It is my intention to write a creative
nonfiction thesis as part of my master’s program in English Literature and
Language. I will be writing in the sub-genre of memoir, reflecting upon observations
and reminiscences. Author Lucy Calkins
says, “In order to write memoir, we need to see that literature is made out of
the everyday stuff of our lives” (The Art
of Teaching Writing 399). In this manner, the content of my memoir will
focus specifically on various moments within my childhood. The earliest part of
my remembered childhood was spent on the dirty and crime ridden streets of
North Minneapolis. When I was between the ages of seven and eight, my parents
traded this unloving concrete world for the open arms of nature herself by
buying an unchartered hill in rural Wisconsin. They scrambled to build us a
home—the old fashioned way: with their hands and by the sweat on their brow.
They moved us smack into the heart of the natural world—in the honor and
likeness of Thoreau: in the woods, deliberately sucking the marrow from life.
The tentative title of my work is “We Owned the Dirt,” which eludes to the humble
beginnings from which I came.
The candle’s wick topples and drowns. Perfect blackness releases me into the free and boundless night, to roam in dreams through an everlasting, untrammeled forest; a forest that gives me breath and shelters me; a spirit forest; a forest that envelops me with shining, consecrated webs and binds me here forever.
-The Island Within by Richard Nelson quoted from Blue Mountain: A Spiritual Anthology Celebrating the Earth by F. Lynne Bachleda
Preface: The Root of the Root
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Words and wounds come together and sing the sweet lament that composes my life.
When we are children we are completely present. We observe the world around us and react. As we get older we cease to observe –though we continue to react. Without seeing the changing clouds’ design or shifting oceans’ tide, some of us stay trapped in a world long since gone yet still spinning round and round in our
minds. We are dizzied and hypnotized by this spinning while being present only in body and robotic functioning:
I love my kids. I give them my time because they add something fundamental to my life, but sometimes (most of the time) I am lost in a maze of tasks and devotions. I am there. I am doing and responding, but I am not actually present outside of a moving robotic body, whose goal is to maintain emotional stability in order to have endless patients and the ability to be on the ready for anyone else’s needs. I’ve often thought that I could live my life asleep as well as I am living it awake.
I am passionate and quick to fight for the rights of others. But, my child-self is still with me, receding into the forests in my mind when ugliness or rejection becomes too much. See, I’ve learned that if you open yourself up to see the changing dynamic of color composition when the newer and lighter green leaves cross in front of the older and darker green leaves, and you see this as proof of nature’s majestic artistry, then you are also open to see the ugly.
Ugly is scary.
I try, now, to keep my eyes open; but, this is a hard place to remain. Sometimes my fear makes me ugly and I reject the world around me. I think: I just want to find a place far away from everyone, somewhere left untouched by the monstrous hands and critically judgmental attitudes of people who would do away with everything I find valuable. Then a hotness rises to the surface of my skin and I am wrapped in guilt. A guilt and shame rooted in some believe that I am being selfish by having those feelings.
Don’t I love my kids?
As I debate my morals, I realize that they, too, could not come with me to this magical totally-accepting-of-me place because I’m too empty, their innocent needs would still bring me falling to my knees. I have run dry. I am out. I am all spent. There is nothing left of me but this robotic shell, like a fire that is dying-out because it is not fed any new, uncharred wood or given any space to breath in the air’s oxygen. I am a dying ember. I feel forgotten even though I’m needed by so many. The people in my life think they need the person they see when they look at me. But me… I’m not actually there other than a speck lying in the ash graveyard of a once burning-with-life self.
I forget that there are others out there just like me.
I continuously return to the inner spinning world within me that holds me in its cyclic grip.
“Return to the root of the root of your own self” Rumi
I am a forest—my spirit is a forest—while abundant with tall-standing trees breathing life, also abundant with fallen trees. The trees—standing and fallen—are symbols of my hopes and dreams, some still standing, some fallen. They are the embodiment of all things actualized and those never realized. They are the shining stars behind the gray night sky. They are the paths in my life that were lit with a glimmering and guiding light that led me toward successes and joy; but, they are also the darkened and dangerous paths that led to hurt and pain and failure. They are the ones who have helped to hold me up and the ones who let me fall. They are my assets and they are my weakness.
