An Alphabet of Life’s Daily Events: “A” Through “M”

A few days ago I was reminded of family duty of communication. Work and daily life chaos had prevented me from calling on of my aunts for far too long. I was reminded periodically, but “things” got in the way. She took the initiative to call me, never chiding, but reinstating my obligation to keep in touch more regularly. I’m to keep that in mind came the unspoken instruction.

Break to when I got off the phone. Questions swirled in my brain. How often do we change course in our lives through such a soft-toned reminder that someone worries about us when they do not hear from us often enough? And how often do we voice the same concern over one who’s been silent too long?

Causing people distress isn’t something I indulge in purposely. Yet, as it does for so many it happens occasionally through social interaction and family dynamics. Somewhere there must be a mechanism for the prevention of the effect of our lives.

Direction came from my Creative Muse as she let fly with one of her spurts of healing juice. I discovered within me the unstoppable need to put poetry to picture for Claudsy’s Blog. This process takes as long as writing a blog post and is not something done to save time.

Examination of suitable photos takes nearly as much time as writing the specific poem that will hold court in that image. Sizing the photo, getting Sister’s copyright with proper placement, and sighting the position of the text box, all take up time. I’m fussy. Everything must be just right before I hit the save button, and if it isn’t, it hits the trash bin.

Fortune smiled for me, I had the exact photo that fit my mood. Muse wrote the poem through my fingers. Et voila, a poem photo is produced and posted.

Gathering other images for use with poetry kept me moving that day, along with my other writing obligations. Stretching my writer’s fingers has become a full-time occupation lately; one which keeps me growing and moving forward. The experience is a good one, albeit exhausting.

Here, in my small office space does magic occur. I don’t concern myself with whether someone will lift my new creation for their own use. I’m sure some already have. I think of these personal triumphs as ambassadors, carrying part of my purpose with them on their travels.

In the time it’s taken to write this short piece, something I’ve created from nothing more than a thought and a supposition has taken flight to destinations unknown, to ask questions, offer solace, lift a spirit or simply offer beauty. That is its only obligation and my only concern.

Jumbled within our daily exercise of life, should we not take one hour to create something for no other reason than to share it? Should one have to desire more than that revelry in order to enjoy the process of creation? Must we have other agendas?

Knowing the soul’s purpose for creation is, I learned, absolutely necessary or there can be no joy in it. If the act of creation causes dis-stress, pain, confusion, tension, and a sense of never being good enough, it becomes the destroyer of the one creating; its own antithesis.

Longing to free Muse from a stagnant prison empowered me to begin writing, to make a serious effort toward publication and the writing life. My hard work led to being published several times in several genres. Along the way, the business got in the way of the creation.

Making room for life within the business of living under the title of “Author” can wear down anyone as it did me. I’d lost sight of my purpose in writing. I’d almost lost the joy creation. I was brought up short before it was too late. And I’ll always thank those responsible for it.

A Break from habit, Causing me to follow a new Direction to make a closer Examination of the  Fortune in ideas Gathering  Here  In  Jumbled array;  Knowing,  Longing for the Making of new creations for all. 

Review What You Know

Lately writers have gotten two bits of advice on what to write about: write what you know—the old literary standard, and the new, write about those things that you’ve always wanted to know.

 Either piece of advice will put words on a page, but the question is: what kind of words are sticking to that page?

During the February Blog Challenge on my Wordpress blog, Claudy’s Blog, I’ve talked about my family. I haven’t given away the store, by any means. I’ve dived into those strong personal memories that surged to the surface of the memory pool. They were strong in personal meaning, not necessarily in perfect imagery. They were things I’ve known from the past.

Since beginning, I’ve spoken to a couple of family members who remember additional info about specific aspects of those I’ve written about. I learned things that were previously hidden from me. In doing this challenge, I started a process of looking at family about which some was known to me, as well as the people who carry those additional memories.

How to Learn About Memory Carriers?

People store memories in odd ways that even the experts haven’t unraveled completely. Associations made up of emotion, sensory triggers, and/or trauma link aspects of memories within the brain and the mind. Ever wonder why the scent of a favorite baked goodie makes you feel good and think of mom or grandma? What about that sharp pain in your shin? Didn’t that leg get whacked during a Little League game?

Those associate olfactory and pain triggers have kicked in to bring emotion and their accompanying memories to the surface. In fact, many believe the sense of smell triggers the strongest and most accurate memory links.

