From the Editor

As the ever darkening storm clouds of war appear, filling the horizon and the space in front of us, it is hard to write—to find the space to think, reflect and appreciate. The air is heavy, the changing pressure is palpable and the demand of the storm to release its over-saturated clouds is unambiguous—we wait for the inevitable. Someone told me once that Matisse repainted one of his paintings seventeen times before he was satisfied. What does it take to rework a painting this number of times? Umberto Eco would write prolific notes on the subject of his novels and then burn them prior to actually beginning the novel. Waiting and letting go, the stuff of life and writing. I am imagining (and taking a huge liberty) that Matisse's sixteen other renditions were not necessarily “bad” art, but that they were not the piece that wanted to be painted. The same experience is in letting oneself write and then finding that the words that appeared on the page are not quite the words one had felt or imagined in one's mind. A struggle ensues—whose words on the page are those anyway? (There is, of course, the experience of bumping into writing that feels right and strangely not you even though mechanically rendered by your hand.)

We are looking for something—a voice, an image—to convey something of importance for us and others. It is an act of faith—for the finished product may seem like a waste, a waste of time and energy, and yet to trust, regardless of how the work is critiqued or redlined, that the endeavor was worthwhile, for you and the work in and of itself. Matisse was perhaps his own art critic, but for the writer there is the reviewer or editor, the misrepresented gatekeeper. Perhaps the hardest moment after the birth of a piece of work is the response you get from the world. The moment you declare your opus, people want to comment on it, critique it, evaluate it—contribute to it. What does it take to suffer the reworking of this creation? Perhaps the first step is to let