Distillation

The day before yesterday, my siblings and I hosted a party to celebrate my Mother’s ninetieth birthday. We rented the back room of a local restaurant and invited some family and friends. About 60 people showed up to share in the experience, delighting in Mom’s eager participation of wearing a silver tiara sporting the number 90 in purple across its width, and being queen for the day. And oh, what a queen she was, leading the entire group in a rousing rendition of You Are My Sunshine, while playing her harmonica accompanied by her 76 year-old baby sister, who had been asked to bring hers, as well. We do know how to have fun.

My cousins, Mom’s brother Joe’s children, proudly carried in a tree they had made from white plastic tubes for branches, with ninety one dollar bills tied with colorful ribbons to it. Mom, who is usually a bit on the shy side, seemed to expand in the spotlight, sharing in the teasing and laughter that accompanies such festivities.

My sister, the ultimate arranger, had brought along a digital frame and turned it on for a slide show of family photos dating back over 120 years of our shared history. Small groups of guests would gather around the table, where it sat, trying to guess who was who in the photos. My cousin Fred proudly turned to me to say that he had been named after our grandfather, who was thirteen, at the time of one family portrait. And I, in turn, explained the ease with which I had converted well over three hundred photographs onto a flash disc for this current perusal.

Cameras abounded as Mom opened gifts and cards of well wishes amidst extensive banter about the ‘favorite’ daughter, while my two sisters and I helped her organize and write down what came from who so she’d have a list for thank you cards. When it came time to blow out the candles (only one large one, to insure against burning the place down), Mom was helped by five or six of her great-grandchildren. The cake was strawberry (one of Mom’s favorites), and lovingly baked and decorated with deep purple roses (again Mom’s favorite color) by my niece Patti, who just happens to be an expert in that arena.

The food was plentiful and extremely good, the service unobtrusive, but swift and friendly. And people lingered long beyond the time we had reserved for the reception. There was a great deal of laughter as individuals drifted around the room to talk, reminisce, and catch up with others they hadn’t seen, sometimes in years. And my sisters and I were terribly grateful that none of us had to stay and clean up the mess.

It was a small party, especially when you realize that my grandmother had nine children and 156 grandchildren. I called my Mother yesterday morning and she was still bubbling with giggles and laughter at the memories we had made the day before. Memories I have distilled here and in the pages of my journal.

Distillation is a process by which a substance is broken down, it’s components separated to make another, different substance, like moonshine made with a ’still’. And that is what we do with memories even as we are making them. I am certain that there are as many versions of that birthday party as there were guests, each one capturing some of the components that I, myself, have written here, but many different ones as well. Kimberly, my niece’s almost two year-old daughter, would definitely have a much different perspective than any of the adults in that room, if she remembers at all, other than through the photographs that were taken as she maneuvered her way through the stalks of adults who stood around speaking and laughing. My Mother will remember certain faces, a flash of gifted silver jewelry, a particularly funny anecdote someone told her, etc.

The photographs are a different kind of still. They capture one moment in the life of the individuals who are caught on film, yet separated by the photographic process. Someone recently said to me that the past casts a far dimmer light than that of today. That is true except for those of us who take the time to distill a few of those moments, breaking them done into separate components, making a different kind of substance from all of them.

A record that is far better than a photograph because it captures more than one stilled moment. Our words give that moment a taste, a feel, a smell, along with the sound of laughter. Our words give it life in the way that a photograph never could, and our memories might not have noticed, or have lost in the passage of time. To borrow from my own verbiage, those words shed a brighter reflection of moonshine on the shadows that might be all that remains for many of our guests. But they do something even more important.

When my own grandchildren are adults, and hopefully curious about where they came from, they might find particular meaning, or a bit of delight, in knowing that their great-grandmother entertained a roomful of well wishers, by playing her harmonica at her ninetieth birthday party. “The very best one,” she says, she has ever had.

Different Faces

Yesterday, while browsing through several other WordPress blogs, I found a comment (Spasmically Perfect), in which one writer told another that her muse looked like Danny DeVito. I really liked the idea of my muse wearing a face I could recognize. So I stated that my muse looked like a skinny Tom-boy with creamed coffee curls. But this morning, when I awoke, I found she had grown into a Medusa-haired Amazon spouting radical feminist rhetoric. What happened?

