Start with Myself?

“Start with yourself” was the secondhand advice a friend gave me, more years ago than I can accurately say, when I talked about writing again, writing anything. A mentor of hers had advised as much when the friend was trying to get back to her photography work. (She is an awesome photographer, my friend.) I am going with 12 years ago.

Many of us creative types lose track of actually doing what we love, are not as productive as we wish, or stop producing altogether for some period of time, maybe years (um, decades). Not all of us. Some are breathtakingly productive. I applaud you.

I want to write again, but I think I don’t know how to, think I can’t, tell myself writing a blog post is pointless anyway. I also feel like I can’t be an “open book,” can’t be honest, bare.

Start with myself? I know nothing anymore. I am not sure how I ended up where I am. I don’t have grand goals. I have isolated myself, on purpose, because I trust so few people. I don’t feel safe. Being with friends can be like writing: you have to be open. To be open, you need to feel connected and trust. I am resistant to opening up in any real-real way whatsoever.

Wow. That’s cheerful, for my 47^th birthday (yeah, today). I am such a healthy human being.

Let me try that again, on a lighter take. On Instagram, a random Doctor Who fan account posted a photo of the Doctor captioned, “My whole life can be summed up in one sentence: It didn’t go as planned and that is ok.” (Side note: as a writer/copyeditor type, I had to fix the original caption. Notice the lack of punctuation after “sentence” and “ok,” plus the division of the so-called one sentence, making it two. I had to fix it because my brain cringed.)

This is likely a familiar feeling, for better or worse, that many of us share.

The statement might be more accurate if I had ever planned more than a year or so ahead. Well, I suppose had my planning moments:

1) I was going to be a medievalist. I determined to study the middle ages in high school, and that plan lasted through college and later was picked up again in grad school (a master’s degree—I couldn’t plan far enough ahead for a PhD).

2) I was going to be a teacher, and I was, in two chunks: two years out of college and three after grad school.

Thus, the caption proves itself true: I loved studying the middle ages, pursued my studies with rare focus and determination. Am I a scholar now? Nope. (I still love the middle ages and keep up with some scholarly stuff, if it is accessible and well-written.) I saw myself as a teacher, and that plan was abandoned, by choice, for so many reasons. I didn’t hate it, and I wasn't even bad at it. But that is a story for another time.

The earliest life plan: From a very young age, the single digits, I was going to be a writer. I wrote stories in those marble composition books as a child, filled them with made-up stories of groups of friends with wonderful names, fantastical events, talking animals. 

I can thank my mother that I still have some of these. (Not really a side note: My mother was a writer of some renown and amazing talent. She encouraged any and all writing.) I wrote in high school, short stories, beginnings of maybe-novels, and lots of poetry. I continued a bit in college. But then I stopped writing fiction and poetry. 

I was a budding medieval scholar. Scholarly writing examining aspects of the middle ages for undergraduate and graduate school took creative writing’s place. Even my scholarly writing was creative, however. It took on a life of its own, relied on my instinct to move bits about to make an essay or paper just the right shape, structure.

After that, my writing didn’t stop dead: I still write in journals. I love my journals of different sizes, some lined, some unlined. Oh, and the graph paper ones! I have one in my bag, one on my workshop/desk, another by my bed, mini ones tucked places just in case one is needed in an emergency. I may also have half a small bookshelf filled with journals yet to be used. Don’t judge.

Once, I even kept a blog, this one, When Time Meets Eternity, somewhat regularly, after my first child was born in 2004. Today it is a very lonely blog, desolate even. I am going back to it. Determined.

This post is my start, in 2018, on my birthday, so many years later.

PS: If you made it this far, I must say I am frustrated that so many of my photos disappeared from my blog. That is going to take some time to fix. Or I can simply look forward and not worry about the "broken photo" icons.

no idea what I am doing

As I do this National Novel Writing Month thing, I must remember two things my mother wrote:

1) One of the last things my mother wrote – in May 2007, just over a month before she died – was for a discussion panel on creativity at the university where she taught creative writing for more than 10 years. She wrote, “Writers don’t really know what to do or how to do it. They are uncertain.” My husband said, “Come on, some writers must be confident,” assuming my mother was not confident. But I think uncertainty is not the opposite of confidence.

2) I found a list in my mother's handwriting, a list of events from a very bad year (1983-1984). A tiny piece on that list jumped out: "I feel useless, stupid, not a writer."

