Tag: #amherst writers & artists

Postcard to myself

Attachment-1(40)Dear 19-year-old Me,

You were SO excited, do you remember? I mean, you were on the move and it wasn’t New York, or even Chicago—but it was somewhere—another state, albeit in the absolute wrong direction, away from the coast, even further from the Atlantic you dreamed of living near one fine day.

I’m writing to remind you of the sheer newness, the joy of that. Do you remember? Learning a new city, by getting lost in its flat expanses, gridded broad streets radiating out from a center point, the grand procession of green-lawned parks marching up Meridian Avenue, dotted with statues, obelisks, monuments of wars long past…one-way streets and diagonals and even a traffic circle!

Remember cruising the city in Georgia McGuire’s shiny red Mercedes Benz—parking with flashers on in truck zones or in alleys to run contact sheets into Ad agencies and design studios? You pretended the car was yours, and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” played in the sound track in your bubbly young mind.

Back then, it seemed money and a fancy foreign car might add up to happiness, or something like it.

At the end of the work day it was back to your old wood-grained Chrysler wagon, drinking 3-for-$1 beers with Jane and her friend—was it Amy? Angie?—who were in their late twenties, and regulars, so no one carded you even though you looked about fourteen, so fresh-faced, even with makeup on.

There was an air of possibility surrounding you like a bubble that humid Indianapolis summer. Even though nothing really happened—well, there was that brief crush on Georgia’s handsome young son (whose name has vanished now into the summer haze). He was tall and dark-haired and had a sweet slow Alabama drawl and the careless manners of someone born with money. The tobacco-chewing habit—the way he spit the chaw into a coke bottle like that was normal—was a crush-breaker. But still. For a few heart-thumping flirtatious days, you’d dipped into fantasy the way he dipped into Skoal. Imagined being part of the family, rich, unconcerned about the price of a Mercedes or a mansion. Because back then, happiness seemed like something you could maybe buy, if you were lucky. Something you could purchase and keep, like a trinket from some far-off hotel gift shop. Something just out of reach for a girl like you.

If I could really send you a postcard now, I’d tell you to sit and feel the pain of what you were running from, because happiness was folded underneath all along. You just needed to take your foot off that accelerator. Slow down. Unpack.

Love from your future self,

E

 

Note: this was written from a prompt where each person chose (at random) a postcard, and wrote a “postcard” to an earlier version of themselves; we wrote for 10 minutes, and the above is a quick polishing of the fastwrite back to the past.

heartshaped

IMG_3693

(short fiction)

Heartshaped

Vaguely heartshaped, that’s how you described her face, and I always imagined her—with my child’s-eye, literal imagining—as having a face the color of a pink valentine’s candy heart, a face with a pointy chin and also big eyes made of chocolate, because you said hers were brown and melty.

That’s how I saw her, my grandmother I never knew.

The photos were all lost in the legendary house fire, so I never got to see her, how she really looked. I used to long to be able to visit her, like my friend Annie did her Nana. I thought that the first thing I’d do was crawl in her lap and tell her how much you missed her and how much you talked about her. It seemed that would please her, and the way your face looked when your talked about how her singing made the moon rise, how she played a mean game of cribbage and could bait a hook with one hand  made me want to know her, and please her.

Later, when I was near-grown, everyone began to remark how like her I was. I used to pull my dark curls away from my face and look for signs of the tell-tale sweetness emerging, but to me, the eyes reflecting back in the mirror were cold as the glass itself, cold as any Canadian January. My face itself was more of a pillow shape. I began to wonder what sort of sieve memories run through, to sugar them so.

Much later still, describing you to my own children, I honeyed your brown hair, I made your eyes the color of the ice on a bright day in March, that fresh slate color, and I made your hugs as warm as raisin-oatmeal cookies fresh from the oven. I waited for them to pepper me with the questions I once would have asked.

My children were raised on your photographs, though. Raised, too, on reality TV and iPods and textbooks, not fed random poetry and left to wander woods and libraries alone, the way I was.

I thought I was doing the right thing, educating them, drilling them with the math facts that I myself could never pin down, the after-school tutoring, summer enrichment programs, sending them to the Catholic school for good discipline and rigor.

But I think I made them blind.

 

 

This short piece was written from a prompt in workshop, using the Amherst Writer’s and Artists method.

 

 

 

 

back through time

Lake Michigan sunset from New Buffaloback through time

I lumber back through time unrooted
over boulders gap-eyed water glinting pink sunset
unrooted I slide through mud
into sand into lake
stone wash hillsides caving in
I am caving in
all I have to hold onto
all I can carry
this basket, sweet-grass woven

Inside is my pacifer
rubbery round I sucked hard to make the world
go away, and a half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights
that got me through the night
and my mother’s dark gaze, and the way I waited and waited
but she died when I left
In the sweet, sweet basket, a satin ribbon, blue of my father’s
wave and smile from the hospital bed in Kettering
I want, I think, to keep that?

I want to keep the window seat and the slanting roof top
on Cornell Place, keep it in the basket so I can climb back
lie, watch the sky with handfuls of clouds sliding by
I want to keep the way you said “why do you think you’re crazy?”
I want to keep the puzzlement of that
sweet belief sparkling
floating like golden moats in the sunset
I want belief, a thin film of it like magic dust

I want to carry my children’s laughter, and every single hug
and the brick of anger I lobbed through the glass window of us
I want to keep that, too, to remind me
broken is something to keep, too
But mostly I want to keep those giggles that skipped like stones
across the mirror lake
that shone like a string of lights in a summer garden
I want to keep every purring swirl I ever held
and even the ghost who stood there
watching me heartbeating fast, pretending sleep

It’s my basket. I can keep what I want.

 

––––

The above was written in a twelve-minute fastwrite from a prompt developed by one of my classmates at Amherst Writers & Artist’s Workshop Leader training in Chicago this September. Along with my fellow students, I delved into the AWA method, which you can read more about here. I was drawn to the method, based on the work of Pat Schneider, because of her bedrock belief that every single one of us is born with creative genius, that EVERYONE is a writer/storyteller (regardless of educational level, age, or socio-economic status). Writing that moves us, inspires us, makes us feel, makes us laugh, makes us cry—such writing is the result of connecting to our deepest voices. Our true selves.

I already knew this to be true—that everyone has within them a unique and creative voice. I learned it from the skilled leaders and community at Cincinnati’s Women Writing for (a) Change, where I found my voice (which I had all but lost) in core classes, workshops, and retreats.

This summer it became clear to me that what I most wanted is to learn ways to unlock that magic for others. All kinds of others. People who aspire to write books, people who have written many books, people who want to write poems, people who don’t think anyone wants to hear their stories, people who think no one is listening, or that no one cares. The act of expression—genuine, authentic expression—is an act of liberation. For me, it is transcendent.

Writing is when I connect to my soul-self.

At AWA training, my classmates and I learned about taking creative risks, about creating an environment that welcomes the seeds of new ideas and allows craft to bloom. It was a transformational week.

I’m happy to say I’m a certified AWA Workshop Leader now!
Tonight I led my first small-but-mighty AWA-method workshop at Clifton Cultural Arts Center.

I think I will put tonight in my basket, and keep that, too.