Memoirous

At this blog (Memoirous--about memories) I’ve mentioned in the past certain blogs or websites that can help to spark flashes. Right now I’m onto Forgotten Chicago and Abandoned Spaces. I signed up for notifications so whenever there is a new post it shows up in my feed. Which is all Facebook gobbely-gook. What I mean to say is I love the pictures and they motivate me to flash and write about memories. Abandoned Spaces viscerally calls up nostalgic curiosity. I am always intrigued by the various spaces, once inhabited but now abandoned and the various relics left behind.  Abandoned Spaces The abandoned Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire, England Sometimes it is a shoe store still warehousing and displaying styles from the 60s, sometimes it is a schoolroom from Chernobyl with decaying textbooks fertilizing a tree growing up between broken desks. Who isn’t fascinated by ruins? They call to us, remind us that we are all mortal, that nothing stays the same, but will eventua...

You don’t realize how much of real life is squeezed into a Disney animated film. Life, Animated is a new documentary out by Roger Ross Williams about Owen Suskind a young man with Autism obsessed with Disney animated classics. Throughout the film Suskind and his father quotes lines from the movies that directly relate or are pertinent to Owen’s life: the fears, the highs, the lows. Even Owen himself sees parallels, how things always look worse before they get better, how the bad guy is all part of the hero’s journey, the necessary role of the sidekick. Owen’s life could be a Disney classic. For someone who needs the help of social cues, these movies become tools for Owen to navigate his life. As a 3-year-old Owen suddenly lost speech and retreated into a world of his own. A room without doors. His parents with the help of therapists and teacher searched for inroads, but ran into roadblocks. UNTIL one day, once upon a time, they discovered Owen repeating some lines from ...

  We have been hosting a refugee family from Syria. With 7 kids. I can’t begin to name them all. Three of the bunch are triplets. The majority were all born during the civil war. One was actually born in a refugee camp. Her name is Haneen meaning nostalgia. A yearning for yesteryear, for what they once had, for their homeland. They named her that so they would not forget. Looking back, yet moving forward. Remembering the good times, prayers for what lies ahead. Don’t lose heart.

I was listening to an interview on Fresh Air with Garry Marshall (re-aired since he just passed) about his career writing comedy and for TV and movies. He is best known for developing and writing for Happy Days among others. He said something interesting: time + pain=comedy. We’re always looking for that elusive creative spark. Sometimes it is simply butt in chair. Sitting down and writing. Spending time with your material. This is not sexy advice. We always wish for the “secret,” the inside scoop, the magic formula. But often it comes with a prosaic thud. Live life, write about life. That’s it. He said when looking for material he went back to an embarrassing moment. As a boy he would never take off his shirt at the beach because once his mother said you have so many moles. I bet I can connect the dots. Thereafter he was self-conscious about his moles and freckles. Later he would turn this into a famous episode on the Dick Van Dyke Show , the one where Rob falls asleep ...

When is a truck not a truck— When it kills 84 revelers after a fireworks display On a busy boulevard When is a plane not a plane— When it is used as a missile and Flown into tall buildings When is a train no longer a train— When it becomes a bullet bomb Underground Mail, parcels, parties Bible studies, peaceful protests University classrooms Can you think of any other ways Where everyday life, the ordinary Has been co-opted? Where something Like eating at a restaurant, watching a soccer game, Walking your dog, attending a concert Have been turned into the most horrific Moment of your life— Can you imagine? Think, think again . . .  seaside promenade, palm trees, rollerbladers, ice creams stands =all take on new meaning

This blog is all about memories and writing flash memoir. (If you need a quick guide to writing flash memoirs download my eBook Anyway, here are 3 journals looking for flash memoirs: http://souvenir-lit.squarespace.com/submissions/ Send Submissions to Souvenir.litjournal(at) gmail.com The Remembered Arts Journal http://www.rememberedarts.com/submit/ AND cash prizes awarded (entry fee required) http://www.theshortstory.co.uk/competitions/flash-fiction/ nothing over 500 words Submit a piece this week!

