‘Put it in Your Book’
“Find a subject you care about and which you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“Put it in Your Book”
Is it just my mother? Maybe. She is most certainly one of a kind. There is more love and emotional depth inside my mother than any type of allegorical metaphor I could come up with to do her justice. One of her mottos that she often would go on to preach to me (and my friends too) if we were bickering was: “If you can’t say something nice. Don’t say anything at all.” A stolen quote from Thumper in Bambi, but a goodie.
In our hometown, Lisa was one of those Moms you did not want to piss off or disappoint. As she would pull up the driveway, my friends would scramble frantically along with me to clean up the house for fear of Lisa’s wrath if she were tested. She loved and adored the company of my friends in our little three bedroom ranch. She loved our gymnastics practices on the grass, forts in the backyard and the shouting and giggling on our trampoline; but she despised and ranted over the aftermath mess of the mayhem strewn about the living room and the front lawn. She would walk in and give one signature glare and we would immediately start cleaning up like maniacs.
Later, after I felt guilty for making her life more difficult (or maybe I just felt bad that I made her yell), I would break out the theater and heartbreak and still fine something over which I could bitch, and I would begin the earth-shattering, dog-pitched whining.
My Mom’s favorite retort to my dramatic pouting fits was:“Eh, shut up and put it in your book.” She always still jokingly swears my two sisters and I will each inevitably write a book about our miserable, rotten lives with our awful, terrible, good-for-nothing family. “Boo Hoo. Your rotten family. Yeah, yeah I’m a witch-mother. Write it in your book…” My Mom’s finest catchphrase was dripping with sarcasm of course; I had a lovely childhood and a wonderful family. We were never told “no” and always given love. Looking back, I love her snappy way of asking me to count my god-damned blessings.
At 14 years old, a fire engine wailing down the block seems about as accurate a description as you would get to my whimpering tone. Yes, my life was horribly tough. My parents cared way too much for my safety and did not understand me at all.
“But Mommm… everyone else is allowed to go drive to school with older people-uhhh, I’m gonna take the bus like a LOSERRR! … It’s not FAIR! ‘So-and-so’s’ allowed to do it!”
Before the fire balls begun to brim behind her azur eyes to launch out at me she would say:
“Well then, why don’t you go live with ‘so-and-so’s” family then? You think her Mom is nicer? Fine. Boo hoo quit playing the martyr and complaining to me and write about it in your book.”
The intention of this blog here is aimed towards a creative forum for my memories. And possibly partially for my thoughts to sound less like venting and complaining and more like organized thoughts and memories that blend and move and make sense of all that I do not understand or refuse to understand and accept about life. Like she suggested, write it in your book. Best advice my Mom could have given. I should have begun earlier. But where to begin exactly?
A dream analysis macrocosm. What the hell does that mean?
What I am trying accomplish is whatever the opposite of a microcosm would be, I suppose. I want to broaden my memories and dreams, mingling bits and pieces of my life, my imagination or yours, friend’s suggestions, newspaper articles, garbage can lids, dishtowels… endless possibilities, anything can stimulate creativity. Instead of pairing down everything into one focused story, I want to take a piece of my story and turn it into everything or anything. I’m kick starting the process by discovering new avenues of inspiration to fuel this reinvention-of memory machine.
I am going to send myself backwards using pictures, videos, recounted recollections, made-up stories, inanimate objects from the 1990’s, dialogues, discussions, incidents with ancestors, blended character traits, accidents, purposefully placed lies that may or may not have actually occurred. Memories mingled with imagination mixed with facts and fabrication to develop fictional non-fiction about my life growing up. Growing up. Have I yet? Working on it, because I’ve clearly progressed little if I’ve chosen the most cliché and enduring theme in the history of life on which to write my dinky little stories.
I want to salvage my memories and create something spectacular. Spectacular to me, at the least, that remains at least in some form or another, with each of you. We’ll see if this ride continues out past the horizon.
