Yesterday at work, someone called me dedicated. I don’t take compliments well. My face got red. I hemmed and hawed, made a funny and changed the subject. Later, I thought, am I dedicated or merely obsessed?
With my work as a deputy public defender representing the mentally ill, I think I am dedicated. One has to be to do the work. You have to be able to see people, really see them. It is difficult work that I love. Some might even call it a calling. But, I don’t know if I can do the legal stuff forever.
My problem is that I love beauty. My husband was and is beautiful. My weakness for nice hotels is obvious in my lifestyle. My home is what I think is beautiful (with glossy, custom framed prints of my favorite punk and post punk rockers).
Most of all, I love the beauty of words. Words in a television show like “Anne with an E” that I just watched on Netflix. As a young college girl, it’s why I fell in love with James Joyce the first time I read his short stories in Dubliners. And beauty is why I was drawn to memoir by the humor and power of Frank McCourt’s scenes in Angela’s Ashes. Words do it for me. They make me buzz. I can still recall the first time I read the gorgeousness of Sandra Cisneros’ prose in House on Mango Street and the sadness inherent in Junot Diaz’s Drown.
Art and the magic of art is what life is about. It’s just so damn beautiful. Art makes my heart sing. Great art takes my sadness away. The loveliness of art makes me forget my infertility, all the deaths and the sadness of life. Or sometimes, art makes me remember. The best art always makes me cry. In a good way.
My love for words and beauty is what may force me to take a different path. To save myself. Because in the criminal justice system, there is no beauty. It is not art. It is a cruel and barbaric at times system. A system that makes me cry in a not so good way. It is a system I may be perpetuating by my participation.
So, I choose beauty. Love. Positivity. And most of all art and my writing. Forever and ever. Amen.
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