Someone gave me the name of a poet and the site where I could listen to him read his work. I did so and his words called for a response. As I wrote, his cadence and rhythms kept swirling through my head and I found myself adopting some of that as I put together a response poem. The poem started out with an image he had created and then went where it wanted go. I let it do so, exploring as I followed. When it was finished, I sent it off to the friend that had suggested I take a look at this man’s writing. I even told her to look and see what she had done. The poem was quite different from my usual stuff.

This morning, I knew I was going to write my usual journal page, then come here to write another blog. But my muse had very different ideas. She definitely wanted to add some more to the piece I thought I had finished last night. She kept interrupting my journal writing with phrases and words that made me smile, because I could see where they were going and they were definitely in those other rhythms I was playing with during the past evening. Simply put, she wouldn’t be denied. So now I have a poem that is twice as long as I thought it should be and I have no idea if its finished or not.

As I have browsed through some of the blogs on this site and others, especially those pertaining to writing and writers, I have often seen a lot of discussion about what is called The Writer’s Block. That’s when the writer can’t seem to get past a certain point in his/her writing. It can be utterly frustrating and even devastating, especially when there are deadlines to meet, whether they are self-imposed or otherwise. More to the point, I almost allowed myself to be talked into one this morning. I don’t come here with a set idea of what I am going to write about. I always do my personal writing first, and most times, in the course of doing that find a phrase, or idea, that I bring here. Then I just start writing and it comes together. That is the result of years of off the cuff writing on a daily basis. Just another reason for keeping a journal, by the way.

Most important, is to remember that the Muse is a myth dating back to ancient Greece or before. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t one, but many. There were Muses for different genres of expression, symbolizing the creative forces and their feminine origins. And each muse wore a different face depending on which of the creative forces was in play. The word play here, is very important. Muses were pictured using the instruments of their chosen expression: one might be playing a mandolin, another using a plumed pen and so forth. But each one was playing with the instrument of her expression, using her imagination to explore a new form of her creative energies.

Each time we sit to write, pick up a pen, place ourselves in front of a computer screen, we are signaling our willingness to play, letting those creative forces know that we are back in the ball game, sort of speak. We are encouraging our imagination to speak through us. And it does. That may be the problem. If we get too comfortable with only one face of our imagination, we might very well panic when it doesn’t appear. Might not understand when another face appears instead. Might even think, somewhere down the road, that we have exhausted our creative energies and there is nothing left. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Creative energy is built into the system, our systems. It is as necessary as the air we breathe and has just as important a purpose. If we limit it, we ourselves will be narrowed down and limited. If we only allow it to wear one face, then we will certainly be out of luck when it assumes another. Rest assured it will assume another on occasion. It is an energy flow, thus it is always moving, always changing, and evolving. We are dependant on it in order to grow, to heal, and to become.

If I had turned away, or ignored that Medusa image this morning, I might have blocked the poem entirely and you certainly wouldn’t be reading this blog because there would be none. My entire day would have been a different story and certainly far less satisfying, met with a whole lot less eagerness, as well. Long ago, I read that the best thing to do when one finds oneself tangled up in a memory, compulsively reliving the moment and its attendant feelings and states of being, the best thing to do is to move. Simply move oneself out of the place one finds oneself in, be that physically, mentally, or emotionally. The movement is what brings about the change. To choose not to move, is to choose to remain inside that other moment.

The same can be said of the Muse. Let her change her face, reveal herself, and all of her facets, while moving you to a different form of expression. Let her show you just what she is capable of, and she will teach you some very worthwhile things. And trust that she’ll let you get back to what you were doing before she came along. She does understand deadlines.

There are those who will say that this sounds a bit out of control. Be grateful for that. I am. If I were really in control of all of these words, they probably wouldn’t get written at all. I’d still be in bed, dreaming about an Amazon figure with snakes on her head, trying to find a way to free myself from a nightmare, or worse, a Writer’s Block.

Extended Metaphor

My last blog, the story of the little seed, was an extended metaphor. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike objects. The comparison is meant to bring about a deeper understanding of the compared object. An extended metaphor is simply what is says, an extended form (longer version), of the comparison. In that former blog, I compared the words we write to the little seed growing in its plot of ground. But, there is another metaphor that could be applied.

