JUST GET IT ALL DOWN

'I Got Rhythm'  by  Trish

"When I say start! commence writing and don't stop until you come to the end of the page", says the teacher of the creative writing class. "Don't think about what you're writing, just get it all down! .....     Start!"

Heads bend hastily over blank pages, hands clutch, pens, pencils, biros, whatever, and write and write! But not me. I  draw a magical mouse. In my very young years I used to imagine a magical mouse lived in my pocket and gave me the answers to all the problems that filled my life.

At fourteen I reluctantly gave up the help of my mouse friend and replaced its help with a tram ticket. If I  got a ticket with the same number either end, I knew it would be a good day for me.

My drawing looks nothing like a mouse. How to fill the page?  Creativity.? What did it mean? Fantasy? Making up untrue stories to stop adults from getting angry? Head down, I try drawing a mouse,that looks real. I drift to the past.

At age eleven, I was standing on the roof of a large building with a friend, she lived , in one, of the many small flats below. It was almost dark and the city lights made me think of a starry heaven. My friend Olga , a year older than me, said  "Do you ever wish you could fly?" "But I can" I replied . Olga shook her head, and said, "honestly, sometimes I think you're  definitely crazy".

We didn't see each other once Olga's family shifted to their new house, but I often wondered why it was so crazy to say you can fly, but not crazy to wish it?  My mother's words were all I had.  "We can't change the way we're born", so I accepted I must have been born to think in a  bit of a crazy way.

People, places, life, everything, blurred my vision, just like my mother's strong reading glasses did when I tried them on. One night I had dream, in it there was this one star in the sky, I looked up at  the star for ages, then suddenly, the world turned upside down, and I felt myself  fall into the bright light of the star. As I fell deeper, I became full of wonder and happiness. In the morning when I woke, I wondered what  was  in the dream that made me so happy. But all that remained was the image of the one shining star.

I drift back to the page. My pen has made a straight, strong line, away from the miserable mouse and begun to write;  I realize immediately, it's the memory of the bright star dream! Line by line it unfolds across the white page, pictures of my life and that of others, are born from the marks of my pen. Before my amazed eyes, a river of colors stream into the images on the page. Fiery reds and icy blues, flow and melt against a blazing orange sunset.

My word pictures paint a rich  landscape that's filled with  people. But, unlike the fruitful landscape,  the people in it are fragile, and ominous clouds hover over them. The people vanish, they are wiped from the scene. My pen continues to drip  life from its tip, continues to distill life and color, onto the now overflowing once blank page. "Stop!" says the teacher of the creative writing class. I do as she says, but in my heart, I know, I've just started.