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A group of talented people magically lift and pull me forward.
Different path’s led us to this place,
Different stories hold our attention,
Different words leave our hands.
The title carved in stone and polished through time “Writer” cannot be self-appointed, it is too heavy.
I belong with a tribe of writers – perhaps someday it will be earned.
I don’t even remember the first Time that I did it.
It was no big deal, not like forming some kind of habit.
Over Time I did it a little more often, I quietly killed some.
Sometimes it was fun, mostly just doing it out of occasional boredom.
Suddenly one day I was driven to obsession.
Murdering in mass and serial slaughtering consumed me.
Death now burned my eyes as they opened in the early hours.
Random methods to choke, smother and drown Time became routine.
Driving the need to kill Time and feed my aging Dragon.
She hugged me goodbye unlike a stranger would.
The nice little lady gave me a long hug, as if she felt or understood it should be, that I was someone more than a stranger.
Slowly looking up, quietly my grandma asked, “And who are you?”
Writing, I began to write after my dog Sarrah died.
For reasons unknown to me this became my way to cope with losing her and to absorb my time. Writing was never ‘My Thing”, I actually hated it while in school. After a year of writing daily I began taking classes, attending writing seminars and even started a blog.
It seems she led me down another path, perhaps one without an end.
Moving in for their first kiss he could smell a light floral scented shampoo in her long curly wild black hair, hair that covered the back of his hand. This hand that had been slowly caressing her cheek, the edge of her ear lobe and the line of her jaw as it disappeared from view. Huge brown eyes shrouded by heavy black eyeliner seemed to sparkle and melt as they seductively closed and opened with slight hand movements. He could almost taste the smokey red wine on her breath as she purred the words with slurred S’s “Sex is Stupid.”
Bouncing back into his chair, following a huge gulp of beer, he began laughing. “Yes, yes I suppose it is stupid – and if it wasn’t so fucking awesome, I’d consider giving it up.”
We were off to explore a college.
Jeff and I acquired the correct paperwork, our parents approved it.
Being seniors in high school this accepted right of passage allowed for a few additional days of absence.
All of our individual teachers initialed the forms and counselors filed them with praises.
It was the best ski trip of the season!
I took another Writing Class at the Hugo House,
“Asking The Right Questions: Self-Inquiry in Memoir” by Suzanne Morrison.
She started by having us write answers to the following questions and then share our answers.
– Write one sentence about the story we are or want to be writing. “My story is a reflection on learning about life, from living with a dog.”
– A memoir we love. “A Big Little Life by Dean Koontz”
– A song we love. “Into the Mystic by Van Morrison”
– A word we love. “Perhaps”
Then after some discussion about how to dig for questions and capturing feelings by writing about “Glimmers” (moments that cause recollection and reflection in sensory detail) we were given our first prompt.
1 – Write about a Glimmer that comes to mind that has occurred in 2014.
“Winter had many days shrouded in thick dense fog. The mysterious cool wet precipitation now causes my hip to sing with searing pain, before I even go outside. Walking in the fog makes me recall numbing pain from football hits, stinging burns from Kung Fu kicks and the flames from a car accident that I could not walk away from.
2 – Take one thing from your writing that links back in time, ten years or more.
“The slow motion of impacting into the side of a pickup came suddenly from the left. Deafening explosions of glass and metal distracted enough to not anticipate running into a little house on the right. Crunching wood replaced the sharp memory from a few seconds earlier, only to be erased by the fire where our windshield used to be. Laying in the mud watching the burning car with my feet still in it seemed like a fitting end, at least it was quiet.”
3 – Write about something from the second Glimmer that embarrasses you.
“Being an only child makes it easy to be your Mother’s favorite. A certain burden comes along with being the chosen one, one that does not allow for making bad choices. Choices that put you in the hospital after a silent ride in an ambulance, after a noisy life-changing event. Parents do not like life changing events in the early morning hours, on Mother’s Day.”
4 – Write about something that has happened to someone else that is tied to your last writing.
“My friend Dan decided not to wear his seatbelt, he never did. Driving too fast in the foggy drizzle to get home a little sooner seemed to him like the thing to do. The other older driver of the pickup shared that perspective and had a similar smelling breath.”
The next few were given as homework.
5 – Reminds you of a subject you’re interested in.
“I’ve always been drawn to cars, in particular muscle cars of the sixties. I also have what my grandfather called “A heavy foot” after my mom asked him how I did when he taught me to drive his pickup, the summer after sixth grade, on the gravel roads near his farm in North Dakota.
6 – Something that you don’t understand.
“Despite several documented examples of getting into trouble and a few painful episode’s resulting from traveling fast, I still have a love affair with the nasty bitch we call Speed. All forms of logic and punishment cannot seem to make me completely part with this mistress of blood rushing excitement and the tastes of adrenaline laced moments.
7 – Riff on one word or phrase that has potency.
“I still have a love affair with the nasty bitch we call Speed. I’m not sure what to do with this one but Love is a drug and perhaps so is Speed.”
August 2012 I attended a writing workshop titled “Making a Personal Metaphor from the Natural World” by the writer Matt Love at the Alder Creek Farm Conservation Site in Manzanita, Oregon.
Another of Matt’s prompts that day – was to use different blue crayons and draw a body of water resembling self.
My crude picture was a side view of a river meeting the ocean (I was thinking about the mouth of the Columbia River colliding with the Pacific Ocean between Washington and Oregon).
– Then name it
I came up with “Change of Flow”
– The next step was to write some thoughts about our sketch.
I wrote:
I am at a point in my life where, like the mouth of a river meeting the ocean, flow has changed.
No longer going in a predictable direction, now part of a more random, changing… Freedom.
The largely wilder side of uncertainty is both calming and stressful, at the same time.
This change of flow is unique in its position of looking into the future, while looking backward.
The gravitational nature of this place in uncontrolled.
– Next we were to go back and underline the top three words.
– Then write a sentence summarizing our thoughts.
“I am at a point in my life where, like the mouth of a river meeting the ocean… Flow has Changed”
August 2012 I attended a writing workshop titled “Making a Personal Metaphor from the Natural World” by the writer Matt Love at the Alder Creek Farm Conservation Site in Manzanita, Oregon. This one-day experience was packed with many memorable moments, but the last couple of days keep bringing me back to one of the last writing prompt lessons of that day.
From Matt’s “Nature Metaphor Inventory List” prompts – we were to write down what first came to mind (and a bit why it was chosen):
Animal –
Bird – Eagle (don’t flock)
Water Creature –
Tree – Cedar (stay consistent)
Season – Autumn (cooling time)
Landform – Mountain (largely impenetrable)
Form of Precipitation – Fog (hard to see thru)
Astrological –Comet (flash & go away)
Element (gold, copper, etc.) –
Some I didn’t have a strong answer for in the short time given for each, so I skipped them.
Then we were to choose the one that best describes our individual writing style and expand on it, I chose Fog.
Here’s my list of why, because I:
– Use a lot of questions (many go unanswered)
– Don’t follow a linear path
– Use punctuation… approved and Not, to affect! Cadence
– Confuse those not paying attention
– Like to intrigue and cause readers to wander and wonder
– Find mischievous pleasure in drawing a reader in (once you start walking in fog, you have to keep going)
– Hide small treasures for those who think
I’m not certain how accurate this was/is but it has been very foggy here for a few days and I kinda like it.
Can Bryan Write? 