In the act of composition

If not full-blown superstitious by nature, all writers are somestitious (minimally).

It’s the words. The words that follow us, the words that taunt and haunt, the words that sing for no reason, the words that hurt and sting, all the annoying ones, poky ones, the deliciously pert and apt ones, it is the words themselves that make writers tick and clack way pushing hot buttons with black keys trying to dispel them as if cleansing a curse.

It is also paradolia, or the fault of seeing human faces in random things such as corn flakes and Cheetos, or the Virgin Mary on a chicken nugget, or even more naturally, an angel in a cloud or David Bowie on a peach. Faces are everywhere, faces are elusive, faces need names, people need to say the names.

Names are given to us of course. Words find us, they also escape all of us, just like names. Writer or not, we all lose face(s) sometimes.

It is nothing short of miraculous that we arrive in our cultures born with a ready compressed language file in a zip format just waiting to for the set-up to be executed and unfolded. It seems that way anyway. Our chords are wired for sound. We become words. All the words collected, collated, conjugated, and put away in their appropriate compartments and drawers make us, define a certain experience that is the gist of us.

Some words like ‘serendipitous’, ‘peace’ and ‘vibe’ aren’t specific to anyone or any thing and yet they are concepts that resonate with each of us for different reasons and at different times evoke different responses. They are dynamic and possess infinite potential. The word ‘narrative’ has begun to sound like nails on a chalkboard to me-why have all politicians and news anchors decided to constantly chew on this word like a breath mint, to spit it out at every crossroad between Point and Dead End? Their ‘same ol’ story’ makes me nauseous. There is no plot in that ‘narrative’ and the characters are all weak.

As a writer and lover of words, it is offensive that politicians have grammar-napped such a beautiful round concept as the word ‘narrative’ and made it mean something plastic wrapped, like ‘motive’ or used it synonymous to ‘story’ or (gasp)‘myth’ because it sounds fiction-esque and hence less vulnerable to dispute.

Words won't save us all. Some words we have to eat and those are often the poisonous ones.

Writers are often so hyper-focused on where the story starts or how to start, that the writing can kill the story before the real beginning begins (endings are always easier since there is no real end). Writing is much like science that way. Will we ever know what happened at the beginning and before the beginning and before that?

Anyway...a life is born, a writer is born in February and against all odds is born but not a writer, or the other way around. My mother was on birth control when she had me on a rainy day in 1976. Something saved this life and somehow I don’t remember what. I honestly don’t remember being a baby but I do remember not being wanted, perhaps thought of as a fetus. My mother was married-for a short time, I did not know my biological ‘father’. He ran over my legs (under age 2) while doing mechanic work on a forest green “bitchin’ Camaro”. I have fond and terrifying memories in that car. He, the ‘father’, did two tours in Vietnam, his second was voluntary. I am an only child-break the break the mold kind they say-and with me they meant it literally. I wonder if there is a mold for a generic fetus like Rodin who recycled body pieces. I had some doctors remove a fetus from me as if it were an infection. At the time-it would have killed me. If none of this has made sense to you it is intentional nonsense, an urge to scribble or babble like fish or fish, verb or noun. And it will stink when I eventually reread it.

I am entitled to say the truth-and I only mean my truth. There is no such thing as THE Truth for all. Paperwork? I don’t have the papers that show the title to this body, but I am the only one who knows how freaking heavy she is and after carrying her nagging voice around for all these years, I see her point and I raise it-that is my entitlement. Proof? Oh, you mean, “Experience”? Nah-okay, some, but that’s not the thing that retains or grows value or wealth. The only thing worth owning the title to is yourself. This is where you should invest and direct your energies of criticism and applause. Have you looked in the mirror lately? I mean really looked at yourself- as if you were someone you know, someone that drives you crazy at times? More important, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror with genuine care or dare I say-love? To love what you see behind the eyes and underneath the grey matter, loving who you are or are becoming before its too late, we are all entitled to this Truth.

If I was confessing a truth to a total stranger, like you, I would tell you I lost my virginity to a gay male. Some of my best friends were gay men growing up. Did I know he was gay? Yes. Did he know? Yes. His mother and father loved me. He loved them too. I wonder why the word ‘unconditional’ has not come under scrutiny the way that ‘loyalty’ or ‘pursuit’ has. Where are all the parents with unconditional love? Things have changed since I was growing up, acceptance of gay or transgender is acceptable in most cultures and cities but I don’t think much has changed with the eldest family members or extended families. There are transgender bathrooms in my favorite burger joint. It is a ‘known thing’ that the men's rooms are always messier than the women's restrooms- naturally, we can only speculate about what will happen to ‘known things’.

I have known that gravity waves exist since I could walk. I nibbled on photons when bored, stacked rocks like legos, known the time by the sky, but I am no Einstein. I’ve always preferred poetry to math, I do have a fascination with fractals (and pi), but words were always my thing, my noun, my adjective, my verbiage, my everything. Science in words is philosophy, no? What took so long to discover gravity waves? The body must catch up to the brain. We needed proof and more concurrence and further confirmation and then we can say we have evidence and make predictions. Or we could just guess and say the first thing that comes to mind and call these decisions and statements -evidence-based. I wonder what would happen...your guess is as good as mine.

All art is science-based. The two need to cross the aisles and begin a new narrative.

Math and money are forms of censorship and sponsorship. Both are intangibly American. 

My daughter is waiting for decisions to come in from her college applications. College is a big deal for (the little) us. She has a lot riding on her essays. All of the schools she has applied to are seeking ‘diversity’. They all decide on the ‘whole package’ they say. If all universities want diversity, is it still diversity?

Scientists and artists are more alike than different, both explore unknown regions.

My daughter is going to be an artist and a scientist.

Writers are well-practiced liars whom enjoy their craft. Scientists make things up and then make up solutions and even politicians and preachers, live and die by the word and the power to use it.

Censorship is like superstition, it is fear based on what is in the mind. In our endless quest for truth and justice we must say where we have been and where we need to go so others don’t get lost and yet, so many are at a loss for words-even without someone trying to take them away...

And it could all just be a ‘fiction’ of our imagination anyway.


The words in bold are from the list of words the 45th President has ordered to stricken from all CDC reports during his term. A poem written on this topic was also published on the CDC Poetry Project website (here).

Painting by Santiago Rusiñol [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.