Fact and Fiction - Poetic License

About my blog:

Welcome to the infancy of my blog. We, that is, my words and me, have not yet decided what we'd like to be, so at the moment our aim is to be whatever I need at any given moment. Sometimes I might need to rant about the nonsense of politics, mourning the unwelcome changes I see in the character of my country, or celebrating forward movement in causes I support. Sometimes, I might want to make up a character whose life I can imagine in prose or verse. Sometimes I might sneak in a snippet from the novel I'm writing. My main character is Max Mardel. Some days when I am writing, he is quite cooperative. Other days he is incorrigible and refuses to be put down on paper. One thing you might want to know about Max: His intentions are good. I don't know if his mama told him, the way my mama told me: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But who knows, he may reveal that to me at some point.

I live in Texas but was raised in rural New York. I never once, until now, have referred to my mother as mama. But Max was conceived (ha!) born and raised in Texas. So he always calls his mother mama. Just for the record, I called mine Mother.

I'd like to dedicate my blog to two of the awesome writing teachers I've had along the way. Both of them are well-known Southern female authors and professors: Angela Davis Gardner and Lee Smith, both of whom taught and encouraged me at North Carolina State University. Angela was the first person who helped me build confidence in my writing, and Lee encouraged me to enter my short stories in the Hollins College Literary Festival where one year I won first prize with my short story "Sister Helen," and another year I was a finalist. It's been so long that I'll have to go back and look to see which story that was. I have only a hard copy of "Sister Helen," so one day when I'm feeling ambitious, I'll re-key it and post it to this blog for perpetuity. And I'll figure out which story was a finalist and post that one as well. Keep in mind, these stories are more than fifteen years old by now, but I have ambitions of creating new ones to stand beside them. Also thanks to Angela and Lee, I applied for and was awarded a $7500 fellowship from the North Carolina Council for the Arts. But that was nearly eons ago.

To make a living as a single mother, I put my efforts into technical writing and raising two beautiful (seriously, they're gorgeous) and now fully grown daughters who are the loves of my life and fill me with untold angst and joy. And they've undertaken expanding our family with their wonderful husbands and by bringing new little ones into the mix. We are a crazy but happy family! So now, I have gotten serious about returning to the writing that once filled me with a reason for being and created an internal passion that I had only a shadowy idea existed.

And by the way, I do still need to support myself, so having the time to write is not something that I've achieved by becoming independently wealthy. It's a matter of having been unemployed since December 2008 and having an abundance of time on my hands! In addition to taking a fresh and concerted approach to my writing, I have also just recently returned as a volunteer grant writer at Family Resource Center (http://www.frcnt.org/) of North Texas in hopes of bringing in some funding to help this wonderful non-profit organization continue the good work it has been doing for many years. They help North Texas families in so many ways including an awesome program called "For Kids' Sake." Denton County Courts order all divorcing parents to attend this seminar that teaches them how to relate to each other and their children. Parents learn how important it is to set aside the strong negative emotions they may have toward their ex-partner and to help their children deal with their own emotions about their parents' divorce. Parents learn not to use their children as weapons against the ex-partner, not to bad-mouth him or her in front of the children, in other words, how to provide the children with a stable, emotionally healthy environment in which to grieve and move on. For Kids' Sake is just one of many programs that FRCNT offers. Seriously, check out their website (and if the spirit moves you, feel encouraged to make a donation!).

But getting back to About my blog.

So, in this post, I've provided some facts. And some of my future posts will also be facts. Or opinions. Or musings. Or fictions. For now I think maybe we, that is, my words and me, will be a kaleidoscope of words; words that when put together are sometimes true, sometimes imagined, sometimes false, and sometimes just dropped together on virtual paper to see what they might become. Pollock comes to mind. My page is my canvas. My word is my color.

Getting to Know Me - a collection of six-word memoirs

Faith
Often in fits and starts, believing.
Sometimes falling into abyss of doubt.

Myself
A unified dichotomy of two selves.
Tongue, knife-sharp, softened with age.

Reading
Zealous lover of other people's stories.
Surrounded by books, millions of words.

Politics
Conservative Republican looking for liberal affection.
Big government will never regulate me.

Most Importantly, Dogs
Healthy grieving? Tell me you're joking.
Life's too short to live alone.
In my tale, plenty of tails.

Me and My Sister

We're sick, fevers one hundred and two,
thermometers poked under our tongues
and forgotten.

In the day our mother off to work.
At night she soaks in the bath tub
hours on end,

courting a long-neck bottle of beer and
thinking (we're sure, we've talked it over)
of our father

who's disappeared.
Vanishing acts both of them.

Our faces are flushed my sister
bursts into a coughing fit and
our mother

never screams out from the bath tub
"Are you all right?" the way she did
in our happier days.