A STORY. 81. AGAIN AND AGAIN, I TRY

I am remembering a client (yes, this brings in another side of my life) who burst into the individual time I was having with her partner. She was desperate. It was urgent. She was in such inner pain because of what was going on in the relationship.

It marked a huge turning point in both their lives.

And now, here I am, bursting into “you’s” story because of an inner push. I could ignore it. But my sense is that I would be ignoring myself, and this experiment comes from listening to myself. So I will listen to myself once more.

Something from Virginia Woolf (hugely famous novelist) just came to mind, from A Room of One’s Own. She castigated another hugely famous novelist, Charlotte Bronte, for allowing her heroine, Jane Eyre, to cry out, when looking out a window high up in the attic of the manor, that women feel just as men feel, that they have the same longings. That is inappropriate, reprimanded Virginia Woolf. Jane should have been thinking only of her beloved.

I’m with Charlotte Bronte, who does not keep Jane confined.

So here I am, with my own longings, interrupting this story.

I am thinking again of my friend Karen, who abandoned her lifetime of paintings on the curb, when she went to live with her partner who did not like these paintings. Too dark.

She died six years later, of colon cancer.

I don’t know if the cancer was in any way connected to her abandoning her paintings.

It looks like, to me, the killing of much of her creative output.

I have not abandoned my poems. I could not. Sometimes other things, also important to me, have pulled at me, but the poems have kept tugging at me. Help us. There must be a way.

This STORY comes, at least in part, from the desire to bring my poems much further into the world, at a time when, in the West, very few people read poetry. It feels very right.

Years ago, I could just feel the burning desire. I was doing what I could, putting pieces online. It did not feel like enough. I didn’t know what else I could do.

I’m going to give voice to that sense of inner urgency. My sense is many creative people feel it.

I Try

Who Will Help Me With My Spark?

Who Will Help?

Forever Alone.

I’ll start with I Try.

I have read many times: what if it could be easy? In other words, what if, instead of things being a struggle, they happened easily.

I’d love things to be easy.

On the other hand, I have seen many people, taking it easy, leave their dreams behind.

Not my way.

https://elsasemporium.com/i-try.html

hardly a day goes by
when I do not try
     try
     try
     try and try and try again

hardly a day goes by
when I don’t do
     do
     do
     strive, achieve, do my best
          my damnedest best

hardly a day goes by
when I am not tired
     tired
     tired
     draggy
     and crabby
   forcing the flow
   pushing to go
          no matter how tired
               how tired of trying

That was one part of me. Only one part. There was also the part happy to put each piece online, delighted to see that many people were viewing the pieces, as I learned to get the pieces found by the search engines - for several years, up to 60,000 page views a month.

But something hugely important was clearly lacking - especially a sense of connection to the people.

To be continued . . .
A STORY. 82. WHO WILL HELP ME WITH MY SPARK?
https://elsaiselsa.substack.com/p/a-story-82-who-will-help-me-with-my-spark

A STORY. ALL THE CHAPTERS ... UP TO NOW
https://elsaiselsa.substack.com/p/a-story-table-of-contents-up-to-now

Posted Oct 17, 2024