Alone with One Line
Writing is a singular obsession, and hard to share. Upon a landscape, an artist looks at a canvas or a photographer takes the camera, and another, an audience, can look upon the scene, albeit with a less discerning eye but it is shared. The musician, the dancer–both offer audible, spatial exhibits. Even when starting out, something is there screeching and puttering along.
For the writer, the mindscape is closed to all until the words come out, and even then it’s not visible, but still unformed, Proteus, the god of all shapes and none. A writer takes images with the mind’s eye, fleeting and distorted as they maybe, and often as hard to hold as quicksilver.
Grab the pen, the paper, jot them down and hope to catch them, a foot print, a lost feather, a wisp of scent. Sometimes the writers do this at their peril when it coincides with family, friends, strangers who wonder about the person scribbling, lost to the matter at hand.
"I wore the bones for fifteen years."
"The only light in the blasted cavern came from her hair, like gold spun with dawn's pale pink newness."
"Wires shot out and imbedded in her flesh."
At the moment they came, I wanted to write them down. Granted, these may be throwaways, never used. I may take apart the idea, rearrange, lose interest, seek another bit, but these lines meant something, and I wanted to hold them.
