The Gift I unwrappped the paper gingerly, pretending I had no clue as to what it was. I thought "perhaps this time it will be a novel..." something new by Winterson, or Marquez... but I was just kidding myself. I was wishing for words when I know there would be none. Blank pages; yet another journal. . When I was nine, I still used the word "diary" and believed that the words I scratched within were of the utmost importance. I would hide it carefully down the side of my bed, wrap it in strings and place hairs on pages...if they were gone I knew the fortress of my most innermost thoughts had been breached. They never were. Who cared? Even if they had been missing, chances are the words would have no meaning to the viewer. . The words were mostly the selfish rantings of a little girl who had been an only child long enough to know she liked it. My parent's love-affair was crashing down around their ears, the neuroses of the dance were beginning, classmates and friends were taking a one way trip to a far away place called Guyana, and my "diary" reflected, more often than not, what possesion of mine had been destroyed by "the baby" that day. . I can't imagine life without my younger brother... but it took me more than a decade to realize how lucky I was to have him. Years later a found a few of those diaries and was disgusted by their content. Or lack thereof. It was especially odd because I can remember being truly affected by the times and the losses... why could I not write the words? . "...pretending I had no clue..." . High School. A young adult. Emphasis on young. Feigning maturity, the diaries/composition books in which I now scrawled my thoughts became "journals". . In more artistic moments, they were my "sketchbooks". And some of the words reminded me I could think, when I chose to. I vacillated between wanting desperately to learn and wanting desperately to get the hell out. "Not living up to her potential"...how many times did we hear those words? This time the journals were filled with page after page of lucid response, not one word of which my counselor would call "potential fulfilling". . Then along came the obsession with the male anatomy. Not sex, necessarily, because there had been sexual experimentation a bit before high school...I had been going away to camp every summer since 6th grade... No, this was much more clinical than pomegrantes shared...than long slow kisses (I do not remember the first one, I only know I have liked them as long as I can remember). This was more about power and control and what effect the hand has on the sensitive skin of a not-quite-man. . I have read countless tales of besmirched honor and ruined women...but as I look back on the journals of that time I am struck by this thought: if anything was besmirched or ruined...it was the way I wrote. My words are lumps of cold oatmeal on those pages; they are clinical and unromantic. There is not one drop of eroticism in my descriptions. "It would be a whole lot simpler if he would just wear buttonfly jeans instead of those stupid 505's" . Egad. . They were quite simple to destroy, those journals. I did so on a recent visit home. He asked, "I know they are your memories, but can't you get rid of some of those boxes of crap?" I could. . "...I thought perhaps this time it would be a novel..." . When my life became entirely my own, my journals became something resembling "fulfilled potential" in the sense that they became the blueprint for the concepts that would fill my art. . I worked, I wrote. I played, I wrote. I read, I wrote. Sometimes a friend would join me at a cafe table and it would take a few moments for me to remove myself from the entanglement of words and acknowledge their presence. . I wrote of lovers and friends and of their parallels in literature and art. I wrote of the choices I was making and the possible directions I could see myself going. I wrote of (and on) the drugs that I was intrigued by... and the lack of control that intrigued me most of all. I had written that night. . They read it together, the lover and the friend who had become a lover. And the ink was fresh and the words still electric. When had I stopped hiding it down the side of my bed? When had I removed the strings? Where was I? At the corner store? In the shower? More importantly, why hadn't I just been honest about my wants and needs? Some details are completely erased... all I remember is leaving a room and returning to a snake pit. . I didn't write for a very long time... . "...wishing for words when I knew there would be none..." . I turn the book over in my hands, it is truly beautiful. I had seen a similar one years before on Nantucket...but I had been careful not to mention the attraction. My in-laws-to-be would be quick to buy it for me, and I was already anticipating the guilt...there was still a bit of emotional bargaining going on and they were trying to convince me how happy he and I would be on the Cape. My walls were strong, they couldn't find the door. They let him go. . Back to this journal, the new journal. I've received a total of five journals from well-meaning friends since I moved abroad. "Document everything!" they cry, "Forget nothing..." their voices trail off as they try to remember themselves. "This is the most incredible time of your life, you MUST put it all down..." Is that what stays my pen? Am I still so headstrong that the mere hint that something is a task I am required to perform...I refuse? . This journal is a gift from much closer members of his family. I know it is no bargaining tool. So why do I remain intimidated? Perhaps it is because the leather which envelopes the standard issue sketchbook is such a work of art. The Celtic dragon which is deeply embossed on its cover is echoed on the rough but rounded pewter button. I run my fingers across the surface and twist the thin strap around my pinky until it is blue. I would have adored this thing in 1984. . Did I mention it is black leather? . My journals and my art went on a sabbatical when we moved to Japan in 1994. I spent the first year pouring my soul instead into reams of letters. I suppose I hoped they would help to maintain the friendships that had become so distant. I suppose you could say it worked, though some of the friendships have mutated into something altogether different because of the outpourings of my pen. Shouldn't have mailed that...ah, 20/20 hindsight. . Secrets are funny things...when I woke up one morning in possession of one that could hurt the friends to whom I normally wrote, as well as the man to whom I normally spoke, I decided it was time to return to those private pages. It was actually the most joyous of secrets... one that I would be glad to share if only I knew the right words to make myself fully understood. . It involved a paradigmatic change. It involved an epiphany of sorts. (Do you see where this is going?) It involved another person. . It was better left unspoken. And unwritten...only I was spending so many hours of the day thinking of the words to describe what I was feeling that it seemed as though I had to get them out or I'd explode. . Thinking like writing, Writing like talking. . I wrote it all out, and re-discovered the joy of writing the uncensored word. Because I do censor myself in the letters to my friends...to our parents...and I try to down-play my fears because I know that the people who love me will surely amplify them. . I wrote regularly until this Fall, and during that time I also began to draw again on the pages in between. Slowly, slowly, I began to return to my studio. I would slip in and finger the rough edges of the unfinished prints...holding the kozo up to my nose, inhaling the lingering scent of lacquer thinner. I was in there when the journal arrived...too late. It was time to begin again. Time to return to the visual imagery that had been my mode of expression when words failed me. I don't quite understand the dynamics of it, but it seems that when I am producing I very rarely write in the journals. It's as if the art itself uses up my words, leaving me with nothing to write. Well, almost nothing...these words continue, this exhibition, this self-indulgent rambling. . She wrote of her sanity, of her knowledge that she was in fact just one personality...I have a pretty good grasp on my own reality, and my sanity, but the "one personality" thing is a real challenge. There is a pretty big difference between the experience-seeker and the documentary maker. There is a Persephone before the camera, but it appears there is also a Persephone behind the camera...she is writing this. . Meanwhile, the black leather journal sits on a shelf in my studio, waiting for me to pick it up, waiting for me to fill it with words, waiting for me. I slowly prepare to print, but my muse dances around teasing me with the merest glimpses of inspiration which distracts me. . What am I waiting for? . . | ||