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Words on Writing by Zoe Migicovsky
 
I asked a painter if they could build a house with their canvas- thinking of the forts I used to construct as a child, sofa cushions leaning together and waiting to collapse. "Well", the artist lamented, "Not really, unless I sold it and used that money"
 
Why do we write, draw, compose, construct, create? Why do we think _expression means we are real, or true, or even beautiful?
 
This is a story about the ugliest girl you'll ever know. Really know, there are no boundaries to free verse. Prose is just word flowing after word. But where was I? This is a story about me.
 
I spent two weeks last summer in a creative writing camp. A place where they told me "this is flash fiction" and "this is poetry". Why is everyone so constricted? The teachers included a dark haired, vegan, woman who wore skirts over pants over darkly tanned skin. Her co-star in this drama was a man of about the same height, fair and feminine, the type of guy to wear sandals and buttoned down plaid shirts. These were my teachers. I am not sure what I learned. That words are valuable because not everyone has them and unlike food and water, not everyone can get them. I've always been fortunate that way, I suppose. Sometimes I wonder where the words would go if we didn't capture them like butterflies in a net. Pinning them, dried out, to our papers. Would they just float around, dandelion seeds, eventually settling in someone else's mind? I guess that's something like what happens after death, something we can never know.
 
But at this camp last summer we sure tried, the dozen of us and the teachers, we twisted words, contortionists on our page. We melted and welded them into shapes they probably should not have been, and we enjoyed it. Like those kittens in a jar they grew to fit our imposed shape. The students were all female and most wore sparkle eye shadow and Franz Ferdinand shirts but what they did was gothic. Abuse.
 
I came to class the first day with several short stories tucked into my folder, many more hidden in my mind. It's a game we play with words, trying to coax them out. They tease but normally we win because we are stronger and we are better. Somebody asked, "Why do you write so much?" I told them "Because I like the way words sound" I'm addicted to the rhythm of a language that is one of the most blunt, inarticulate ones in the world. We don't choose our lovers.
 
There were field trips like any decent camp has. We went to the big art museum downtown where over-caffeinated college students sit on the stairs, slip their Vogue into Plath and pretend they are their own parents. The teachers, still young and idealistic, seemed like they knew the place so well. "Choose," the man in pale blue explained, "one painting, and write a short story based on it." We take the words because we think we need them. Why does everyone mistake poetry with air?
 
I choose "the Seaside" by Basquiat because he is one of my favorites, and the quintessional artist story. Live hard, die young. We should die soon, before our flesh sags and those brown spots, whatever those are, appear. I wrote about a girl with skin the color of ocean foam, in a silk, or was it gauze, dress that is attracted to the edge of the cliff. Alone in the cold.
 
Later in the week there was a guest speaker, who told about living in the middle of nowhere for three months and how much that helped him. I wanted to let him know we were high school students and where were we supposed to go? The mall.
 
The teachers at the camp, were just that, teachers, English teachers and why don't they learn Latin or something beautiful? Something dead. English is so trite, our letters don't blend like paint but they aren't the metal of German either. English just is, and maybe that's why it's so popular. It's easy.
 
In my class there were other girls, girls who probably had better stories in their minds. A girl with a father who had cancer, a girl who just came back from Italy. We all have less to write about then we think. I go to the library sometimes and I wonder where all of this came from and why we keep it here. Tangible. What are we trying to preserve? When we write a book is it our soul, are we sacrificing in order to feel like we have made a difference? The dark-haired woman read a story about two sisters in different universes, my other teacher wrote about the white bile of television and desperate moments of passion. Now I'm writing about them. Just like water this is a cycle, eventually it will evaporate and our bodies will decompose and we will be as if we have never been. Maybe we already are. I'm not hiding but I could be invisible.
 
It's just that everyone is so bitter. I asked the painter if their work saved lives. "well," the artist contemplated, "Some people says it speaks to them, it changes them." I asked the painter if they were the new Messiah, ready to heal, light and warmth turning the earth into a crystal orb. "Art doesn't need to save," the artist told me, "Art is the savior".
 
Why do we think this is something we control? That just because it is our fingers holding the pen, these phrases belong to us. There's no such thing as creative writing. We create nothing. Words are just apples, waiting to be picked, it doesn't matter who does it.

Zoe Migicovsky is studying environmental science in university, and later in the future hopes to plant trees and write poetry. She can be contacted at zoe.migicovsky@gmail.com.