Every Day a Beautiful Page

The wine: Chateau Ste. Michelle Merlot, 2007, because it tastes like home.
The music: Mascagni, Cavelleria Rusticana: Intermezzo; and Giordani, Caro Mio Bien

Tonight I light a stick of incense and put on Mascagni. All day I have been sorting my life and tossing it into boxes. In a trunk I found ten volumes of an old journal series I wrote, years ago, forever ago, Honest Ink Vols. 1-10. Another file holds story outlines, impromptu portraits. I searched for an essay I remembered writing on Jekyll Island, sitting at the edge of the sea, writing under an umbrella while it rained. Short sketches of family members, an entire volume written while I waited for the results of my first cancer biopsy. I was 32, and felt so angry that my life had hardly started before it was threatened. It was then I started using real ink, and fell in love with Parker Pens and black and white composition books. They seemed solid, eternal, timeless. I sat by the edge of a lake, watched the geese fly overhead and wrote as the leaves fell red on the water. It was that fall I decided to start really living, allowing myself any damned pleasure I wanted. I bought a beautiful stereo, listened to classical music in the dark, and wondered why it took living in the shadow of The Big C to break me open in all good ways. Now, years on, I light incense called Heaven, and listen to Mascagni, and am thankful for that fall, because it was then I became invincible. I found a short essay I wrote during that time. It is unedited and overly-sentimental, as am I tonight, and I make no apologies.

"Yesterday I had a revelation, an epiphany while driving. In one burst, I understood that I am not a Reformer, as are the people I am surrounded by at the place I go to earn my daily bread. I am at base a Creator, a very different creature indeed from a Reformer. Whereas Reformers look at the world through the lens of what is wrong, I tend to see the world as a starkly beautiful place, full of images so wondrous it is almost painful to my eye. All around me are compositions of a positive Universe, and my only mission in life is to sustain the creative state of grace long enough to capture them in some form others can perceive. In that, I rarely succeed but while in this pursuit, I enjoy a happiness so complete that tears flow from my eyes in joyous testimony. There is beauty in the world for those who would see it.

I become mute around my left-hemisphere dominated Reformer brethren. While a part of me understands and sympathizes with the quest of the Reformer to redistribute the wealth of nations, lower the world cholesterol count and implement a thousand well-intentioned ideas, try as I might, I simply am not moved to the same actions. Much to their dismay, I am completely and happily engaged in the creative process, absorbing my surroundings, observing, seeing, smelling, touching, tasting. Turning things over and upside down to understand them. Getting it all down, then sitting quietly, blissfully doing "nothing." When I engage in these activities which are most natural for me I am too busy absorbing and creating to pass judgment on things or people. I am far too absorbed in looking at things to form an opinion on them. Everything is simply and inherently interesting. The shape, the form, the color, the texture.

Throughout my life, some have judged me a "simpleton" because of my "right-hemispheredness." This hurts a little. My truth is one that is global, wholistic and provides a deep and through understanding of the nature of things. For example when I observe something for a long time, I learn more about it than does someone who only gives a passing glance before passing judgment. Absorbing things, people, places and events enables me to recreate the scenes later in my head for writing stories, or for using pieces of what I have absorbed in the creation of something very new.

I am thankful for having a small talent, a reason for being in the world. I know in my heart that while I cannot do every thing, nor would I wish to, that life indeed has a great purpose for me. When I listen to music, the words and the tears flow from me in equal measure. I compose entire chapters, essays in my mind. Books issue in one burst and I am filled with the great joy of knowing that at the very least, I can do this one thing.

And yet, when I sit down at the computer or at the pad and pen to write these things down, I sit mute and within minutes have started to berate myself for not having the discipline or raw naked talent that will pull these word symphonies from my head onto the paper. In short order, I become a silent lump and have convinced myself that I am indeed a waste of flesh. The only way I can get the words flowing again is to take my keyboard in my hands and close my eyes. I imagine the music in my head and play the book on my keyboard. It is all there, fully composed, and if I sit quietly and squint, I can see it and write it down.

So today and everyday for all of my life, I lift my eyes and heart as I lift my pen. I have witnessed the beauty in the universe and have vowed to be a humble correspondent. I celebrate all that I see by attempting to preserve the tiniest bit of it with words. Everyday, something new to see. Every day, a beautiful page."

(1997)