Inspire Me Thursday, a Day Late: Self Portrait

When Melanie and Misty wrote that we shouldn't run from a Self Portrait task, I'll admit I scoffed. I mean, really. Why would we run?

Then, I started the assignment.

Apparently, Melanie and Misty are more insightful than I am.

This is an exercise in putting oneself out there. It was fun, but it was a bit painful. As I wrote, I kept thinking: Who are YOU to be thinking this about yourself? And then I kept thinking: Who are YOU to tell yourself that you can't think those things about yourself?

Do you see what I mean? The loopy, getting no-where, rat on wheel mindset I've got going here?

And then, I was like, whoa, girl, reel yourself in; you're divulging too much. At that point, I felt like I had to inspect and judge every word.

So, finally, I stopped thinking and I just wrote, and here is my result. I didn't draw or paint or sculpt, at least, not in a traditional way.

________________

Like a book on a shelf: a dog-eared, flea market paperback; the leather bound classic; a coffee table art volume with a kicky, bold cover. She is ruffled pages and ruffled hair. She is a cookbook with grated cheese in the binding.

She cups words in her hand and drinks them like water. She drowns in quotes and synonyms. She uses words wrong. She uses them right. She prefers the Book Antiqua font.

She is a run-on sentence with made up verbs, too many adjectives, and a few forbidden adverbs. She is inappropriate and she is repetitive and she is a conjunction without a function. She is dangling participles, misplaced commas, and up for interpretation. Could you pass her your Cliff Notes? She would be eager to hear what they say and abide by that Theory.

She is page numbers and margins and chapters. She is candied description, a scuffed love story, a thesis without a drink to wash it down. She is a footnote, an afterthought, in a text where she wants to be the title. She does not understand that footnotes have their own place, that a footnote can be fun.

She throws snowball bursts of color--ochre, pimento, saffron, magenta, tangerine, cobalt—at the Table of Contents and the Index. She is pastel chalk sketches on the pages in between.

She is the sequel. She is the prelude. She is volumes 1 through 34. She is a private diary tucked under a mattress. She is a tell-all memoir with shocking, nude photos in the middle. She is a treasure map to some, and to others, a clue.

Feather through the pages and she sighs to you before you go to sleep at night—notice me.

Feather through my pages, she sighs. Notice me.