Jana Purington

Linfield College

McMinnville OR 97128

14 March 2015

 

Dear Reader,

 

     I’ve heard it said that speech connects the mind and body. I speak seldom. Perhaps this separation explains why my words don’t work. Hemingway might be right that words exist in the blood ant that writing is but bleeding on to the page because I have small veins and low blood pressure and when the doctor finally finds a vein, my blood crawls out; I write at a similar speed and with as much ease. But were Hemingway’s theory of language true, surely I would feel words stirring, instead they fizzle out before I can grab hold – I lose them before they are mine to lose. Then I think that they could live externally, maybe floating in the air, and like a whale I wander with my mouth agape hoping some verbal plankton will get caught in my baleen.

     So out of frustration and with a touch of good-natured spite I invert my letters, make them impotent. I know of no better way to show them how it feels to have something to say and fail to say it. You may say, “As these are your words you only stifle your own expression.” To which I respond:

1. The evidence that I am the origin of my language has proven inconclusive (see paragraph 1).

2. Supposing I don’t snatch them from the atmosphere, I couldn’t rightly arrange them so they didn’t further my expression in the first place.

     Tangled and tumbled, the letters mirror how I feel they change on the path from brain stem to fingertips.

     Should they object to my treatment, I would argue that I am doing them a service. Once unable to convey their message, we can appreciate them for the splendid series of lines they are. And they needn’t worry about seeming hollow scratchings, for their meaning doesn’t disappear with readability, only becomes obscured. With their form foregrounded they acquire an air of mystery.

     If, in the future, my relationship to words changes and one of us becomes more pliable to the other’s will, I may be able to place them upright. Until that time, I am more precise when illegible.

 

                                                                                                                      Best wishes,

                                                                                                                                 Jana Purington