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