I saw a call for submissions to an anthology called TheShell Game based upon borrowed forms. For example using the platform of a recipe as a springboard into writing about something else. Just like last week we experimented with the LIST memoir, you can use ready-made forms such as directions to a restaurant to meander into a rant on how the date went. From the webpage: Within the recent explosion of creative nonfiction, a curious new sub-genre is quietly emerging. Hybrids in the truest sense, "hermit crab" essays borrow their structures from ordinary, extra-literary sources (a recipe, a police report, a pack of cards, an obituary…) to use as a framework for a lyric meditation on the chosen subject. In the best examples, the borrowed structures are less contrived than inevitable, managing not only to give shape to the work but to illuminate and exemplify its subject. Here’s one that spoke to me—remember in Ladies Home Journal the column: Can this Marriage B...

I’ve been think a lot lately about early-onset Alzheimer’s. I think it has to do with the recent death of Pat Summitt , former head coach of the Lady Vols at the University of Tennessee. She was only 64. There is another reason I am saddened by her death: My father loved the Lady Vols. He watched every game he could on television. After retiring my parents moved to a kind of “Stepford Wives” retirement community where every lawn was groomed, the houses perfect, and the residents (mostly white) golfed and drank martinis. Maybe it was a bit like Mad Men too, with a dark underside. Anyway this community lay along the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, so close to the basketball action for that state. On weekends you’d see cars with little flags whipping on the back of SUVs Go Lady Vols. The women were taken just as bit as seriously as the men. And Pat Summitt was no joke, but the real deal. No one wanted to get between her and victory. She coached the team to eight NCAA cham...

Now July. Officially staring down 2 months before lift off. In September I will embark on a 1,000 mile journey from the top of England to Land’s End in Cornwall. This past week I tested out camping equipment on a car road trip--of 2 thousand miles. Chicago to Portland, Maine. It was both stressful and pleasant. A lot like life. And a chance to test some of my armchair traveler theories. You see, it's easy enough to plan a trip in front of a computer, but reality has a way of throwing a wrench into the mix. One: relying on phone and Google maps. One of my biggest worries is navigation. I'm not quite ready to sink $300 or more dollars into a Garmin. My Smartphone has changed my life. On my trip back from Grand Rapids self-navigation became a breeze rather than the laborious torture of other trips. The constant stopping, getting my eyes adjusted to tiny map print, then sometimes ultimately taking the wrong direction. Boom: Google pops me thru towns. BUT: now there are p...

Summer is half over. I know hard to believe. But the 4 th of July signals that we are past the solstice of the longest day and once again moving toward shorter days. A list poem is a combination of haiku and the prosaic list. It is an itemization but also creative way of looking at something. Here is an example from my own archives : You know summer is over when —snow piles up on window ACs. You know summer is over when —all the swimming pools are empty hulls. You know summer is over when —the streets glisten from icy rain. You know summer is over when —you shiver stepping out of the shower. You know summer is over when —even the dogs put on jackets. You know summer is over when —the marigolds die. You know summer is over when —they bring the patio umbrella inside. You know summer is over when —the mice run into the house. You know summer is over when —Starbucks begins to advertise their Pumpkin Chai Latte. You know summer is over...

Or something like that. We can all contribute our voice, become one of MANY voices that make a generation distinct. Are you familiar with the term Millennial? It makes me laugh. People get labeled without ever getting a vote—is this how you want to be referred to? Gen Xer. Baby Boomer, Lost Generation. The group of young people disillusioned after a horrific World War (I!—often called The Great War, because they had no idea there would have to be TWO of them) decided to drink gin, hang out in cafes, and write “modern” stories. Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound (though to be honest, he was part of another generation—the super crazy), HD, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald—to name a few of the “lost” souls. And the British poet Stephen Spender. I was introduced to his work by Marilyn Nelson who recently gave the Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Harold Washington Library. He was a poet whose writing spanned several great and ungreat wars, dozens of love affairs and li...