Literacy Narrative Rough Draft (Final)

I was sitting in my room, the covers pulled around my shoulders, face slightly numb from the chill of the air, when it happened. When my understanding of what it meant to be literate was challenged and completely demolished. Not by dynamite or weapon, but by something much more dangerous and destructive, the words of another. I had been on my phone, using it as a source of light and entertainment as I struggled with my weary eyes, begging them to rest and allow me to sleep.

Reading has always been a strong calming force of mine, and that was how I was utilizing it. I felt like I was drifting across the screen, not entirely registering what I was reading or the meaning that would lay heavily behind it, but I continued nonetheless. When I somehow found my way to the poetry, I became suddenly intrigued. Poetry had always been important to me, but in a small and non-consuming way that meant I had no favorite poets or pieces, and I had never written any of my own. Thinking to myself that the soothing tones and transitions may be what I needed, I scavenged and swallowed every word, until I was bloated with them. My throat was filled to the brim with words I had not spoken, and my hands full of words I had not written, but I still needed more. I wanted something that was meaningful to me, for any reason, which gave me a sense of satisfaction that the other scraps hadn’t.

I then came across an older man’s writing. He was Chilean, and the soft spoken truths were laid out and stripped, splayed across my screen with a Latino edge. The accent was clear in the words he used, the way that they flowed and twisted, transformed and died on the page. I was transfixed, enamored, enchanted. “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” by Pablo Neruda, has stayed with me to this day. The hairs on my arms stood up even though they were shrouded by the sheets, and I could feel my cheeks flushing, the blood in my body swirling and pumping faster and faster. The sharp intake of breath I took seemed to be from another person, as I was no longer a part of myself, and the scent of the familiar detergent lingering in the air and on my skin, still wasn’t enough to return me. Pablo’s words had filled my body, and there was no longer enough room for all of who I was before.

The corpses he had left on the pages were stunningly sharp and beautiful, embalmed with emotion and intensity rather than harsh formaldehyde. His words had the same effect though, the experiences and feelings set onto paper, and through my screen were immortalized, or at least their appearance now preserved. The depth of his meaning, and the honesty he showed flowed through my arteries, and pulled me back in. Smaller parts of myself were squeezed out of course, flowing through the edges I had fought so hard to clamp and weld closed. My cup before had been filled solely with myself, but as I reentered my person, I found part of the space taken up by this new experience. The words he had written were no longer part of his collected writings, but part of me, something I had claimed which had claimed me back. My pupils, no longer feeling swollen or painful with sleep deprivation, flitted across the lines, free of fatigue and with renewed vigor. I had to read it again and again and again.

The way he described the sky in the start, the way he portrayed melancholy and love, and made it clear that they were not mutually exclusive, was earth shattering. This woman, who I will never know, had become important to me, in a way I cannot explain. I was shocked and disturbed. How did this person, this old author, connect me to this person I had never known? How had he made me feel so successfully what he must have felt, how dare he force this on me? I had no answers, and I doubt I ever will. His writing was mysterious and romantic, but violence was also present. Not in physicality, but in the force and magnitude in which he felt things. How the woman he had loved had taken parts of him and how he had done the same to her. How irreversibly they had stretched and pulled each other, to the point of ripping. He had made it clear that as they walked away from each other, the blood on their hands and pooling in the hollows of their bodies, was not just their own.

I had never seen a person put so much of themselves into their writing before. It made no sense to me how he could afford to lay himself out, to knowingly be dissected, handing the scalpel over with his blessing. It was astonishing to me how comfortable he seemed to be with letting others know and bury themselves in the space carved out of his chest, the space where he had so obviously separated and torn his words from the muscles and ligaments, severing those connections to make room for other people. These were feelings that were obviously personal, the words and experiences irreplaceable and important, and he had chosen to allow other people to see and inspect them, to analyze and pick apart each word, each shift in tone, each line break that he had so delicately labored into life.

Before that point, I had never considered being personal in my writing, preferring to instead stay distanced, focusing on the point I needed to make, or the side I had to argue. My opinions and knowledge was only included if relevant and could serve to better the overall delivery and understanding of the message. I saw though, for the first time how wrongly I had taken to every single writing task I had completed up to that point. From then on, the words I spoke had depth, and the letters written on my paper were personal. I saw how allowing my voice broadened my vocabulary, and made my meaning clearer. All of my writing became easier to digest.

No longer tough and dry, or clinical and cold, I had transformed. My writing had gone through the process of metamorphosis, coming out silkier, softer, more pliable and completely renewed. I changed every part of my writing process, no longer analyzing from a distance, but digging, searching and sifting through each word and its connotation. The voice of each author now had meaning to me, and it was easier than ever to understand point of view, and the emotions that seeped through subconsciously, the author unaware of how they had tainted their pages, signed their name between the lines. I was able to write better now than I had before, even if I did not have a significant change in scores or grades, it was clear to me at least how much more successful I had become. I now appealed to emotion more than logic, and to people whose motivation and life force are what we feel, it was human, and I became better for it.

Every now and then, I read the poem again that changed my life. I still get chills, and my throat still tightens as I read it aloud. An old man from Chile, whom I had never met, gave me a gift that I can never return or thank him for. He showed me that my writing is good because I am writing it. That the emotions I feel boiling to the surface or simmering in my abdomen are useful and good. He showed me how the most human part of all of us, allows people to relate to your writing, and gain a deeper level of understanding and respect for what is being said. He taught me through a single poem, how to better understand what I read, through the feelings and emotions entrenched in each piece of writing I come across. Before I had encountered “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” I had fooled myself into thinking I was literate, when truthfully, I was only going through the motions. Of course I could read and write, but allowing peoples work to touch me, and having mine touch others was a concept I had never even pondered. Pablo Neruda gave me literacy, and changed how I see it in others. For that, I will be eternally grateful and forever literate.