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.

"So Attention Must Be Paid."

W. H. Auden, the poet and playwright, said, "Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be."

Consequences...hmmm? Would anyone venture to guess how many times in the past four months I've destroyed good food because my entire attention was focused on my writing instead of the burner I turned on and forgot about? Or how many times the toaster oven has been found to contain petrified bagels that neither my dogs nor the omnivorous crows will even look at? Just this morning, I neglected my oatmeal. My habit is to plump the raisins as the water boils and then add the oatmeal. It takes awhile for the water to boil, so I came back to my work, sat down and zoned out. To make a long story short, there were grapes in my oatmeal this morning. Lucky for me, I like grapes.

I sometimes even burn hubby's lunch, if I make toasted cheese and soup for us. Woe betide him if he makes the tragic error of going outside or down cellar for longer than a minute. I take that as an opportunity to dash back here to work on my writing. I'll smell cheese-turned-charcoal - - that's my version of alchemy. I can make it back just before he reenters the kitchen, but I never fool him. He says he "didn't come down with the last rain, you know. Ayuh."

Dinner, well, it's the same thing, only now I usually have Bacardi & Coke and WADD (Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder) to contend with. [Sigh] But that's hubby's fault. It is, too! I never drank rum until I met him. I am not deflecting. Balderdash! That's a kids game, did you know that? A kid is either a human child or a young goat. Domesticated goats are a subspecies of goat from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans live in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic....OKAY, I'll stop deflecting. Dinner is not often neglected because my husband is more watchful as he has a vested interest in the outcome. He's also an excellent cook.

I look at everything now as an opportunity to write. Memories bubbling to the surface of past events funny and unfunny, relationships long since cooled and dead, secrets that no longer matter to anyone. When I walk the dogs, do the dishes, drive in the car; my eyes, my mind both wandering and watching for that moment of inspiration. Overheard comments or seeing something that reminds me of something else can trigger an explosion of scribbled notes on any available paper product. A remark made in an e-mail that sets off a flurry of memories, or forgotten resentment at a tone not heard in decades can change the course of any writer's ebb and flow. It's all for the taking, the musing, the writing and revealing. In not so many words, or a whole lot. Margo and I say, "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

"The writer should not be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention." Flannery O'Connor.

Ding, Dong, Heaven Calling!!!

Caroline Myss says in her book, "Your Power to Create,"

"When your whole system fills with this 'I've had enough,'... that is your first indication that Heaven is about to move you. That is your first sign that the power to create is something you better start animating. You may think that the power to create is your choice. You are absolutely mistaken."

I have read most everything that Caroline Myss has written over the years. I bought this book in audio form not long after I left my job. I was headed home after visiting my mom and when this passage came on, I started weeping and had to pull over. I played this section of the CD, entitled "Creating begins with revolution," over and over, and sat crying on the shoulder of the road. Heaven had moved me, I felt the revolt and I did something - - I quit my job and I started my writing life. To hear Caroline Myss speak the words of her book is more powerful than simply reading it. This is a woman whose plain talk appeals to me, and she believes what she writes.

What reminded me of this wonderful book was an e-mail I got from a new friend, whom I'll call Abella. This name finds its roots as a Catalan byname for beekeeper or "small and active." She is my one and only follower of this blog to date and is becoming a good friend I've never met. Not yet anyway. I've offered her a pitcher of our Island Blaster's if she'll cross the country to visit. These drinks look so benign, pink and fuzzy like a ballerina, and I'll even throw in nice blankey to curl up in when her limbs and limbic brain no longer speak to one another. Our next door summer neighbor, Solana has sworn off the Blasters because she teleported home once from our house which is maybe, and to her advantage, fifty feet away and didn't remember how. We're the people Solana visits when she wants to let her hair down, come over without makeup in her gardening clothes, eat potato chips with abandon, drop the "F" bomb, etc. We're the fun neighbors who love her for who she is.

Anyhow, so Abella e-mails me and says "...you risk so much with the potential of being judged, or misunderstood, or hurt so deeply," in reference to my blog. It was then I remembered what drove me to this thing I call my muse. It was Caroline Myss' voice saying Heaven had moved me and I'd better start animating this power to create because I had no other choice. I recalled the "cosmic fry pan to head" emotion I felt that afternoon, sought out the CD and listened again.

I e-mailed back to Abella that I suffered from episodes of panic where I wondered what people thought of me and my writing; most fearful of the opinions of my family and friends. I've come close to abandoning the blog many times for fear of my identity being discovered, particularly around here where I live. My not-so-inner jackass always thrashes around at those times, slinging hyphenated obscenities at my ridiculous anxieties so I can continue writing.

Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying "Do one thing everyday that scares you." I think this qualifies.