Pig Lips

“You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

- Barack Obama in his 2008 campaign for U.S. presidency

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Dear Alex,

Why would anyone in a state of normalcy or decency put a lipstick on a pig? Or any creature?

When Obama uttered the above comment, he was thought-painting for us a ridiculous imagery to point out the superficiality of his opponent’s charge for change. Lip service for the pig or anyone means wasted time, lipstick wasted.

Time. Lipstick. Do we need to say more of one or both?

Last week on a long-distance phone call, my father told me fiction writing is just that - fiction. You can write from reams of imagination, float on streams of magma or maggots and still stick on nothing deeper than spit. Words on pulp or pulpit without meaningful action are like lipstick on a pig, humanizing the pig more than its keeper, dehumanizing real issues about culture and clan as toilet tissue. Piggyback your poetry and laundry on pen and the resonance of our hope looks tacky on porky lips.

Reading, writing for nothing. Waste of ink or lithium power.

So I grew up in a household where no one has the time to read fiction for leisure. In my Gr. 3 parent-teacher conference, my mother asked my homeroom instructor: How can we stop her from reading and re-reading books of fairy tales? And by now, I have converted to writing about tales where once-upon-a-time plots may not have happy ends or any amends foreseeable in my lifetime.

No fairy but fire comes to us sometimes in the hush of heart. Magnum of words fired. Lipsticks swiped on wounds. Pigs in flight. Wigs awry. Maybe this is the time to nick on truth, char the skin, stare at bone, look deeper into ourselves to ask:

If I am not a pig with lipstick, then who am I?

Yours, Kate