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?

.

.

SMQ1996