A moment must be captured swiftly lest it be taken away with the waking of the dog, or the sudden rush of an autumn
storm that changes the landscape and blows away all your materials. Intention, deft and dexterity must be observed when lifting paint from the pallet. In art you must choose what to keep and what to leave out. Writing is this way too, like the painter whose every move will be documented on the canvas, the poet must be careful about the words they choose and how they will arrange them. These choices will be cretinously examined by critics and peers alike. Disaster or Infamy hang in the balance.  The private journal leaves more room for error and mulling over the most absurd notions. You can draw funny faces of your friends in here or phallic images and none will be the wiser of your still juvenile tendencies.

My leather bound journal has pages made of linen, inspiring both the written word and the art of drawing. Arielle, my little sister, is an art major here at SUNY New Paltz. She gave me this journal for this past birthday. In my mind I want to say something short and profound about the relationship I have with her. It is strange how when we need to say something important the words are hard to come by. Maybe I chose not to write about this object originally because in my writing I’ve been trying to get away from the personal. I wanted to step back and leave myself out of my objects. Bringing myself into them and into my writing makes me vulnerable, a feeling that I’ve been trying to get away from my whole life and one of the reasons I began writing in the first place. I try not to take words for granted, try and put them in their proper place at the right time. They are not objects themselves, or are they? They are brought into being and then erased, re-written. Aloud, they exist in air for a nano-second and disappear. I sweat over them, rubbing my hands beneath the table, chewing on a nail, wanting to speak but never wanting to say the wrong thing. Misunderstanding and failure are too close at hand for me to voice an opinion. It is only through many years of practice have I learned to overcome this.

With the pen it is different. Here, you can speak up, work through your thoughts before presenting them. The details of a life are mundane to those who stand outside its sphere. You must choose carefully what to write to make it true, or else it’s just another slip of paper being put away in a draw. What you leave out becomes more important than what you keep. I have been writing in journals since I was a little girl drawing in them, pressing flowers and writing poetry. In this private place however, you can write as much as you want about whatever you want. I knew I wanted to be a writer before I turned thirteen. My sister followed my lead; the books I would read would become hers, but more often she would use my paints and art supplies to make her own creations. We flourished in our shared little world of imagination.

I’ve been told not to talk vaguely of experience. Seek truth. No one will ever experience the exact same things that my sister and I did. There is a great Tolstoy quote: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In my family, our father was prone to lighting things on fire, not out of anger or for the love of the flame, but out of sheer drunkenness. The garbage can was a victim often, but mostly the couch felt the brunt of it. He ate, read and slept there every night and would fall asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Next to him were two kerosene heaters he used to heat the house. The heaters themselves, if left till the wick burned out, would fill the house with smoke. Arielle and I would wake up in the mornings and there would be soot on our faces. It looked like you were rolling around in dirt.  The windows were lightly coated with the stuff. If you wanted to look out through barren trees and see the frozen lake clearly you’d have to get a wet towel and clean off the glass.

I broke my little sister’s heart when I left that place behind, she was only fifteen and would spend another year there before moving in with an Aunt. Our relationship suffered for a while, but recently we’ve grown close again. Her gift was a reminder to me that no one else will ever get that close to understanding who I am than her. I didn’t think I could give an object that much importance and meaning until I set down to write this.