One Woman's Eye: Giuseppe's Getting Ready

Most of us spend our lives trying not to be seen. Slipping just far enough under the radar so we can call ourselves a success without getting too much attention. We play by the rules someone else created for us, our family, our culture, our religions. Not being seen fully allows us to keep our secrets, perhaps hide our flaws, avoid being judged more harshly than we can tolerate. We think we are in control of who sees what part of us when.

In this age of Twitter, FB and Google searches we have lost that control. Sound bites and news clips take the every day citizen into a spotlight they may despise or secretly crave. I tell people that I believe you need to live your life online as though you were on Candid Camera. For those not old enough to remember, Candid Camera was a kinder, gentler, more humane version of TMZ.

As a writer, I cannot fully function without words. I lose my ability to breathe when I am not constructing sentences into story. It is who I am.

I wrote just for me for a very long time. This blog was the beginning of me putting those words out there in the world, to be shared, to be enjoyed, at times to be criticized. And now in a month's time if all goes to schedule I will release my first novel to the world. While the story is fiction, any writer will tell you what we write involves baring ours souls. It is our art. No matter how made up the characters are they stem from some truth in the way the writer sees the world and human interaction. I will be seen. Ready or not.

I have been busy preparing. Choosing my cover design. Debating whether to format the text myself or hire someone. Reading and rereading passages that need polishing. Guessing timelines. Compiling my lists of how and where I will promote The Secrets They Kept.

It's an effort to keep the worries and the fears at bay and to trust that the Universe will provide. Walking helps. This morning it also offered up one of those delicious winks that I can't stop smiling from.

There is a bronze bust on a pillar in Central Park that I pass every time I take my walk. I have my friend Giuseppe in several scenes in the novel. Today as I was coming close I noticed some tape and plastic at the spot where the bust meets the stand and then a man on a crane lowering himself close. I asked what he was doing. He told me he was repatinizing it. A green and brown film is produced on bronze due to oxidation over a long period of time. Giuseppe hadn't had a sprucing up since 1994.

Giuseppe, I am guessing is anticipating more visitors. He is getting ready as I am to be seen in a fresh light.