Memoirous

Suddenly I am struck by the thought: I am old. Not very old, but older. Just as I am no longer beautiful, though I was never beautiful. Just as I'm no longer thin, not that I was ever that thin. So while at this very moment I am not old and fat, it cannot be denied-- I am not who I used to be. Rest in peace--Dawn Mortimer, an old friend, but not so very old.

This time of year always causes me to beat my wings against the bars of my winter cage. As a kid growing up in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio I was familiar with Paul Laurence Dunbar and his poem “Sympathy.” I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas!         When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;     When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,     And the river flows like a stream of glass;         When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,     And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —     I know what the caged bird feels! I also struggled with another kind of desperation. I couldn’t grow up fast enough and get away. Even though I was a good enough student I hated high school. If I had to hear one more fellow student talking in a voice loud enough for all to hear about a weekend party or a “kegger” I’m sure I was going to puke. I was more of an observer. I’d sit back u...

Dear Readers (thanks both of you) as you know I am a fan of Aleksandar Hemon the famous author from the former Yugoslavia, from Sarajevo, Bosnia who now lives in Chicago , used to live in Uptown—all this to say he is a Nowhere Man . Reading his “memoir” T he Book of My Lives I can see how easy it is to subvert memories. He comes from a country with a long history—where memory is just as long. I love how Hemon has always interjected into his fiction autobiography, while at the same time his non-fiction reads like a story. The past is a tricky thing—depending upon where one stands in a room, the angle changes. Genre with Hemon is just as fluid. I got the sense when reading The Book of My Lives that so much of his life he has had to re-think. War has a tendency to do that. And, not just any war, but a soul-tearing, ethnic cleansing war. Not just a civil war but a holocaust and tsunami put together. How does one rebuild memories or reconcile their perceptions to this new ...

Bedroom Community Do people even use this word anymore? I heard it a lot growing up—along with this song (Little Boxes) I think it was a sardonic message about how society was changing, conforming. Disassociation. Disconnection. Here is where I sleep. Here is where I work. Compartmentalization of people’s lives. Just a mediation on the evolution of a word that at one time was loaded with levels of meaning and today is more or less a side note—as people now commute up to 60 miles, sometimes round trip 120 miles, back and forth to work. The idea of a bedroom community is disappearing as even jobs and communities outside of cities and even peak oil are going away. Okay—back to our usually scheduled Monday.

I was intrigued yesterday when I heard this story on NPR about a couple who in the 1960s decided they would run around and record new and emerging authors reading their own work. Recordings weren't new, but access to recording equipment was getting more and more affordable and portable. ...The Schwartzes' idea was to record such authors, put them on vinyl LPs, eight minutes per side, sell the records for $1.95 apiece, and pay each writer $150 — pretty good money in the early '60s.... First they started with James Baldwin reading from Giovanni's Room who then connected them with Bill Styron who led them to Philip Roth. Today we can listen in on the young Roth--before he was famous. These voices from the past still speak to us today. That's why I was so enthusiastic about The Flexible Persona --an online journal publishing in both the written and audio format. I think this is something more and more literary journals will begin doing--just as stories are shri...

Nostalgia always seems to have an overlay, a gloss, of sentimentality. nostalgia confers a longing, a wistfulness for time past. There are two tensions that come with nostalgia--perhaps, more--and often we occupy both of these tensions at once --too bad we didn't know then what we know now OR --I'm so glad I didn't know then what I know now. Like the difference between stained glass and white washed walls, both hold a certain aesthetic. For now, what was (nostalgia) and what could be (hope) feels absolutely unknowable. AND FOR AN UPLIFTING LOVE STORY=click below https://soundcloud.com/wbez/storycorps-after-grief-an