My Amusing Friend

I don’t know if I have a muse or not, though I’m sure I have an internal critic. I’m assuming they’re not the same thing or at least I hope they’re not. The critic seems a lot more intrusive and – dare I say? – powerful, which makes it  very uncomfortable when I try to put my thoughts down. Writing is no fun and is hard work when the critic is present.

But there have been times when I’ve written something, usually something fairly long, and sort of came out of “trance” afterward and wondered, “Where did that come from?” I’m usually surprised at how good it is, too.

I mean, I’m a good writer, but the content is generally more powerful than my usual thoughts. I’m assuming I’ve been “amused” at that time. Not that I wasn’t aware of what I was typing, not that deep a trance, but my fingers seemed to be typing of their own accord, or somebody’s accord besides mine.

There’s a difference between what “I” write and what my amusing friend writes, both in content  and in feeling. When I write it tends to be a bit of a struggle, time drags and my thoughts don’t flow as smoothly as I would hope, and the writing seems dry and pedantic.

When my amusing friend writes, it’s no struggle at all, words come easily, and there doesn’t even seem to be thoughts as such at all.  Time flies, and the writing has more life and flavor. More savor. Maybe it takes a bit of editing here or there but for the most part, it stands pretty well as written.

That’s how “I’d” like to write all the time and I despair when I can’t or don’t. It’s also what keeps me from writing at all. If I can’t write that way I just don’t want to work so hard at it only to come up with something blah. Not a good attitude but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Besides, that inner critic – her name is Edna – has a lot to say about what I write; she doesn’t seem to get in the way when the amuser is present, though. That must mean something.

I don’t know the name of the amuser and I’d sure like to know what it is. I mean, there’s Erato and Sophia and even “Self,” so many good names, and yet none “dings” when I say it. I realize that when we name something we limit it and maybe that has something to do with her being nameless. About all I’m sure of is that the amuser is a she. But then, so is Edna. But she’s limited.

 

LiveJournal Tags: Muse,writing,inner critic,names,limits,Erato,Sophia,Self

Senryu

Quite sometime back I tried writing what I thought were haiku, a form of Japanese poetry.  I was rather quickly disabused of that idea by being told haiku is not personal, but is about nature, as well as having other requirements my poems did not have.

So I put my poems aside and felt quite thoroughly put down.  Then I did some research  and discovered that maybe, just maybe, they could be called senryu, a form that’s similar to haiku but more personal.

Then I discovered that senryu is supposed to be ironic or satirical or even humorous, so that was that. And then, just today, I discovered a haiku journal article that said nothing could be further from the truth.  Senryu is about human experience and human emotions.

So, before I discover my poems don’t have any kind of name, except “short poems,” I decided to  post them here and consider them senryu.

What do you think?

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Disabled I’m less

Helping not self nor others

Kindness befalls me

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Permeable, melting

Becoming the universe

I am filled with joy

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Neediness is fear

Needed ones are repelled

My soul is murdered

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Secret fears and sins

Chosen busy-ness to hide

Cannot conceal them

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To heal others’ pain

I must acknowledge my own

Know humility

 

LiveJournal Tags: senryu,haiku,short poems

Why I write

(I just want to acknowledge the tragedy at the Boston Marathon yesterday, and then let it be. I don’t like adding to the energies of grief and anger around such an event.  But I grieve, even though I truly believe it will all be OK eventually.  “Eventually” just seems to be taking a long time to get here, that’s all.)

 

I think I’ve wanted to write forever. Only for some reason I didn’t.  I remember choosing a nom de plume when I was maybe nine or 10. It was Pamela Hathaway, if I remember rightly.  Now I wonder why I didn’t think my name would be good enough. I even got a notebook and put “Pamela Hathaway” on it, but I never wrote anything in it. Neither did she.

Even though I dreaded those essay questions on tests in school, I secretly enjoyed writing. I was afraid I didn’t know enough to fill out the answer space but once I got rolling I always seemed to run out of space or time before I ran out of  things to write. In junior high I even won an essay contest on “Freedom,” from The American Legion. I kept my medal and a copy of the essay for years.

Many years ago I let a friend read my essay and he criticized it for being “too editorial.” I was crushed. After a long time I finally realized that I hadn’t written a newspaper story, I’d written an essay. It was supposed to be an unashamed paean to freedom. I realized then it was OK to write about personal feelings and ideas, to editorialize.

I really found out how good writing could make me feel when I started journaling. Here was one “person” who was always willing to let me spill my guts without criticism or boredom. Editorialism was fine. Feelings were fine. Ideas were fine.  Sometimes I found out things about myself that surprised me. I learned to touch emotions I’d ignored for a long time and had forgotten about. But they hadn’t forgotten about me! I opened the gates to their cages, and they still have a lot to say. I’m trying to give them the same things I want: a voice heard without criticism or boredom.

