Verity (Spring 2013)

“This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside,” said the pilot in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. When he first meets the little prince, the prince promptly demands a sheep. The pilot draws three in succession, but one is too sickly, one is too old, one is actually a ram. Finally, the pilot draws a box—the prince is delighted.

So we each scrawled up a sheep. When we pooled them together, we didn’t get identical animals—we got a menagerie of assorted creatures. Emily’s sheep was classy, Irene’s was a glutton and Helen’s was a cross between a rat and cotton candy emitting a friendly “bahhh.” There was an individualism, a bit of ourselves, in what we concocted. (We also remembered why art should left up to the art team.)

The point is, we don’t always need to grope around for new ideas. When we start with the unknown, a wildly drawn-up sheep, we lack a bridge between reality and imagination. But let’s begin with the box. Let’s embrace the limits of our existing experiences and reflections. We can reinterpret what we’ve already seen, capturing verity—a reality and complexity—in our writing. In other words, we have our sheep.

And for all we know, inside the box may not be a sheep—but a friendly rat covered in cotton candy.

– Vertigo Editors (2012-2013)