So I think we can all agree that I am the worst blogger of all time.  If there were a trophy for this, like a guy throwing a bowling ball or doing that one arm forward, one back holding a football about to toss it to the outfield (I don’t know sports) my trophy would be an empty pedestal because I disappeared for months and forgot about it.

To my followers though, look at it this way, you know I won’t spam you!

I never actually forgot about the blog, I’ve just gotten sidetracked by other projects and shiny things.  I’m working on another book, which is going to be much bigger in scope than Life Songs and much more difficult to write.  Life Songs lived in my poetry, my head, my heart, it was written from inside.  The new one is going to be complicated and if I can pull it off, important to others like me.  That’s my goal.

The working title right now, by the way, is Nightmares and Laughter.

I want to take you with me on this one.  Life Songs was very personal, very intimate and there really wasn’t anything to discuss.  But this new one, heretofore called N&L (I’m fancy like that) is so involved that I want to bring you along in the process.  This is not entirely altruistic; writing things out, sharing them with someone else, can help keep me inspired.  And it will be a good way for me to keep up N&L the blog, while I work on N&L the book.

I’m certain that while I go through this process, “talking” with you will help me sort things out.

I will be honest with you, it’s Tuesday morning, I’m in my jammies drinking coffee, and I’m watching the pouring rain outside my window, thinking about my book.  You do not have my full attention, and I may start to ramble.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you know this is not super unusual.

Lost in Thoughts and Daydreams

Since N&L starts with my old diaries, I’ve been living firmly in the past for a few months.   This is not entirely good, given the things I’m reading and reliving.  I had 10 physical diaries covering ages 9 to 33 to read page by page, capture notes, analyze…and remember.

This journey thus far has not been pleasant.

Here’s what I do to stop a downward spiral, and it works a lot of the time.

I have many photos and drawings of long-dead relatives, some going back to the mid-1800s.  I can see my face in a smirk, or a side-eye, or pursed lip annoyance, I can see these long-dead relatives in my siblings, my parents.  Except for my sister, all of these people are gone.

Bear with me, I’ll get to the comforting bit.

See, most especially with the very old photos and drawings, these people have been gone a long time.  They had trials, pains, headaches, menstrual cramping before Ibuprofen, (girlfriend, respect!) They lived through the Civil War, WWI, the Depression, WWII, and a million problems I can’t even imagine.  But those human events, all of them, are over.  Whatever one believes about an afterlife, those pains, as well as the joy, are done.

I try to hang on to this, look at these pictures and see my family, imagine what they went through. Did they keep diaries?  To my knowledge, there are no actual diaries for any of them.  How is that possible?  I can’t believe that in a family as artistically inclined as mine there is not one journal.

Maybe you have figured out where I’m going.

I will die someday

I’m not afraid of death, I don’t believe in an afterlife of any kind, so I’ve no fear of that.  But I do fear dying.  Any pain, regret, and worrying about what will happen to my journals, my writing, my photos, those beautiful family photos I take comfort in.

Neither my siblings nor I had children.  I have no close blood relations who might care about this random woman in San Francisco.  Will my diaries, at the moment I have kept 21, be in a landfill?  Deleted? In an antique store?  All my thoughts and fears and joy and pain will be gone.

But then I look at photos.

All of those people are dead, there are no diaries, no way to “hear” their voices. They are pictures in a frame. I can do a family tree, I can trace exactly how they are related to me, (the lady in the picture on the cover of Life Songs is my great x3 aunt Alice) but they are strangers.

At the end of our lives, we are stories.  We are not the photos, we are not the antiques, we are the stories.  Once we are gone, we have no control over our legacies.  Regardless of what you believe or not, we are gone.  I can’t imagine an afterlife that involves worrying about human concerns.

Grief is for the living

My brother died in June, my first sibling to die. Of course, I miss him, but there was something else.

He, my sister, and I formed a whole lifetime of memories.  No one has all of them, we filled in the blanks for each other.  Now with him gone, 1/3 of our memories are gone.

This made me very sad first, but then I realized we have the photos, the memories, the stories.  There are a great many stories where he is concerned. Kenneth was quite unique.

And that’s my point.  He lives in stories, our lives, our memories.

My close blood relatives are dwindling, but I have many friends who are my family.  They have children who are my nieces and nephews; I love them dearly.

Will they care about my “stuff” when I’m gone?  I don’t know.  But they will have stories, oh I guarantee, they will have stories.  From my grown niece who calls me her Fairy Goth Mother, to my little nephew Mini Cooper who has resigned himself to the fact that I will always call him that, and everyone I hold dear, there will be stories about me until there are not.

And I will not care, because I will be dead.

This is comforting to me.

Legacies Long Gone

I got an old phonograph from my brother, with the hand crank, and a collection of old 78 rpm records.  I love to listen to long-dead artists living their dreams.  I know too many musicians to think that they did not sit around and argue and swear and fight artistic differences.  One of the records is the Andrews Sisters.  They straight up hated each other.

But they all made beautiful music, they all left beautiful music.  And these passionate musicians will all be forgotten in time.

Except for the Beatles.  That’s just science.