Healing through story
A Monday that stands out. Memorial Day. Starting the week with story. Clothing the naked form with our words, images, clay, pencil. To honor our fallen military heroes, I found a couple of stories you may enjoy. One about an old veteran who never forgets, that comes from Daily Kos, May 2015. Another is from The Week. Also about a WWII veteran.
And I include another sample of my own writing: a stripped down Porsche chassis.
Continue readingWelcome to another week of Mannequin Monday. The place where we drape the naked form with words, images, shapes, texture. The magic of story.
Today, the featured story starts where sea meets land. We drape the form with wet sand, with overpowering sea water, with “landlocked grief.” The story is Across the Sea: A Sequence, by Gbenga Adesina.
My own writing sample today is titled “Cold Pizza”. A man waits at the beach for a woman. For a fresh start.
Nigerian writer Gbenga Adesina brings us a poem, a story of the sea. Adesina is second-place winner in Narrative Magazine’s eleventh annual poetry contest.
The sea as a place where life meets death. Where dreams meet reality. His piece is titled: Across the Sea: A Sequence. You can read all of it in Narrative Magazine’s website.
In Adesina’s poetic story I see immigrants. Struggling to escape to a new life. Fighting the sea. Perhaps fighting a sea they have never seen or dealt with before. Landlocked people driven from their homelands. Crowded on barely-seaworthy boats to cross to a land with opportunity. With hope. Hope now drowning in sea water.
Here is a quote from Adesina’s Across the Sea:
Continue readingThe naked form, the blank page. Time to dress them again. Dress with your narrative. Your point of view. Your expression of self. You as artist, making art.
This week we take a look at four exciting, award-winning stories from teens. Courtesy again of Narrative magazine.
Plus, Donald Maass offers advice on writing with meaning, in Writer Unboxed.
And a sample of my own writing. This time a repost of The Mother’s Day Card.
Narrative magazine, a consistent – and free – source of good fiction, recently ran its fifth annual Narrative high school “Tell me a Story” contest. The winners each had their stories posted on the magazine’s website.
In the words of Narrative, “What happens when you make a choice? A choice that can’t be smoothed over, reconciled, or unmade? That’s a question for the ages—and for story.”
Continue readingWelcome to one more Mannequin Monday. Our theme continues. We find ways to dress the blank form. To cover the mannequin, to write the words, to shape the sculpture, to create the sketch, to take the photo or make the film.
Today our fiction piece – again from Narrative magazine – features a story by Ifeoma Sesiana Amobi. The interview features five up and coming Nigerian writers. And finally, another sample of my own writing.
Narrative magazine gives us a fine short story by Nigerian author Ifeoma Sesiana Amobi, titled A Small Blip on an Eternal Timeline.
“My family came to America when I was one, and in my tiny luggage bag my mother stuffed dreams too large for me to carry.”
So starts Somadina’s story. In her early twenties, an artist, she lives with boyfriend Emeka in a tiny apartment in Pittsburgh, PA. Emeka has his big dreams too, but he struggles with family expectations, a potential marriage with the “ideal” woman Amaka.
“Give me a little more time,” he pleads. He swears he will tell his parents he will not pursue a marriage with Amaka, but rather build a life with her. His family strongly disapproves of Somadina.
She struggles with her own family’s expectations. “According to my mother, I was never right with the world.” She tells Emeka, “I had a teacher once, in a continuing ed studio workshop… He told me that I would have a hard time competing with African artists who were making bold statements as a result of living in a state of existential urgency. He did not realize that my flowers were also coming from existential urgency. I asked him why my paintings had to mean something. Why they couldn’t just make me feel something. Something indescribable. Why couldn’t they just open a door for anyone to walk through and experience an existence that’s greater than they will ever be but also in this strange and relieving way, a part of them. An alternate reality that is ours. Isn’t this what we all want? To find that magical place in the midst of our tiny, broken-up lives?”
Somadina muses, “If I hadn’t lived out my life the way I felt I needed to, moment by moment, we might not have met each other. In the grand scheme of things, as ugly as life gets sometimes, I haven’t made any mistakes. Am I wrong? Am I making a mistake?”
When would I stop running? she asks herself. Running away from myself?
“I took one long, deep breath, and walked into the sun.”
Dreams too large to carry in a tiny suitcase. A metaphor for the plight of both characters. Dreams vs. expectations. A conflict between their own dreams and those of their families. A conflict within, as each struggles to find their way.
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