Confessions of a writer

I love writing, not just the artistic nature of creating poetry and prose, or combining words, phrases and sentences to make communications that hit the mark in my work – no I love the very act of writing, the visceral nature of putting pen to paper.  The art of physical writing has become less and less a part of our every day lives, with computers, phones and other machines that are separating our hands from pens and paper.

I love to write using calligraphy fountain pens and on quality papers as in the picture below.  The picture is of my piece “Confessions of a writer” that I wrote after watching the film Becoming Jane.  The film is loosely based on the life of Jane Austen, one of my all time favourite authors and after watching it I was inspired to write Confessions.  The paper I used is vellum and the ink is schaffer’s violet calligraphy ink, both some of my favourites.  I wouldn’t usually write on my best paper, but on this occasion it just felt right.

Confessions, was written as a stream of consciousness and as you can see from the picture I didn’t make too many revisions.  The words had been beating at my brain all the way back from the cinema.  I remember clearly the moment on the drive home when I literally had an explosion in my mind as these lines were born:

“Like out of season strawberries, sensible of all that a strawberry is supposed to be, coloured a deep red with bright green stalk and juicy seeded flesh, all apparent as they should be. And yet the flavour is lacking and their aroma distinctly wrong. In truth the forced nature of the poor fruit takes away what beauty it may have held. Love, like a strawberry in season, once tasted is never forgotten and can never be replaced with mere lust.”

I was under a compulsion to write, driven to bring to life the words burgeoning forth in my brain.  It’s something that I have experienced many times in my life and feel very lucky and privileged to have had happened to me.  It’s a strange experience, almost trance like, you are aware of the fact that you are writing and that time is passing, but you don’t really connect with the outside world.  It’s not until the compulsion lifts and you look down to see what you’ve created and suddenly you notice that the light in the room has changed and the hands on the clock have moved -you realise that life passed on while you were captured by the trance.  It’s an incredible spiritual communion between art and artist that takes you to places in your mind that you would never have experienced otherwise.

Once I’d completed the piece and downed my pen I noticed that the layout of my desk with the papers and pens seemed perfect for a photograph.  I took the opportunity to combine two of my favourite arts by actually photographing my writing once it was completed and the picture below was the result.  Beneath the photo you’ll also find “Confessions of a writer”, the subject matter of the picture.

I hope you enjoy both the picture and the prose.

Wealie x

Confessions of A Writer - Copyright R.Weal 2006

CONFESSIONS OF A WRITER

My poet drives me this night, courting the ink in my pen, captivating this page with her prose. She is restless, her nature that of the caged bird, longing for an open sky in which to sing. She is lonely, the absence of love, of a vessel upon whom to lavish it her current woe. So simple a confession it seems, and yet the reality a painful truth. For no simple remedy might be found, no fast fix to paper over the hole in my heart.

It is not the physical presence of a man in my arms, nor the lack of passion that has my poet all a twitter. I have passion enough for ten more women as I, and the warmth of a man’s physical presence is easily remedied. But such easily won company has a hollow ring. Like out of season strawberries, sensible of all that a strawberry is supposed to be, coloured a deep red with bright green stalk and juicy seeded flesh, all apparent as they should be. And yet the flavour is lacking and their aroma distinctly wrong. In truth the forced nature of the poor fruit takes away what beauty it may have held. Love, like a strawberry in season, once tasted is never forgotten and can never be replaced with mere lust.

My poet misses the easy camaraderie of shared knowledge of acquaintances favoured and foul. The absence of the knowing smile across the crowded room, a secret smile meant only for mine eye and given only from his lips. A smile that only I might decipher and the promise of eternity from my lips the response to its unasked entreaty. An earnest and gentle caress of hand to cheek, stolen kisses for unshed tears. The inner warmth of total acceptance. All this worth more than any words have ever told.

This void in my heart vexes me so. In all my years I have felt naught such as this. I grew so used to love, to giving and receiving it to one man for more years than I care to recount on these pages. Love that was flawed and imperfect, but true and faithful in the giving. Sometimes it brought me pain, sometimes exquisite joy, but always it was my constant emotion to keep. Having finally bade the love gone from heart, knowing the course of it held more pain and suffering than I could survive I find myself in uncharted territory.

I am bereft, who now do my words of love speak to? Who will drink from the well of my prose with a thirst that cannot be quenched? Who will look beyond the siren and see the dreamer? Who will seduce the seductress and yet still captivate the heart and mind of the poet? Better yet, how could he love one who was so thoroughly owned by another? Unending questions with no simple answers, the innocence of youth has long since departed and I am not so enamoured of life as to believe in happy ever after.

The root of the issue it seems is in my luck and good fortune to have found once in my life that which all seek……true love. Having found it once, feeling the power and magic that it wields, well I find myself ill content to be resigned to a fate of never knowing it again. Do I find myself grateful to have loved so completely and been loved so thoroughly in return? Indeed I do not! A selfish heart beats beneath this breast, she is not content for one love to have been her lot. Even as she knows how truly rare such a find was, she would steal another’s chance and another’s, and another’s in an unending chain of guilt and remorse, but still she would take it. For she has been seduced by the elixir of the soul and has had life itself breathed into her very heart and music dance through her thought.

So now my poet is lonely, longing for true love to once more take a hold. Watching with ill concealed envy the love shared between those she secretly observes. Her jealousy a callous on her nature and a blight on her character. The reluctant romantic, wistful in her imaginings, treacherous to my sense and intellect, perhaps a silly, vain part of me still believes in happy ever after?

Ruth Weal
9 April 2007 1.24 am

For all those who have loved and lost
You know who you are.

R
x

Copyright R.Weal 2007 ©