Face
The Final Breath of the World’s Greatest Free Diver, Natalia Molchanova
I remember once telling a writer all sorts of things about a story of mine he had just finished reading. His reply? “So what?” With that in mind…
Face: Ink and acrylic on board. About the size of an index card, mounted as the top of a box.
The Final Breath of the World’s Greatest Free Diver, Natalia Molchanova. Yes, she really was, and yes, unfortunately, she really did. Acrylic on canvas. Footnote: I tried to take this painting to the next level after photographing it. Ironically, perhaps, the painting did not survive.
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It’s easy to be that smug, clever, verbally glib toast of the cocktail party, to drink just the right number of gin fizzes to find just the right combination of words to turn just about anything into a joke.
Not so easy to find something sacred in your life, something you respect for the simple reason that it deserves it. And to know it deserves it for the even more simple reason that it has earned it.
People read those sacred words of yours even when you wish there were more of them, or they wish there were fewer of your words, and those readers, which is what we call people when we forget why we started writing in the first place, talk to other people, who have hearts full of searing desire, who share, persuade, love, hate, kill, hug, nurture, and sleep around because of your words, or mine, or those of their parents, who might not have loved them as much as we do.
If in that tiny office of yours that always feels too hot or cold you write This word, That word – Verb my Noun! your words move me to hate, love, laugh, think, desire, and crave, and so I share how you’ve made me feel, and in sharing shape the world atom by atom, and we both know how pesky those little atoms can be.
Your writing is sacred because people are, and our earth is, and the things we love and hate and care about are.
Participate in the sacred because we need your sacred words, flawed as they are, like you, you beautiful, immoral, uplifting, passionate, desperate, decrepit animal.
Participate in the sacred because we need your words to remind us to save,
to love
to nurture,
to judge and excoriate,
to forgive and apologize,
to dream,
to ground.
And to remind me to scream
Stop!
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Things matter. Not like people, but they’re still important.
A pen that inspires you to write beautiful words because you want to do its form justice, its feel, the way it spreads ink across that particular shade of paper you found after looking for weeks, which you’ve placed on top of that
desk you’ve always had in the family,
or just bought, and on top of which today you’ve set up a laptop instead of paper, and tomorrow maybe an iPad, although not that many yesterdays ago you wouldn’t have known what that meant.
What you choose to write with, on, and seated at will draw you in, or push you away. Writing day after day after day is hard. As in very. Make it easier by falling in love with objects that you enjoy touching, seeing, celebrating. That way, even when the writing does not end perfectly, the act of writing will.
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