These two bits go together. I must remember both as I write: as I think I am getting nowhere; as I complain that I can't write dialogue and that I don't have a plot. I have no idea what I am doing. And that is okay and, maybe, even exactly right.

things my mother saved, part 1

I am sorting a box of things my mother saved from my childhood: paper dolls I created, a tissue-paper flower, two bound books enclosing my preschool art, among many other things.

I found a story I wrote on her old Kaypro II computer, which she bought in 1981. "Clark, the First Cat" covers two printed pages, dot-matrix, with the remnants of the perforated margins where the printer feeding side bits were removed (whatever you call them).

Keep in mind, I was 10 or 11. I have changed nothing:


Clark, the First Cat
1981/82

When I was only 2, my mother got a call in the middle of the night from a friend, who had found a cat. She had found an 8 month old cat, and she wanted to know if we wanted him. My mother thought that I would like a cat. So that night my mother’s friend brought the cat over.

In the morning I woke up to see a cat looming over me (at the time, I didn’t know what a cat was). When I screamed, my mother came running, as the cat jumped off of my bed. My mother told me that her friend brought him over during the night. She asked me what I wanted to call him. I said I wanted to call him Nicholas, but my mother said we should call him Clark. So Clark it was.

Over the next few days Clark got used to the apartment and us, and we got used to him.

About two weeks later whenever I left the apartment Clark would run up the hallway and leap onto my back, dig his claws into my shoulders, bite my neck and pull my hair.

One day when my mother came home she said that she was going to get Clark fixed and maybe he would calm down. My mother left and came back half an hour later.

For a week Clark didn’t jump on me, but then he started again!

When I was three and a half we got another cat called Dorothy. Dorothy was only a kitten but Clark liked her right away. He liked her so much that he only payed her attention and he didn’t jump on my any more.

So that is how we stopped Clark jumping on me.

THE END

I love the suggestion that my mother scooped Clark up, and got him neutered in a mere half hour. That can't be right.

I now know she wanted to name him Clark because her father was a clerk. But that is another story.

memoir

I finally had a daylight moment to read yesterday evening. I have caught up on the next Glenda Adams story, “Kangaroo,” in Lies and Stories. That was easy, just four pages. Then I sorted the newspaper pile and found an article from May 24 (at least it is from this year) about memoirs, rather, a review of three film memoirs: “The Way They Were: A Trio of Masterly Memoirs,” by Philip Kennicott.

I have no memory of saving the crumpled up Washington Post Style and Arts section, but clearly I meant to read the article. So I did. A month later.

The most scathing (and true) observation about contemporary written memoirs: “One awful thing follows another, and then a few chapters before the end there is some tripe about healing and redemption.”

What Kennicott describes as different in these three film memoirs from the “well-debased form” or written memoirs inspires me, not to make a film (how the hell would I do that?), but to write. He writes, “Memoir – the most personal and idiosyncratic form of storytelling – is as much about how we remember as it is about what we remember.”

I have some memoir-like thing percolating in notes, in my head, in fantasy. But I have nothing suitably traumatic to relate. I wondered if anyone would be interested in a memoir that was did not detail “the pain and suffering of addiction or incest or bulimia or child abuse.” But those things (awful as they are – real as they are) have become the cliché in written memoirs. So maybe I’m not living in a complete fantasy land.

These films, “L’Aimee” by Arnaud Desplechin, “The Beaches of Agnes” by Agnes Varda, and “My Winnipeg” by Guy Maddin, sound lovely in themselves – and were showing at the National Gallery of Art (in late May). Kennicott describes how the medium of film “plays with the illusion of immortality.” I like that. To distill the article’s descriptions (keep in mind, I have not seen any of these films): “My Winnipeg” is about leaving a hometown city, “L’Aimee” jumps off from cleaning out an attic full of a mother/grandmother/great-grandmother’s artifacts, and “The Beaches of Agnes” has the 80+-year-old “grandmother of new wave” telling her story on the beach with mirrors (or that’s how I read the description). No over-the-top trauma – but so compelling. This could be done in the written form, too.

There could be a place for my little memoir-like thing, which does hinge on the idea of how I remember, what I remember and why (and have forgotten, for that matter).

"my" book

Okay, it’s not “mine,” but my story, “Grandma’s Tree,” is a part of the anthology, Grandma Magic, edited by Janet Hutchinson, published in April 2009. All the stories are creative non-fiction; mine is an essay about my mother as a grandmother.