That little seed can easily be compared to one individual life. The growth process, described within the story, can easily be compared to our own personal experience. We come to life, wrapped tightly within our own narrowed view of how the world works (preconceived notions), and our own place within that world. Each experience we encounter can and does challenge us to grow stronger, a bit wiser, so that we can flourish within whatever environment we find ourselves.

The diverse elements within that environment: the sun, wind, rain, night, darkness, furred and feathered creatures, are opportunities to learn, to grow, and develop the strength necessary to carry us even further. All of it is a learning process, and we can choose to learn, to grow, or to be diminished or devoured by such encounters. And, just as in the story, any growth is really hard work. It may seem, especially in childhood, that growth is simply a natural force that happens without our permission. We eat, quench our thirst, and we grow.

There is a danger in that sort of thinking. It could mean that when we reach adulthood, we assume we have arrived and can put our energies into something else other than the growth process. Remember, that little seed had only made it through the first day and night of his process. He still had a long way to go to fruition. Do we ever really arrive?

I hope not. I want to continue to grow and bring forth fruit until my very last breath. That is one of the reasons I am here, writing these words. I don’t know it all, but I certainly intend to keep striving for just that end. And yes, my words are the seeds I plant on the path of my own journey. That in turn, brings me back to my original extended metaphor. The words I write are a challenge to myself to continue to grow and to learn. They are my friends like the sun, the wind and the rain. They can also be those four-leggeds that come snuffling out of the darkness, hungry and seeking to satisfy their own needs. But, if I truly want to grow, I must learn how to deal with each and every one of them. It is very hard work, and it is done one word at a time, one seed dropped here and there.

My daily writing facilitates whatever growth process I am engaged in. In that sense, it is the food I use to sustain me on my journey. Whatever seeds I plant can also be the sustenance used by other fellow travelers along that path. I don’t particularly like vegetables, prefer fruit. But some of my words are definitely of the leafy green and starchy variety. That’s okay, I’ve learned enough to know that a balanced diet is far more conducive to growth than any other. Some days, I write nothing but vegetables and simply hope that those snuffles I hear, coming my way from the shadows ahead, are the sounds of vegetarians, not carnivores.

Story Time

The little seed slept. Curled inside of its hard tight shell, it never felt the fall, or the impact. Never felt the earth embrace it, hold it to its chest, wrapping itself around the tiny fetalized kernel. Perhaps it was the moisture that softened the shell, but the seed awoke slowly, began to stretch until it found an opening. It reached beyond itself for the first time, found the dark moist soil that surrounded it. Grasped hold and settled in. It was hungry.

No one could say why this particular little seed awoke, while its brother slept on, never to awaken at all. As it stretched its hunger increased. So it sent out even more fragile tendrils, always seeking for the food that would sustain it. Some of those tendrils dug in, holding the little guy in place, while others reached for something more, for something it couldn’t quite define but knew intuitively that whatever it was it was absolutely necessary. The soil around it only grudgingly made room for those fragile tendrils as they continued to push and shove their way to whatever it was that drew them onward, ever upward. It was hard work.

Eventually, the fragile tendrils of the little seed broke the surface. Ahhhh, freedom. Space all around, and light, good nurturing light. Yes, this is the place it had been looking for. The right place. The little guy shook himself out, knew that here it could grow and become whatever it was intended to be. It basked in the sunlight and in its own success at having arrived. It’s new friend, the sun, smiled on him, as it rose higher and higher. But it was warm, then warmer, and then it got hot. Whew! If his new friend didn’t back off, the small seed might not survive. It was wilting in the light, feeling drained and enervated. This was even harder work. How could it get to this place it was supposed to be, only to find the kind of heat where it might not be able to hang on, maybe not make it?

But, just in time, his new friend pulled clouds over her face, and blew a cool wind over his countenance, giving him the chance to regroup and pull himself together. Then the rain came. He needed the rain, he was so thirsty. But the rain kept falling, pounding on him, beating him into the ground, as though trying to force him back into that darkness where he had just come from. This was all so hard, so difficult, and he feared that he would drown if something didn’t happen soon.

