This is the first page. Whatever has ever been written had a first page somewhere: a genesis and initial thought. This is one of those pages, though the thought has not been fully thought out, and the genesis is as unclear as the destination.
But everything begins on the first page.
Certainly there are those books with prefaces and introductions, but words before the first come only after the first is written, and only after that word has proclaimed itself important enough to be preceded by the words of another. These others put their words before the first in deference to it... claim they can never write another as pure and use all their powers to convince the reader of the purity that is the first word.
But there is a secret rarely told about the first word. The first is not the first. The word we see at the beginning of the first page is a patina, a result of age and editorial wisdom. The true first word came long before, when the page was terrifying in its primordial blankness. The true first word filled space and nothing more. It was the first blush, and nobody saw it but the writer, too embarrassed to let more evolved minds see his Prometheus, his placeholder. The first word, like the first page that followed, was a failure.
Failures are not destined to stay failures. Other words, other pages, followed the first. And there is always a moment in what follows where what came before is bathed in the light of new experience. The light shoves shadows out into the open and reveals all flaws for their positive intentions. And the writer returns, enlightened. He reconstructs, sometimes demolishes completely, but always reinvents the first page until it becomes something worthy of a preface.
And that is my dream. To be worthy of a preface, and at times, to be worthy of even writing more than that first page, more than this.
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"Thou shalt prove how salty tastes another's bread, and how hard a path it is to go up and down another's stairs."
- Dante Alighieri on exile, Paradise XVII
"It begins, as all things do, with a song."
- Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
But everything begins on the first page.
Certainly there are those books with prefaces and introductions, but words before the first come only after the first is written, and only after that word has proclaimed itself important enough to be preceded by the words of another. These others put their words before the first in deference to it... claim they can never write another as pure and use all their powers to convince the reader of the purity that is the first word.
But there is a secret rarely told about the first word. The first is not the first. The word we see at the beginning of the first page is a patina, a result of age and editorial wisdom. The true first word came long before, when the page was terrifying in its primordial blankness. The true first word filled space and nothing more. It was the first blush, and nobody saw it but the writer, too embarrassed to let more evolved minds see his Prometheus, his placeholder. The first word, like the first page that followed, was a failure.
Failures are not destined to stay failures. Other words, other pages, followed the first. And there is always a moment in what follows where what came before is bathed in the light of new experience. The light shoves shadows out into the open and reveals all flaws for their positive intentions. And the writer returns, enlightened. He reconstructs, sometimes demolishes completely, but always reinvents the first page until it becomes something worthy of a preface.
And that is my dream. To be worthy of a preface, and at times, to be worthy of even writing more than that first page, more than this.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
"Thou shalt prove how salty tastes another's bread, and how hard a path it is to go up and down another's stairs."
- Dante Alighieri on exile, Paradise XVII
"It begins, as all things do, with a song."
- Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
