About Me
So here I am. Writing. I always thought I had the talent to be a good writer, yet I have done precious little of it. A college professor told me I was the best writer in her class. Yet I have let years go by without commiting much to paper. I have started stories, written poems, and have notebooks full of dialogue and character sketches, but cannot discipline myself to put my work out there. Why is that? I begin here to look inside. I struggle to plan an order to my blog, my innate need to be chronological is a practical impossibility. So I will jump back and forth, making every effort to identify the context of older writings. I have no illusions that what I write will be of importance to anyone but me. But perhaps something will touch someone, on some level, and I would love to hear about it. Much of what I will write...whether new or or old writings seeing the light of day for the first time, will by nature be imperfect and unpolished. I intend to journal with a minimum of self editing, which I think we all do too much. I want to be open and honest, for myself, resisting the urge to polish the smudges and regrets of a passionate, flawed and often weightless existence. I will chronicle feverish blooms and wilting ardor, euphorias and melancholy, novel dreams and epic silence. My story has roots in my youthful insecurities and desperate need to be loved and noticed, growing bewitchment by the ephemeral elixirs of alcohol and drugs, leading to over a decade of self-annihilation.That feeling of utter hopelessness, of the devastating sadness of daily being agent and witness to my own seemingly inevitable destruction, will never leave my being. I tried to capture that emptiness here..."And just how terribly sad it all was...the impending loneliness of a long drive back home drunk, through the pressing gloom of a dark frigid Nebraska winter night, all old college friends like strangers if even to be found after those 3 years. What exactly had I been trying to find? What fleeting apparition of happier times did I expect to reappear to comfort me? I did not know, yet my sense was this was the last place I knew to look. The play had ended, participants and spectators had long since dispersed, yet I remain frozen in the harsh glare of the spotlight from within. Vain attempts to conjure up the rich arcadian panorama of the scenes, now came futile and barren.What had dissipated the sustenance that had thrilled my heart? The sadness was not bitter, but a yearning, sweet, fateful melancholy that was pervasive, tangible, the atmosphere of my heart. This spiritual anguish could be a chrysalis, a coming transformation, yet would I survive it? And what of it's duration? For it already seemed intolerably endless. A thousand long nights strung back to back by the thread of hope that the next day would be different, and I would stop losing pieces of me. That is what was happening, I had passed the critical mass of potential blinding explosion, and now felt my very being disintegrating, slow, relentless, heartbreaking. Treading water, drowning in alcohol, eventually I would slip beneath the surface, random bubbles rising from the murky depths to meet the final swirling eddy. Who would be suprised? Least of all, me."But the experience of having survived the prolonged physical, mental and spiritual punishment, has altered my essence, and attuned my heart to the possibilties of redemption through suffering. Not long after resurfacing from this near drowning, I wrote of the transformation..."I found myself nearly suffocating from excitement, as an unending torrent of possibilities flooded my mind. surely this merciful new development promised final disentanglement from my soul grinding daily existence. The sad, grey mist that clutched my face would no longer burn exposed nerves, no longer each leaden step forbode the final plank walk. Yes, the clock of fate had struck twelve, and the thunderbolts of divine judgement had not snapped and licked at my boot heels. Indeed even the people I now passed on the street no longer looked intent on staring me naked, whispering in delight, foreshadowing some final fate of justified depravity. The gallows had emptied, I, inexpicably pardoned. Certain death, now cloud wisp freedom."I leave tonight's inaugural blog with a fairly recent poem I wrote...impressions of a passing storm, and the way it tapped into my old hallucinatory senses..."Flash of brilliant silver light,
Crack and peal of sonorous thunder,
Cavernous reverberations o'er the hills,
Trees stretch in patient grace,
Leaves tremor and whisper,
In rising symphony,
Then settle back to silence,
In this timorous, brief still,
Nature vibrates the presence of God"