The rain stopped and the sun came out again to dry him off. He just knew he could count on his friend. He watched her slowly descend. She was so beautiful as she threw out those wonderful colors as though she was waving good-bye. Good-bye? And the night came on. The darkness and all of its own scarey sounds. The wild creatures that came to snuffle around him, sniff at his presence, while he shivered and watched them swallow up a few of his like companions. All that hard and difficult work. Would it only end in continued darkness, either in this place he had thought was freedom, or in the belly of one of those strange and grunting four-leggeds that crept though this oh so horrible place?

No, it was getting a bit lighter, and there, far away he saw her face, coming to smile on him again. His friend. He had made it through the first day, and the first night. Maybe even, if he could be strong enough,  to his own eventual fruitfulness.

So ends the story of the little seed. It is offered as no more than food for thought. What if each word we write is a little seed? The pages of our journals, the rich soil that embraces them, holds them in place, while they grow to fruition? And we are the gardeners, tending our plots, our own stories. Will we pull them up to check to see if they are growing, have roots yet, or, are no more than weeds to be tossed on the compost heap? And just what are those four-legged creatures that come snuffling through the dark? Will we run from their approach, or stand firm to protect what we ourselves are growing? What kind of fruit will you be harvesting?

Crisp, juicy sweet apples, blushing soft peaches, or deep red raspberries that leave purple stains on palm and beneath fingernails? Ripe strawberries drizzled over fresh cake and French vanilla ice cream. I have grown them all, harvested them, and tasted their goodness. Will you?

Those Really Big Questions

I am referring to those questions that usually come somewhere between midnight and 3am on the night before some big event in our lives. The one night when you know that you really need to get some sleep so you have the energy to face the following day. The Thinkers of all ages have wrestled with these questions, have attempted to answer them, written volumes of possible solutions, even spent entire life times exploring, rejecting, and then reinvestigating probable, or improbable, perspectives, viewpoints, theories and so on. We more mediocre, middle of the road types of individuals, usually end by throwing our hands up in the air and asking (without ever believing there really is an answer), “What’s it all about?” “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” “What is my purpose in all of this?”

Those are the big questions of life, and if we have even a minimal amount of curiosity, we all get around to asking them sooner or later. If we don’t, perhaps it might be just as fruitful to ask ourselves why we are avoiding them. Why we are not curious about the manner in which all of the puzzle pieces fit together, connect, and create an understandable image of who we are and why we are whatever we are. What it is we are ultimately seeking and striving for, and if we have any kind of chance at accomplishing any, or all of that.

Life is very much like a jigsaw puzzle, thousands of small cut out pieces all stored in a cardboard box until that dark night when we can’t sleep, so we reach up on the shelf in the front hall closet, bring it down, and spill them all out on a card table and attempt to put at least a few of those pieces together, maneuvering them around to see if they even come close to fitting, sliding together, and go “ker-chunk”. The big difference is that a jigsaw puzzle is uniformly cut into a certain pattern, and the pieces are all of a similar size and shape. Our lives, on the other hand, are usually made up of large, medium sized, and small pieces, sometimes jagged edges that end abruptly for no apparent reason, or smoothed over curves that wonder off aimlessly into nowhere.

Logically, we should be able to sort all of that out chronologically. This is what happened in such and such a year, and then the following year, and so on. Have you ever tried to do that? It can be an overwhelming task without any seeming end. That’s because our lives don’t happen in a straight line. Trying to make those odd shaped pieces fit into such a preordained order is a great deal closer to insanity than most of us wish to get. Oh, you can clip off some of those jagged edges, straighten out a few of the curves, but how do you decide what to leave in, or what to take out? By the time one is done cutting and pasting it together, one might very well have lost any sense of the story that might have been there at the beginning. The picture that might eventually emerge could be no more than a nightmare, a hodge-podge of colors, as discordant as cracked bells, or just a mess that needs to be cleaned up and thrown out.

A journal or diary, could easily become the cardboard box where one keeps all of those pieces. A repository for the odd moments, bits and pieces, large and small, and everything in-between. Because there are no rules, except the ones chosen by the keeper, its a safe place to keep it all. And because one is making note of those odd moments, creating a distinct path to remembering them, the odds are much higher that the pieces that actually fit together will find each other and slide together far more easily.

