Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Prophecy

The Writer by: Giancarlo Neri
Hampstead Heath, 2005. Photo credit Yvonne de Rosa.

The Writer dedicates this story to Lisa Clark
With much, much love.


"The Writer stares at her screen," She types, "Feeling as though the screen is staring back."

It can't be staring back, She thinks, that's stupid. You can't write that.

She deletes everything from the screen.

The Writer stares at her screen. She does this for a long time.

I have nothing to say, She thinks.

This is my life and all its creation on this blank page and there is nothing written on it. I am a void.

There is an awful tsunami of panic brewing beneath the surface, tugging at optimism and self belief, dragging them under, into the dark.

The Writer shakes Herself a little, to shatter the image of a shadowy tide, lurking in Her own mind.

I like that, she thinks, the shadowy tide.

The Writer pauses and types again, making reference to the shadowy tide. She stops.

Or maybe it makes me sound like a ponce.

The Writer shrugs and types on for a while, before the gunshots across her keyboard fade into silence. Her hands flutter over the keyboard for a moment and then rest on the desk. Her shoulders fall.

The Writer looks away from the screen. She conceives of a world made by writers. A world that came into existence as each writer tapped keystrokes, chewed the ends of pens or chattered staccato inspirations into a tape machine.


In such a world, She thinks, a writer could not write unless another writer wrote that she could. And in turn that writer could not write until another writer invented her and wrote that she could. It would be a long chain of writers, one after another, shaping each other's lives, loves and successes. It would be a world of creativity and creation, interdependence and faith. It would be beautiful.

The Writer smiles.

In such a world, no writer would be out of work again.

The Writer selects all the text She has written so far with a sweep and click of Her mouse. She presses Delete. The Writer takes a deep breath and presses one key, then another and another. Words are made under Her fingers and appear one by by one on the screen.

"In the beginning was the Word," She writes, "And the Word was good."

And The Writer was glad.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that's good. Welcome back Writer.

Anonymous said...

The writer created her world in which she writes, trusts and loves.