The whirling blades
I was listening to an NPR show the other day about a woman who had grown up with birthday letters from her dead mother and the burden that had put on her life. But one letter came at a particularly pivotal moment in her life and actually helped sway her decision. Her mother wanted her to stay wedded to the Mormon Temple and that was the cause of much duress during her life, but when she was in college and trying to decide what to do a letter came on her birthday imploring her to seek her ethical expression through her work. She chose to become a doctor rather than go into finance.
I listened to that and recalled my impression last night as I was sitting in the Fairgrinds Coffee Shop on Ponce de Leon last night at an art opening my friend Marcela Singleton curated and was featured in – the theme was Gluttony. A long time ago when I headed west to California, my intention was to be a writer, one who plunged into the bad and good insides of my being and brought it all to light. Last night, I stared at a photograph of Marcela 50 pounds heavier, drunk, and half naked – it was a time in her life that she made into art and transcended.
The Colombian architect had just asked me what I do for a living and I said I’m a writer, but that is the equivalent of saying my father was Cuban – it contains no backstory and no weight. I’m a writer among other things. My father was born in Cuba and had various origins. And I work in finance. After the Colombian architect, I told the puppeteer who had just finished this fascinating performance, I had wanted to be Henry James or Georg Eliot when I began writing – I held this to be my calling, my ethical expression in work. And now I write for the financial world and blog.
He said to me, “You blog? You are a post modern writer.”
Hardly, I thought, but didn’t want to show him the err of his ways. I am a modern word hobbyist and not even that most of the time as I am mostly recording a life I am living, rather than creating one. Or is my daily life an act of creation? Have I created this persona who writes for the financial world, lives in the LaLa, and dreams of days when my insides won’t be clamoring to be on the outside and my medication is to blog?