When we write memoir, we become intimate with ourselves.
experiences and memories from the past and then philosophies and beliefs
the event happened in the past, but we are writing from now.
writing with specific detail is important
Natalie Goldberg's work: once you start you keep writing
Vivian gormic: not the story, but the depth of inquiry is what makes the memoir. "Fierce Attachments" ; also the situation and the story the situation is the experience, our experience is the story
be willing to use lists
Rules of the Writing Practice
1. Keep the nad moving
2. Don't think
3. Lost control
4. Use specific detail
5. Dont worry about punctuation, grammar, spelling et
6 Be willing to write the worst stuff in the world
7. Go for the jugular
we start with something we know, but we look for something below the surface
let your memories ambush you
Structures of fiction writing
1. narration from the 1st person. I fear that, it seems as if, etc. if you are talking about someone else's interior world can't say it definitively
2. dialogue memoir is about you: a time in your life, or how you perceive your own life; you can use dialogue; dialogue can life a piece up.
3. Scene
4. Memoir is not autobiography; memoir is single point of focus
when doing writing practice put in whatever details come to you. but when you go back to edit, check to make sure it feeds the story.
Art of Writing Memoir; it is driven by:
Depth of inquiry
Quality of Prose
Knowing what to keep and what to leave out
You get no credit for living
I remember Grandma. The orange kitchen. The orange plates, napkins, hair, clothes. Orange was her color and orange was her.
Once she knitted me a thick, orange sweater, with long orange fringe on the sleeves and around the collar and bottom. It was way too big for me, but she was practical and said I would grow into it
I never appreciated that sweater when I was a kid, i mean, who wears orange? Just when I was ready to wear that sweater, I lost it. My stepmother discarded it along with all of my other stored items when dad died. how could she? how could she?
but back to grandma. we called her the Balla Busta: Yiddish for a ball buster. Red hair (orange, really) with 2 other redheaded sisters. born on the lower east side of Manhatten. first generation from poland. she met my grandfather, Charles Saul Heiser, when she was 15 and he was 16. she fell hard for "saul" they married two years later.
young and idealistic, they moved from the lower east side out to brooklyn's jewish ghetto, williamsburg. from the walk-up they began their lives together
i don't recall exactly what grandpa did for a living at that time; it was inconsequntial to their story and their lives, but it was a few years later, in his early twenties, that he somehow got himself hooked up with the plumbers. how he ended up being the organizer for the first plumber's union, going on to building that union, is a mystery to me i don't have all those details and I'm not sure it matters. what i know was that grandma fought along side him for over 10 years as they built that union. they were threatened, possibly even with death, as they stood up for the workers there. grandpa was a charismatic man: i always heard how the men loved him, how they really would follow no one else, but that he could not be anything more than an "organizer" in the union, never the president or any other office, because he was jewish. still he held his head up high. He always had grandma to tell someone off when they would critisize him or discriminate. you'd get a piece of her mind. they built that union with the help first of the communists, but to become more legitimate, they ended up making deals with the democrats, and most likely, the italian mafia.
in fact, over sunday dinners grandma told us all that if we every voted republican, she'd kill us. it was the democrats who stood for the workers, the democrats who made their union legitimate; those republicans want to abuse and take advantage of the workers. she would have none of it.
grandpa was elected every 2 years. so even though he made good money, and were able to move out of williamsburg out to the beach at Far Rockaway, they never lived in anything bigger than a 1 bedroom apartment. that was just in case he would lose an election, so they kept their overhead low.
he never lost an election until one year for some reason, some political coup occured in the union and he was ousted from his "organizer" role. Grandpa sat on the couch for 2 years, devastated. what else could he do? Flaming, fiery grandma, picked herself up and went to work in the sweatshops to save the family. She stole milk to feed her babies. She survived; she made sure they all survived.
i wonder why this story about grandma is so important to me? I have always wanted to write about her, even though grandpa was the person everyone admired. He got the credit for what he did for the american worker. but we all knew that without grandma, he could never have accomplished this much.
it reminds of a quote from a 13th century Japanese Buddhist sage, Nichiren Daishonin that goes something like: "women support men and then in turn cause men to support them". Grandma did that. She had the strength, resiliancy, and grit to support someone as powerful as Charles Saul Heisler. In turn, he took care of her even after his death, even sending one of his union official friends, Sam to comfort her and who she would marry as her second husband.
I wanted to be like grandma and to some degree I am. I am certainly not the child-like, dependent personality mom is. Although she is a strong survivor, mom's beauty and charm enabled her to be taken care of by the richer, dominant men of the New York social register. She wasn't like grandma; she tore my father down so much that he had to leave her for a woman more like grandma.
I was able to grab grandma's strengths and work side by side with my husband to build a buddhist organization in northern california. He and I as partners, now it can be looked at equally. We dance the dance of soul mates, weaving in and out of each other's shortcomings, filling in the gaps like water flowing through crevices so that we can build something from nothing.
But back to the year grandpa lost the election. I was a child then in the late 60s. I remember the conversations among my parents and their siblings: what are we going to do? how will grandpa survive this blow? fortunately it only lasted two years; he ran again and was re-elected and never lost again. For over 40 years, Grandpa took care of his men, they took care of him and grandma was the strong foundation for them all .
