Yet another post inspired by Tim...
I am trying to write my home. And that keeps me from writing other things. And I am not sure that I can write it until I come to terms with it.
As much as I love the Ozarks, and the Ozarkers who live there, growing up, I was more ambivalent. I never really fit in as a child. I read too much, I had asthma. I have a non-verbal learning disability-- I don't pick up some social cues, especially non-verbal ones. And I was sensitive as a child and cried easily. Sounds like a textbook case for alienation, doesn't it?
And so I hung out with my family. My grandparents lived on the next hill. My great-grandmother across the field from them-- a quick walk around the pond. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I learned to sew. I learned about when they lived in Kansas City and in California. I admired the strength and determination that allowed them to buy the farm that we all lived on (my parents bought part of it).
But then school intruded.
Everyone I knew is dying, though, Joe Kenneth, Timothy, Amber (a girl I used to baby sit-- baby sit! She was 26), my granny, my grandparents, Gladys (my grandmother's friend).
I would love to do this well-- a cynical A Long Way from Chicago... a story that shows the beauty of the area and its people, and that shows me as, well, frankly, not a pathetic victim. I want to be a smart, engaging observer. But the problem is, of course, the reality of who I was. So really, the first character I have to create is myself as a child. And that is a major reconstruction job.
So, of course, I am paralyzed. I write about what I would write if I were to write. And I really only manage to write that here. So.
There you go.
2 comments:
The hard part about writing your home, as that's essentially what I'm doing in my poetry, is that you've got to come to terms with the reality of who you really where and who your family members really are. You, like them, ain't and weren't pretty. So your job is to find what makes the beer drinking grandfather beautiful. Is it that he slips you ten dollars out on the back porch at Christmas? You've to got to deconstruct for meaning, then reconstruct meaningfully. And it's hard not to feel guilty for playing with people's lives.
I'd love to read what you have to say about the Ozarks. Send me a draft any time.
I agree. It's hard. It's taken me years to write anything close to the truth about my family, because it all filters through the "little girl" lens. It's even harder when filtered through the "sassy teenager" lens.
Tim's right about tearing it down and rebuilding meaning. I think it takes an awful lot of bad writing before the truth begins to surface. At least it does for me. Family writing is tough.
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