Run On

I told you in my last post that, while I was entertaining my inner editor/critic, it's important for me to keep playing with something else. Although I choose to write most of the time, I choose to write something so mindless and fun that it is absolutely freeing to the heart and soul. It can be emotional work and strains my memory occasionally, but this is familiar territory.

Here's what I've been doing while I edited A Little Lazarus. I've been working on my memoirs. You may say, "My God, that sounds like scary work to me." But it's not. It's relaxing and goofy, sad and hilarious, and slightly crazy--just like me. I am loving it. I simply do what my friend, Glo DeAngelis, used to advise and "follow the golden thread." I go wherever the next word or memory leads me: from past to present to wandering about the future and back to the past again. If this memoir were a figure it would look like the giant scribbles we used to make as kids. Then we would go back and color in all the circles and loops until we had something a little like a stained glass window.

That's what my life looks like to me; a stained glass window. Not the kind you find in fancy churches, but the kind we hand-made as children with nothing better to do on a rainy afternoon. If there is a God in charge of getting all of us born into this world, then that's what God was doing when s/he created me one mushy March Wednesday afternoon in 1954. Messing around with crayolas on a blank sheet of typing paper, going "Goodness, look at all these cool colors!"

I find my stained glass life easy to write. I simply take the same black marker or crayon God used and begin; somewhere, anywhere. I follow the line (alright, it's not exactly a golden thread) where it leads me. Later, I'll add the colors, the sensual stuff that appeals and wakens the reader once I've gotten the lifeline drawn. I call that painting the story.

There is no real chronology to memory. That's not how it comes to us, anyway. It comes out of the blue, like the smell of coffee on a crisp morning when your camping. It comes with the flash of rainbow in the water as we tussle with a trout. It may even come to you when you read a quote on face book. Memory can be elusive, but the flashes that jump start it are everywhere if you pay attention. Oh, and don't listen to those old fogies that tell you that you're not old enough to write your memoirs. Sorry, but that's just bullshit. If you've got a black crayola and a storyline, friend, that's all you need. Now, tell that critic to run along while you write some run-on sentences about the stuff of life.

Here's a little sample from my memoir with the working title, "Frankly, I Think I've Been Freaked Out All My Life." Maybe it will help you get started:

"In the second grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Duncan, who was big and tall and wide; at least to me who was seven. But I could tell in comparison to my folks, who were fine-boned and slender, she was way bigger. Anyway she had a reputation among the students, especially first-graders, that she was tough and mean. In first grade all this really meant was that she wasn't pretty. She wore glasses and was kind of pasty and lumpy, ergo she was ill-tempered like the giant in "Jack and the Beanstalk." I was scared, too, even though I kind of liked her, which fact I did not share with my classmates, as they would think I was freaking out to like a freaky teacher like Mrs. Duncan.

One morning I had a fight with my parents over the oatmeal. It wasn't funny. And it wasn't the first fight I had with them over cold food. I cannot abide cold food which is suppose to be hot. It freaks my mouth out and I can't swallow. All breakfast food is suppose to be hot, except maybe bananas, strawberries and orange juice. This not-so-weird preference for hot food has for some reason given me bad breakfast karma and I get served a lot of cold eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc. Except at the Waffle House where you can watch them cook it and the waitresses are fast and immediately pick up your food and slam it down in front of you. If they don't, you can gently remind them (gently, because usually they are pretty tough) that you think your food may be up because you can see it.

I hung out at Waffle Houses when I was a cop, which was the most freaked out job I ever had, and it was a great comfort to me to sip their bad (free) coffee, talk shop with the other cops, and wait for the next call to come so we could argue over who would take it. On my birthday, the waitresses served me steak and eggs, and they were good and hot and I didn't get a call while I ate them, which seemed like a good omen for my 33rd year of life. All this to say that my preference, no, need to have hot food, began when I was very young, maybe even an infant because I was not breast fed, which would have automatically made the milk the right temperature and which is extremely hard to imitate in a bottle. Mother's milk it ain't, okay?

So anyway, I'm like seven years old and living in Houston, TX. I walk to my grade school which is a few blocks away. I don't remember whether I couldn't find my shoes, or I lingered over my toast, or the oatmeal sat around too long before making it into my bowl, but it was cold."

And that's it fearless writers. Simply follow what seem like the loose ends of your life and you will find that they actually tie together remarkably well. I eventually get back to the story I started with, but meanwhile I may tell a couple of others in between. It's feels good to write my life this way and it's easy. The whole point is not to think to much, but to let memory lead the way. It's a great way to tell the critic, who is your nearly constant companion when you're polishing some great work of art, to take a break, to run along while you run on. Trust me. Try this at home. Get ready. Get set. Run on!