One cannot really know an other without intimacy. Detached, objective observations alone leave a surface upon which it is too easy to project one's own image or fantasies. In intimacy, one respectfully interacts with the other, invites the penetration of the other, enters into a common effort, and then the strange and distinct contours of self and other become more apparent.
Deena MetzgerWrite against patterns. Go against the devils. Write what you never write. Lie. Validate what you donโt validate. Indulge what you donโt like. Wallow in it. Write the opposite of what you always write, think, speak. Do everything against the grain!
Deena MetzgerCreating art and creating ourselves are the same act; art, world, ourselves - these are continuous with one another.
Deena MetzgerWe want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving. But God is the most fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in the storm of my grief and planted itself again. God is the death agony of the frog that cannot find water in the time of the drought we created. God is the scream of the rabbit caught in the fires we set. God is the One whose eyes never close and who hears everything.
Deena MetzgerStories move in circle. They donโt move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when youโre lost you start to look around and to listen.
Deena Metzger