Cellular Memory

one of my grad school assignments last year was an experiment with autofiction – a genre that concentrates on the narrator as observer. these snippets are excerpts from that draft.

I taught ENG205: Ecology & English Literature and two sections (ENG103, ENG107) of Composition & Narratives that semester.  Ellen gave me the idea when she began telling me about her classes last year, about her idea that plants, like people, have cellular memory.  She told me that human bodies process trauma on a cellular level. It is part of why nightmares feel real, why they emerge again and again after a significant event of psychological distress. Our memories are embedded in our tissues, the conceptual and physical linked together.

Scientists have also learned that memory is a chain of ideas – each time we remember something, what we actually remember is the last time we remembered it, on and on in sequence. The course started as an idea on the significance of trees in literature and through a series of changes became an examination of authorial philosophies on the environment. I had to dress it up for the program directors to get it approved.

Comeback Kid

I certainly wasn’t planning on taking an annual break from blogging, but here I am, writing my first post of 2018 in December.  Welcome back, and happy new year!

I graduated from Oglethorpe in May having drafted a novel in three months, and between that project and the nightmare that January turned out to be writing here fell through the cracks.  Since finishing my B.A. I’ve had a series of odd jobs, competed in my first #NaNoWriMo, and bought my first car.  I traveled to Kentucky, Virginia, Nashville, Vancouver and Seattle in 2018, & I’m headed overseas in January!

The Freedom Giver

“Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.” – G.K. Chesterton

spring runs from mountain to mountain
igniting the snow with the dawn
and the snow pours down its sides
gushing like crystal wax
ahead of the green & gold
lifting up its voice
in echo

Breaking Broken

Last night I saw a student production of The Tempest.

I’d never read the play, but knew it featured a shipwreck and a character named Ariel, as well as (in this case) a circus interpretation.  Usually, I try to read the play first: my synapses take a while to sync with the nuances of Shakespeare’s words.  But, as I did not have a chance to read the play beforehand, I sat back and tried to track the flow of the narrative instead.

At first, I hated Prospero.

Interview: Of Darling Wrens

You know how there are some people you talk with for a few moments, and you inexplicably feel like you’ve known them all their lives?  That’s pretty much how my friendship with Annie Hawthorne (my petname for her is Cinthy, since she reminds me of hyacinth flowers) started: we clicked right off the bat.  Since then, we’ve exchanged writing and talked on the phone, I’ve adopted her as my dragonkeeper, and we ramble on about all sorts of things.  And now, at long last, she’s launched a blog!  EEEEEEEE!  I’m delighted to be able to introduce her to you guys today, and to point you to a lovely new site soon to be filled with perusals and things. ^_^  So, without further ado, read the interview and bookmark her blog!

chasing the glass

“What would it look like for you to walk away from the opinions of people who don’t see the dream?”

How do you stop caring about other people’s opinions? Especially when they’re wrong?  How do you shut off feelings of frustration when people don’t understand you and your desires?

When I was 15, I had the start of a hellish year.  I grew up fast, in some ways.  I had precious relationships ripped from me, relationships all the more precious because they were so rare in my younger years, and the aftermath was raw.

And somehow that fire burned my vision.  I saw so much more clearly.  I started to see people as people, as flawed, tragic, beautiful beings living in a story.

Beautiful People – August 2013 – Double Feature

Cowriting can be a pretty darn awesome experience.  In fact, pretty much all of my ventures into cowriting have been very darn awesome.  Probably because my cowriters are awesome.  And the co-creator of this story is definitely awesome.  You can tell because of the repetition for emphasis in the logical syllogism.  *cough*

The story started when my friend Mark went, “Hey, there’s this superhero story on Holy Worlds, you should see about it,” and then kept poking me nicely because I like things but I also forget about them.   It’s a symptom of cookie deficiency.  Anyway.  Eventually he brilliantly wondered aloud in chat if our superheroes knew each other, and…well…a story started poking less nicely.  Because this story is the sort of story that makes authors cry.  And laugh.

Hopefully, readers will feel the same too.  Eventually.  As part of the development, we enrolled two characters into the questionnaire called “Beautiful People.”  Mark answered the questions for The Dreamer, and I for Lance – who are currently from the same overall story, but different books.  Currently.  All of this is experimental science, so expect data fluctuations/variations in the final product.

Also of interest – neither of us picked ‘good guys’ this time around.  Manipulating people’s mind’s and–well, you’ll see.

Enjoy.

What amazes me …

What amazes me is that most days I feel useless. I don’t seem to accomplish anything – just a few pages, most of which don’t seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I’m very proud.

– Louis Sachar

Stories you read…

Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

– Neil Gaiman, M is for Magic

Poets are toddlers

I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars.

On and on it goes, all the way to the lightless borderlands of time and space, which we come to discover in some future age are but the beginnings or endings of a single word spoken from the mouth of God. Some nights, while I traipse down the hill, I imagine that word isn’t a word at all, but a burst of laughter.

– Andrew Peterson