A STORY. 31. ON BITING OFF AND CHEWING
I’m still with My Dreams and I :
https://elsasemporium.com/my-dreams-and-i.html
I reread the first words. I don’t know where they come from.
Don't bite off
more than you can chew
The words don’t come from my family. Or myself.
Instead I’d generally have no idea what I was biting off. I’m in Grade 7. I write a short play, Up North Before Christmas. I want to put it on. Is that biting off more than I can chew or not? I recruit kids from my block and cast them in the play. I set up rehearsals and they come. Things don’t get completed that year, so I do the same the next year. And the next. This time, third try, everything gets done, including costumes sewn by my very pregnant mother. The challenge as it turns out: putting on the play. My brother is born early in December, so that leads to a delay. A family friend comes to the rescue, in terms of getting the play performed: she loans her finished basement. In January, there is a performance!!!
My dreams are alive
They thrive
on the slightest light
the slightest air
They dare
to stir
to unfurl
their wings
My dreams and I
are ready
for one more try
My dreams do not die
They wait
gestate
They long
to belong to the world
My dreams and I
The sky's not half as high
as the height they would fly
if I try
or so it seems
just one more try
if I dare
if I care
if I try
one more try
My dreams and I
The poems. The word pieces. This is one more try. I wrote them. I typed them up. That started - so very unexpected - in 1994. In 2006, I started my first site - a home for my poems, songs, ideas. I learn how to reach people - up to 60,000 page views a month. But there’s no feeling of permanence, or of any deep connection to the poems.
Then for a decade I have been pulled more and more to what is going on in the world, to issues that feel so very important to me. I do what I can.
Now, as the likelihood is ever increasing that there will be a major world war, I am coming to what feels like home to me now, this strange STORY where, in one way, there are no rules. I don’t have a regular plot line - time for the second corpse to be found, time for the big lovers’ blow up.
I have a personal rule: to listen to myself, to what is coming up from inside me. Is this what is most pulling at me? Is this where it feels right for the story to go?
I have another rule as well: to listen to you, the reader. Does this bring the reader along? I remember poetry labelled “difficult” - meaning that, unless someone explains what the poem is about, you wouldn’t have a clue. That doesn’t bring most readers along.
And now, my listening says: time for one more piece about this deep inner drive to reach in a way that feels right.
It could be Escape Velocity. I will come to that one.
It could be Who Will Help Me with My Spark?
It could be Can’t Cross the Gap.
I settle on
My Own Lucky Penny
To be continued …
A STORY. 32. MY OWN LUCKY PENNY
https://elsaiselsa.substack.com/p/a-story-32-my-own-lucky-penny
A STORY. ALL THE CHAPTERS ... UP TO NOW
https://elsaiselsa.substack.com/p/a-story-table-of-contents-up-to-now
Posted April 15, 2024