today’s Musing written and published from
[note about music/video links – I find on Saturday and Sunday mornings I have time, and perhaps my readers do to, to listen to some music. I choose pieces I like that connect, in some way, to the subject matter or to my mood… hope you like them]
Morning walk: 2C/36F, partly sunny/cloudy, yesterday’s chill continues to discourage outdoor fun, Gusta and I witnessed people planting, building fences, getting their rear yards, front yards and side yards – the kind no one spends time in or looks at much – in shape, manicured and sculpted representing nothing of what the people in those houses are like, how their lives work (unless you believe every uniformly identical yard indicates uniformly identical residents of the heated box that sits on each lot). It’s a fresh day.
My music selections for today - Enya’s Watermark, Einsamer Hirte + more Zamphir + more , Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan , G.F.Handel Alla Hornpipe (Helsinki flute quartet) D.Varelas which I hope you enjoy with a hot drink in a cozy place.
In the early days of my writing, I ran afoul of some, most especially a gorgeous fiery Welsh woman and also my mentor KT – which produced robust conversation on the subject of story. The issue was not one of hitting so very near the bone (which I do with scary surgical precision some times) but the issue then, was of telling someone else’s story rather than sticking to my own. This question ‘is this my story to tell?’ became clearly one to ask every day, rule for remembering. As I am these days, stabbing at fiction, I am finding that, I can change names, locale, hair color or quirky traits to disguises those stories I couldn’t otherwise tell. They’ll find their way to my pages . . .
But, I digress. I went out last night after changing my resolve to stay in from the chill; I went to the gym, more for the steam than the workout. I left just before closing to visit a store, to buy steak-knives. Steak knives, or rather the ‘case of the missing steak knives’ is no longer one I need help to resolve. I bought new steak knives, and life has been changed. There will come time, just about one o’clock at the farmer’s market, for more book research, next page of my story, changing someone’s life – possibly mine - I’ll write that down, it’s a story for sharing, or at least for growing.
Catharsis of writing is home plate – centers me, closest I get to knowing myself, learning keystroke, punctuation point or pause at a time - there is a recipe in me, for fixing. If I can excise that recipe, perhaps there is something there which might release, new learning for someone receptive to have change in their life . . .
Case in point: I’ve been a Norman Mailer fan since my teen years; not from reading his prodigious output of door-stop-weight books, essays or stories evidencing his flamboyant style, but watching the iconic tour de force, lightning rod for outrageousness (brilliantly executed) mostly through media-eyes; treat to read, read about or watch interviewed + retrospectives of those interviews after his death a couple of years ago. I’d re-watched, but listened with a different ear. No longer confused teenager or wandering confuznik, as writer now – intrigued more by his lessons for me as a writer, as a man.
Some of my favorite Norman Mailer quotes: ‘When I read it, I don’t wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.’ - - - ‘There are four stages in a marriage. First there’s the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.’ - - - ‘There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.’ - - - ‘There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be’. - - - ‘I’m hostile to men, I’m hostile to women, I’m hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I’m afraid of horses’. - - - ‘Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.’
One of his most telling comments, I saw again last week, the clip played while his widow was interviewed about her new book – he explained, though he had written many very good novels, his unfulfilled dream was to write a novel ‘that changes people’s lives’.
Immodesty is, from what I’ve seen, not common among book writers, essay writers, writers of any kind actually. It seems I/we have some quasi-evangelical strain that presumes to know something others don’t, presumes to have it parsed just right to tell – all the reader need do is read, listen and follow instructions . . . to a better life, as a result.
As Mailer’s career end yearning proves in part, there is driven-ness in writers, one I am late in life coming to know, that, despite all failings and yet-unresolved shortcomings, we have something to offer which might indeed, change people’s lives. His comment rang home for me, again.
~~~
MUSCLE MEMORY - archived poetry
To make sense of this
tormented-ness I think
I need some help, or
maybe I just need time
for it to heal up; yes,
that’s it, like an old
sports injury it will be
cured, scar over and
not bother me
very much at all,
the kind I can forge
all about, that kind
that only twinges
when weather changes
or robust physical
activity causes a pull
or a strain, that will
remind me then, that
once, a long time ago
there was a pain there,
that gut-wrench
hurt inflicted by an
accident when, not
really looking for it
or expecting it, I was
blindsided by love
tackled by feeling
and overcome by
the knowing that I
will likely never feel
like that again – so it
will be OK then, to
be reminded of
where there once
was pain there.
~~~
Mark Kolke
322,304
RESPONSES/COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME; send to: dailycolumn@markkolke.com
May 22 Comments
May 22 – IT SEEMS TO ME - Wonderful talk with you last night, thanks for the call. Birdsong and morning showers greet me this morning. A quiet respite, a cup of coffee and a grey tabby cat nearby before the day's activities. Cats just aren't as much fun to "walk" as puppies. You are important in my life. I suppose, if one doesn't "fall" in love. then getting "over" is a very different process. I had hoped that the past few weeks of being too busy to write and speak and your process of meeting and enjoying lovely women would help you "get over." Until I can joyfully move forward into a future without
May 22 – IT SEEMS TO ME - Hi Mark, I quite enjoyed your monologue today. A mixture of humor and seriousness, laughter and pain, it's realistic to our common daily experience. I especially liked your portrayal of the woman with her unruly dog. You're quite right; I'd rather take my chances with the dog, EG, Calgary, AB
May 22 – IT SEEMS TO ME - Mark I enjoy your musings and daily thoughts even if they are not ground shaking because it is important that at least some of us on this planet observe and better yet share, PL, Calgary, AB
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