Losing Himself

So this is a picture of why I teach writing. It's not a dramatic scene: no train wrecks, space walks or plummeting arrows on the economic chart: just a picture of a kid writing, losing himself in writing. I think it's lovely. It was one of the first times I caught my eldest Syracuse child writing (well, drawing, I guess). It's simple, quiet, and the concentration is so intense that I can almost smell the crayons. There is also a very profound mental and social engine that he's driving (and being driven by). Writing is changing his ability to know the world, both abstracting him and bringing him into a deeper connection with it. I see all this happening in this picture, and it thrills me because I understand what that's like, to be changed by writing, to have your identity start to form around & by words, by the practice of using words. His mind starts to understand things as a literate mind does, looking for names, lists, abstract orders not visible in the objects themselves. Remember those paintings where the people are made out of food (apples for eyes, that sort of thing)? He's becoming more himself as he becomes transposed into words and sentences. He is a wordle, but not just any wordle. He's his very words themselves. I like this picture because evening is coming on and he is lost in his creation, becoming more abstract and more himself at the same time.