Last night, I spent some time listening to a song that I find particularly haunting. Later, a friend called and asked what I’d been doing. I told her and began to explain where I first heard the song and my immediate response to it. In telling her those things, I remembered other things that pertained to my fascination and intrigue with the story behind the song. The pieces of this part of my own story ranged from dreams, a movie, an actor in the movie, the names of particular people in my life, the birth of one of my daughters, a prayer that had been answered. In other words, associations and connections ranging over thirty years of my existence. Suddenly, all those disparate pieces fit together and went “ker-chunk”.

A large portion of those Really Big Questions got answered for me last evening. It was time and I was ready to hear the answers. Ready because I have been making notes, enhancing my memory, and keeping all the bits and pieces in a journal. My friend, who by the way, had called close to midnight, was as awed as I was by how smoothly it all fit together and how much sense it made.

At the moment, I am thinking that not keeping a journal is a lot like spilling all of those puzzle pieces onto that card table face down. No clues of color, or pattern. No concept of how they might fit together, connect to one another. Blind by choice, to all the possibilities. Furthermore, if by some astronomically odd chance you might be able to fit them together, you still have to flip it all over to see the image that has emerged. Good luck with that.

That Old Telephone Game

We used to play it all the time. We’d all sit in a circle. One person would begin by whispering in the ear of the person next to her. Just a few phrases, maybe a fact or two. Then that person would whisper it into the next person’s ear, and so on around the circle. Most of the time, when the last person spoke it aloud, the whisper didn’t even closely resemble what had been said at the beginning. I always, even though I was often a participant, was shocked and amazed at how it had been altered. So were most of my companions.

Some time ago, I wrote here that we all have many voices in our heads. Those voices are often defined by the different roles we play on a regular basis. We certainly wouldn’t use the same tone, or words, to our boss as we do to our children. Nor would we speak of the same things to our pastor as we do to a parent. And its not just the tone or verbiage that changes, but often the perspective as well. The nosy neighbor would certainly get a different view than that offered to our best friend who probably hears a great deal more about the nosy neighbor than he wants to.

Imagine that circle of whispers, what we called the ‘telephone game’, going on inside your own head, and realize that is more real than not. How does that effect the function of memory? It can distort it as much as the whispered facts in that childhood game. Our memories are selective, not always complete, and partial to the belief structure we have created. In other words, we remember what we choose to remember. What is important to us, what underlines our particular set of belief systems, is stored in a convenient location, retrievable at will. And the rest? We can say it’s forgotten, but that doesn’t mean it simply disappears. It is stored somewhere, perhaps on a dark shelf at the back of a closet that is seldom used.

In her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes that nothing is ever truly lost from the psyche. That is one of those things that lodged in my brain the first time I read it, and I’ve never forgotten it because I find it terribly comforting. Not that I don’t have things I’d prefer not to remember, but I have even more I don’t wish to forget. And even those things I’d like to lose in the fog of passing years, retain a certain value and might be needed at some time in the future.

That’s where the discipline of journal keeping becomes really important. Written words can’t be changed as easily as selective memory. If one is as honest as possible, one can go back and see how memory has been enhanced, abbreviated, slightly altered, or grossly distorted because one has a written record to compare it with. Has that ever happened to me? Yes, all of it, at one point or another.

Several years ago, I was talking to a friend about an experience we had shared. I was wounded by what she recalled of the incident, and she was hurt by what she felt were my representations of the same incident. I was sure I had written about all of it, so I went back in my journal and found what I had written. To my own amazement, we were both right. We both remembered particular aspects of the experience, each from our own perspectives. When I shared with her, what I had discovered, we were both a bit embarrassed and said as much. Our memories weren’t incorrect, they just weren’t complete. In that instance, my journal saved a good friendship that continues to this day. We are both grateful.

My journal has been another piece of source material for years. It keeps a lot of those pieces of my psyche that, although not lost (as Estes points out), might be hidden on one of those dark shelves way at the back of the closet I call memory. I do occasionally go into that closet and set it to rights, but like all cleaning, it is never truly done, complete. I’m constantly storing more and finding more. At the very least, I do know where the closet is and can get at it without too much trouble.

Since moving back to the city of my birth, and being in much closer contact with my family, I have heard, “But that’s not the way it was,” on several occasions. I immediately think of that circle of children, a room filled with whispers, and the look of surprise on all faces when the whispers are spoken aloud. It saves a great deal of wear and tear on relationships and fills a lot of pages in my journal. Two good reasons to continue.

