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Blog started in Jan 2005: 1st entries for Write in Every Genre. Then the REAL ME begins |
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It Hurts When I Stop Talking Sometime in Fall of 1998, when a visit from Dad was infrequent, and primarily at the mercy of his 88 Toyota making the 50 mile journey, I was being treated to lunch. The restaurant was my choice, I think. Sisley Italian Kitchen at the Town Center mall was somewhere my dad had not yet tried, so that was my pick. Either I was being treated to the luxury of lunch and adult conversation without my husband and 5 year old son in tow, or that's just how the moment has lodged in my memory. The more I think about it, they probably were there, but enjoying the Italian food too much to bother interrupting. Daddy and his lady friend at the time, Anne, came up together and made a day of it with me and the family. We were eating together and talking about some of my scripts, stories, coverages, poems and other creative attempts that really were not seeing the light of day. I think I'd just finished a group reading of The Artist's Way and was in a terribly frenetic mood over my writing. I think I'd just given them an entire rundown on a speculative Star Trek script. My Dad asked me point blank, “Why don’t you write it?? Anne agreed. It sure sounded like I wanted to write it. Why wasn't I writing seriously? It's what I'd set out to do when earning my college degree in Broadcasting many years earlier. Heck, I should, I agreed non-verbally. “I will.” But, I didn’t. Blogs can be wild, unpredictable storehouses of moments, tangents, creative dervishes, if you will. I'm getting a firmer handle on my creative cycle. My mental compost heap (which is a catch phrase from Natalie Goldman or Julia Cameron - I can't think which, right now) finally seems to be allowing a fairly regular seepage of by-products. That may be a gross analogy, but I give myself credit to categorize my work in raw terms. It proves that I'm not so much the procrastinating perfectionist that I once was. Still, I always seem to need prompts and motivation. Being a self-starter is the next step. My attempt to keep up in the Write in Every Genre Contest at the beginning of the year seemed like a perfect point to launch the blog. |
| I received many compliments from family and friends attending the Celebration of Life for my dad this past Sunday. I feel I only did what I wanted; gave it the attention to detail that was my style. There was music and words and sharing by others. There was a location and a selection of specific people, there was a specific level of treating those who attended to a taste of who he is, what he loved. I imbued it with ritual - nothing that I drew anyone's attention to. really only I knew. His cremains were placed reverently and draped in colorful cloth on the piano that was played throughtout. I only made the pianist aware that he was placed there. And consciously, I only think two other people and myself knew his cremains were there, and receiving the glorious reverberation of that piano played so masterfully. I felt a blast of joy at one point in the music, and I know it was heightened by the seat I choose. There were little pauses and stutterings and expressions that I don't think I even heard right, the first time, but nothing bothered me. By the time we'd made it through, I had accomplished what the whole prior near-month had been about. |
| When my grandmother died, (and she had only been on one day of hospice, so it is difficult to remember if that made it more or less a shock -- more, due to her only surviving one day, or less, the understanding that hospice is preparing for the death) within a few sleepless hours I was writing in tribute to her. My father died suddenly, at age 71, just two weeks ago. In the first week, I was able to list a half dozen memories of gratitude for our shared experiences, and I also wrote and published his obituary. I think these were good pieces of writing. Two weeks, moving into a third, though and I am worried that I am not writing the stories. I can write the details, the facts, but no one will be moved by a litany. That makes my writing an accomplishment, but not a draw. I need to know what I can do to write with a return of emotion, joy, even anger...It's not that I am not feeling anything, I'm just stuck in not expressing fully what I am experiencing, or am I? I don't even know. So far, the only other things I have written down are realizations: I feel like shredded taco meat, if shredded taco meat could feel itself being that hot, drippy mess that it is I have always been a Journalist -- Today, I wanted to note down that I feel comfortable counseling myself through the early grief in the loss of my father, due to being a life long "journal-er". And in that moment that I hesitated to add the right sounding suffix to the word, it dawned on me that "journalist" was the apt title I had been denying myself Both of these realizations say something about my appreciation of the blog format The rest of the grief process needs time, whether related to my writing or avoidance of writing more. |
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