Essay # 2: Classification Essay

I have always been a wordy girl. Journals fill boxes that fill closets in my home. Poetry leaks from their bindings, lists fill many of their pages. Since I have returned to school I've discovered that there are different writers living in me now - three versions of the wordy girl. Dancing poet girl writer has an achy wrist from dipping and dancing with the pencil across the white ice of empty paper. It is her natural instinct to communicate the feeling not only in the words but also with the flourish in the letters themselves. The studious girl writer watches and sticks her nose in the air at the dancing poet girl. Where is her form? Her classification – what of the assignment? What of the straight letters so bold and true? Meanwhile, practical, organized girl writer is thinking in terms of to do’s and to don’t forgets. She makes menus and lists, meals and doctor appointments. She remembers to complete applications and doodles in the moments between items. Each version of the wordy girl brings her own strengths and weaknesses to each of the pages.

Dancing poet girl writer is an acrobat. She jumps from line to line and thought to thought hanging precariously in the wordlessness between with subtle moves meant only to extol a quick breath of “ahhh” from her own self, alone as director, audience, and critic. Her words are viewed through the curves and imperfections, the soft, round tones and the sharpened points. Naked, they tease the eyes and scatter the lines. They break the margins and forget the spacing. It isn’t rebellion that moves her. It is rather the freedom of flow to follow form and disregard function. When she writes of passion, eroticism is reflected in the movements of the slant. The words make love to each other when she closes the journal until the white is shadowed with careless movements. The graphite of their merging darkens her right hand.

Strictly studious girl writer gives her words precise spacing and segregated constraints. She is professional and her curves are more pronounced and piercing. There is no gray, only more definition. She wonders after grammar and readability. The only dancing is incidental - keystrokes moving with their red and green squiggly lines commanding correction and clarification. She fancies the letters in terms of GPA’s and merits and, once upon a time, in terms of salary. She writes the proposals and the important business letters. She worries over accuracy and clarity. Her function is to follow form with structure and balance. She will write the Isearch.

Practically organized girl writer puts classification somewhere between the items. Her dreams are not of form or function but only of the flow that cannot be confined to paper. She wishes in three words or less. Her beauty hides between watering the plants and changing the oil. She is neither the sensualist nor the minimalist. She is the keeper of the list and the recorder of the needs. She writes the research and walks the dog. In between, she writes the warnings and sometimes the options. She packs the bags and empties the trash. She remembers the fruit and forgets the past. She sets the pace and rearranges the space and draws the out the meaning.

Tidily, they make their places in me. I am the passion, the precision and the reminder. I am the poet, the student and the organizer. Sometimes the poet sits to write the classification or the student begins the list. Sometimes the student forces a reluctant pen across the bored paper and the list maker tries her hand at my studies. Sometimes it works and sometimes it’s another take on disaster…another 3am bedtime fighting wordy me.