Writing makes things right again, pure and simple.

Writing makes things tangible again, brings us back to real time rather than yesterday or tomorrow. Writing allows us to sort the facts from the fantasy, both idealized and frightening. Writing makes things right again, every time we allow ourselves the space to let our thoughts flow freely – you know what I’m talking about, I am sure of it.

Not laborious, face of the red-pen bearing grim reaper of words third grade teacher you would rather forget but words, flowing freely like the cursive e’s I didn’t even know were “e’s” scrawled along blue lined paper.

When I close my eyes and allow my memory to drift, I can still feel that paper across my lap, against the skin on my little four-year-old-thighs. “I’m writing,” I would say, I’m sure earnestly. “I’m writing” and I knew it felt good and I knew writing could make anything better.

It isn’t the actual mechanics though it is.

It isn’t the finding perfection, it is allowing the perfection and the imperfect imperfection to crowl quietly down your forearm and dive off the tip of your pencil or pen. “Julie, do you remember? Julie, do you hear what I’m saying? Julie… darling one…. Hi.”

I remember the first time I was in a psychiatrist’s office and my head was bent and eyes, downcast in a stew of numb disbelief, unnamed fear and the silent, unwhispered help I sometimes see in the faces of homeless people who have given up begging because it stopped working.

That dear psychiatrist but his face in a place where my eyes would see him.

That’s what words do, too.

Sometimes I don’t recognize it until the first re-read and I say, some level of surprise greeting my face, “I wrote that? That came from me?”

YES! The you buried underneath all the stuff people say you should be, the tasks others say “you should do that” all the beliefs that created this brick wall of unworthy which we want to deconstruct and make into a meandering path to what is actually true for you.

I found in my Brain Dump the other day “righting” for writing – and that’s how my words reminding me, “Writing makes things right, every time.”

 

There are some words that make me swoon.

There are some smells that actually have been known to make me close my eyes and moan from someplace deep in my gut, beyond my physical hunger there is this place that understands the smell of rosemary and flour, a soft tickle of a breeze in the mid-summer desert heat, an especially tight harmony all land there and my response is a pleasure-sound from that ancient depths place within me that doesn’t even have a proper name.

(Perhaps its name IS a sound?)

Contemplative is one of those words.

Four syllables whose definition is pleasurable and the experience of it moving from my throat across my tongue and teeth and the sound like a prayer, “Con – tem – pla – tive” bursts forth, almost prayer like each time.

Is it possible to have a crush on a word?

I talk about spreading the word-love virus and I am serious about that. Words are potent and getting more adept at their use provides a power few understand yet. We are at a point of word-breakthrough here yet my fascination with contemplative feels almost like – dare I say it? – word lust more than word love.

Is this why I enjoy onomatopoeia, internal rhyme and assonance? I’m not a big fan of overused alliteration – too ordinary.

Oh, for a well-placed combination of vowel sounds. See what I mean. Say that aloud, “vowel sounds”. Now wait, this entire sentence. Say it! “Now say that aloud, “vowel sounds.” All those round, muscular “o” moments.

If you will excuse me, please. I need a drink of water and perhaps my notebook and some pens. And some uninterrupted time.

You understand now. I know you do.