I imagine a feminine counterpoint to history;  something with an air of vengeance and subterfuge, something illicit — not in and of itself, but to the frame of mind that reduces experience into a causal, chronological line.

I imagine this is called heracy.

I imagine it has always been with us, only, it takes on a more kinetic and ephemeral form than what’s survived in the bits of writing passed down; I image this feminine counterpoint to history was not so taken with being abstracted into the forms that have survived the grubby hands of history’s children, but instead she was content to pour her knowledge out around the hearth,  weaving her account of people, places, things at neighborhood wells & market stalls.

I imagine it wasn’t until the printing press that we had the technology to set down a faithful record of what maked all of history possible — I imagine it wasn’t until the novel that we were able to reconstruct her properly, on the page and in the mind.

I wrote this week about Virgina (and it was brought to my attention that should I call her Woolf); I wrote about her essay “Modern Fiction,” how she criticized Joyce for making her feel like she was stuck inside someone’s head — a brilliant head, but just a head. And she wanted something less “angular” and more open, when it comes to fiction, something that sets her free. She evoked the artistic impulse to render life — life the halo and not the catechism of supremely meaningful symbolic forms. Life the rosy, plantlike, birdflying, multi-metaphored, coursing in out and around the forms we need to put there, on the page, to help the reader reconstruct what it is we are presenting–

I imagine there is a way of articulating experience, of drawing connections as opposed to conclusions; though i believe that connecting and concluding are two parallel processes — two ways of proceeding forward, for writing, the best writing, is really all a reaching — a reaching after, a reaching for, forward, back and forth.

We fill up chalkboards, blanketing their blankness with what?

A family drama. Facts and Feelings, fighting behind closed doors. We invite the reader to peek in the window — what do they witness? Violence? Lovemaking?

Probably always a bit of both.