Things are looking up in the reading department. I started Doctorow’s Ragtime Tuesday and I have read the required chapter for my class next week. If I didn’t have some writing to catch up on I’d keep reading. It is entertaining and interesting. Finally an American novel– not adolescent literature– that I can get into. I hate summarizing novels, I also hate reviewing them. Let’s just say Ragtime is like an old-time pulp fiction. Perhaps it inspired Tarantino?
I also started The Blackwater Lightship, an Irish novel by Colm Toibin. I have been having the hardest time getting into Irish literature because it has been so sad and strange (alienating, and at times befuddling , boring even), but this book, this book! I love it; it makes me cry. It dredges up all the emotions I have been holding back…it makes me want to write. I have come up with fifty ideas I want to write about from just starting the novel. It is about a woman who suddenly finds out her brother is dying from AIDS and he wants her to tell their mother and grandmother. The family has been on the outs (especially the daughter and mother) and the brother dying brings them all back together. By the seaside no less. A novel after my own heart.
But it makes me think of my own mother and the troubles between us…I also think about my own family and how it fell apart these last years.
And I miss my grandmothers. I wish I still had one. So I am down, and so emotional. I feel like I could walk around my house crying, alternately wring my hands and tear my hair out.
Then I feel penned up here. Like now I have to be quiet– everybody is sleeping. Sometimes it sucks having a full house. You can’t scream and get a little crazy when you want to. Decorum, decorum…I must keep my composure and set a good example for the young ones.
I feel like getting in my car and driving around for a while…listening to my sad songs and wailing along. But where to drive to in this cold? The car needs an oil change anyway. And I am tired, so tired. Not to mention I have to be up early.
UGH! Responsibility.
I think about hopping the Amtrak train to somewhere. Amtrak supposedly will let writers ride for free…sounds great…oh the things I could write riding the rails.
But I don’t want to run away…not permanently. Only for a spell, to get this craziness out of my system. Then it would be nice to write. Write what I want for change. Take some time off and really dig into these emotions and my stories. Holding them inside is really beginning to trouble me. Who knows how much is still there. I have to get it out, shape them, remember, do the work, exorcise the demons, empty myself.
Yes, to run away for a little bit would be quite nice. But I sit here crying and laughing silently in the semi-darkness.
Jacquelyn's Space 