“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” – Jack Kerouac
Who hasn’t read On the Road? Kerouac understood, as I hope you do, that each of us is the hero, in my case heroine, of our own story. My journal is my book, and sometimes in recollection, I am truly amazed.
simple notebook pen
soliloquy on the page journal diary
a day once removed to march cadence on blue lines fill each empty page
siphoning angst hurt experience clears the mind for new adventure
My journal is the running memoir of my life, my confidant, my Wailing Wall, canvas for creative thoughts, and so much more.
“Never mind the misses and the stumbles…” “The habit of writing for my eyes only is good practice, it loosens the ligaments.” - Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf's quote hits home for me, and if you would write, I hope for you. There is something so freeing about writing just for yourself with no deadlines. It doesn’t need to be perfect; it’s a conversation with and exploration of yourself for yours eyes only now or forever unless you decide to share it.
Saying you want to write is not enough, you must write it. The truth is so much writing is just mental gymnastics. A skater skates, a harpist harps, a writer writes. It is the practice that perfects.
Day after day, with no one to see, no one to hear, and no one to applaud, I rise and go to my practice. I write in my journal.
It's Throw Back Thor's Day, and as I looked back through old photos, I was reminded of the pre-digital world I grew up in.
Yes, there were cameras, but not everyone had one. Our family didn't get one until around the time, we shipped out for England in 1955.
Before that and even after that, we went to the local portrait studio. These studio trips were always reserved for birthdays and Easter and always required a new outfit. And then there's the one in the tacky flower girl dress.
The ones in color, were hand painted for an extra fee. Color cameras were neither readily available nor affordable to the public til mid to late 50's. We made do with the old Brownie and actually had an 8mm color movie camera before we got the Kodak color camera, #TBT
I was scared, but only I knew it. Momma combed my hair into long curls with a comb dipped in cold water – think Shirley Temple. A quick breakfast in the kitchen, and then I walked to the bus stop with the kids I’d just met and barely knew, and took a bus to the first school I’d ever attended.
Once there, my new friends left me to go to their classes saying just ask for the principal, so I asked the first grown up I saw.
I was determined not to cry, but the butterflies in my stomach made me feel like throwing up my breakfast. I swallowed hard before answering this kind and smiling lady’s question of why my parents weren’t with me. “Momma doesn’t drive and she’s home with my little brother. Daddy went to work at 5 this morning.
I have all my papers and stuff, and I’m supposed to give them to the principal.” I handed her the envelope full of information I could not yet read.
She took me in hand, and I eventually found myself in a first grade classroom with another young woman introducing me to a class of yet more strangers.
Sitting at a desk in a classroom listening to the teacher talk felt somehow right, and at lunch, everyone wanted to know me because I was from Texas. They all seemed to think that all Texans carried guns, rode horses and knew John Wayne personally.
The ride home that first day was reflective as I looked out the window at the verdant countryside. I knew that my entire world had changed, and I would never be the same. Some of my new friends were sorry for me, for in their eyes no one cared enough to go with me. Some of my friends thought it was cool that I could go out into the world alone and unafraid.
I was a little sad for myself, too, but I was also little bit proud; I knew I was okay alone among strangers. It would stand me in good stead as time and again, I walked into a brand new school and enrolled myself.
Although I enrolled in February, with the teacher’s help, I caught up to the rest of the class before school let out for the summer in June.
Texas didn’t allow anyone to start school unless they were six the day school started, and as my birthday is in February, I was not in school when we got to England. That was not to last.
Daddy came home and said he found out I could go to the base school, regardless. So here it was February; the school year was half over; there was no kindergarten back then for me; I didn’t even know my alphabet.
“No problem,” Daddy tells Mom. “I’ll teach her.”
We began after breakfast, skipped lunch, and through tears and threats of no supper either if I didn’t get it all learned that day, I did it. I learned to write and recite my alphabet and numbers 1-100, and spell small words in a day. We went down to the main dining room by 6:30.
Sunday we practiced and practiced and practiced some more. The next day was Monday and would be my first day of school.
There were some white bread sandwiches on the coffee table. They were butter with cucumber and butter with ham; cut into fours with the crusts neatly trimmed away; and neatly stacked on a beautiful old plate.
