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I've been thinking a lot about my hands lately.
They gather and report information about the world, communicate, build up, tear down, manifest Art, and so very much more. Thank you, my hands
For first handshakes
for handshakes that reach across the years
for hugs
for caresses
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Postcards To Younger “Arts”
The Rules:
I will only send back generalized advice and encouragement. I will be very careful that my words will not cause Younger Art to choose different life paths than the ones he has already chosen. I am happy that my life has brought me to where I am today. Each section is a separate post card sent just to the Art of that age.
Art Before Age 8
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To Art’s teacher: We both know that Art can’t read yet, that he has no math yet either. Both of these things will come to him in the fullness of time. I know that you and the other teachers who found Art in their classrooms did the best they could for him, but we both know that he needed a massive one-on-one intervention to succeed. He will receive the help he needs, in time. Woul…
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If A House Could Talk
On the last day of October,
An old man and his wife
Sat together
In a small lakeshore cottage.
An all-night rain
Thank you for letting us know your house, and Laurie and you together there and what you have been through, with the house, with Laurie, with your life. This is so powerful Art. I have always felt a level of writing ability coming from you that is from some higher level...I don't know how to explain it, but your writing is a gift, and like I said powerful (in a quiet way). I look forward to everything you write.
What a beautiful house you have, with all its memories and surroundings.
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Above: Detail of a painting by Mireille Davis Texier, author of A Provençale Childhood
When your story gallops away from you and you can no longer get your head around it, here’s one way to shrink it down to a manageable size.
Try writing your story in three sentences. Each sentence addresses a specific question:
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From my "Carolina" notebook comes the following list:
Turntable
Going out tonight
Groundhog
Mondegreen
When I came across this list recently, I stared for a long time at the word "mondegreen." What did it mean? Did I actually write that? Is it a real thing? The word was very legible, written in my own hand, yet I had no idea what it meant or why I might have written it. So I typed "mondegreen" into a browser window and learned--or apparently, relearned--that a mondegreen is a mishearing of a phrase, often a song lyric or a poem. For example:
Being a Nerd, I tend to look up lyrics I am unsure of - so not much experience with "Mondegreens". I tried to dredge one up from memory, but failed.
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The Poetry of Praise
My collection of writers’ notebooks preserves not only my own scribblings but also the blackboard-perfect handwriting of my mother, the self-assured script of her father, the thrillingly chaotic lines of a 95-year-old artist; and the notes of other writers whose struggling penmanship betrays their advanced age. This weekend, while nosing around in search of a writing prompt that I could use in an upcoming workshop, I pulled out a notebook that I thought was my own and opened it to find somebody else’s ramblings—semi-coherent thoughts, often regretful, sprawling across the page and trailing off or ending, abruptly, in midsentence, only to repeat themselves a few pages later. I sighed, put the notebook away, and opened another—whereupon I encountered a similar morass, only this time the notebook was mine. Some of the paragraphs made sense, and some didn’t.
Now I ask you: What could possibly explain…
and now we can finally throw out the booklets (we have a huge pile of them in our cellar next to the washing machine)...because we can never find the one we really needed and then we look it up online and 'they' have them all there!
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Speaking of Dialogue
True story: In 1976, when I was 22 years old, I had dinner with the actor Jon Voight and his wife, Marcheline Bertrand, in their room at the Park Lane Hotel in New York City. Voight was starring in a production of Hamlet that was about to go into rehearsals at a theater on the campus of Rutgers University in New Jersey. My date was the director of the play, a guy we'll call Frank. The Voights’ baby, Angelina, was asleep in the next room. I don’t remember much about this event. I remember that I wore a long floral print shirtwaist dress that fell to my ankles and platform sandals, and that Marcheline was beautiful and shy. I remember the men did most of the talking. I remember standing over the sleeping baby’s crib—I think this was at the invitation of Marcheline, as in “Would…
That conversation felt very real. Like what I really think about Trump and sometimes capture in my daily journals. It's very personal and sometimes can be scary. Not just a few times, I've caught myself writing something and thinking, boy, if they ever actually read this, I'll be in deep shit.
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If Your House Could Speak, What Would It Say?
To whom would it speak?
What emotions or sentiments would it express? What desires? What regrets?
For the exercise, "house" can be your present home, or a previous one. It can be a real house, or a fictional one.
Write about 500 words.
ahhhh that house, stately yet comfortable, big front porch with columns but not imposing...instead welcoming
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Belated thanks to Mary Labrecque for last Friday's poetry workshop. It was so much fun! I'd love to do more poetry, and I welcome all suggestions for other workshops--fiction, journaling, whatever.
This is a poem I wrote several months ago. My inspiration was a story by Linda Morse, a writer in the Thursday group.
Sue
Oh, I had a horse and her name was Sue
And she always did what I wanted her to
Except when she didn’t.
Nice piece, Art!