Barely Touching the Brush on the Canvas: Neila Mezynski's Men Who Understand Girls

She started dancing. She liked dancing with short quick steps. She liked being at rest on the floor, body suspended in a certain position, waiting. She liked to start up again rapidly with the next step. She liked when the music skipped a beat.

She started painting. She liked painting with all different types of strokes. She sometimes liked to form the base with long heavy strokes, fill it in with short quick strokes. She sometimes liked to start with violent undersized strokes, finish it off by barely touching the brush on the canvas. She liked to paint trees. She liked to paint dresses.

She started writing. Words sentences stories and poems. She definitely started writing. Leaning words against more words to form sentences that curve and twist when read. Forming the basis for a new way of understanding how words relate to language to a reader to a page. Short bursts quickly are over and then commence again in sometimes longer but usually just as short bursts.

In Men Who Understand Girls, she writes about relationships. How those relationships emerge into something. Something that is unique to men and girls and also something that is not unique to men and girls. Something rather that is understood by all as long as there is a relationship between one and another not necessarily being men and girls. She also writes about how those relationships fizzle into nothing. Nothing that is understood by all as long as there was a relationship between one and another not necessarily being men and girls.

In Men Who Understand Girls, she writes about writing. Her writing is art. Her writing is dance. She writes about how writing is a thing and a concept. She writes about how writing may be the only that is a thing and a concept. She uses ideas from dancing and painting to show her words to a reader. She uses devices from dancing and painting to explain her words to a reader. Her dancing and her painting are important to her writing. How she dances and how she paints shapes the center for how she writes.

She writes about men who understand girls and girls who understand the men who understand girls. Miniature relationships made large.  She understands that men who understand girls can sometimes not understand girls. She understands that men who understand girls can understand but then girls may not understand men back. She understands that it does not always work out as planned for men who understand girls and the girls that they understand.

And sometimes it does. And sometimes it does.