"It's the only thing that I have.
If you'd believe it's in my soul
I'd say all the Words that I know."
-SUM 41
He gives me that look, its half "butterfly net" and half awe. I've gotten it before, usually during an exit. He puts his coat on my kitchen counter, but he doesn't put the novel down. He is still holding it, cradling it. I see this. I sink into this.
"How long did it take you to write this?"
I close the door behind him and avoid the question. This is the final draft, 20 years after I started it.
I can't tell him that.
I am trying not to stare, but the way he's holding my manuscript is more important then anything he can say about it.
He rubs the cover with his hand in a way that says, this is important. I feel that rub in my stomach. He holds it as if it can break. As if it is fragile and priceless.
When I turned 7, all I wanted was a dinner party. A formal dinner party. And my mother let me have one. I invited maybe half a dozen little girls I knew. We made very special formal invitations. Everyone I invited came. Their parents dropped them off one by one at my house, all of them dressed in formal gowns and maryjanes, and their mother's pearls or dinner gloves. We sat in the dining room, where my mother served us. We used the good china, and crystal, and table linens. Everyone was a little lady, everyone was care filled and attentive to everything. Everyone really tried to hold their little pinkies out as they sipped hot chocolate from the good china tea cups. Everyone of us feeling special, because we were treating everything like it was special.
And that's what I wanted. I wanted it to be special. I wanted every one to feel special. I wanted every thing to be special. And it was.
Reverence.
He hands the manuscript to me as if he's handing me a living breathing thing. I can see the reverence.
Like a good china cup when you're 7 years old.
Like something you aren't really supposed to be handling, but here it is in your hands. And you don't want to blow it.
He watches as I take the book, and ever so carefully he lets go.
It was one of the best compliments anyone's ever given me.
February 02, 2006
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4 comments:
Lovely
you're my heroin(e).
Namaste'. Truly.
body ever keeps an appointement, you can blow it off in the last minute, there are cellphones, there is a fast llife, a life on the fast lane.
there are times when i am so tired of it all, that i can't even speak anymore. i sink into this wordless abyss, i love it, i stretch into the nothingness. a movement of your hand, a wink in your eyes, a deed, it counts so much more then.
until the day, when you come across someone who handles the word with care, like a precious china cup. someone who handles it with care, like a newborn baby. knowing of the delicate nature of words, of how fragile they are, like a flame of candle that can be blown out by the mere use of your breath, abusing your breath, abusing the words in your mouth. sometimes, i am an expert at this. blabbing like a waterfall, hammering those words into my keypad...but, this candle, and you know it, can burn everything to ashes.
everything.
so a phoenix can arise.
your fire, your ashes, your phoenix, it is the resurrection of a long lost but very old power of the word.
they could heal with words.
there were magic sayings
its not a mere metaphor.
a magician and a word
no
it actually happened.
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