The standing and fallen trees are me.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Words and wounds come together and sing the sweet lament that composes my life.
When we are children we are completely present. We observe the world around us and react. As we get older we cease to observe –though we continue to react. Without seeing the changing clouds’ design or shifting oceans’ tide, some of us stay trapped in a world long since gone yet still spinning round and round in our
minds. We are dizzied and hypnotized by this spinning while being present only in body and robotic functioning:
- Set the alarm…
- Get the kids out the door and to school by 7:40 a.m...
- Shoot! Did I give Pete and Jess their medicine…
- Do the laundry: -where is Rayna’s other sock? -now does this shirt belong to Pete or Jess?
- Call the doctor to make that appointment. Shit what appointment was I supposed to make…
- Remember to pick up milk, bread, cereal, and chicken before coming home…
- Get home before the kids get home from school…
- Help some of the kids with their homework; force homework
- vehemently upon some of the other kids…
- Break up a fight over Legos people…and then a Rubik’s Cube…and then the magnets… and then…
- Finish dinner in time to get the kids upstairs for showers…
- Did I remember to give Jess his medicine...
- Good night… Good night… Good night… Good night…
- Pick up the mess in the house before falling on my bed…
I love my kids. I give them my time because they add something fundamental to my life, but sometimes (most of the time) I am lost in a maze of tasks and devotions. I am there. I am doing and responding, but I am not actually present outside of a moving robotic body, whose goal is to maintain emotional stability in order to have endless patients and the ability to be on the ready for anyone else’s needs. I’ve often thought that I could live my life asleep as well as I am living it awake.
I am passionate and quick to fight for the rights of others. But, my child-self is still with me, receding into the forests in my mind when ugliness or rejection becomes too much. See, I’ve learned that if you open yourself up to see the changing dynamic of color composition when the newer and lighter green leaves cross in front of the older and darker green leaves, and you see this as proof of nature’s majestic artistry, then you are also open to see the ugly.
Ugly is scary.
I try, now, to keep my eyes open; but, this is a hard place to remain. Sometimes my fear makes me ugly and I reject the world around me. I think: I just want to find a place far away from everyone, somewhere left untouched by the monstrous hands and critically judgmental attitudes of people who would do away with everything I find valuable. Then a hotness rises to the surface of my skin and I am wrapped in guilt. A guilt and shame rooted in some believe that I am being selfish by having those feelings.
Don’t I love my kids?
As I debate my morals, I realize that they, too, could not come with me to this magical totally-accepting-of-me place because I’m too empty, their innocent needs would still bring me falling to my knees. I have run dry. I am out. I am all spent. There is nothing left of me but this robotic shell, like a fire that is dying-out because it is not fed any new, uncharred wood or given any space to breath in the air’s oxygen. I am a dying ember. I feel forgotten even though I’m needed by so many. The people in my life think they need the person they see when they look at me. But me… I’m not actually there other than a speck lying in the ash graveyard of a once burning-with-life self.
I forget that there are others out there just like me.
I continuously return to the inner spinning world within me that holds me in its cyclic grip.
“Return to the root of the root of your own self” Rumi
I am a forest—my spirit is a forest—while abundant with tall-standing trees breathing life, also abundant with fallen trees. The trees—standing and fallen—are symbols of my hopes and dreams, some still standing, some fallen. They are the embodiment of all things actualized and those never realized. They are the shining stars behind the gray night sky. They are the paths in my life that were lit with a glimmering and guiding light that led me toward successes and joy; but, they are also the darkened and dangerous paths that led to hurt and pain and failure. They are the ones who have helped to hold me up and the ones who let me fall. They are my assets and they are my weakness.
The standing and fallen trees are me.
When I ask a gift from my death, it is that at the last minute I will be able to look back over my life and know, without any doubt, the entire story I have been living. As this final gift, all the details and events that I have been relentlessly ordering my entire life will arrange themselves in a simple and startling beautiful structure, until meaning—surprising and dazzling—flashes out of the dank, sticky, and entwined chrysalis of daily life. Then I will know, despite pain, disappointment, and limitation, that this life of mine has been a good and meaningful work.