Cc: Him
As I got to the check-out counter of the Strand book store, I forgot I chose two books from the $2-book section to use for this assignment. Because I did not want to hold the line, I made the hasty decision to purchase the book Midnight Blue by Pauline Fisk. I think what made me choose this without a second thought over the other book (that I no longer remember) was because of the book’s summary. To me, a captivating plot lead me to think I would create a captivating erasure.
I flipped through the book repeatedly, stopping at pages due to certain words catching my eye. With each page I stopped at, I would try to see if I can make a complete erasure. If not, I proceeded flipping. It was not until page 169 that I managed to create an erasure. If I remember correctly, it was the words “What are you feeling?” that made me attempt to start an erasure. Luckily, the other words I found on the page, I think, read beautifully with it, giving me my final product.
Highlighted with a brush-tip marker, it goes:
“What are you feeling?”
She paused
Caught up, tangled in herself
Wrapped up was he in Her voice
Terribly ashamed
He hung his head
“I don’t want you”
“I don’t know why I did”
At first, I did not think this would be my finished product. The words I ended up choosing happened to be words that resonated with a personal experience of mine, specifically my break-up with my ex-boyfriend who is also my best friend–or rather, was my best friend as of exactly last week (his choice, not mine). The fact that this erasure is what I came up with after everything that has happened between him and I really interested me, and made me wonder how surreal this whole process was. Why did I just so happen to erase text that reflected my relationship with him so well?
I chose to execute my erasure by slashing the unwanted text to resemble cuts. This was inspired by the scars my ex-boyfriend hid from me while we were dating, only finding out about them a year later, a few weeks before I had to leave for college. After cutting the text, I chose to sew some of the cuts at random to show how some cuts are still fresh and open wounds, while others start to heal and mend back together. To me, this embodies the concept of cuts and their healing process. Cuts are not perfect, together with their scars. Both processes are executed with no intention of achieving perfection.
Personally, I think the cuts represent the experiences an individual encounters, and the scars they turn to afterwards represent the lesson learned from it. The imperfect stitching and the ripped paper symbolize how at times, we feel as if we are being held together by a piece thread, ready to burst at the seams, but once we recover and heal, we become stronger and better versions of ourselves. Overall, my message behind this erasure was, “Cuts heal, but the scars linger.”
I want to dedicate this to him, to my first love, to the one who has left some of the most unforgettable cuts imaginable. He knows some of the cuts he left me has healed, but not all of them. Some are in the process of healing, and some still fresh. If he happens to find this, I hope he knows how much of an impact he has left on me.
