Unseen Beauty: A Journal

Reason to write

I write because I need to. I am no existentialist, yet I believe with all the passion of my being that we are indeed creatures trapped within our own minds. Our world is a vast honeycomb of souls with their noses pressed against the glass of personal point of view. I know all about trying to break those walls, to reach out to those around us – I’ve spent half of my life trying. I’ve tried to make friends; I’ve given to others; I’ve found best friend after best friend, only to find myself alone again in the end.

On the MBTI, I come up a radical introvert – somewhere around 78% on the introversion/extroversion scale. I get headaches from going to large parties or meetings where I am expected to be social. As a kid, I was the odd-girl-out in the world of my small parochial schools. Most recess breaks, I was the weird girl sitting at the edge of the grass with the big book of poetry or the notebook. But what the other kids didn’t know was that, much as I longed to be popular like them, I wasn’t alone. Certainly, I missed out on the physical activities and the note passing, but I made other connections, touched other souls with tenuous fingers of thought. In the books I read, the stories that carried me away from the often-cruel laughter, I found a connection with others I could never quite master in the “real” world. In those places, I learned that words could pass through the cells in which we find ourselves trapped. You may not be able to touch through a glass window; you may not be able to hear well through it; but you can hold up a paper caressed with the touch of the written word, and the message transfers undiminished.

I think that is why I write. Certainly, like Picasso, a part of my art (if I dare to apply that term) is exorcism. Words have ever been my way of expressing my inner demons. But beyond that, I write because the pain and the beauty I find in the world around me cries out to be shared, to be seen.

We, as human beings, miss so much in our world. There’s the old action movie cliché about people not looking up, but like most clichés, there’s truth in it. I’ll never forget one holiday season evening at EPCOT, my husband-to-be and I were sitting on a tile wall, watching the fountain dance to a program of Christmas music. The park was closing, the fireworks show had finally gone dark, and the crowd was pouring out of the park, the mass of people breaking around the fountain like the ocean around a beach rock. The play of light and music was breathtaking; the water shot more than 30 feet into the air, its crystal clarity cast into all colors of the rainbow by the lights. Below the seething mass of people, the pavement twinkled as lights set into the concrete danced in preset patterns across the courtyard. But the only people who saw the fairytale world the lights, water, and music created were the children. They oohed and ahhed, pulling at their parents’ hands as they tried to pause to watch the fountain or to follow the lights chasing across the pavement. They tried to tell their parents to look, but their elders, faces creased with exhaustion and purpose, focused only on the park exit.

I write because a part of me is still one of those children. I fully understand the need to keep your eye on the exit and maneuver your way through the crowd to your goal. But I also understand that those things alone not enough. Our world is stockpiled with wonder. There is magic around us if only we are willing to see it, to accept it as magic instead of pressing its beautiful, uneven outlines into our straight-lined world. My soul aches with the desire to share that magic, that wonder, with those around me – to reach out for others who are willing to pull at the hand of responsibility and drive in an attempt to stay and marvel at the beauty offered to us. And for me, the best way to communicate that wonder, to get it through the isolation of “me” is in the written word. I write because I long to communicate, to reach others, to share what I see. And I write in the hope that perhaps someone else will see it too…