Soul Writers is a drop in writing circle facilitated by yours truly. All are welcome. It is free and takes place on the first Sunday of the month from noon-1:30PM at the Amor Spiritual Center at 2528 Beacon Ave S. Seattle, WA. If you are ever in a mood to write and want to join us, just come on through. The format is as follows:
- Check in/ Welcome to any new writers
- Prompt or exercise of the day
- Writing time
- Sharing and critique
- Goal Setting
This month our exercise was inspired by the lyrical genius of the Indigo Girls. One of my favorite songs begins with "I heard you were drunk and mean down at the Dairy Queen." I don't know if you have ever had that particular experience first hand or as a witness, but it always kinds of makes me laugh to think about it. This got me thinking about how I could chronicle my life by my iTunes playlists. Songs to fall in love by, songs to hate your ex with, songs to bemoan the misery of another suck ass winter, and so on. Poets like Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell steal my heart, so what better way to do a prompt for an exercise in memoir writing than to steal a few song lyrics, drop them in a hat, pull them at random and write about the memory that comes up.
Here are some of the lyrics that were in the hat in case you want to play along at home:
- All we are saying is give peace a chance.
- You'll always know the reason why we couldn't have the moon and the sky.
- Exercise your right to enjoy life. You don't need an invitation.
- I could drink a case of you darling and I would still be on my feet.
- Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.
- She runs through the streets with her eyes painted red, under a black belly of cloud in rain.
- The city I live in, she's my companion. I walk through her streets, she knows who I am.
The lyric I chose:
Sometimes I wished that I smoked cigarettes so thinking
about you wasn’t my only habit.
The piece I wrote:
I’m sitting here wondering which one of my exes takes up the most space
in my brain. What a pointless exercise, looking back across the grid of
converging and divergent journeys. There are no medals, no Olympic gold winners
to stand on platforms waving, just snap shots of time, fragments of what
happened mixed with what I wished had happened so jumbled they come across as
dreams. The answers aren’t really anything I am willing to admit. So I will let
you be my easy answer for today. I will remember you for the simple purpose of
forgetting you tomorrow. It’s midevil, like blood letting. I bleed our memories
with the intent to purify, but it only seems to make me feel weaker.
Maybe had I met you at another time and place I wouldn’t
have needed to know you. A woman needing a man is like a fish needing a
bicycle, impractical, a Salvador Dali painting waiting to happen. But I needed
something and you were a close fit, an easy smile, a boisterous laugh and oh
the way you cooked. You tasted like home. I didn’t mean to fall in love. I
didn’t try to set my heart by your metronome; it just fell into the simple
ticking of you.
Should I tell you its fall now and how the season
nestling dark around me makes me think of you? The cool caress of wind across
my cheek, the stinging absence of the warmth of your hand. Should I ask you if
you even remember our accidental date? Would you admit that I felt like home to
you too? That you took my hand, not
the other way around? That you let me borrow your last name and lay your head
in my lap and let me ease you the way only a woman like me can? I am no shallow
comfort. Me with love like the endless pools of molten rock that live in the
core of our earth. Me with a heart like an anchor that wouldn’t sink you or
weigh you down, but would center you and ground your soul. Could you say the
same about the woman you gave your name to for keeps? I wondered if it was
because you didn’t see me, but in retrospect I know it was precisely because
you did. When you held me, we both knew the truth and when you walked away, I
learned to repeat the lie of you not choosing me, the lie of you not knowing
how to love me back. But the truth endures long after the lies have burnt to
ash. That really happened. We were us, if only for a brief moment in what will
be a much longer journey to come.
Sometimes I wish for an addiction with a twelve step
program. No matter how many steps I take, none of them lead me any further away
from you.
