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I was asked by the
British Council to write something about writing for
www.contemporarywriters.com
It's an odd question which I could
have taken pages attempting to explain, but this, I think, captures
the real reason.
This
evening my two year old son came out of his bedroom. I had put
him to bed half an hour earlier, but he has just learned how to open
a door, and this is a marvellous thing for him: to take doors that
have always been closed and open them wide.
He could tell I was not happy. I didn’t need to speak.
‘Horse!’ he said and ran out three steps and picked up a plastic
horse that has lain lost under his bed for the last two weeks.
He closed the door behind him, and did not come out again.
It was later that I went into his room, saw him in the dim arc of
light from the doorway, face down into the pillow, the horse still
clutched in his hand and this moment – the door, the horse, his fist
clenched round it – and me, his father watching.
And I thought that this, in a crowd of other reasons –
pleasure, success, the need to tell an untold story - is the real
reason why I write: to capture the fragile beauty of our days, which
are daily lost and forgotten.
See also:
a scroll of bamboo |
