All hail the right-brain!
After too many years of writing what I thought I needed to/should write, a little girl named Sylvie showed up one morning and yanked on my sleeve, insisting that I sit up, shut up, pay attention, and write down her story.
And what a story it is: Mom’s a drug addict/prostitute, Sylvie and her grandparents are raising this never-seen-by-Sylvie mom’s kids of varying ethnicities, and the one place where Sylvie thinks she’s found serenity–a secret hideout behind the garage–is where a ‘bad man’ attacks her.
And yet, somehow, in the midst of conflict and loss, there are laughs; and there is hope.
And as I plunge ahead, listening to Sylvie’s voice and transcribing it to the best of my ability, her younger sister “Peanut” steps out of the shadows of the story and takes over, imparting to me, the astonished penman, Part Two.
Sylvie, of course, reasserts herself as the central figure and narrator by wrapping things up in Part Three; while I, mad about these characters and entranced by their story, and who have always been amazed at the intricacies of the human mind, give an extra prayer of thanks for the inexplicable capacities of the RIGHT BRAIN.
