PATCHWORK PIECES

Otago Witness, Issue 3898, 27 November 1928, Page 76

PATCHWORK PIECES

By

Eileen Service.

for the Otago Witness.) LXXVIII.—THE WRITER. If there was something to fix her attention on she could write about it. “ I want an article regarding spring, or war, or animals ” the order might come, and she could always do it, because it was necessary. But if there were nothing to guide her, if she were left to her own devices with a free rein to go where she pleased it was not so easy. Friends would try to help her. “ Write about pins, or hedges, or books ” they would say. And then, waxing enthusiastic over their suggestion: “ You could say such and such a thing, find bring in such and such a point. You’d do it well.” But she never could.

“ Things have to make a personal appeal to me before I can use them,” She would say, hoping that they would understand and not go away feeling offended. “ I’m not attracted to pins and hedges, and I haven’t anything new to say. about books. I’m afraid I couldn’t do it.”

Sometimes they would try to persuade her, convinced that she could succeed if she tried. And once someone sent her a whole article carefully typed out, with the postscript:

“ Here’s something for you with my love. I’ve typed it so that the editor won’t know it’s not in your writing.” That had been a very awkward situation. She would sit hoping for inspiration. Sometimes it came. Then she would revel in writing, for it just meant swimming with the current, fast, ecstatically. But when it was denied her she would have to set to and coax herself to write. She would turn to her childhood as far back as she could remember,, and, selecting incident after incident, dangle them before her imagination. It was like luring a fretful child with ribbons. Sometimes not even the brightest would prove stimulating, she might flatter and tempt as she pleased. And then again one would unexpectedly make an appeal and be seized upon with eagerness. She would go warily at this point careful lest she break the spell that so skilfully she had woven. But generally it was powerful enough to be trusted to hold, and away would her imagination go, playing with its subject, tossing it, catching it, and returning it to her, imbued with a life which by itself it would never have knowft. She wanted to do so many things. “ Some day, some day ” caution would say. “Be patient, foolish one.” But she did not want to wait till “ some day.” She wanted to do things now—immediately, and not look to the future for all the fruit she was to have. “ I can do other things ‘ some day,’ ” she would say, her voice heavy with rebellion. “ It’s the present that matters. Let me achieve now.” Then It would come. It was a cynical thing with a leering voice, crafty, cruel. She would hear Its steps and brace herself to meet It. She was terribly afraid of It. “Achieve?” It would say. “Who is speaking? Can one make bricks out of straw, my dear? Can one? ” She would answer defiantly. “ I have more than straw—far, far more,” and hope to impress It with the statement. But after It had gone, chuckling, sneering, she would' turn to herself in affright. Had she more? Had she really more? Or was she trying to gain results without having the proper wherewithals? She could never tell. Her bricks seemed all right to her. But she might be blind to their deficiencies, and unable to see that they were not bricks at all, only heaps of straw cunningly fashioned. This longing to create! It was overwhelming. If only she might know that she was justified in persisting in it. But she could not know. She could not go beyond herself and look at her work dispassionately. She was all wrapped up in a little circle, and everything within it seemed good. ’ When It came she realised the precariousness of her position. But she could not escape from her circle. She just went round and round inside it. She began a story aljout a beggar who in a vision saw a king’s crown, and felt that he must make it. But where gob was needed he possessed only iron, and for gems he had nothing but pebbles. Nevertheless, he worked at his crown and eventually finished it. At this point she could go no further. Did the king, looking at the workmanship, commend the beggar and give him real gold and gems as a reward, or did he see only that the crown was a caricature and refuse it as useless ? Personally she thought that the former act would be the true one.

“It is better to have attempted a thing than to have refused to try through lack of proper materials,” she would Bay.

But then, was that the correct attitude? Would the rejection of the crown by the king be what would really happen? She could never decide. The cramped walls of her circle! She did not know how the story should finish. When she was unable to proceed any further, her thoughts sticky with too much handling, she would suddenly leave everything alone and run away. It really was running away. She would go to the top of the hill, hatless, coatless, and hurry until she was panting and could run no more. There she . would sink

down. Those things she had left behind, her pen, her book, what did they matter? They were monsters, tyrants, with which she was ever battling in the hope of gaining supremacy. She hated them. Let her find something else to do; there was a whole world to choose in. Why tie herself securely to these two? She would pet herself, suggesting this and that occupation. Gardening now, or athletics, or even -work on a farm. She loved the outside world so fervently. Why not work in it. She would paint vivid pictures of these things, revelling in in their beauty, hungering for them. And she would persuade herself that at last she had come to her senses. She would seek to write no more. But when she returned to the house she would go straight to her desk in the corner, and out would come her book and her pen. No—she might talk as she wished, she might plead and storm, but it could never make any real difference. Whether she succeeded, whether she failed, she must write. There was something greater than she which impelled it. She was a pen in its hand and could no more refuse to function than could her own pen when once she was determined to wield it.