From This Broken Hill

     
     If It Be Thy Will by Leonard Cohen has been speaking to me lately and I recommend listening to the song (posted below.)

     I am writing memoir and Cohen's song pretty much describes my writing process.  A memoir involves taking the stuff of one's life, as though clay, and creating a third thing with it, hopefully art.  It involves telling the truth, a loaded subject in the world of publishing over the past decade (another blog post altogether.)  
 
    I agree with those who say truth is critical in memoir. However, it is emotional honesty I am striving for; no, not striving, rather, it is being demanded. It is not facts I am concerned with or some chronological rendering of the events of my life, it is some deeper truth.

      I now understand what writers over the ages have referred to as the muse.  My muse requires from me not only honesty, but a true voice, although I am writing from a broken hill, as Cohen sings.  I am writing to end the night...to let the rivers fill.  I am not in charge.  The muse is and for that, I am grateful.

     Each day, before writing, I light a candle.  I play this song.  I ask that mercy spill onto the page, that my burning heart be made well. I ask that the tattered rags of memory be clothed in light.  I ask to be let to sing.

     If it be Thy will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNfNdflTs5E&feature=player_embedded

To the Lighthouse

     You can see that I haven't blogged since September 2010. I won't try to cover that lost ground, just start where I am. I committed to an innovative writing project aka The Book Project at The Lighthouse https://lighthousewriters.org/ located in Denver, Colorado. We relocated here from Alaska in late August 2010.

      Let me clarify what I committed to:

      I committed to myself and my lifelong passion for writing and reading.

      I committed to a daily writing practice. I committed to emerging myself in a writing environment, one where I am in daily contact with other writers and readers.

      I committed to writing a book even if I don't know how, even if I don't know what, even if, in the end, the book I'm writing turns into something else or equals three different pieces of four different books, or one short story, or two essays or maybe a poem.

      I committed to listening to and following my Intuition; because She has taught me the hard way that all the other voices are liars.

      I committed to living the writing life because it is the Life to which I have always belonged even as I rejected it in favor of anything, anything, anything else.

      Last night, in workshop, I shared a selection from my memoir in progress where I describe the death of three friends by suicide related to alcoholism. This morning I get a Tweet about a piece in The Atlantic by Rob Delaney, an excerpt from his memoir ROB DELANEY: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage where he describes the death of three friends, essentially, by suicide.  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/drugs-will-kill-your-friends/281418/

      His piece is, by far, more polished than mine but so what? I was tempted by the Liars in my head to completely dismiss my version, throw myself on the floor, and give up writing due to this discouraging coincidence, or is it synchronicity?

      But instead I decided to start blogging again here on the KellyBlog. I'm gonna keep Writing About What Matters as long as it matters to me.

Life Happens

It's funny how life blindsides us from time to time. I haven't blogged since June 2009 and so much has happened since then. My most recent post (before this one) features a poem I wrote March 26, 2009 after learning I was to be the grandmother of triplets. The same day I received the news, Redoubt, a volcano located in upper Cook Inlet, part of an area near where we live in Homer, Alaska, had just erupted with ash emission 65,000 feet above sea level. Along with writing the poem, I collected enough volcano ash from our rain gutters to fill a jam jar.
One of my daughters, Jennifer, had been undergoing a struggle with fertility issues for several years prior to a successful IVF implant that, against the odds, resulted in that good news. The sucessful implantation (after three failed attempts) was only the beginning of what became one hell of a miracle rollercoaster ride. The eruption of Redoubt paled in comparison.
In August 2009, I traveled to Brooklyn, New York, where Jen lives, to hang out with her for the remainder of her pregnancy. I had originally planned to fly to NY around mid-October, my intuitive guess for when the babies would choose to arrive. However, by August, Jen had been hospitalized twice with pre-term labor concerns. My son-in-law, Karim, was out of the country on business and it became clear: my daughter needed me and needed me yesterday.
So, the months of August, September, and October 2009 were spent in my daughter's third floor one bedroom apartment cheering her on in her heroic and determined effort to keep three babies in one place: inside her womb. She was magnificent.
As big as a house and growing bigger by the moment, she religiously drank two gallons of water (she had been told that, in most cases of pre-term labor, the expectant mothers are dehydrated), ate nutritious foods, and swallowed a handful of pre-natal vitamins daily.
The babies' optimal chances for good health and survival grew exponentially with every day they stayed in the womb up until 36 weeks. Then, the doctors informed us, should they reach that magic number inutero, they would need to come out via C-section. Eventually, the C-section was scheduled for October 19, 2010, timed at 36 weeks gestation, although we were told repeatedly that, with triplets, the chances of making it to a scheduled birth are not good.
She made it. On October 19, 2009 she gave birth to three healthy babies, two boys and a girl. Hannah (Baby B) and Rayan (Baby A) weighed 4.5 and 4.7 lbs each. Yasin (Baby C) weighed 5.2 lbs. Three days after birth the triplets and their mom came home from Columbia University Hospital to that one-bedroom, third floor Brooklyn apartment and three of everything.
Jen, Karim, myself, and my husband Wayne (who joined us a week ahead of their birth) hence took turns feeding, burping, and changing three beautiful babies in a constant rotation that was exhausting, even with four of us on duty.
Did I say exhausting? Yes. Have you ever experienced the kind of exhaustion that comes with what is, perhaps, your greatest work, your best achievement? That kind of exhausting.
Wayne and I flew home to Alaska just short of ten days after the babies' arrival. I had been in NY for almost three months and needed to go home, but saying goodby to my new grandbabies was bittersweet. I had so little time with them. Their life-affirming baby smell, the silky feel of their newborn skin, the distinct note of each of their cries, and the long, treacherous journey my daughter undertook to get them safely born had soaked into my pores and filled my senses with an uncommon, crazy love. They had safely arrived and with them, that miraculous thing we call life.
It knocked me for a loop. It's not the first time life has stopped me in my tracks. It won't be the last. So, if anyone happened to notice that I haven't blogged a word since a year ago June, just know this: Life happens. Aren't we lucky?