Now I’m older and this kind of writing often hurts; my hands, my wrists, my stomach. My heart. It’s difficult, it’s real work, it’s real fun, and so very, very satisfying. In giving me  expression and identification, it eases the isolation which has permeated my life. Much of what I write, though, is never quite “right.” Writing is satisfying, but I’m never satisfied with my writing. I edit and edit and rewrite and edit. And rewrite and edit. Sometimes I figure, what’s the point in writing if it never gets done, but then I realize, “Hey, that’s life! It never gets done!”

And that’s why I’m writing.

 

LiveJournal Tags: LiveJournal Tags: why write,editorializing,feelings,emotions,pain,writing pain

Fiddlesticks!

I haven’t posted in some time and I’m sorry about that.  I had a fibro flare or something and could barely put one foot in front of the other for several days, close to a week, anyway. 

That exhausted me (or something did) for several more days and I had just barely begun to return to what passes for normal when I developed a toothache or at least something that’s making my jaw hurt.  I can’t figure out a specific tooth that’s causing the problem. 

May not even be a tooth but a fistula or some such thing that’s a result of a split tooth I had to have removed. Gnashing my teeth at night is not a good thing! Or ever, for that matter.  I use a mouth guard at night but even that makes my teeth sore.

So even though I post irregularly at best, it seemed like a good idea to let y’all know that I haven’t let the blog die yet.  Fallow for a while, maybe, but there’s life here.  It just might take a while to stir into something lifelike.  But it will.

“Bad Boys” and the True Self

Last evening I accidentally happened upon an old video on television, Legends of the Fall. The movie won several Academy Awards. I’d seen it before but didn’t remember many details. I should have remembered more because it’s a pretty good movie. It covers many decades, from before WWI until 1963.

It’s about three brothers, Arthur, Tristan, and Samuel, who live with their ex-colonel father, a Cornish immigrant, in Montana, their mother having left them because she couldn’t handle the isolation and difficulty of living so far from “civilization.”  I won’t tell you the story; you can look it up for yourself.  There are some pretty intense emotions in it. 

One sentence late in the movie struck me and made me think about the common adage that women (and men, presumably) like the “bad boys” even if they end up being hurt by them. Everybody loved the bad boy in this movie, even if he was always getting into trouble. I’m not talking about the evil-doers, just the men that don’t play by the rules of society. 

There are women that don’t play by the rules as well, of course, but they’re usually given all sorts of pejorative “titles.”  They may be attractive as well, but for the women it seems to be a more negative role. I assume that the attraction of these types are similar in both cases. That might be a topic for another post.

The speech that got my attention was thus (more or less): “I’ve followed all the rules, did all the right things, and you did none of that, and yet they all loved you more than they did me, even my own wife.”

And then, almost without thinking, I “replied” to the one man that it was because he had been trying to “buy” conditional love by his actions and behavior, and maybe even his thinking.  He was trying to be what others wanted him to be, what they thought he should be, what he thought he should be.

The other man had always been his own self, wanting love just as much, but not willing to become what he was not in order to get it.

Such self-possession is rare – and attractive.  It’s being honest and true to oneself and people recognize that it’s a rare and precious thing, to be what one must be, with all the pain and even guilt and recrimination that might go along with that.  What courage that takes!

How many of us dare to be who we really are? How many are willing to risk being real?  All of the time? 

I immediately realized that, like the one man, I was/had been a “good girl,” doing as I was told, doing all the right things, following the rules – most of the time. Sometimes I failed but not because I was a rebel or even being true to myself. I just couldn’t be perfect.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s something inherent in being the oldest, the first-born, as he was, as I am, that promotes this kind of attitude and behavior.  I think that’s possible.  Perhaps there’s another post topic there, as well.

At any rate, I’m gradually learning to be who I am, though I’m not sure who that is even yet.  I’ve followed the rules for so long that they’re ingrained, a part of me, and that makes it difficult to be able to dig deeper, below them, to find out who I really am and to discover if I’d follow them even if I didn’t “have to.” I wouldn’t have realized that if I hadn’t glommed onto that one sentence in an old video.

I’m beginning to believe that I’m not such a bad person after all, whether I follow the rules or disobey them or go around them. I might do things society doesn’t like or even condemns (like be a tomboy, or not wear a bra, or live with someone without “the bonds of marriage”) but I’m becoming more comfortable with myself.  I think that’s a good thing.

The things we can learn from the movies. 

My Apologies

I’m not planning on writing much today.  That might change, but, well, we’ll see.

