Word-Love Takes Form... in Unusual Places with an Unbelievable Trajectory

Heart My friends have heard me repeatedly talk about my usual “relationship trajectory.”

I have lived by a pattern over my lifetime: usually I am very excited about someone (or something) in the beginning. I am passionately drunk about the person or idea or activity. I rearrange life to make space for the object of my passion and for a while I can’t imagine life without it.

This is like a firework that flies up in the air and explodes…. And falls to the ground.

There are also fireworks that zoom up into the air, seem to disappear and then KABAM!

Their booming demise is remarkably loud though not very colorful.

Then there are trajectories that go up… and up… and up… and float around up and up and up… usually profound friendships, love for my children, appreciation for my parents look like this.

Word orgy 1 Finally, there is my love of language and all things word-based.

I can’t even put into words the passion I feel for words, but today I was in office max, copying pages of paper I have painted, I have sprinkled, I have torn and photos I have printed over a painted sprinkled page.

I found myself stroking the paper: the originals and the copies.

I loved how they both felt: very different but both absolutely heavenly. As I made more copies, I spread them out on the table behind me. This may have gotten on the nerves of other customers there at Office Max but I couldn’t help this public display of Word orgy 2 paper affection going a bit over the top.

More paper and more paper and more paper all in varying shades of pink and purple: so feminine. The pages were such a reflection of me.

I actually had to self-talk myself away from the copying machine. My frugal self met up with my creative self and said, “Julie – these are enough copies to start with, really.” So my creative self rearranged the papers on the table and taking photos of the paper.

Each satiny sheet of paper delighted me. The multiple copies of the same pages arranged differently delighted me. The resounding shout of the click click click of the camera fueled me more.

You might think the two images I posted here are the same. They are not. The bottom image includes one of the very first pages I painted and created with several years ago. It was from a book I thought I would love that I ended up hating. I thought making art would help my feelings for it and it did.

In the bottom photo, you see a heart from that book, with a quote that reads, "A poet must be more useful than any other citizen of her tribe." Those words both ground and inspire me now like they did when I first read them.

My relationship with word-love trajectory goes beyond anything quantifiable. There are no metaphors or illustrations that can capture it. My romance with words is longer lasting and has more of a future, perhaps, than any relationship outside that of Aedm2012 my children.