that each is a an attempt to bridge the gap between the inconsistencies that presents themselves in the world that we exist in today. By acknowledging the brokenness in systems, recognizing how fragmented and diverse human desire is – then I find the courage to begin to look into the gaps, plough through my own apathy and cynicism.

Lingering on this very question – of where the intersection lies between poetic eye and debugging code is a slope undefined for several reasons. One is tempted, as I have, to draw clear distinctions of where the former ends and the latter begins – a line so faint that when staring into it too much, it can feel crystal one day and maddeningly blurred the very next. Both are ways to escape into imagination. Yet neither can deliver what they promise fully and most of the time it ends up unfinished business and so, they both are a good lesson in learning when and how to look away. And so some days – most in actual sense – it feels as though my left and right eye are seeing two different renderings of reality, and I fear they may never reconcile fully.

"Everyday each of us invents the world and the self who meets that world, opens up or closes down space for others within that." - Rebecca Solnit