letter against fear
This is me running away from home for the first time. I’m three. I have a small plastic suitcase and a big scary looking doll. Look at that thing. My cat “spice” is in the foreground, probably wondering where I’m going. My sister is in the background, nearly out of the frame, in the most glorious red dress.
I went to the edge of the yard and sat on the curb for about 30 minutes.
The house is near Stinson beach near San Francisco, where I was born. The yard was filled with fruit trees. The house was filled with anger. My sister and I were terrified most of our childhoods. My father bred fear into the bodies of his daughters.
And yet look at me. In that moment of the picture, taken by my mother who no doubt thought it looked cute, like mothers do, I knew what to do. Volition.
There is art in that.
I believe in art the way other people believe in god. I say that because books and paintings and music and photography gave me an alternate world to inhabit when the one I was born into was a dead zone. I say it because if you, even inside whatever terror itches your skin, pick up a pen or a paintbrush, a camera or clay or a guitar, you already have what you are afraid to choose. Volition. It was already in you.
Just be that—what moves inside you. It’s already there, waiting:
Hush for the line
Crouched like the touch of dreams in your fingertips
She is coming with a vengeance.
No comments yet.
-
Recent
- Why we publish the books that we do, or, IN YOUR FACE, market, and why YOU should commit a revolutionary act and buy a book that doesn’t kneel.
- letter against fear
- hey tea party morons: suck on a pair.
- 10 good reasons to reread marx
- about mothers
- 3 post obama stories that fucking crack me up (tho one sceeers me)
- welcome to the white house mr. president
- uh huh you got that right
- shut the fuck up, gosh darn it
- what’s YOUR husband or parnter done lately?
- blue eyes
- free inquiry vs. indoctrination
-
Links
-
Archives
- September 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (1)
- September 2009 (1)
- December 2008 (2)
- November 2008 (2)
- October 2008 (2)
- September 2008 (8)
- August 2008 (4)
- July 2008 (1)
- June 2008 (1)
- May 2008 (2)
- April 2008 (2)
-
Categories
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
Leave a Reply