The Pink Album

I'm currently reading Stephen King's, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft, as my walking-on-the-treadmill book. The book begins with his high praise for Mary Karr, and her novel The Liar's Club. He writes with shades of awe and envy for the "totality" of the recollections of her childhood being "an unbroken panorama." As a prelude to the story of his own childhood, which he says was "herky jerky," it seems to me self-preservation had a say in his choice of memories.

This first part of the book he says is "not an autobiography" but calls it the "C.V." He gives the reader snapshots of his life. After reading all about his childhood and his early struggles to write and succeed, I felt this was an author I never knew much about, only that I loved his work. By the time I reached the passages describing his mother's death, I was bawling and howling for the pain it laid before me. I just kept walking, sobbing, with my head down, tears falling on my sneakers and the black "ground" moving ever backward.

"Forget your personal tragedy. We are bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it - don't cheat with it." Ernest Hemingway.

The word "snapshots" reminded me of a project I've launched headlong into. I started scanning hundreds of photos from one of our oldest family albums, "The Pink Album." Making sure everyone in the family has access to these pictures on CD as real film degrades, pictures are lost, torn and fade, is important to me as the youngest child of nine. It's one of the little things I can take care of, seeing how I'm "aimless and fiddle-diddling" on the computer all day anyway. Picture five hundred eighty-eight or so has hit my hard drive with a thud and I'm looking forward to being done. I've four more albums to conquer yet. Wish me and my hard drive luck.

When I began the project I didn't expect the head trip it would take me on, filtering through memories - - The Pink Album Time Machine. This album starts back when my folks were in their mid-thirties, 1950-something. The black and white film does great justice to the time, way more than color film could have. There are pictures that make my parents look like something from The Grapes of Wrath, sans the dust storm. They were certainly as hard-pressed, poor and struggling, with too many kids.

Each child growing up, picture after picture, there's an evolution of each happy kid to teenager. Then some change would occur in each one. It was the sixties then the early seventies, the hippie days with alcohol, marijuana and worse. You could almost see the moment when the times and some "thing" overtook their lives. From one Christmas to the next, a once great, smart kid turned drunk or drug-addicted, or somehow now despondent, or uncaring about themselves. Then they'd just stop being in the pictures altogether. The older siblings then gone from the house, away on their own. They were either running off across county to escape responsibilities or desperately wanting to simply be gone from a small mill town. The worst of all? Getting married to cover the cost of a life carelessly tossed like a coin without first checking to see whether it landed heads or tails. All of us girls did that, me included.

"Memories may escape the action of the will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place." John Muir

I remember in these photos my parents turning from what I understood to be loving and responsive to no more pictures together, and no more kisses good-bye in the morning. Each picture showing how far apart, the body language now so obvious to my seeing eyes. A picture of our old kitchen reminds me of the day Mom threw a plate full of breakfast and an orange and white coffee cup at Dad's head across the room and missed. I loved that cup. It was iridescent when held up to the sun, all shimmery like an eggshell with orange stripes. I might have been five and I just couldn't understand why. She was always doing things like that, but there was no one to make her stand in the corner for being naughty. Dad never gave up but he knew when to walk away.

All the screaming and yelling was nothing compared to the silence, when I'd hide under the dining room table until Dad got home. I was so little at the time, I fit in the small space where all the inside legs came together, maybe eighteen inches square. Fear was a big part of my life before I started kindergarten and my days became filled with something other than soap operas. At this point in time, my oldest sister would frequently visit Mom with her children in tow. She always had a slap for me like I was her kid and not Mom's, and I hated her for it. She always had a lie to tell, too, and she and Mom were perpetually on the outs. Perhaps if she'd realized I'd become a writer, she might have thought twice before laying a hand on me and lying her ass off? Too damn late now.

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!" John Irving

This album takes me through my entire early life and family history as I look at the snapshots. Experts on family dynamics say that the youngest child does not have the most accurate memories of events. Mine may not be accurate, but they formed who I am today. These memories are where I live in my head and what sets me howling on my treadmill. They are why I write.

"It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time." Barbara Kingsolver.

'Pajamas Worn Boldly...

...in diamonds from Za-ales! Pajamas they sold me, Hon! I'm doing the dog walk, and baking a squash pie. And when the laundry is done.....I'm strolling to my space. To do my own thing! To write with some zing! My blo-ooog, while there's light....Whoo-oo-eee...whoo-oo-eeee..."

To get the real feel for the beginning of this blog, you have to sing it to the tune of "Blues in the Night." Also, it is Rosemary Clooney's version and the best rendering in my estimation. Now try it again, with feeling and emphasis where appropriate. And sing nice and loud; no one can hear you. I can wait....... (As an aside, my diamonds are not from Zales, but it rhymed.)

This is one of my favorite songs from "Rosemary Clooney's 16 Greatest Hits" CD. I listen to this album quite often while I'm writing. The song was written in 1941 by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the film of the same name. Arlen is quoted as saying, "The whole thing just poured out. And I knew in my guts, without even thinking, what Johnny would write for a lyric...".

Whenever I read those words "I knew in my guts" and "just poured out" from a writer of any medium, I feel so envious. Is it that writers become so attuned to writing that they eat, sleep and drink it? Is it the years or decades of hard work that result in the flood of so-called "sudden" inspiration? To sit and write with no critical thoughts, no thoughts of rewrites; the words coming from God's mouth to your ear. I am in awe of this entire concept.

"You never have to change anything that you got up in the middle of the night to write." This is quote by Saul Bellow, an esteemed author, lecturer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his book, Humbolt's Gift, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. I would add to that: "... or change anything you wrote under the affluence of incohol before dinner fot cully gooked."

Anyone else have this problem? Ever e-mail anyone after a couple of grogs? "Fix" your resume or your blog entry when you've tried on a few belts for the evening? Got a few night caps pulled on and thought to be irretrievably witty??? Oi. It's not the very worst idea I ever had. My worst idea to date was in helping my friend, Suzy, down a flight of stairs when she was fully debauched. Her big toe folded under her foot, she crunched it like fat African grub and the party ended.

Quite often I revise my blog entries between my first rum and Coke while making dinner and again at the end of my second rum and Coke after the dishes are done and hubby's watching the news. (I'm a very cheap date; two drink limit.) The next day when I review my blogs for content and continuity, I'll notice changes I didn't realize I made. The revisions are usually not so bad that I'm horrified. Sometimes, but not often, they are better, funnier, and wittier. Maybe there a Hemingway-esque, alcohol-induced quality to my writing? It is said he wrote well in spite of his "little problem" and not because of it. But, I don't think ol' Ernie had a two-drink limit like I do.

This process of writing isn't so much about writing after all. For me it's about reading, more reading, research and more research. And let's not forget staring blankly out the window while I pickity-pick a friggin' hangnail clear to my elbow trying to chart my next move on the keyboard. Excuse me while I go get a bandaid...