Patricia of the Front Range - QEPD

A cyber friend.

I miss you so much. The note from your daughter that you had passed away threw me against a brick wall. However, since I never physically met you I was left having to deal with a set of memories that involved a computer. This is a new phenomenon to our culture today. Mourning people we care about but whom we have never met and can't recall more than a series of emotions centered around writing and reading.

It's been several months now, since you left and you come to me often. I have these conversations with you in my head, like trying to find a way to tell you that I've decided I like carnations or to ask you what I need to know to grow a rose bush in your memory. I feel so silly that I took (am taking) your passing so hard. It takes so much to not try and get needy about missing you with your husband and daughter, mostly because I feel they need to work through their grief and I'm I'll equipped to do so. I suppose I just need to let them know that I consider you to be important too.

I still have conversations with you about faith and children, roses and photographs. I am still so touched by your acknowledgment to the assistance you felt I gave you as you graduated from college.

You are one of the women I consider as a cyber aunty to Squink. I had always hoped to get to meet you, and lament not forcing it the one time it came close.

I miss you and refer to you in my memories as Saint Patricia of the Front Range. I hope that you wouldn't find that offensive but I strongly feel that you performed miracles for me.

I still miss you.

And my favourite line is...

An August Midnight

By Thomas Hardy

I
A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II
Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I.


Yep that last line, the one hopefully in bold, which may or may not appear as such in the post since I am sending this one in.

I have a few stories coming out. One is a story about my grandfather, though it did not start out that way at all. The others are eulogies to two friends who passed away this year, both far too young, both of whom I deeply miss. 

It is interesting trying to find the patience for writing for others reading than just writing for the sake of getting something off ones chest or out of ones brain so that it is out there for out there's sake. Unlike the longlegs, moth, dumbledore and fly from the poem above, I know not the Earth-secrets to matters such as these.

I feel at a loss for words. This is not something new.  I am not one to shy from conversation, but I am shy about a different kind of words. I want to write, but I am at a loss for how to get to the words to do so. This is not writers block though, it is about the translation of verbal stories into written form that renders me quiet and reticent.

I find that literary flourishes more often detract, rather than add, to a story. They can be misleading and create mental imagery that is called in to question with later portions of a story. I suppose that my mark of a good writer is one who can tell the story in as few words as possible, convey the spirit of the story's point (or message) and lead the reader on some glorious path of whatever the path is that a reader takes.


Don't get me wrong, I have lots of stories... stories I even want to tell. I am just stuck on the part that translates a story from an oral tradition to the written form. Then, I feel compelled to wonder if the stories are just a narcissistic extension of some part of my psyche and while I think that most art forms are, I am just not sure if I am completely comfortable with this. I also wonder how I can escape it, it seems like the natural state in some ways.


blah, blah, blah

So, maybe I am thinking about what makes for good writing. Someone I know told me that writing is about taking the ordinary and "turning it up to 11"(being provocative, maybe). I see why, no one wants to read about the boring, but I would argue that turning things up to 11 can also be dishonest, especially when trying to tell stories that are personal. I can see the value, but the process of of being able to make the mundane seem vital escapes me on so many levels and for so many reasons.

When I read my favourite authors, I don't get the sense they they overplayed the story to make it more interesting. In a story in one of my favourite books there is a scene at a dinner party and while I may like the story because it directly involves my mother as one of the characters, I don't feel like the story in the book was over played. It was just told well in a written form.

I wish I could do this, write well. Tell the abundance of stories that reside within me and that do them justice... the justice they deserve.

Another friend told me that to learn how to write one must read. I think that is very true, but what have I seen come from this attempt is that I tend to copy styles. I want to find that voice which is my own, which allows the person I let read the story to hear it in their heads as if it were coming from my very mouth.

So, backtracking a bit... over the last year or so I gave poetry a chance. In general I hated poetry, I found it soul killing and overly flourished. So, I made a concerted effort to read more poems. I find that I am much more generous to poetry now. I still do not think it is a higher form of writing or some deep look into the soul of humanity. But I will state that the poems I found compelling used wonderful verbal imagery and I am more apt to stop and take a look at a poem now, than I was over a year ago when I started this path.

So, having had that learning experience with poetry.... I think I need to practice writing in that same vein.

I have a place; here.

That, sadly, was the easy part.


The hard part is that elusive what.


Where do I begin? It is a mix off too much to choose from and fear.

Annual family prom portrait

But what kind of pizza and what kind of beer?

Desire

by George Bilgere

The slim, suntanned legs
of the woman in front of me in the checkout line
fill me with yearning
to provide her with health insurance
and a sporty little car with personalized plates.

The way her dark hair
falls straight to her slender waist
makes me ache
to pay for a washer/dryer combo
and yearly ski trips to Aspen, not to mention
her weekly visits to the spa
and nail salon.

And the delicate rise of her breasts
under her thin blouse
kindles my desire
to purchase a blue minivan with a car seat,
and soon another car seat, and eventually
piano lessons and braces
for two teenage girls who will hate me.

Finally, her full, pouting lips
make me long to take out a second mortgage
in order to put both kids through college
at first- or second-tier institutions,
then cover their wedding expenses
and help out financially with the grandchildren
as generously as possible before I die
and leave them everything.

But now the cashier rings her up
and she walks out of my life forever,
leaving me alone
with my beer and toilet paper and frozen pizzas.