I am currently reading the book. The stories so far are excellent and are from varied points of view – grandmothers, mothers, children, grandchildren. The authors are all Australian women (myself included – I am a dual-citizen) – but the book is also multicultural. The first few stories have been set not only in Australia, but also branch out into, for example, Sweden and China. Australia is an interesting, multicultural country – with cultural influences that overlap with but are also very different from those in the States.

Grandma Magic is available only in Australia (for now) from:
Allen and Unwin
Booktopia
Doubleday

The 20 contributors are: Kristina Olsson, Annette Shun Wah, Gabrielle Lord, Angela Catterns, Robin Barker, Ruby Langford Ginibi, Caitlin Adams, Arabella Edge, Sara Dowse, Michele Di’Bartolo, Kerry Greenwood, Paddy O’Reilly, Lorraine McGee-Sippel, Jennifer Mills, Marion Halligan, Eva Cox, Shalini Akhil, Julie McCrossin, Eileen Naseby and Anne Deveson.

Unfortunately, each story has made me cry a bit, but not because they are sad. While only my story is about my mother in particular (of course), each story is about a grandmother and her relationship with her children and grandchildren. And my mother is no longer here to be a grandmother for my two sons. She was such a good one: quirky, kind, calm, creative, and all. And that makes me sad.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to end on a sad note. I am really very excited about the book. And my story is dedicated to my mother. She would have been proud.

the crux of the matter

Okay. If I am going to write, then I must eventually write about when I was 16 years old and lived in Sydney for six months. But I avoid this topic. Completely. Until now. Don’t expect anything that is earth shattering – I think it was only so for me. I’ve blocked out a lot of the memories; this is going to take some work.

So many BIG THINGS revolved around this event.

First, I begged my mother to move there. She was Australian. I am half Australian. I was unhappy. My mother must have wanted to move there too. But I begged, cried. So I think the whole move is emblematic of how my mother was so understanding and supportive. We moved in January 1988 (unless it was December – can’t recall).

Second, I had spent the summer of 1987 in Sydney, visiting my friend K’s high school. I thought I fell in love with a boy (who turned out to be a boring stoner). So, my boy-crazy nature drove my “grass is greener” thoughts.

Third, my father had remarried and my stepmother was pregnant. I don’t remember associating this with my desire to move, but it must have been, right? I became no longer an only child (while I was in Sydney). AND, this whole move made my father so mightily angry at my mother (and me – I remember him saying, “You are a scared person, just like your mother.”).

Fourth, I was in my junior year in high school. Every year I seemed to go through some kind of “run away” scenario. For example, in tenth grade, I wanted to drop out (silly girl).

That’s all I can write about this for now. But I do know that if that book is going to get written – for some gut reason – I need to write about this first.

Joanne Harris and Radiohead, random

(A disclaimer: I have no in-depth knowledge of either Joanne Harris or Radiohead.)

I listened to the rebroadcast Diane Rehm's interview of Joanne Harris on January 4, 2009. I have not read Harris' Chocolat (though the movie is quite good), and I know little about the author. But I listened anyway -- on the little radio in the bathroom while a took a shower.

A pair of red shoes figure in Harris' new novel, The Girl with No Shadow, a sequel to Chocolat. Rehm asks why a love of shoes and chocolate is associated with women. Harris answers that both are associated with magic, transformation (which does not quite address the woman connection, but anyway...). I especially liked how she described an irrational shoe-associated belief: if she could find the perfect pair of shoes, she would be transformed. I cannot remember her exact words. But I definitely recognized the idea. I am always on a shoe search. I think the perfect pair of shoes would perfect me, or my look -- so I suppose I understand that irrational belief.

I listened to another rebroadcast of a Radiohead interview on Sound Opinions on December 26, 2008 (as a podcast -- the show is not, as far as I know, broadcast on a local public radio station). I have enjoyed some Radiohead tunes, but I am no expert on the band. But I listened to the entire interview while I did a spinning routine (on a stationary bike, you know...)

Discussing how they record songs in the studio, the band members explained that they record a song, playing together, once (they may even videotape the performance). They don't listen to it until much later -- maybe months later -- and then they can rework it. This is instead of playing it piece by piece, working on one song for days or weeks in the studio, until it is perfected (there's that "perfected" theme again). They said the latter method makes them lose all perspective. The former gives perspective and helps them work together and see the big picture. Again, while I can't remember their exact words, I recognized this way of working -- similar to how I write. I put a bunch of stuff (ah, "bunch of stuff" -- eloquent) down -- often messy -- then polish later when I have had some time away.

These are my random thoughts for the day. Have a good night.