We devoured them all, and Mom put us too bed. I could hardly sleep, and when she left the room, I crept to the window to look out. As I look back, I know now why I liked that shot in Harry Potter so much. The one where he sits on a large stone window sill looking out through the frosted window of his new home high in the castle.
I didn’t need waking up the next morning, I was ready to go before anyone and waiting impatiently at the door. We went down the rickety stairs to the better stairs and found our way to the kitchen, where the maids were scurrying around the long table delivering breakfast to our house mates.
At that time, Wadenhoe House was managed by Mrs. Boothroyd (Mrs. B) and with two exceptions, all the rooms and suites were let out to military families. The exceptions were a Scot and a Pole (daddy's terms). The Scot, when in his cups, would change into kilts and serenade the whole house with his bagpipes whether they liked it or not. The Polish man was quiet and read a lot.
Mrs. B introduced us around the table, and asked how we liked our eggs. I watched as the cook cracked these huge eggs into a bowl and beat them with a fork and milk before putting them into the large iron pan on the old wood stove that occupied half the wall at then end of the kitchen.
Later when Mom found out they were goose eggs, she never ate them again.
It began in San Antonio, Texas. My Mom married Daddy when I was 3, and we all lived in a small apartment in a Mrs. Steele’s comfy old house where the roosters perched on her grand piano and generally made a mess everywhere.
We weren’t there long since the minute Daddy married Mom, he got on the waiting list for base housing. Lackland AFB was great. All the families were young, and I suddenly had tons of friends to run and play with until the orders came.
I was six and my brother was two when we boarded a ship out of New York bound for England. I was seasick from day one. My most vivid memory is lying on a bunk and staring at a porthole of dark water and trying hard to keep down the saltines I was nibbling on and praying it would be over soon. The crossing took nine days and Daddy had to stay in the men’s quarters, so we only saw him at meal time.
We spent only a day in London, and I remember a parade. Mom got a picture of the Queen, well the back of her head. The next afternoon, we got in a black car and headed out of town to a little village called Oundle then on to Northhamptonshire. It’s about 70 plus miles but with no highways, it was well after dark when we arrived at Wadenhoe House.
I felt like we were in a scary movie. This huge castle loomed in the night as the fog rolled along the ground all around it and us as we got out of the car. Daddy, ever the practical joker pointed at the head carved above the entrance and said, “That is the ghost of Wadenhoe.” Mother told him to cut it out, but I had to pee too bad to be scared.
An old woman, Mrs. B, opened the door and welcomed us; showed us to our flat (English for apartment); told us what time breakfast was served in the kitchen and left.
I love Faery Tales. I read them and had them read to me when I was a child, and I had my favorites. I was not the princess. I liked the regular girls best before they gained that status. Cinderella and Beauty were the daughters of merchants/storekeepers; Red Riding Hood was a woodcutter’s only child; the heroine of Rumpelstiltskin was a miller’s
daughter – and so on.
When I liked the ending as in Rumpelstiltskin I went with the story. Of course I was the miller’s daughter who triumphed over the wicked little creature who would steal my child.
Red Riding Hood I revised when I read it to myself. I was she, but in my version the wolf did not eat me, because I was so tough and so smart. It was I who rescued my grandmother just before my father arrived.
I pondered my propensity to make stories including faery tales suit my ideal – walk on clouds so to speak or 'head in the clouds' as momma put it. I wrote the below poem in one of those moments when I had fallen through those insubstantial clouds to the reality of a disabled child and a sick husband, and...
I started my cozy on the 14th and wrote 2-3 chapters and then I got sidetracked. The following week lead up to my 65th birthday of February 23. I found myself celebrating the whole week with various friends over long breakfasts, lunches, happy hours at favorite places all culminating with a great Sunday afternoon at my friends' Daniel Day Gallery-Dream Mecca Studio. Daniel Day and Melody Musik truly are a Renaissance couple.
The Gallery is a unique venue of live music (blues); art; sculpture; photography; handcrafted jewelry, clothing, and accessories; vintage clothing; and more than I have space to tell. Every Sunday afternoon from 2-6 there's a party that overflows in beautiful weather onto the large patio out back. It's BYOB and a cover charge of $12 covers the food hot from the grill, and pays the band. This Sunday, the sun came out to shine on all of us and the Jeff Jensen Band from Memphis rocked the house. Melody Musik who plays Clarinet in her band (yes, she's a musician, too) played a Happy Birthday solo just for me.