A Couple of Dirty Words

At least they are to many of us who don’t particularly feel a great deal of fondness for exercise and discipline. These two words often conjure up images of sweat, repetitive motion that creates sore muscles and a backache among other things. Something most of us would avoid if at all possible.

In my last blog, I spoke of memory as a seductive, maybe even perverted little bugger. It can be both of those things and a whole lot more. Memory can be slippery, sliding in and out of focus, moving us swiftly from one thing to another, often at the speed of light. It can also be incredibly detailed, sharp with concentrated camera-like images that make one feel as though one is in that immediate moment. Other times, it can be hazy or seemingly in slow-motion and we want to speed up to the action we know is just within the next frame. It is also the least expensive tool we carry with us to inform and teach us about the world we inhabit.

Memory just happens, right? So what do exercise and discipline have to do with a seemingly inexhaustible and unstoppable force like memory? Are you familiar with the old phrase: “Use it or lose it?” We will be celebrating my Mother’s 90th birthday in one week. Oh, the stories I could tell. But I won’t. She is, besides being a source of ongoing delight, a constant reminder to me that one of the best things I can be engaged in, at this moment and time of my own life, is writing. My journal pages are my daily work out in that arena. And, I might add, there is very little sweat or sore muscle involved in it.

Writing forces us into remembering. Memory is the result of Association. It is triggered by coming in contact with sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that we have encountered in the past. Do you remember the last time you eagerly ate Aunt Lucy’s potato salad because it looked so darn good, and how sick you were afterward? Maybe Aunt Lucy’s culinary skills are slipping, or she accidentally grabbed the wrong ingredient, but whichever, you vowed that you would not make that same mistake again. And your memory will inform you of that fact. More so, if you happened to record the incident on paper after recovering your equilibrium.

Writing, on a regular basis, helps memory. It makes a note of things and that note is then more readily available in the process of connections and associations. Remember the learning process? How it takes numerous encounters before we actually know a thing instinctively? Writing facilitates that process in numerous ways. It would be wonderful if Aunt Lucy realized where she went wrong, but she might not. That means you are on your own. The discipline of writing exercises the memory function. Actually puts it into play on a deeper, more readily accessible level.

The very action of finding words to describe anything exerts added force to the process of recall. Seeking a means to express what occurred makes a note of it. Setting down the words is another note, and rereading it is yet another. Depending on how detailed you choose to be, each moment of the incident is another note to remember. Aunt Lucy, the wonderful appetizing appearance of that bowl of potato salad, how hungry you were, how long it had been since you had eaten that particular type of salad, and of course how sick you were afterward, all the trips to the bathroom, each of these is another note in your process of remembering and learning what you need to know the next time you go to Aunt Lucy’s house.

The more notes you make, the easier it is to remember. Not just the general queasy feeling, but what led up to it. Although I am using Aunt Lucy as a sort of silly example here, without all that writing, you may actually forget. It might be another six months of day to day business before you are back at Aunt Lucy’s house, once again, looking at that bowl of potato salad (one hopes its not the same one), and all you get is a queasy feeling which you ignore and then dig in anyway. And heaven forbid that it takes several more visits before you actually connect the salad with the sickness.

Most people don’t want to take the time to write on a daily basis. It’s too much like work and that dirty word discipline. To some, it might even mean breaking out in a sweat at the very thought of  a writing exercise. If memory truly is an important tool in the learning process, can you afford to skip this one? If you are inclined to do so, please remember that Aunt Lucy might very well live to be 105 years old and feel that her greatest accomplishment is her secret ingredient for potato salad.

That Slippery Slope

Memory can be
seductive, perverted
little bugger. For most
part, nothing more
than simple tree hugger,
’til something grabs
its attention:
bit of scent wafting
through wood paneled
rooms, music played
just out of tune, or
flash of scant
sequined costumes.

Then it becomes bold,
parting dark cloak
at edges of forgetfulness.
Exposes itself, dangling
between present moments,
or rushes toward shadowy
stage of existence, undulating
against pole of time, doing
bump and grind dance
of remembrance.

