Process

Can there be any greater pain Than the rejection of your mother, your sister, your kin? Death itself is less heart stabbing. It is impersonal. It does not seek to inflict pain. It is indifferent and in this, Death is kind. I am certain there is no substitute for a mother’s love, Nor a cure for this stinging 8-ball in my throat. I don’t think I’ll ever walk this earth with a lightness of being. Sadness is with me always to varying depths beneath the surface. With time it ages like weathered skin. Like a photograph of an old indigenous person weathered by life, It takes on a beauty of its own. I am weathered. As I sit here in Starbucks with snot dripping from my nose I am perfectly accepting of my indecency. All the things which have been kept secret and out of sight Flow from me now, Visible for all to see.  In this, I've never felt more okay. Longing has become my friend. I no longer have the energy nor the inclination to fill it And it has not the energy nor inclination t...

The Merriam -Webster Dictionary defines denial from a psychological point of view as “a defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality”. I inhale, squint my eyes and hold my breath after reading this as if preparing for someone to rip a bandaid off of a wound. The definition just doesn’t capture the experience. Being in denial is like being under the influence of black magic. You are blind to the thing whatever the thing is. There is no conscious act of avoiding or denying anything. I denied leaving the wall heater on in the bathroom when questioned by my mom despite knowing full well that I had done just that. Certainly I was avoiding confrontation with my mother’s dismay, the truth of my absent mindedness and the fear that my misdeed would cause me to lose my mother’s affection but make no mistake about it. My denial was a lie. What I am talking about here, is quite another type of ...

It's been a difficult 2 weeks in my writing.  I've felt enmired at this particular junction of the story.  I've come at it from different angles yet have not been able to penetrate the heart of it.  Doubt set in.  I worried that I would end up dropping the project passively.  It starts so easily.  I miss one day of writing because the cat has a wound and has to go to the vet.  Then another day is missed because I told myself I would write from home but never did.  It is easy to come up with excuses to not put pen to paper.  Ultimately the fear which kept me away, brought me back to the table.  I knew if I waited any longer to return, I would not. So I returned to Starbucks yesterday and procrastinated a little longer by responding to an email from a writer friend.  I joked about how he was now my excuse not to write but in so doing I recognized that I was writing and finding satisfaction in the irony and humor within. What I was...

I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I'm noticing in my writing process as of late.  My habit has become, quite unintentionally, to capture my thoughts longhand in a notebook.  So, when I'm going to be writing something fresh I take out fountain pen and paper and go at it for an hour or two.  Then I close my notebook and go home.  The following day after work, I'll get situated at my neighborhood Starbucks and do a re-read.  I am often surprised at the clarity 24 hours can provide.  It's like looking at something with fresh eyes.  I can see where the story starts.  Sometimes it's right away but often there is at least a paragraph of warm up words, the chaff, the stuff you have to get out of the way in order to get to the kernel.  I can tell when I'm there because it takes on a rhythm.  It starts to flow.  It may not be perfect but there is something true there, some thread worth following.  Fresh eyes are for the edit...

Let's not start at the very beginning.  Let's start smack dab in the middle with the girl who was the turning point.  Her name was Debbie.  She was big as in tall, big-boned, big breasted, big voiced, big eyed and big in personality.  She spoke her mind and carried herself with a self-assured authority which belied her level of education.  I took to her right away.  She came into my life at the time when another relationship was ending, my marital relationship, and I was facing a lot of firsts. It is difficult to put into words how it feels, even now, as I recall the approach of those firsts - the first birthday, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and Easter as not a family.  The loss is more than the tragedy of the way things are, it is the trauma of losing what had come before.  Things like the Thanksgivings when my Mom and Dad came to visit our family in our single story four bedroom rambler on a third acre in my favorite Sou...

I don't know what came first, the movie or the party.  I only know that it came to an end the night he dropped my friend off first.  Backing out of her driveway, he looked at me through the rear view mirror and said, "What's the matter with you.  Are you a lesbian or something?"  Without hesitation I blurted out an indignant, "No!" and turned my head to look out the far-sided window.  Heat rose from my neck to my face.   I wanted to hide.  I thought,  How could he think that about me?   Yet the sting of humiliation persisted like an unanswered question gnawing at me from the inside.