Louise Erdrich is a
beautiful, Ojibwe Native-American author of a long list of books.
After several years, I looked up to see if she'd written anything
new. I found “Shadow Tag”. Loved the writing at the end on
cleaning/going through her kids toys, (every parent could relate)
when the lead character went slightly cookoo. There was the strain of
being at the end of a dissertation and realizing she'd lost interest.
Her painter husband longed to do another type of painting other than
the one that was supporting them and he was famous for. There was a
surprise twist at the end, totally unexpected but once there I
remembered the one clue she gave in the beginning. I've since learned
her new book is “La Rose”. She writes amazingly about the north, being from Minnesota.
In May there was
lots of raking leaves. I wanted to let them cover my yard to soften
and enrich the soil which is largely sand but came to find out, there
were too many hiding places for snakes. One of my neighbors being
bitten by a copperhead after reaching to pick up her little barking dog,
we decided to get the piles down to where things are more visible. I
can still rake in my P/C and used a plastic pitchfork to pile them
into a pull wheelbarrow. I emptied one or two myself, but then
wanted help as I couldn't get my chair too near the little cliff
we're piling leaves on.
I've been
reflecting on my decision to come to SC. Just how did I end up here
anyway? Grand mom had died and Grandad was still alive. I was with my
third husband and I don't remember talking to him about it
before making the decision. Doesn't that say something about our
communication? In
those days I didn't think about the future. How could you know what
would happen? This was before my diagnosis. We had come back from
Oakland, California, I rode my bike to work, passing the small town
airport, to “It's a Beautiful Day” restaurant in College Park. I
made vegetarian breakfast's and lunches. Had he found a job yet
besides stay at home dad? At the beginning of our relationship,
there was one clue that we weren't compatible. His grandfather summed
me up as reckless. I just wasn't very well educated on life, and not
malleable enough. There were many other reasons that we weren't ready
for each other, but I get ahead of my story.. this all led to my
journey here. To be continued in my book...
There. I said it. I
am writing a book. I certainly don't have to worry about not having
material. But how to write a book? Reflecting. Going through for a
second or more times, joyful living by the seat of my pants, times of
despairing about life while learning what a comma splice is.
Is there any hope
for a book about having four husbands and then finding out, as I
recently told my dad, “I don't think I'm the marrying kind”.
Yes, there were four, don't judge me.
Well,
Phenomenology, Sartre,
(http://www.english.ufl.edu/mrg/readings/Sartre,%20What%20Is%20Literature.PDF
), and Existential Philosophy history, (“At the Existentialist Cafe”
(Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails), correlates with my desire to
keep writing. I must remember to read Camus' essay “The Rebel”.
It's on my grocery list.
I will say
this...while you're young, get the best education about the world
that you can. Especially history. On this, everything else sits. And
history includes how it's all been going. I'm sorely lacking in this
area, but trying at my ripe age to mend it. Lecture over.
I've also been
grazing on Baldwin's “Price of the Ticket”. I wish I could afford
books, I'd definitely have this on my shelf. It's essays he wrote
about his life growing up black in Harlem, NYC, in the '30's and
40's, leaving home to live in Paris and returning for the 60's,
diving reluctantly into the South, with it's bigot's and sublime
black artist's and reformers.
“The Creative Process” by James
Baldwin Taken from “The Price of the Ticket” p.316
“Perhaps the
primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate
that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of
being alone.”
“That all men
are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality—a
banality because it is very frequently stated, but very rarely, on
the evidence, believed.” p. 316
Baldwin taught me
if you're exploiting others, you're exploiting yourself. You may not
realize it, but there is a natural balance in giving and taking. Who
knows what that is? It's a constant battle to know.
To wrap up, thank
you for staying with me, May was a good month also because I took my
grandson fishing, my dad came to visit from Tennessee after an absence
of three years, and I've sold a battered and broken down car that had
memories I hadn't imagined would come flooding back.
I haven't given up
on writing for money. I could call my first essay for Vanity Fair
“Why Donald Trump Wouldn't Be a Good President” or “This Essay
is So I Can Buy My Cat Flea Meds”. I imagine they pay a pretty
penny.
