Why I write

They can't. Nothing will bring back my long-dead parents, nothing will change the tragedies we all have, nothing will change the facts we live with. 

Even though words spill out of my pores, take up residence within my temples and whisper sweet words while I sleep, writing is a struggle. Not writer's block, but a struggle to separate the dross from the real - to chisel away from what sometimes seems to be my stone-cold soul, to let surface the mysteries that lie entwined within the marble.

Michelangelo once was asked how it came to be that he could create such a masterpiece as David. Michelangelo simply replied: I did nothing. David was there, all along. All I did was chisel away the marble until I found him there, in his glory.

It is the same for all of us. Symbols of our lives, transfigured as metaphors, lie within our subconscious.  It is our job to chisel away what does not matter from what does matter.

That is the artistic process. It is a struggle.  I have little choice, really. I am compelled to write. Words steal me away from daily existence; they take me to a secret place far from the madding crowd, far from life's ignoble duties, far from the dreck and muck that is my soul.

Outside the sky is clear, full of cumulous clouds that cause the imagination to stir: If I look closely, I can see childhood friends once thought lost - a Mickey Mouse hat, a Betsy-the-Wetsy doll, my pink denim cowgirl skirt and bolero with pink fringe and cowboy boots: items long trashed or given away, symbols of a childhood long past, now a writer's metaphor.

The blue sky, the maples, and the sounds of cars passing on the road below draw me back to childhood, when as a girl of three, I stood in the backyard with my father at the threshold of our trellis, overgrown with daisies and morning glories.

I asked him to tell me (again) the name of the white flower with a yellow center I so loved.

"These are daisies," he said, as he smiled and gently stroked my chin with a daisy. "This is the same white flower as you have on the blue dress Mommy made for you.  When you want to remember something, say it over in your mind three times."

"I will," I told him. "I will remember everything that happens and then I will write it down. I will be a writer."

"You don't want to be a writer, Kathy," he told me. "A writer must suffer."

"Oh. I have suffered," I told him. The little girl in the blue daisy dress who looked out over the yard on a day of blue, green and yellow knew only what three-year-old girls can know. She picked crab apples then sold them to neighbors; she caught salamanders that rained down from the mountains and flooded the gutters; she let the rains from the thunderstorms tickle her toes as she ran for shelter, and, finding shelter under a large oak, she stood with friends, feeling safe.

In a three-year-old girl's world, feeling safe is all that matters - not being old enough to know that standing under the largest tree is the last place to be during a thunderstorm.

Writing cannot change the facts of our lives but it alters how we feel about our lives. Within the world of imagination, writing does bring back my long-dead parents, does let me breathe fire and walk on nails, swim the English Channel and climb Mt. Everest.

But what caused this woman to have once said, as a happy, three-year-old girl, "Oh, I have suffered," remains a mystery only our subconscious can unlock.

Copyright  ©  2007, 2008, Kathryn Esplin-Oleski