albionidaho (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
albionidaho) wrote2008-08-07 08:52 pm
albionidaho) wrote2008-08-07 08:52 pm
Entry tags:
i know i've held you but i can't remember where or when
I took the kids to the park last night. There was a little girl there with pale bleached hair, gray eyes, and a kitten named Shadow. While my kids were brachiating and throwing themselves down on the grass, I sat watching and thinking. I sat there trying to center myself. To focus. To breathe. To try to grasp some idea of how to take all the disparate aspects of myself and to unify them into one whole once again.
I'm not the woman who left for Clarion West, and it's a hard road to navigate.
I'm all about being unified and whole.
Before I left I had read that the Clarions change a person, that they can completely shake up one's life. I had also read that this was entirely not true. I leaned towards the last assessment. How could six weeks of writing and critiquing, no matter how intense, change my life?
I suspect this is a really individual thing, how Clarion affects one. But for me it ripped me apart, and it shook me up, and then it started to put me back together and then Clarion West sent me home, a sobbing, exhausted, exhilarated, wonderful mess.
I'm like a rough draft right now, perhaps not even fully written. But a lot can be done with this draft. With work and time and dedication and perseverance and luck this draft can be turned into something amazing and wonderful. Not perfect -- no story is ever perfect, but I can make it into something good, something I can be proud of, and perhaps something that others may get something out of, as well.
The other thing to remember is that one doesn't write their own work, make it perfect all by themselves, and then throw it out into the wild. To a certain extent any good story becomes a collaborative event. And this is the case here. I made some wonderful friends at Clarion West who were there to love me and care for me, and I hope there were moments when I gave them as much as they gave me with their stories and their love and compassion and understanding. And they continue to do this. But it wasn't just my Clarion classmates. There were a few IRL friends who stuck by me and held me up, and continue to do so, and I had some on-line friends who also were so incredibly good and kind and loving and wonderful to me.
We're not alone in this.
***
The girl handed me her cat that she'd just gotten that day. I took it, and pet it while she told me about it, how she got it from the pound, and how her other cat had disappeared and was probably dead. (There is an age where children are so matter of fact about death.) We talked about her cat, and I stroked its head and back. And for that one moment everything so simple and so clear.
There were moments like that at Clarion West, seemingly small moments when I was writing or in class, or moments when I was with a classmate and everything was simple, easy, illuminated, and I felt alive and whole. In those moments I could focus and breathe and there were insights there about who I am and where I'm going, who I want to be and what I will do with myself.
Everything else aside, the writing is going to rock.
I'm not the woman who left for Clarion West, and it's a hard road to navigate.
I'm all about being unified and whole.
Before I left I had read that the Clarions change a person, that they can completely shake up one's life. I had also read that this was entirely not true. I leaned towards the last assessment. How could six weeks of writing and critiquing, no matter how intense, change my life?
I suspect this is a really individual thing, how Clarion affects one. But for me it ripped me apart, and it shook me up, and then it started to put me back together and then Clarion West sent me home, a sobbing, exhausted, exhilarated, wonderful mess.
I'm like a rough draft right now, perhaps not even fully written. But a lot can be done with this draft. With work and time and dedication and perseverance and luck this draft can be turned into something amazing and wonderful. Not perfect -- no story is ever perfect, but I can make it into something good, something I can be proud of, and perhaps something that others may get something out of, as well.
The other thing to remember is that one doesn't write their own work, make it perfect all by themselves, and then throw it out into the wild. To a certain extent any good story becomes a collaborative event. And this is the case here. I made some wonderful friends at Clarion West who were there to love me and care for me, and I hope there were moments when I gave them as much as they gave me with their stories and their love and compassion and understanding. And they continue to do this. But it wasn't just my Clarion classmates. There were a few IRL friends who stuck by me and held me up, and continue to do so, and I had some on-line friends who also were so incredibly good and kind and loving and wonderful to me.
We're not alone in this.
The girl handed me her cat that she'd just gotten that day. I took it, and pet it while she told me about it, how she got it from the pound, and how her other cat had disappeared and was probably dead. (There is an age where children are so matter of fact about death.) We talked about her cat, and I stroked its head and back. And for that one moment everything so simple and so clear.
There were moments like that at Clarion West, seemingly small moments when I was writing or in class, or moments when I was with a classmate and everything was simple, easy, illuminated, and I felt alive and whole. In those moments I could focus and breathe and there were insights there about who I am and where I'm going, who I want to be and what I will do with myself.
Everything else aside, the writing is going to rock.