To all my readers and faithful followers, I want to apologize for not writing more often or with more grace and less grump.

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty darn grumpy, partly, I suppose, because I’ve gotten too caught up in Facebook.  I’m relatively new to it and once in a while I comment on a friend’s or relative’s timeline and suddenly find myself embroiled in a “discussion” with someone else who’s read that comment and taken issue with it.

I don’t consider name calling, “shouting” (typing in all capital letters), having people make assumptions about me, my life experiences, my knowledge or, heaven forbid, wisdom, based on a single comment or post, as a “conversation.”  I realize that when people can only use name calling as a way to “communicate” it means they’ve run out of logical arguments and don’t know how to shut up.  Yet, this happens too often and it seems to be rampant.  Some have even felt called (compelled?) to comment on my psychological status.

Normally I can walk away from such stuff.  My skin is not as thick as I’d like it to be, but I don’t have enough energy to waste on trivial things.  I’m a Scorpio and passion is native to my sign and personality.  I read a horoscope today that mentioned my “low tolerance for trivial things” and that felt very right just now.

The trouble is, it’s the responses that are trivial, not my feelings about what they’re “commenting” on.  My comments are about guns, violence against women, same-sex marriage, social inequities, and other things I’ve discovered I’m passionate about (over the years I’d begun to fear I’d lost my passion for anything).  However, when I comment on others’ timelines, I temper that passion and simply keep it, well, simple.

Maybe that’s why their responses also seem “simple,” though not in a good sense, but “simple” in the sense of “trivial.” 

I think these are issues that deserve good conversation, an understanding of each other’s points of view, not vilification of a person you don’t know anything about.  For all I know, they have very good reasons for feeling as they do but I’ll never know them from the responses they make.

And, of course, they’ll never know, much less understand, mine. I’m certainly searching very hard for my soul at times like this.  My ego really, really wants to put them in their place.  Wherever that is.

Where has civil discourse gone?  I miss it.

The Past, Regrets, and Memories

Today I received the news that the man who had been my boss for the entire time I worked in the army hospital lab had died the day before yesterday.  Interestingly, at least to me, was that on that day, for some reason, he popped into my mind and I thought about sending him a card.  But I didn’t.

I’d known he had cancer and his time was short, and yet, I was remiss about even sending a card to try to comfort him.  I’m not sure why.  A part of it is probably that I’m such a superior procrastinator. 

Maybe it’s that we weren’t especially close, though we liked each other well enough.  Or at least I think we did.  We rarely had disagreements over that twenty years so I suppose that means something.  Maybe just that he was my boss and I was good at doing what I was supposed to do.  Maybe just that we didn’t disagree over much.

Now I’m feeling regret that I put off such a simple act.  I’m not particularly sad that he died because everybody dies and I haven’t seen him in the twenty years since I retired on disability.  Well, except at the memorial service for another co-worker and even then, he didn’t recognize me.  So, we weren’t close.  But I do have regrets.

You know how it’s said that we regret what we didn’t do more than what we did do and this will probably be one of those times for me.  Though I do have some regrets over what I have done, too.

There was another level of emotion that came to me as I pondered and it was this: another piece of my past just disappeared.  Like most people, I’ve had losses throughout my life, from childhood on, through the loss of my former husband, to loss of my parents, to loss of animals who were very special to me, to loss of my physical abilities.  Losses are part of Life.

While my boss and I weren’t that close, he was present in a big chunk of my life and there’s no one else who shared exactly that part of my life with me.  And now that’s lost.

Then I recalled that scene in Blade Runner where the android is “dying” and telling about all the wonders he’s seen on other worlds, wonders humans could never have experienced, and how they’ll disappear with him, “like tears in rain.”  That’s always seemed a very poignant, sad scene.  Unforgettable.

So now my boss is gone and his memories with him, like tears in rain.  I don’t know if he wrote anything about his life for his kids to read or to pass down for family history, but if not, I think those tears in the rain will leave a lack in the world.

And it brought home to me once again the importance of memoir, of telling family stories, of keeping the “legacy” alive, even if it’s just for the family.  I have some stories about my mom and dad as kids that make me chuckle even decades after their deaths.  I’ll bet my nieces know nothing of them. 

I’ve been struggling with writer’s block for a couple of years now, feeling I had no purpose in my writing, thinking that no one cared what I wrote, and it wasn’t even very good writing anyway, etc, ad infinitum.  I think I feel that beginning to lift ever so slightly now.  Maybe no one does care what I write but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a mandate to do so.

So my boss’s death has meaning for me.  I can’t send him a card now, but I can go forth and write so there are fewer tears in rain.