Two years ago to this day, I started this blog without a clue where it might go or what I might have to say. I almost never wrote nonfiction before I did this because I didn't know how to appropriate my life for that purpose -- like the popular children's book, my days seemed to be a series of unfortunate events with a lot of comic interludes and some wonderful bits of joy. Stories and poems seemed to be it for me. I could assume someone else's voice (albeit at times a thinly veiled autobiographical one), but never my own. In the eighties, those long ago days of big hair and moody music, there was a lot of talk about owning things -- possessions, feelings, your truth. My truth was that I was happy to own a few books and some clothes. As for my feelings, who else would they belong to? So far as I could tell, nobody was lining up for a dose of my particular gloompot ways.
Once someone I have grown to deeply dislike said, You're telling the same story over again. I said, So what? To which he replied, Well, I know how you hate to repeat yourself. But he didn't know me at all. I love to repeat the same stories over again, warm my hands to them like a campfire that never goes out. We don't have that many stories really -- the same sorts of things tend to happen to us over and over, ala Jungian synchronicity or kismet or whatever force you want to credit. And the truth is that I have a deep fond feeling for the events that have made me who I am, even the bad stuff. Sufficed to say, I would not wish to relive much of the past. But I kind of do on the blog. I guess I'm owning something or owning up to something, coming to terms, all those expressions for that nebulous act of accepting complicity for your life. In the picture, I'm holding one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken, a brick building with a simple cross and block lettering -- Here's Hope. It brings to mind that even in tremendous suffering there is something else, that one good element in Pandora's box. You can find it anywhere, even on the side of a building in Detroit, maybe especially there.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I always do make a back story for myself, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I just like to." Gena Rowlands
Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: Christiane F.
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!
12 comments:
We likes yous and hopes you never goes!!--Short bus and Special(nad thank you for being for two years!!and congrduals!!)
Very nice post. Keep telling your story. :)
As long as you love what you're doing at the moment then it becomes a memorable moment regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Peace
mark
Congratulations on two years of consistently brilliant writing day in and day out!
--Albuquerque, New Mexico
MyCajunQ
2YRPrizes
OMightyEYes
FoxlyMamaD
BFree2
LilWoodstock
R2C2Shazammmm!!!!!
Happy 2 year blog anniversary!
You're a talented writer =0)
That's a lot of dedication. The only things I can commit to that I do daily are basic bodily functions. Damn.
Beautiful as always! Oh how I miss your class. =(
Congratulations on two years of blogging!
Michelle,
You are a wonderful writer. Your blog is consistently touching and lovely, very true. I look forward to reading your memoir!
Mary
I commend you for your persistence.
Congrats on making two years. That's impressive. I've certainly enjoyed your take on issues, both the fiction and the nonfiction.
Hi Michelle,
Happy Blogiversary!
You do tell a great story, and I agree, the cycle of similar events does continue its pattern over and over again...a form of insanity in our lives, I suppose; like a self-imposed prison with good meals and a great library!
The events that make up our daily lives are the same event played out differently, and we write about that same event (that same drama/story) as differently as we see it and experience it each time - but it is fundamentally the same event.
I don't know much about anything - but I do know when I keep feeding that camp fire...I never want to leave camp.
I love the warmth of familiarity.
I measure myself everyday with Castaneda's words:
"If you think you've changed a little; you haven't changed at all."
And, I keep coming back with the same measurement...I have not changed.
But I do pray for that miracle - A Course in Miracles calls a miracle: "a shift in thinking" - and I do pray for that shift to occur and the day I will wake up and my measurements will have destroyed my scales.
Until then, I will write about my life and the events that rerun with a new cast of characters each season.
Peace :)
PS Deep down inside, I do want to get out of my soap opera and jump over into something like "Legends of the Fall"...I would rather be taken down by a bear (and kissed by Brad Pitt) than be killed off and brought back as my evil twin! LOL
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