Writing Journal

To You From Me, To Me From You
If I could believe
Anyone believed in me,
I'd believe it you.

Sometimes I'll get poem-thoughts and see that they're only three lines when they're written out. That's when I check for syllable counts, and this one only took a little fudging to get the counts compatible with the haiku format.

If you've read any previous posts about my writing, you're probably shocked that this one has a title!
I was thinking about a few of the challenging situations I'm facing, one of which being the discord with the best friend I've ever had. Before I saw said friend last night, I was reading Mary Kay Ash's biography. She mentions numerous times in the first few chapters how important the words "You can do it," are to hear. Her mother, especially, told her that often. It led me to ponder on when I may have heard those words, and...I couldn't recall any. Especially in taking on one of my challenges.

I know I've had people tell me they want me to succeed, but I don't know that I can honestly remember anyone saying they thought I can. No one. Not true; one person. But she had known me for less than an hour and encouragement from her hasn't continued beyond that. I'm really all that bitter or upset about not hearing it since I doubt I'd believe their sincerity, anyway. If they did say they thought I could do this, it would likely be out of a sense of obligation to provide me with confidence in myself when they have none in me themselves. If that makes sense to anyone else...

But the friend I saw last night...that friend I'd believe. But I took on this challenge around about the time we had our falling out. And there hasn't been much opportunity for that friend to express any confidence in me. The reason I'd believe that friend? It's happened before with other challenges I've taken on.
Friend: If anyone can do this, you can.
Me: What if anyone can't do it, though?
Friend: You can do this. I know you can.

So that's the story behind the "To Me From You" part of the title.

That same friend told me one thing they liked about me was the way I tap my fingers when I write poems. Really only/most often with haikus. I tapped my fingers while writing this one. That's the story behind the "To You From Me" part.

Writing Journal

Rain and Sunshine*
There's a storm cloud up above me
And it's darkening my halo.**
I have to wait for the rain to stop
Before I see my rainbow.

Many times I failed to hurt
Because I failed to see
The bad parts inside of you
And the good inside of me.

You didn't want to hurt me;
I never thought you would.
But now I see that I was wrong
To never think you could.

There's a storm cloud up above me
And it's darkening my halo.
I have to wait for the rain to stop
Before I see my rainbow.

I'm sitting here, not crying
Over how you treated me.
It now becomes my fervent hope
That someday you will see

The storm cloud up above me
That is darkening my halo.
I cannot wait for the rain to stop
So you can see my rainbow.

The next time that you see me,
I won't feel so alone.
Some other man may find me
And earn my pot of gold.

But even if he does not come,
The storm was not in vain.
Think of all the gardens grown
Every time it's rained.

Now there's no more clouds above me,
So it's clear to see my halo.
And now that the rain has stopped,
I finally found my rainbow.


*If you know me, you know I'm terrible with titles. And will always ask, if not beg, for suggestions and/or ideas.
**I promise this was not inspired by Porcupine Tree's "Halo." I had completely forgotten about any knowledge I may or may not have had about that song until Saturday, March 26, and I wrote the poem before that.
Although...hearing it over the weekend did cause me to come back to this, which led to my changing a line I didn't really like.




Now for the rest of the story... A blogger whose blog I stalk, er, read, gave me some advice on a situation. Advice it took me a while to follow. The premise of this poem was the premise of her messages to me. Writing it was very theraputic to me in terms of dealing with some of the choices I had made and actions that had been taken. I had hoped that it would answer one of the questions I still had for myself about the situation, but it didn't. Maybe the next one will.

Reading, Writing Journal

So, it's been a while....
I'm reading more than I used to. Although I did take a good break this winter, after I finished "Quirky, Yes. Hopeless, No," a book about dealing with kids who have Aspberger's and "Winter Blues," a book about understanding Seasonal Affective Disorder. Now, I'm almost finished with "Little Women," and "Goodbye Ed, Hello Me," a book about recovering from an eating disorder. Sometimes I read books about things I don't have and situations I'm not in, because I might come across someone who is there, and I'd like to have a glimpse of understanding.

I've been dabbling in writing. Mostly about dating. Like "The Economics of Dating" and "How to Get Over a Guy in 10 Days." But neither of those are in final enough stages to share with hoards of public, and I'm rather choosy about subjecting my prosaic ideas to scores of readers. My poetry, however...I'm better at exposing that. Mostly because I need help with titles. (If I were more serious of a writer, I'd look for workshops or something.)

Little Lamb
One little black sheep,
Lost in the dark,
Too scared to cry out for help.
Doesn't think anyone would
Hear him, anyway.

Searching for him with
Flood lights and heliocopters
Only creates more shadows and noise,
Driving him deeper into darkness.

Once the search party gives up,
One little child goes out,
Armed with a flashlight,
Some bread, and a blanket.

After much lonely searching,
The black sheep is brought home.
And the child sneaks away,
In search of another lost sheep.

Reading Blog

Finished O! Pioneers!
Had a fabulous discussion with a friend about it.

Also read Terry Hatchett's "A Hat Full of Sky," which was a pretty good book for youth. Really liked it and caught myself thinking with the accents of the Nac Mac Feegle's. Sent it to my 11 year-old sister and we'll see how she likes it.

Picked up "The Greek Mind" as my true. Not as dry as I'd expect. Haven't touched it in a week or so. I don't think I'll come out of it with much insight.

I intended to read Crime & Punishment but found myself at the public library with no recollection of exactly what's in my "Book of Great Books." I was confident "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was the Hemingway selected, so that's what I chose.
That night I rented "The Brothers Bloom" from redbox. If you like cinema, watch it. Trust me.

The next morning I discovered that at least the elder brother was inspired by a character in James Joyce's "Ulysses." Since it sounded so familiar, I thought I had it at home. I didn't. I then concluded it must have been in the BoGB. It wasn't. I traded Hemingway for Joyce, regardless. If a movie that good is associated with a book I've heard of, I'm reading it.

Not as quickly as I'd like.

I should steal the idea from a friend to read 25 books and 25 poems a year. (She does 50 books, but she reads faster and lighter.)

Reading Journal

I have got to start spending more time reading!

I need to finish reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 2 months and I have about 200 pages left. I also need to finish Coming of Age in Mississppi or a True in order to start my annual holiday re-read of O! Pioneers.

Old: Tess
New: Wimpy Kid (finished in less than 2 days)
Random: Mississippi
True: Something short
Old: O! Pioneers

If I can't find something short and true on my shelves, I'll hit up Half Price. Which I can do since I recently purged my shelves of books with language or themes I wouldn't be comfortable discussing with the prophet Thomas S. Monson. I only had problems with one: Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." I read it twice in college and I think once after. It has some pretty amazing quotes in it, and it really goes in depth about soldier's experiences in and after Vietnam. So of course there's vulgarity and lewdness. So I skimmed it and wrote down some of my most favorite quotes.

I'll share some of those here.

p. 20 "They were afraid of dying, but they were even more afraid to show it....They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die....They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed and died because they were embarrassed not to."

p. 23 "You couldn't burn the blame."

p. 32 "...as I write about these things, the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening."

p. 34 "You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present."

p. 36 "What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end."

p. 38 "Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes, remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."

p. 157 "Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, lie clearing the throat. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what had happened to me, how I'd allowed myself to get dragged into a wrong war, all the mistakes I'd made, all the terrible things I'd seen and done."
p. 158 "By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. you make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened...and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain."

p. 179, the definition of metafiction, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."

p. 180 "What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.
I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again."

p. 192 "When you're afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends."

p. 225 "But this too is true: stories can save us....in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world."