My theory is that people reveal themselves through what they remember and the sensory triggers that call up those memories as much as through how they behave.

Many writers use this knowledge to build characters that are believable, rounded out, and belong in anyone’s family or town. This ability to reveal a person’s internal truth shows a character’s motivations, personal history, aspirations, what-have-you.

When I talked of my Dad’s lessons in field and forest, I was standing beside him, listening to what I remembered of his words, his tone; watched his gestures and facial expressions. The memory movie ran until I stopped it to move on to another lesson memory.

Like most people, hearing a song on the radio puts me immediately back into the time and place where I heard the song for the first time or into the most personally important event of my life up to that point. Flip the record and I do a similar bit of time travel.

The sound of a particular word or phrase—especially if it’s in dialect—and my world will shift to that place and those whom I’ve known who use that word or phrase in the same manner.

Collecting and Using the Knowledge

Think back to people you know within the family. What do you know about their lives? Isn’t it true that you think you know only what they’ve told you about their earlier lives?

You can broaden your view of them by sifting through your own memories; sort out the conversation or trigger that brought about the telling of your family member’s recollections. When you talked to you grandmother, for instance, as she helped you make your first cookies, didn’t she reminisce about baking like this with one of her loved ones?

Body language exhibits unconscious cues to internal feelings and can’t be totally controlled. Do you recall what her face showed during that retelling of a past event? Was her tone lovingly gentle, filled with suppressed laughter, or tight-lipped with suppressed emotion? Did her eyes sparkle and her hands pause as she stared off into space for a moment, lost to that memory?

All of those tiny cues hold keys to a life lived before you existed. They speak of that person as you’ve never known them. You have only to take note of them and add the information and supposition to your working knowledge of this person who belongs in your family.

Watch a speaker’s body language as carefully as you listen to her words. Together, speech and physical cues can fill out your mental photo of that person. Use that information in ways that help your relationship, create a believable character, and expand family history and your understanding of it.

You can now write about something you know. You can also dive deeper into things unknown for the sake of knowledge about someone in your life. These are examples of what writers do, some of what this writer does, and why all writers need to use what they know and be able dig into what they don’t know.

Until later,

Claudsy

Communication—Have We Killed It?

How many times do you text instead of call? You use the same keys on the phone for both purposes. You allow for much the same time and concentration for the action. What’s the real difference here?

Is the difference that with texting you can abbreviate nearly every word in order to avoid actually explaining yourself to a live human being? Is this avoidance merely a manufactured stratagem to keep people at a distance rather than to allow them into your life? Have you ever really thought about why you do it? I’m not talking time savings, either.

Texting, for me, is a tedious thing. On the flip side, I no longer care for talking on the phone, either. Some may say that I’m isolating myself from others, including family. But is that true?

Looking at it under the microscope, I see that in one respect the accusation is true. I really detest solicitation calls, harassment-type calls, and those that interrupt my writing activities. As a result, I keep my phone turned off most of the time. Ask my friends and family if you don’t believe me.

Allowing for that quirk of mine, I can say that I also don’t like voicemail. I try to avoid that like a bad case of bird flu. I will return text messages once a day or so if I have them waiting.

Those who know me also know that this is how I deal with things from outside my office and home. As I’ve gotten older, I don’t particularly want interruptions to what I’m doing. I have enough of a juggling act going without that.

I talk to hundreds of people each week on the computer, some frequently, and have no difficulty dealing with the volume, most of the time. Although, there are days when one more email could have me dropping off the cliff called “Not Enough Time.”

I call my dad every day unless I’m prevented by circumstance or timing on a given day. I try to call extended family at least once a month—at least one of them anyway—to touch base and see what the southern group is doing. I also have those family members I connect with on the computer, and as with most families, word always gets around, sooner or later.

Most of the time, I use the phone for business only, with a few exceptions. Friends I don’t get to see in person or family members, who would rather talk on the phone than write, get regular to semi-regular calls from me. The reasons are agreed upon by both parties.

My brother texts me, if he can, instead of calling, mostly because of his schedule and the time zones between us. He hates talking on the phone worse than I do. I think that must come from our upbringing. We weren’t allowed to spend much time on the phone when we were growing up and the call had to have value each time. Telephones weren’t toys back then, and a person didn’t replace them because a new model came out.

Few of us write actual letters anymore. Our personal world pace seems to have gone “a gallopin’” as the old-timers used to say. Our lives are cluttered with so many activities, must-do’s, plans, and expectations that we don’t give ourselves time to stop and think for more than five minutes before we’re off and running again.