Yes!

Yes!

(written March 26, 2009)
Dedicated to Karim & Jennifer


One day

I wake up to the not so far off rumble

Of Mount Redoubt, esteemed Volcano Mother of

The Land of Ten Thousand Volcanoes, down the street and

The land line ringing off the hook, three loud br-rings! before I reach

To say hello! Flipping on KBBI 890 Homer, PBS to hear a volcano ashfall

Advisory "...in effect from noon to four p.m."...then the voice on the other end

Again, "Mom, there's three! Triplets!" Hold fast there girl!

"I'm so scared." You can do this. Anchor yourself there girl-woman!

Before the noon day sun is hidden behind gray dust,

A miracle has dawned in the labyrinth of our old, deep love, that

Love that, when it chooses, comes right into the house,

Doesn't even take off its shoes. Whoosh! Pushs molten rocks up and off

Like they're marbles, shakes out the hair and flings open the windows.

Later, after the advisory is called off, all of my laughter comes.

I run down the bluff to the beach

Tell the sea, "Thank you ! Thank you! Thank you!

I tell the sky, "Thank you ! Thank you! Thank you!"

I kneel on the ground in ash, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

And then I turn in the direction of Mount Redoubt, and this is where

All of my tears come. I shout "Yes! Yes! Yes!'

And the word carries me all the way up to high tide and

The waves lapping the shore, as if to agree with me, their sounds

Say yes, as does the wind, and Mount Redoubt, and the earth making this

Huge Great Birthday Cake, Creating the Universe. I thank you.

"Sentinels": A Painting Inspired my my two Muse Grandmothers In Honor of Women's History Month

Sentinels

Until all of us have made it, none of us has made it- Rosemary Brown-

One of my two grandmothers had these incredible huge sunflowers growing on the borders of her garden. She told stories, played guitar, and sang ballads. I sat rapt at her feet. She always had an apron on and was either gathering food from the hen house and garden, or preparing it for others in her kitchen.
I only saw my other grandmother once before she died, as we lived far from her in another state. I was five years old when she died unexpectedly and young.
During an especially difficult period in my life, I began to imagine peripheral glimpses of her in the grocery store, just around the corner of the next aisle, or passing by me on a road, or just in front of me, as I drove. The sightings comforted me.
Of course I knew that she was long dead, but I had subconsciously recorded bits and pieces about her from things overheard, stories told, comments made by my mother.
We make meaning of our lives through story. When I needed her most, my maternal grandmother’s story came to my conscious awareness and I drew solace and nurturing from it, even imagining her ghost. Like my paternal grandmother, she was a musician. She sang and played piano in nightclubs during the jazz age.
My grandmothers would never dream of calling themselves artists. They did the right thing, as mothers will do, put the needs of their children and families first, and they made music while they did it.
When invited to participate in Her-story Exhibit II, it was my grandmothers’ voices I heard. Their stories, and that of the women I come from, are the stories of women everywhere. They not only adjusted to the circumstances into which they were born and lived, they thrived in spite of them and it is their spirit to which I dedicate this art piece.
The sunflowers symbolize the women I come from, women who turn their faces to the sun, women who follow the light. Architects of my story, of the stories of all women, they stand tall, like sentinels.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. Vincent Van Gogh

Hades Moon, Demeter's Daughter

Unable to die, (no sharp instruments lie by)
When the moon is full and I have fallen, weak, upon my knees,
Painted upon myself Grief, orange, red, black, instead,
Torn at my hair, and madly rubbed charcoal about my staring eyes,
Down my cheeks; I gather the Objects,
Sacred only to me, to beat the drum of my despair,
I draw ancient symbols on my face, my hands, my skin,
A forgotten language decipherable
Only to the guardians at some ancient gate, then
As the Gods allow, or the Moon, or Pluto himself ordain,
I take another step down,
down the stone and winding stair.

A sister priestess, Her purple cloak about her hidden keening face,
Beckons me come, Lifts up her slender hands and pours into my opened breast,
That deeply drinks, bottomless thirst, of a holy water that knows,
A holy water that reaches, flows, finds the wounded, wordless place,
Dances fire, baptizes the heavy knotted roots,
Holding up its diamond-true, still mirror .

The purpled dark reflection contains All Power,
Collapses stars into black holes,
Births worlds,
Splits atoms, the mother's heart in two,
Like a pomegranate cracked; its marbled veins full,
Thick grief revealed, congealed and
Tracing a sluggish path through the quicksand circle of loss,
The caverns of the heart exposed, labyrinths of sorrow.

A glimpse of gold flashes, the thin thread grasped, and
Death's hand opens. The high priestess,
Embodied robe of poetry, breathes
Water-fire-earth-air verse, softly blows the healing tinder,
Flames the broken mother-heart with Spirit until it burns
The solid matter.

Kelly O'Neal Thompson
copyright February 2009

Poem for Linda and Dickers Undergoing Cancer

The dark glass mirror of each other,
Joined like twin halves of a tangerine
Flowered Lotus blossom.
One heart beating,
Spirit.
Kelly O'Neal Thompson copyright 2009