Memoirous

The 24-hour day loses meaning on transatlantic flights. Meaning loses meaning. It's all a blur after a while. Technically I landed in Reykjavik, Iceland after the first leg at 2 a.m. When planning the trip a five-hour layover didn't sound bad. I might not have even noticed at first how long. But after falling asleep on the plane and having to be woken up, it started to seem like a long time. I could be sleeping I thought as I spread out on a bench. But, with all the announcements and maintenance doing loud repairs (I know, wayyyy too early), there was little I could do in that 5 hour layover. I finally had a coffee to kind of reset. I might have dozed on the second leg, but it was only 3 hours to Stockholm. We landed and I needed brain cells to find my bus ticket saved in my Sweden folder on phone. Phone loading so slowly, I thought I lost the ticket. I bought a new one, hoping to sort this out later, and got going from airport to city center. Where my friend Ulrika was waiting...

Perhaps by the time you are reading this I am already in the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden, Lapland! The weather in central Michigan took an abrupt change: the heat broke. Cool mornings made me think of what it will be like to hike in the grassy valleys and birch wood forests. I’m a bit worried about my clothing choices. Layers are always best—but will I need more than just one of everything?? I try to remind myself that I’ll be working and creating my own heat. After my hike I train to Tranas a sweet little town on the edge of Lake Sommen where I participate in an international arts festival: Tranas at the Fringe. There still isn’t much at the website concerning times/places/info on the workshop, but it’ll be on Flash Memoir. Hopefully people will turn out. The last part of my itinerary takes me to Skene, another small town near Gothenburg. I’ve visited here before when in Sweden to see a dear friend from my days in community. I’m looking forward to catching up and seeing t...

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)   By Muriel Rukeyser I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane, The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories, The news would pour out of various devices Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen. I would call my friends on other devices; They would be more or less mad for similar reasons. Slowly I would get to pen and paper, Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. In the day I would be reminded of those men and women, Brave, setting up signals across vast distances, Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values. As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened, We would try to imagine them, try to find each other, To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other, Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means To reach the limits of ourselves...

I love going to the garden to see my tomatoes, red from the sun and abundant heat, to inspect the cucumbers like little water balloons almost about to burst, and the beans, heavy on the vine or beginning as string ready to wax out into bulbous pods. There is this strange mix of emotions: pride at what I’ve accomplished and astonishment at what the little garden has achieved on its own. Sometimes I just sit back and watch it grow. Lately, it’s been the same with my garden of words. I formed them into patches, rows—planted earlier during dreary spring with only a forethought of what the summer might bring. Two pieces I wrote ages ago, revised somewhat recently, and have sent out have been accepted.   The longer “essay” No One Goes to Albania is a memory piece about a trip through the Balkans the Fall of 2007. I totally understood why it was hard to categorize as it didn’t fit easily into a travelogue or memoir. More about “home” and feeling “foreign” in strange times. There’s...

You can feel it. Long and slow. The heat, the leaf, the locusts in the treetops, singing for rain. High and low, crescendo and allegro. Soaking in the kiddie pool, we all know. It’s the lack of purpose, the sense that soon it will be over that makes us lazy. Malaise. Paper leaves, withered by drought, fall, and it reminds me of Fall. Behind the heat, beyond the cloudless bleached sky there hides crisp nights, early morn schedules, wrapped sandwiches, student backpacks. Hecticity. But, for now, we sit and sweat and close our eyes while rubbing a glass of sweet tea along the edge of our jaw.

The Cosmic Teeter Totter By Debbie Baumgartner   I undressed in public tonight On the bank of the danube The sun was setting on the water As my love emerged from his swim We went arm in arm up the path How is this our life? I said with a skip and a giggle and a kiss   I had a friend who suffered a lot Many difficulties Death, illnesses, hardships It seemed to me that she was Tipping the scales in my favor That somehow my ease My good fortune Was heaped up to balance her misfortune   I thought about that tonight As the warm air hit my bare skin With the cool delicious water Peeling away with my swimsuit I dressed slowly Savoring the unfamiliar sensation Watching a naked man Who looked like the blonde version of Jesus Saunter across the field   So much carefreeness Women sitting on their blankets With their hookahs and burkas Children running and laughing Their parents contentedly watching nearby You...

Recently, there’s been a dust-up in the publishing world: Controversy surrounding the successful memoir The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It is one thing to use novelesque devices in order to pen a literary memoir. To cast an alter ego or stand-in for yourself. To write the memoir in third person. To change names to protect the identity of certain people. For clarity’s sake to eliminate characters or even to create a composite—as long as you alert the reader, such as in an introduction or disclaimer in the front matter. This is all acceptable. Real problems occur when one intentionally writes fiction and then tries to pass it off as memoir. When one writes in order to deceive then that writer has crossed a line. They not only harm their own reputation, but also break trust with their readers. Imposters such as James Frey with his A Million Little Pieces was intentional in his deception. Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes might have gone around a few curves in spinning his memoir—but ...

A couple years ago I had about 12 short stories accepted. This has been the year for short pieces. Currently I have a new piece appearing in Switch, online micro fiction. The piece is nonfiction. The website is not very specific and you’ll need to scroll down to find circa 1984. https://www.switchonline.org/about-1 I’ll be at TRANÅS AT THE FRINGE - International Arts Festival, 3 - 6 September, doing a seminar on Flash Memoir. https://www.atthefringe.org/post/jane-hertenstein There are several other pieces of work that have been accepted and are queued for publication this fall. I’ll announce those with links. Until then . . . Still training for the Kungsleden and writing and posting blogs at my Substack.    

I had coffee with a friend who is kindly reading over a nonfiction manuscript I’m trying to peddle to editors. We talked about memories and how those are woven into the narrative. She asked: Did you really think like this as a kid. The answer is yes. See last post on Fads I was a slow boil, still waters run deep kind of kid. Yet, I was never AP material, though I remember one high school teacher’s amazement of how quickly I untangled and gave the straight forward translation to various parables in a book we were reading. This story is about . . . She just let me go on and on since no one else was contributing to the discussion. But mostly I sat overwhelmed in class. I totally overthought everything. Except math/algebra. I had no idea whatsoever. I remember going to see the movie Rocky and trying to discuss it with some kids in my class. I knew it was schlocky even then, but I also knew it was inspiring. No one was supposed to make it to the top (of the steps). Not the girlfriend...

When I was a kid—this memory is decidedly before entering high school—at one of my favorite haunts, the book store, I picked up for half-price a coffee table book titled: Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People by Paul Sann (1967). The chapters explored everything from the hula hoop to Father Divine in Harlem to the rise of Mussolini. You see I was fascinated by how something becomes a thing and then a few years later is nothing. At the time I was also engrossed in reading the Bible cover to cover. There was something very Ecclesiastes about popularity—here today, gone tomorrow, or to borrow the language: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Isaiah 40:8. Even then, I was looking for the key to life. I spent countless hours trying to figure out how a whole nation, Germany, could fall into the hands of the devil Hitler and exterminate over 6 million Jews. It was a lot for a kid to think about. Every day now in the MAGA univer...