I wonder where it all with go when we move towards the future
I wonder how it all begins when we look back at the past
I wonder daily where to stretch the moment and the mind
I wonder mostly when I cannot find those that are my kind
i moved away from all i knew to pursue a westward air
the big blue sky, the canopies held my mind aware
i saw the brown and barren ground in summers oh so new
contrast so starkly from the lush and moist east coast avenues
i moved on to people with a different ethnic flair
they did not understand
what i really want to say is that i right now do not know what i am doing or what i really want to say. i really don't know what i want to say
i am typing so fast perhaps i will now write in a book
I was glad to leave the redwoods and get to the clearing. When I did, I climbed up a short hill of mustard colored grain-like grass to a small log-cabin-like structure on top of the hill overlooking the Pacific. i had to walk around the cabin to get to the door. the door and one large window faced the ocean. the air was clear with a soft, cool breeze coming off the ocean. the sky was also clear, with some wisps of fog forewarning us that it was late afternoon and more of its kind would soon be rolling in.
there were two short stone steps leading up to the threshold. in my hiking boots, i stepped onto those steps somewhat clumsily and the tred did not hold. i grabbed onto the doornob to keep from slipping. The door was unlocked so i opened it. I looked around at the room and noticed that it was sparsely furnished with some light coming through the front window and the window to the left that i saw for the first time. A comfortable orange coach sat under that window with pillows of all different colors: turqoise, forest green, red and mustard yellow like the grass outside. A coffee table filled with books sat in front of that coach. I was ready to rest there when I saw, directly opposite the coach, a small, wooden desk with a tiffany lamp and a person sitting and writing on a small computer. That person did not look up at all as I entered the room, so intent was she at what she was doing. It was a woman, about my age, my height, with hair and eye color so similar to mine. When she finally looked up I saw her smile at me knowingly. She was so close to looking like me that we could have been twins. What she then said was so strange, I felt as if I was in a dream. She told me, "I knew you would come; I have been waiting for you. Please come sit beside me and see what it is I am doing".
i felt no trepidation in joining her at the table. What I saw as I walked over to her was that she was writing a lovely poem. it said:
I am you
I have been waiting for you to show you yourself
I am you
maybe you can call me the higher you; or your higher self
i contain your wisdom
i contain your colors
see all the colors around? (it was true, as I looked at the room I saw color everywhere: multi-colored paintings of exotic birds and landscapes; bowls and cups in the kitchen of all different hues, flowers in the garden outside of every color of the rainbow)
these colors
I was on my way to the airport, driving down 101 from Sonoma County, through Marin passed dairy cows pasturing alongside the road, the mustard covered rolling hills with dots of wild oaks, signs bolding proclaiming wine country, and wondered why i was even thinking that i needed to leave for a vacation. As I approached the orange Golden Gate Bridge, I took a breath and gasped at the beauty of the San Francisco skyline, the city known as Babylon by the Bay... withe candy colored architecture, crazy steps leading through neighborhoods and a bay you can marvel at but one that is too cold to venture into.
But i guess we all need a vacation. I always resist vacations before I set out on them. I love my little life in our lovely hamlet; love my home, my cats, the sweet air, crisp sky and warm clear sun. I love sleeping in our enormous, fabulously comfortable Tempur-Pedic bed, with our expensive cotton sheets and chic and vibrant Mexican style coverlets and pillow shams. Reds and golds and dashes of white and turquoise. I love sitting outside each night on our patio, watching the sun set, with Peter and a bottle of wine. I love our routine of then going into the house to prepare an easy dinner then watching Bill Maher, or some other pre-recorded entertainment.
But I guess we all need a vacation. Peter and I always struggle with where to go. I think it is because we secretly feel that we don't want to leave but feel like we should go somewhere. I mean, everyone goes places. All our friends talk about their trips to Italy, to Hong Kong, to South America, gosh even just to Seattle. We think, yeah, we should go. But then we always struggle with when and really, where?
Maybe its because we both traveled so much in our twenties before we met and married. We both did Europe, we both relocated from our hometowns, left our own kind and adventured out west. then in the first few years of our marriage it was Japan, many trips back home, Cuba, Mexico, Vancouver, Oregon, Seattle, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Hawaii and many points of destination in Californa.
It could also be that we both have cancer in our 5th houses, the astrological house of the home and home life. I guess we are both home bodies! We've spent so much time and money fixing it up, and with Peter being an architect and all.
When did I first close down to love, the teacher asks me. Write about it! Its amazing that in a few short hours, we are all intimate enough with each other to delve into this subject. How we all knew what she was talking about. This is the human condition, is it not? Do we all come open to love and then something starts to shut it down? For some who become sociopaths are there just too many repeated scenes over and over that make the child lose this connection with what I believe is the fabric of the universe,-ove and compassion? Is this what we search for for the remainder of our lives: a way to open back up to love?
Ok for me, a few images came through. First was the time with grandma and the $1 bill. I spent most of my weekends with grandma and grandpa in Far Rockaway in their 1st story appointment around the corner from the beach. My parents liked to spend the weekends on mini-vacations just the two of them going up to the Catskills, to horseback ride and party. My grandparents lived in an apartment complex called The Wavecrest. It was a series of 8-10 6 story apartment buildings in a cul-d-sac behind the boardway, Rockaway Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Uncle Lennie was a lifeguard on that beach. I was a kid and wanted to date all those lifeguards, Lennie's friends, but I was just too young. Since my grandparents apartment was just a 1 bedroom, I would have to share the fold-out coach bed with Uncle Lennie. Just 9 years my senior, Lennie and I were like brother and sister; still too far apart in age at that time to be friends, but later in life he and I were in rock bands together, and became life-long soul siblings.
I spent a lot of time with grandma: weekends, school holidays, most summers especially because we all loved the beach. I was the first girl in three generations of boys on my grandfather's side, so they spoiled me rotten! I was used to being the special girl, especially in my grandfather's eyes.
However this day, this was a windy, blustery day, maybe in November or early december. Grandma and I were walking home from the market together, down the long street of the cul-d-sac to her apartment.
