Your scholastic achievements are admirable, especially given that you accomplished them without support from your parents and despite the emotional chaos of your younger life. What drove you to do this?
Survival. Pure and simple. I discovered early on that mobility for a woman in this culture is crucial. The ability to live and work on your own if you have to is vital. The ability to pursue the life of the mind is vital. The ability to journey the body"s full story is vital. Volition. If you can find that in yourself you are going to be okay.
I have a picture of myself running away from home for the first time. I"m three. I have a small plastic suitcase and a big scary looking doll. My cat "spice" is in the foreground, probably wondering where I"m going. My sister is in the background, nearly out of the frame, in the most glorious red dress.
I went to the edge of the yard and sat on the curb for about 30 minutes.
The house is near Stinson Beach near San Francisco, where I was born. The yard was filled with fruit trees. The house was filled with anger. My sister and I were terrified most of our childhoods. My father bred fear into the bodies of his daughters.
And yet, in that moment of the picture, taken by my mother who no doubt thought it looked cute, like mothers do, I knew what to do. Volition.
There is art in that.
I believe in art the way other people believe in G.o.d. I say that because books and paintings and music and photography gave me an alternate world to inhabit when the one I was born into was a dead zone. I say it because if you, even inside whatever terror itches your skin, pick up a pen or a paintbrush, a camera or clay or a guitar, you already have what you are afraid to choose. Volition. It was already in you.
Just be that-what moves inside you. It"s already there, waiting:.
Hush for the line.
Crouched like the touch of dreams in your fingertips.
She is coming with a vengeance.
Copyright 2010 Lidia Yuknavitch.
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