My week long celebration did include a lot of writing just not on my Cozy. I've been journaling as if my life depended on it. My journal is the running memoir of my life, and good or bad there is always something to write at any given moment. I remember reading Alice Koller's 1991 book An Unknown Woman, which is basically her journal during a period of self examination.
I feel I am at that place in my life now. I've toyed with writing my own 'unknown woman' memoir tentatively titled A Not Yet Famous Woman - A Memoir, or considering the content maybe A Not Yet Infamous Woman - A Memoir.
Being a Pisces, I am two fish. One goes with the flow wherever it goes; one fights its way upstream. I've no doubt that for some years now, I've taken the easy float with the current style of getting by. But now, I see my mother in her 80's, and know I may have 20 or more years left to me. It's not enough to go with the flow anymore. In rereading my old journals and journaling anew I'm exploring that fish that knew when to fight the current - not every day, but when it mattered.
At 65 I'm saying out loud what I've always known. It's not enough to exist. I've become a woman of a certain age, and I ask myself - Now What?
I have so much to do, but I’d rather sit and sip and watch the snow fall.
It started slowly as I left America’s Best with my new contacts. The snowflakes were so sparse, I smiled thinking ‘much ado about nothing,’ and stopped at Publix on my way home. I didn’t need anything, but it was on my way. I picked up a few things that were on special, but even the express lane had a very long line.
I don’t do lines unless it’s an emergency – this was not. I abandoned my cart and went out the door into snow falling so thick the distant skyline was gone. Birmingham drivers have difficulties driving in the rain, forget snow.
I decided home was the best place to be and soon. I have everything I need there for the cat and me: a pantry and fridge full of food; good wine, cold beer, a stack of books to read (courtesy of the library); candles and oil lamps to read by if the power goes; battery TV for the news.
I also have a lot of work to do: a manuscript to edit for a client, paintings for my March show, a poem for an April contest, but it could all wait.
It would all still be there when this fleeting wonder of nature stops and fades to memory and a few digital photographs that cannot begin to capture the magic of it all. I put on a few layers of clothes, changed flats to socks and Sketchers, pulled the old beret down over my ears, and headed out for a walk with my camera.
Southside is a small village nestled comfortably in the city limits of Birmingham, Alabama, and I was not the only villager out and about to seize the moment: children sledded down their front yard’s hill on 15th Avenue encouraging their Mom to do the same; my Asian neighbor was out with her umbrella, sometimes sunbrella now turned ‘snowbrella’; the dog walker, whose large dog pretty much walks her, smiled as the dog tiptoed across the lawn; the new Yankee couple strolled by holding hands laughing at being given the day off for snow; and others too numerous to list. Kindred souls all – out to play in the snow – smell the proverbial roses.
Home now. I’m writing this by the window of my aerie, sipping a steaming cup of mulled wine, occasionally glancing at the still falling snow on the street below and contemplating the manuscript awaiting my red pen.
Tomorrow the sun will melt it all; Sunday the rain will wash what's left of it all away. Monday, it'll be as if it never was.
It's a rather gray and stormy but pleasant day. I'm sitting at the window of my aerie; editing/critiquing the first 50 pages of an area writer's memoir; enjoying the journey; taking an occasional sip of brew; and glancing out at the rain. It doesn't get much better than this.
I low-balled my price because, right now, I just need to earn as much cash as I can. I usually charge $3-6 per double-spaced page for light edit and one page critique - quoted $2 on this one. I could get more in Atlanta and even more in New York, but this is Birmingham, Alabama - a very different market.
Editing is a kind of writing, too. It is easier to look at another's words and know how it can be better. It is sometimes slow-going, because as with my own work, I read certain passages aloud to hear their cadence. They have to sound right. After all we're telling a story and if it cannot sing to us when read aloud, it will never resonate on the page. When I'm through, I'll go back to editing my own words with a fresh eye, and a little more objective hand.
The author is a little stiff, but he does have a story to tell. I'm enjoying the read and hope that with my objective help, he will be encouraged to finish the manuscript and might even see publication.
oine, of our own story. My journal is my book, and sometimes in recollection, I am truly amazed.
first 50 pages of an area writer's memoir; enjoying the journey; taking an occasional sip of brew; and glancing out at the rain. It doesn't get much better than this.