the drama

i'm a bit overly dramatic sometimes. if you write, that's what you do, embellish. i try to resist it because i much prefer a minimalist approach to expressing/sharing/asserting/testing ideas with language. i'll try to say that w/out flinging myself into a labyrinthine jarble . . . and i'm waiting for it to come and waiting and i think i realize that this is why i prefer to express myself in images. with written discourse, i can't control myself, can't contain my compulsion to "make meaning" or "make sense" of things in a way that feels just right (sounds dull and is . . . although i teach this control and think it's important, sometimes).


there is this image i carry - have for years - and with it comes a distinct but fairly unfocused sensation. the image is of a metal weight that people who fish attach to their lines. i get this image of the weight sloping down the line, moving heavy down the line and then i'd tip the other end up and it would move back but slowly and like something moving through a heavy liquid. there's a sensation there, a balance that somehow stays with me and feels important. some were egg shaped and some were like a heavy cone. i remember these things because we grew up w/ the ocean , fishing and diving and whatnot. and i remember going early to these cliffs w/ my father; we'd stop at something like a Waffle House and get sunnysideup eggs and toast and i loved that grape jelly that came in my-own-personal-individualized-package-just-for-me, and i loved watching my father open those tinylittlethings, which seemed made for a child and not a grown person. we'd fish at these cliffs, arriving just before sunrise, and he would wear these big people white keds and seemed to be able to maneuver those moss-covered rocks just fine, which really impressed me, but i was always a little afraid and would stop every now and then to pretend that i'd seen something in a little eddy in the rocks (but didn't; it was a dramatic and lonely gesture . . . something i've been drawn to since i was very young). but so i'd stop just because i needed a break and was afraid.