Narrative essay: purpose, structure, and techniques

¶ … linear about writing. Probably the lines. The words themselves can be beautiful, of course, when we know what they mean. But the look of a page is simple and unchanging, and I suppose in that it has a timeless beauty, if you want to see it that way. But I never did, not when I was younger. But poetry, oh, that POPPED. Words, but not just the words. The way the words looks, the way they feel and roll off the tongue, so essential, so endlessly creative. It was poetry that was the doorway to writing for me, but a strange thing happened as I walked through that doorway.

I realized that I wasn't really a poet.

Oh, I loved the idea of words as structure, that a random syllable can accentuate the beauty of a spectacular line, that words could have color and they could have texture.

I have an aunt. She's a wonderful woman, but we do not see her often. A few years ago, we did see her, however. Well, my mother saw her and I saw her shoes. And her closet. I got lost in there. My aunt, you see, went to fashion college. Now there was something that appealed to me. I still liked poetry, but I had a new toy to place with. I had something that was visual, textural, and completely free from the confines of form. And yet, it is not.

I watched fashion shows on television, I read magazines. I developed the vocabulary and it hit me that fashion was the same as writing. There are confines -- a shoe still must go one someone's foot -- but within those confines there were limitless options. And if the rules didn't work for you, you invented new ones, just to see if you could. Designers become the new poets, bending forms, inventing and reinventing, expressing in every possible way their own deepest selves. Well, I had to design. I don't think I was very good at. I still try it, you know, just to see what I can come up with.

My first love remains words, though. The challenge, I realized, was to spin words to create great beauty, power and expression while remaining true to the linear forms. Now, however, lines were not limitations but challenges. My writing changed. I want to bend forms, invent new ones, reinvent old ones, and I want to do it with color, with flair, with texture. It has been a few years since I discovered that my muse came from fashion instead of writing.