Long to turn face away
from shameless display,
ignore it, but find myself
caught behind thrice-braided
cord of scent, sight, and sound,
sometimes held captive for hours,

fascinated, yes even envious,
of moves this body
can no longer make,
yet remembers. Slides
back in time with present
mind, to solo bedroom,
wood-paneled walls
swaying with smoky
shadows, bits of light
from Tiffany lamp,
moving as I moved alone
to rhythms of yet another era.

“Roll On 18 Wheeler, Roll On”

Last evening, my oldest daughter and I spent several hours downloading music onto a playlist which will accept 100 pieces of music. That seemed rather daunting to begin with, but in a matter of hours, between the two us, we had actually accomplished the task. What’s more, both of us woke up this morning, with at least another 100 suggestions popping into our heads. My daughter told me that she intends to make up another playlist to be titled, Songs My Mother Made Me Sing While I Was Growing Up. These are songs she loves as much as I do, because they bring up memories and the feelings attached to those memories.

And yes, that is where I got the idea for this particular blog. I mentioned, a few blogs ago, that mountain of Associations we carry within us. Music may be one of the quickest avenues to that Mountain, or, if you are as eclectic in your musical taste as I am, we might want to call it a Mountain Range. A big piece of our story is imbedded in the music we listen to. Each song, piece, holds some aspect of what we believe, remember, hold close and dear, as well as what triggers our anger, admiration, and our ability to love and be compassionate human beings. With each of our choices, we emphasize, and express how we understand the world around us, and how we see ourselves in that world.

That, in turn, makes my playlist a whole lot more than entertainment. It is, to a great extent, a record of my personal experiences, and some of the story of how I came to be who and what I am. When I was teaching, I would show my students how to create a time line on which they could note their experiences and create a chronology of their life. I would tell them to glue it inside their journal and when they had the time, go back and make those notations. I think I just discovered a far easier, and more entertaining manner to do the same thing. What if, say, one day a week, I go back, listen to one of those songs intently, let it take me to whatever Associations it reveals and make notes on those flashes of memory and past life. Then, later, fill in the notations with the story that hovers stoically behind them, waiting to speak? Not only of my experience, but the people, places, the emotions, feelings and thoughts the song, its words, and melody bring to mind? What a rich and colorful tapestry that would create, especially because of that eclectic taste I spoke of earlier.

There is another technique that I used in class that would fit into the above outlined exercise. Something I used to call letting the subconscious lead, or Writing Roulette.Creating the list is a simple matter of listing the titles, but this seems to lend almost too much structure to the experience. Here I would simply close my eyes and drop my pen into that list, using whatever song title the pen ended up pointing at. And yes, I know from years of experience, that the pen will very likely drop on a place I would prefer not to go. Those places are as important as the other happier ones. Knowing they exist, and wait there, is the first step in becoming aware of the meatier issues I will eventually have to deal with if I am ever to complete the list and move onto the next playlist which is already forming in my head.

Now, I will give you an example of all of this, using the title of this blog, which is a song done by Alabama. My father drove an 18 wheeler. For most of my childhood and into adulthood, he made nightly drives from our hometown to either Milwaukee or Chicago. Obviously, the song reminds me of my Dad, and the pleasure he took in what he did. I have memories of all six of us (Mom, Dad, 1 brother, and 2 sisters), packed into the car with Dad doing the driving of course. He had a flair for taking a busman’s holiday at any given moment. I can see my Mother’s shoulders dip as she settled in, hear the groans, sighs, and emphatic “yes’s” that would follow his words, “I wonder where this road leads, I’ve never been down it before.”

He would often accompany these side trips with old songs that were silly and made us all laugh and join in, no matter how many times we’d heard them. Like the one about the man who planted onions on his wife’s grave, so that when he passed by, he could pick one up and cry. Or he would regale us with some of his stories from his own childhood, like the one about his old dog Wrinkles, a bulldog that would let anyone in the house, but wouldn’t let them leave again, if they held anything in their hands. And of course, there were always the stories about his adventures, and close calls, as a truck driver.

Then there were those occasional mornings when the house would come alive with excitement because he’d driven to Chicago and stopped at the Spudnut shop. He would bring home a sack of fresh doughnuts, at least half of which had soft, thick, chololate frosting spread on them, so everyone could have their favorite. Even my Mother would smile and join in the banter as she ate her share, because it meant she didn’t have to make breakfast and clean up afterward.

