Imagery

I’m taking a writing class. The teacher is inspirational and thoughtful, witty and insightful. She leads a full and exceptional life of courage and bravery that she uses as material for her writing and her classes. In discussing how crucial finding the right image can be, she discussed how she found the image she used as a basis for her autobiography. The child of intellectual dissidents and prisoners of conscience under Ceausescu, the image that spoke most directly to her about her life was her parents’ process of burying their blackmarket typewriter every morning and digging it up every night. They would spend each night drafting seditious, liberal propaganda, yearning for a freed Romania. Listening to her speak about her imagery, there really wasn’t any space for my own inner monologue; I was simply in awe. She then asked us to try to think of an image that reflects our own sense of person and purpose in a similar manner. She gave us silences to think and reflect. And, I could sense my classmates coming up with beautiful, epic moments of adolescent clarity. I could sense my classmates imagining the moments that sculpted them into the adults they would become. I could sense them finding those moments which gave them their life’s credo. And all I could think of to encapsulate the very essence of myself is that fairly regular occurrence when a sharp popcorn kernel falls into my cleavage, gets stuck in my bra, and I have to be perfectly civil while getting shivved in the boob over my passion for food.