Passion

Kreutzer Sonata

I have a passion for words, and for wordsmiths. Well-crafted writing, whether personal, hand-scrawled notes on the inside of dime-store greeting cards; or twenty-page sonnets on watching paint dry; or above-the-fold, front page reporting; or 800-page tomes on anything that would take me a month to get through - do it well and I will be your word-slut for the rest of my life.
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Good writing, a well-turned phrase, the seductive arrangement of three or four words (it takes so little sometimes) and I quiver, I shiver, I swoon, I melt. My pupils dilate and contract rhythmically, my pulse quickens and becomes visible at that hollow at the base of my neck and I open my soul to the writer. Reading becomes a sensual experience for me. (I'm not talking pornography, here, although there sometimes is good writing to be found in [some] pornography.)
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Sometimes words are put together in such a fashion as to make me gasp for air. They thrust themselves inside my brain and pulsate, resonate and harmonize with my synapses so ardently that I have to stop reading until I can regain control of my emotions, my senses.
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I find good writing in essays, in novels, in poems, in newspaper/magazine articles, in humor...in the oddest of places, sometimes, even in advertising.
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Usually, I savor the moments silently. Rarely do I try to share my experiences because I don't express myself well enough to convey the effect the words had.
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Good writing produces a sort of music in me, paints images in colors and intensities that overwhelm me at times; creates a longing in my heart for something I don't know how to explain. The closest I can come is to say it makes me want to meld with the words, as if I were the platen on which the words had been struck, forever captured in its core, held and revisited forever after.
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I treasure good writing. I am in awe of their creators, several of whom I have found on the Internet and follow every day.
(c) 2009 All rights reserved. Martha McLemore