That in turn, along with the story inside of the song, reminds me of how my Mother didn’t sleep well most nights, tossing and turning. Worried, I’m sure, about the responsibilities of being a temporary single parent until my Father would return. The knowledge that out there, out on the road, anything could happen and she might get a phone call, some blustering, snowy winter night that would alter her life irrevocably. And later, when I was a married adult, I would often think of her because my father had been forced into driving overland, which meant he’d be gone for a week at a time.

How occasionally, my phone would ring at 6:30 in the morning and it would be my Dad asking me if I wanted to come to the truck stop on the Interstate and have breakfast with him. We would talk about fishing, or a hundred other things. I was always eager to agree to that early morning jaunt, and time spent with my grinning parent, especially if the place had a pool table, because he always laughed out loud when I beat him.

My father died over twenty years ago, but I carry him and his memory in my blood stream. The day of his funeral, as the cortege behind the hearse that was carrying him to the Mausoleum, flowed around the curve onto the Interstate, an 18 wheeler curved onto the highway next to us from another ramp. When I saw it, I raised my arm, pumping my fist, and all four of my children eagerly did the same. The driver realized we were only about three cars behind the hearse and were obviously a part of the procession, and gave a long pull on his air horn. A very appropriate tribute to a man who was gentle, fun loving, and filled with music and playfulness. A man who would definitely grin and nod his head at the words, “Roll on, 18 wheeler, roll on.”

9/11 A Loss of Innocence

This is my journal entry from earlier this morning:

Anniversary of 9/11 today. Just writing out those numbers brings back the memory of that morning, turning on the TV, and watching in stricken horror as that plane curved around and aimed itself at the tower and then hit it. How the film was replayed again and again until the majority of viewers were dealing with some form of shock or trauma as the images penetrated to an untold depth that still remains all of these years later. I remember sitting alone, tears rolling down my face, trying to comprehend what I was seeing, trying also to push away the reality at the same time. Not wanting to know that the world I knew had just been altered irrevocably.

Far too wounded to reach out to anyone, I sat there lost in reaction, for at least an hour. Tuning out the voices of the commentators, watching that looping film clip over and over again, finally knowing that the outcome wouldn’t change, and no one would say that it was a hoax of some sick Orson Welles wannabe. It was real, it was true, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same.

The Nation, of which I was a citizen, had lost it’s innocence, had entered into a grief process that would shake it to its core. We would slowly work our way through the stages of grief: denial, anger, blame, bargaining, and eventually a re-commitment to life. Would we ever truly heal or recover? And all those individuals, family members who must pick up the pieces of shattered lives, how would they fair? And the numbers just kept mounting.

The depth of my own personal reaction came days later, as I was driving down the highway, to run some errand. I looked out my windshield and saw a plane in the sky and immediately ducked my head and began to pull over to the side of the road in fear. Then remembered that I had heard that airplanes would once again be allowed to fly. Couldn’t help but wonder how many thousands of others had a similar response to that first glimpse of silver moving through blue, a common ordinary image that had now been changed, perhaps forever.

We have gone on, as we must. But a moment of silence, an allowance for memory to honor those who were lost, and those who experienced that loss, seems an absolute necessity this morning. Nothing else will do.

Didn’t have any idea about what I would write this morning, but it certainly wasn’t the above. Yet, as soon as I typed in those numbers, I was flung back in time to that first moment of awareness. My first response was to struggle against it, but then decided to go with whatever was going on. I did. And I’m glad that I did. Although a painful thing more times than not, a loss of innocence isn’t necessarily a bad thing. That is not to say that 9/11 wasn’t an absolutely devastating and horrible experience. It was, is, in untold ways that may still be occurring, in the dark silence of our inner workings. It certainly is doing that within my own person.

But innocence is ignorance, a lack of knowledge and experience. To consciously and deliberately give it up is one thing, to have it ripped away by unknown hands is quite another. Yet, the consequence to both is the same. A new form of knowing and understanding. With that new understanding of how the world really works, we are given the opportunity to either destroy or create a different world and environment. One that is either based in compassion born of worked through resolution, or hatred, and the corresponding actions that stem from one or the other.

Which one have you chosen?