Friday, August 6, 2010


Why am I still frightened of my words? Why do I hide them beneath my calligraphic handwriting or stuff them into ornately sketched frames? They fill the bulk of a sketchbook that spells freedom- it’s unlined and meant for visual appeal.

Why do I entertain myself with wildest daydreams and fiddle with plotlines, lie with my daughter late into the night conspiring to coauthor fantasy so vivid we can see the colors like a tapestry? I do this, but refuse to attempt to write fiction.


Why can’t my words uncurl on a page all unabashed and varietal, scrawled/drawn and inseparable from the drawings nested beside? Why do I keep feeling that push to separate them- the text and the texture, color, lines. Lines at one stroke describe the curve of an eyelid then line up into letters.

I’m constantly resolving to stop listening to that voice whistling lies, full of pressure like unvented steam. I’m constantly remembering to live in the undefined spaces, remembering that those mysteries are like synapses- that the magic electric conducts between the tangible.

Where things almost touch but don’t; let me be the artist author who connects across that gorgeous void.

Let me be this creature conductor, like a saline, fluid mass allowing the current to flow through me across media, across ideas.


  1. Heidi, I think you are an amazing writer. It takes practice and perhaps a book on craft. You are well read enough that I'm sure you intuit so much about writing anyway. You have such a fresh way of seeing things, you owe it to the world to try.
    I love you!

  2. I keep thinking I'll do a short story but then I get all eyeball deep in arty stuff:) I promise to try some day soon. You'll be my critic? xo