Ink Not Dried - more thoughts on memoir

I recently read on one of Marta Szabo's blogs:
"This blog is a gallery where I hang my latest pieces of writing, the paint still drying."

I like that analogy.

It brought to mind another blog I visit entitled "Sending Pages Out to Dry." It also brought to mind one of my signature lines, "Is there ever a final draft?"

When I first began to discover myself after leaving The Way, and more so as I reached beyond the cultic/all-or-nothing/black-white mindset, I wrote poetry.   I joined an online forum to exchange with other poets from around the world. I gained some confidence in my ability to communicate; in putting myself out there.  It was liberating, yet also scary.  I didn't consider myself a poet.

This past year, 2009, I stumbled across memoir.  I have a new love, that of writing memoir.  I think I'm learning that as I write, as I recreate scenes, I can paradoxically be in the scene and out of the scene at the same time.  It's as if I'm in a play and watching it as well.  But it's not a play; it's life.  Yet, even though I am continuing this path of memoir, I don't consider myself a writer.  Perhaps that will change as life goes on.

Poetry has many layers.  The author may have an idea in mind, or an incident.  The reader can interpret what the author wrote as the reader sees fit to suit the reader's mind, intellect, heart, life.  That is poetry, at least a small corner of it; similar to memoir, to paintings, portraits, melodies - art.

Memoir is like a reservoir of pictures, still life and moving.  I'm by no means a reservoir expert, but what comes to mind are nature's lakes with rocks and sand and layers of life.  An entire universe within itself, the depths of which are hidden until one decides to dive.  That is memoir, at least a snippet of it; similar to poetry, to sculptures, forms, landscapes - art.

Hmm, interesting.  Today as I was hiking and looking over the Shenandoah Mountains, I thought of the ocean wondering how long it would take for the trees and vegetation of the mountain to change if it were covered with sea depths.

Splash.....

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Click here for more thoughts on memoir: I: "Journey through Memoir - Introduction" & III: "Do You Type with Eyes Closed?"
Click here for memoir index.
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