Thursday, May 14, 2009

Fiction and Truth



today, two thousand words and then some flowed out of me onto the paper as easy as pie. I could write all day and I think I will in between bouts of getting the garden ready. I started yesterday putting down the facts of the story but then that got so tedious so today I'm just letting her rip. The thing is it is my story - it is my memory of a time thirty years ago and a place and some people so I'm still mushing through it. I think the best way for me to tell the heart of this story is as a fiction so that is how I'm approaching it. So perhaps the protagonist is me but I think she'll find her own way and start telling me about it soon enough. I've given her a name and the other main characters their own names and pretty much that seals it. Seems once they have their very own names they start telling a slightly different story than the one I told. The thing I don't want different is the village which really exists and the time in that village which really exists. But then again, some people say the village I'm writing about is picturesque or even grandly beautiful and I don't say so. Because it wasn't to me so even the place will be a fiction after all.

It is good to go off to the past and the fiction right now because in all truth - the present and here is difficult right now. My sweet patootie and I have come to understand some hard truths these past few days. We're not making enough money for one reason and another to sustain ourselves without constant worry and panic and running around mending holes in the dyke of our finances. I have to keep telling myself and him that things don't matter - only us and the kids and our family and friends,both here and scattered, matter. And we are all good. So... but we love this house that he built with own two hands and the way the light and the trees come into the bedroom in the morning and now of course the chickens and the manure and it is just all too much.

Sorry to burden you all with this but I really don't feel like pretending much on this site so if you're after funny today would not be the day. It'll be back though - I know you can depend on that. In this mean time - we will go talk to someone who knows something about the choices we must make and then we will get on with it because that is what we do. But today - I'm going to write and garden. I'm going to garden like there are no end to my days here - which again is always a fiction.

3 comments:

Jan Morrison said...

Hey Liz in PA - did you send me your address because I can't find it and I want to send you your odd little prize for encouraging me during the big writing blitz! So you can email me at mobudgeATnsDOTsympaticoDOTca
OK?
Jan

David Alan Richards said...

Jan,

Sad news.

I hope you can somehow keep your house and if not, find a wonderful new place. Don't worry about entertaining us with funny stories, when it happens it happens. It's not your job.

-David

Jan Morrison said...

Hi David,

Thanks for your dear message and actually for the last part of your post! I live in a very beautiful part of the world. Doesn't everyone say that? Walking with my dog in the woods or making my garden or paddling the canoe with Ron is what makes my heart full. One of the reasons I love this home is because it is set into the side of a hill with a crazy cliff on one side and big maples and golden birches and tumbled rocks so that my sort of gardening (no grass - it is the anti-christ) can ramble down the hill. However, I can make a nice place back at the old house. We can garden and the one thing I liked about that place is it backs onto the woods. I just have to keep remembering what is important...
Your last paragraph reminded me of proportion and balance. How the real earthy earth is where it is at.

Ron and I went to hear a lecture last night from the man who wrote Tilting - Robert Mellin. Tilting is a community on Fogo Island off of Newfoundland. The book is a wonderful mixture of anthropology, architecture and social commentary with many interviews and fantastic pictures and drawings throughout. It is above all about a community that was focussed on connection rather than the material world. I highly recommend it.

Back to the novel at hand...
Jan