Spiderwebs by RAVEN BOWIE
When I was in middle school, I would spend hours at night gazing through my window, praying to something in the sky. I would savor the sight of every airplane passing by. The blinking lights would smile down at me, and I would wave, and I would think about the businessman with children at home, and the woman flying away from the love of her life, and the little kid headed to their first funeral. Eventually, the lights would disappear behind crooked trees, and I would resume my prayer.
I don’t pray as much anymore. I don’t know when I stopped. I like to pray. I’m good at it when I’m alone, having a conversation with silence. Bare knees on scratchy carpet, arms sunk into smooth sheets. Fingers clasping onto fingers, white where they press. I guess there’s not much for me to pray about anymore. The multi-colored flag hangs gently on my wall, a gift from my parents. I am leaving this town in the fall, leaving these winters behind for good. I have friends who have fondue parties and drive me to movie theaters and bring me Valentine’s gifts even though I’m on the other side of town. God’s assistance isn’t really needed anymore. A bittersweet divergence.
After middle school came high school, and that is when I replaced prayer with paper and pen. Still up late at night, still distracted by airplanes when I heard them fly by, but less anguished. More assured. Bare knees on scratchy carpet, and elbows too, leaning over a notebook. I have always had millions of sticky spiderwebs of ideas and emotions in my head, all vying for freedom, and prayer was a way to organize them, but writing was a way to get them out. Microscopic streaks of superglue transformed into viewable, smooth, graphite-grey letters. Poems, essays, songs, whatever let the emotion go. Whatever transformed the yearning into hope.
With the power of getting my thoughts out of my mind came the power of knowing what I think. I love myself, it turns out. I would rather windows in my future home than a wife, it turns out. I believe in God, but I don’t think he exists, it turns out.
Once you know what you think, you can do anything. Man, I wish I didn’t feel so ashamed to play Sudoku badly in a room full of people smarter than me isn’t just a passing thought anymore. It turns into a goal. You dare yourself to take up more space, spread your legs wider when you sit. You see an acquaintance’s name on the concert program and text them afterward that the music was beautiful. Someone with messy hair approaches you and asks to study together and instead of I’m sorry, I’m just too busy, you have a delightful conversation about music and Judaism and the Alps on a cloudy Thursday morning. All throughout, you keep writing, and over time, your writing turns from wishing and wanting to describing and detailing.
I recently started praying again. Not near as much as I used to, but if I am reading the details on an assignment and my head starts to fill with spiderwebs, I can take a deep breath and talk half to myself and half to something that doesn’t exist and work through it until the spiderwebs are less of a mass and more of a beautiful orb-weaver web. And then I’ll write the assignment and the spiderweb is no longer in my mind but on the page as words. Just as beautiful. Probably more.
All this to say that I am obsessed with change. And self-improvement, and happiness, and the future. And prayer has helped me change, and writing has really helped me change. One of the most comforting truths I’ve ever spoken is that I will continue to improve as long as I am here. I will continue to be obsessed with change and want to change and change. I will cause good in the world and I will inspire others and I will love to the farthest reaches of the universe and back and everyone will know because I will kneel on my scratchy carpet and lean over a notebook and I will write it all down.
The spiderwebs will always be there. It’s just a matter of learning where to put them.
This page has paths:
- CREATIVE WORKS: FICTION & PROSE University of Alaska Anchorage Department of English