on WORDS…

I’ve had a love and hate relationship with words...

I savor them in my tongue,

as pieces of exquisite candy

…and might spit them into the void

of poems destined to oblivion…

I’ve written them in walls,

with urgency and haste,

and burnt them down, merciless

without keeping the ashes.

I’ve gnawed on the unspeakable

and swallowed up the bitter ones,

while getting lost in translation

more often than I’d care to say…

Now, drunk on the sound

of my own muffled voice,

I will plucked them from the sky

while I also bathe in silence…

Recently, during a tech hiccup, I lost the virtual manuscript of a bilingual poetry book I’ve been working on for a while.
It somehow vanished, in spite of a couple of clouds in place, that promised to shelter it… It is a mystery. I eventually found an old version, containing at most half of my hard work. It was heartbreaking, and stopped me from writing for a bit...
For those that write in more that one language, you may know there’s nothing more difficult to translate than poetry…
Keep the meaning? Sacrifice the rhythm? Find a rough equivalent to the non existing word? Sigh.Back at square 1. Well, perhaps square 2 or 3.

Funny, or weirdly enough, several times in my life I lost or destroyed my accumulated note books, artworks and writings, sometimes in (ironically) poetic annihilating purges... I remember being probably 8, and cutting up my small Dear Diary into little morsels, before disposing of it in the trash. In my early 20s, I threw away my collection of journals, and all the poetry I had written so far. I remember a bunch of assorted books, filled with multicolored inks in my expressive handwriting, disappearing through a trash chute, and landing in the darkness below with a loud thump.......

My theory behind the urge to destroy my expression takes into account that I grew up between exile, and a military dictatorship, where people (some from my own family) where being jailed, tortured, disappeared, etc... mostly just for expressing (dissent). Other aspects of a traumatic childhood were not inviting to freedom of expression either… so I had the great fortune to eventually express through abstract visual arts too, which probably felt safer.

This time, though, an “accident” took my book.
And showed me how there’s a piece of my psyche still carrying that old trauma.
So here, I acknowledge that my words, these very words you’re reading, have sustained a long and courageous healing journey, to reach You.
I share this as medicine, as it may serve you. Reflecting on how part of what is at the root of much of the heartbreak, both personal and collective, often stems from the inability to have one’s expression (as word, idea, form, being, life) exist, be allowed, seen, validated…

I once heard somebody telling a man he didn’t have the right “to put a cork on the wine of his voice” (!). That it didn’t belong just to him. It stroke a chord in my heart. So I invite you to share your own, in a sacred space, where they can tumble softly out of the cradle of your mouth, or sip warmly from the ink of your pen…

Something to SAY? :)

© LUNA