Real letters take time to write. Thought is necessary for how and what we write in them. Texting doesn’t require that, only abbreviations and a ten-second window of opportunity. Phone calls require listening to what someone has to say, processing that information, and composing an adequate and appropriate reply.  Emails are faster and less thoughtful most of the time, as is texting.

Is it any wonder that technology has encouraged a withdrawal from the previous methods of communication? Look where the Pony Express got us. The USPS!

Let me know how you feel on this subject. Agree or disagree with what I’ve said. Each communication type has both plus and minus columns.

Until later,

Claudsy

PS—Over at http://claudsy.wordpress.com/ I’ve delved even further into this subject, but with a different slant entirely. Please take a few moments to hop over there and take a gander at the other side of the tracks.

Saving Purpose for Later

For those who don’t belong to BlogHer with its millions of women bloggers and writers, take the time to investigate the network, or risk always wondering what you’ve missed.

Me? I’m taking the NaBloPoMo challenge for the month of February. Facebook followers probably already know that. This month’s challenge is themed “Relative,” encouraging all of us to blog each day about some member of our families. It’s an opportunity to blog about those well-loved, others dismissed, those who confuse, or whatever family member that strikes the writer’s fancy on that day.

Considering my perverse nature, I began at the end of my definition of family and am working my way forward to those who comprise my nuclear family.

This challenge is allowing me to take a good look at people that I’ve not brought to the foreground in a long time. It’s also giving me all sorts of ideas for stories, articles, and poems.

Through this exercise I realized not just how energizing memory fishing with such a purpose can be for me, but also how well it generates its own kind of creativity. Bits and pieces of long-buried memory float to the surface: nothing major, sometimes only a face, a voice, or an image of someone’s hands. Still, that’s enough to trigger another idea, a vision to be fleshed out later.

This exercise--this blog challenge--has become a creative tool for me, to serve up a purpose for later as a kind of dessert at my writer’s dining table.

First, I get to review all of those I’ve considered members of my family. I get to observe, at a distance, who these people were when I first knew them. I’m encouraged by my inner voice to compare that to who they are now in my life. I get to remember those who’ve left this world and how they were connected to me during their lives.

And, secondly, this mental review of people and animals creates a gallery of characters in a kind of mix and match way to provide all that I need for the rest of my years of writing, whether poetry or stories, if I so choose.

Do you realize how much power that is, how much material? Does any writer know this until the day arrives when the family memories are sifted for a purpose outside the writer’s own daydreams? I wonder.

As in so many other ways, we take our families for granted, I think, regarding how much writing material they provide simply by hanging out inside our heads. Now that I realize the extent of their contribution, I’m going to keep visiting that gallery to find more portraits to bring out into the light and show others.

Have you visited your family gallery lately? Have you done character studies on all of them for those masterpieces of prose and verse that wait to be penned? It’s never too late to start. Just look at how long I took. Don’t put it off. There’s a prize winner in there somewhere. 

If you don’t believe, ask the writers of memoir. They know.

Until later,

Claudsy

NaBloPoMo

Yes, folks, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. There is yet another challenge for the writers who just can’t stand going without one.

I found this particular one when I joined the BlogHer Network a couple of days ago. The challenge is to write a themed blog post each day for the given month, in this case, February.

BTW, this should in no way intimidate or discourage any writer from picking up the gauntlet of that have beaten back many a writer. After all, there are many writers and other bloggers who already post each day. I know, because I used to be one of them.

According to the BlogHer challenge, February’s theme is “Relative,” meaning that each post must have something to do with family in one form or another.

Now, having redefined what constitutes “family” many times across the span of my life, I don’t seriously feel challenged as to topic. I have entire state’s worth of pseudo-family to draw from.

What might concern me, if I allow myself to think about it for more than a nanosecond, is the fact that I have three blogs—not counting an inactive one in the UK—which might, technically, fall under the auspices of this challenge.

Should I be held accountable for only one of my blogs each day, or, do I have to include all of them in the challenge?

That’s a big question and one I have only a few days to answer before beginning the keyboard shuffle.

I’m counting on all of you to help me with this decision. Am I supposed to do all three—that includes Trailing Inspirations on Wordpress—or can I muddle through doing only one of them? And if only one, which one—Claudsy’s Calliope on Blogspot, or Claudsy’s Blog on Wordpress?

Comments are encouraged, indeed, required on this one, peeps. HELP ME DECIDE!

Claudsy