Something Pure

Growing up in Rhode Island, I had several opportunities each year to create a massive snowball. If the snow was wet enough, all I needed to do was pack a fist-sized ball in my gloved hands, crouch down, and begin rolling it across my pristine white yard. It wasn’t long before I had something I was pushing with two hands and that, I soon learned, would endure well past when what covered the ground was thoroughly melted and it stood alone in a snowless world as a gray, craggy, stubborn reminder of winter’s heart.

Sometimes, if it got quite large but I was still hoping to create something memorable and unprecedented, something a passersby would stop to remark on, in my zeal and hubris I’d hit ground. I’d run out of snow, and now my lovely ball was collecting dirt, rotting leaves, and brown grass. There was no cleaning it off. I wanted it perfectly round and perfectly white just like I saw on television. This is what I’d have instead until spring rain reclaimed it and I could forget the whole disappointing venture.

I felt a bit like those snowballs sometimes, rapidly growing but also accidentally collecting a lot of junk in my mind along the way. The difference was I couldn’t tell the junk from the snow once it stuck to me. I loved the arts because there was something pure those songs and stories were pointing toward, something free of what I sensed cluttered up my days, making the unimportant seem important, the false seem true.

I’ve always thought of essays as stories with lessons. However, lesson is perhaps somewhat inaccurate. What I always “learn” when I write these, what I discover, is simply what I see when I clear away the half-truths and misconceptions and doubts I’ve collected throughout my life. I’m not actually seeing anything new, though it seems new at the moment of discovery because it’s been obscured for so long. Fortunately, unlike the snowballs, what I find will not grow gray and ugly and melt away with time anymore than winter’s hard sleep can forever bury spring’s awakening. 

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com