made me insecure

about words.

It was always - Drawings before Words.

Inside, what are lines without life, I thought. But

the obedient rebel that I was, I complied.

So I made 'drawings'. I drew in straight lines

and measured curves, and careful thinnesses

of pencil strokes.

My Architectural Education had no time to waste

on my misshapen wilderness. It taught me that using

words to build my worlds was Unacceptable.

Untoward.

It was always - drafting the drawings.

Never, drawing the drawings.

So I was careful not to stray too far from the instrument.

Knowing I was at least one instrument too heavy.

My Architectural Education taught me about Beauty,

the kind that was immortalized in 'text'books made of

lustrous paper, erudite sentences and privileged men.

It was always - SomethingNewSomethingUnique but

within reason.

So I stepped in from the sidewalk

and marched in the army.

A Left. then Right. then Left.

One of the first things I remember conjuring

out of thin air was a poem about trees.

One of the first things I remember drawing

was a portrait of a famous man with a french beard

in a blue studio with blue lights calling the screen

'computerji'.

And he was just as blue if not bluer in the

scrawny scratches of my mom's blue ball-point pen.

And so, the words had to spill, right? Somewhere.

Like the streams that erode their way into the ocean.