All the Horrible Girliness

I read a Flannery O'Connor story. I wrote a reaction to it for class. Then we went through the story in class and now I feel stupid.

A Prayer For Owen Meany brought me to the class in the first place. I knew I'd reached the end of what I could do on my own. I guess I could have spent the rest of my life writing on an even plane but I want to do better each time. I was banging my head on my own ceiling. So I enrolled in the class.

It would have been easy to claim myself a genius when I found out I was the best writer in class, the hardest worker. Or maybe I could have felt fine when the teacher took me to her office and told me she didn't have anything to teach me (though she was talking about poetry, and even there she was wrong).

Instead, I am humbled every week, in every class, by what I have yet to learn. I am so late to the game. I should have learned all this ten years ago, but I couldn't have, then. I wasn't ready. Will I live long enough to write as well as I can? Am I even capable of reaching the heights I aspire to?

*

I was playing on that Jackson Pollock page and I made something pretty. I didn't know why it was so pleasing, so I showed it to Mister Aran. He is an educated artist and a brilliant visual thinker so I asked him why I liked it. He told me it was composed well, that the colors... went together right, or something. Maybe there was something in there about white space. Maybe I'm making that up.

He told me that Pollock made jazz visual. I asked if it was intentional. He explained that it was, but in the same way that jazz is intentional. Dammit, I can't explain it correctly. I don't know how to use words to explain jazz and Pollock and all of that is just me being frustrated at how little writing ability I really have. I mean I feel so wretched about it right now that I could cry, I feel the crying in the back of my nose, and it isn't even hormone time.

Maybe Mr. Aran will come into the comments and explain the jazz and Pollock thing for me.

I'm just afraid I will always be just one of those people in black, looking at it from the outside.

posted by Samus @ 10:20 AM