Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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LESLIE STERNBERGH
Near the end of 1993, I wrote a script: ten pages to be
sequentially illustrated for a comix anthology to which I'd been
invited to contribute. The story I chose to tell, the events I chose
to describe in this true story from my life, were things that had
haunted me for twenty years, things I'd yet to really deal with.
Failure, mistrust and miscommunication, deviance and denial, a
typical skeleton's closet roster, really, tripping a dark fantastic
through the next three years of my life. It's often been my pleasure
to work autobiographically, but somehow this story was different.
It was more than mere art, no safe encapsulated episode. I could
not finish it. Something was wrong.
This year I will see that piece completed; I've recently
returned to therapy, and spoken about it with people I can trust.
The two-and-a-half years since that script was first written have
been tumultuous, an emotional thrill ride replete with whiplash
and nauseau and yes, thrills. I think I even understand a fair
amount of what's transpired.
I dared call my life art; now I must engage the two in dialogue
long left unspoken. My narrative life should meet the standards of
my visualized art, before it will manifest through a pen in my hand
onto paper.
True stories should not be compromised, any more than
should my life's work, or my life. Twenty years after the end of the
events my narrative evoked, I must make peace with them.
Lately, for me, ink is thicker than blood.