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Drilling Down into 2009
Mar. 3rd, 2015 01:50 amBeen working off and on, for several weeks, on a grouping of LJ entries from the latter half of 2009. A couple have to do with my dad's final days and a couple with the aftermath. Along with some other things, there's a lot of weight, a lot darkness. So now I'm trying to find a bit of light to balance the darkness, to give some relief, if only momentarily, from the spiral down.
I eventually called this grouping "Fading into Sepia," the title of one of the pieces in it, and, having realized that it essentially covered the second half of that year, considered making it part 2 of something that would encompass the whole year. The first half would be whatever I could mine out of the earlier part of that year's journal entries.
Which is roughly in line with what I had decided, some time ago, to do with my journal. To go back to its beginning and pull out pieces that had a common theme or whatever else might make them work together. But I'd always thought in terms of unifying theme, not events strung along a timeline, as driving the process of selection.
Now, I guess what I have is sort of a hybrid of those two ideas and I guess you have to say, as writers always have, well, whatever works. But having gone back to the beginning of that year, I find the weight of it, the nature of those events, is really, really, difficult to handle.
It seems that I could rather easily, by comparison, write about the decline and death of my own father, with whom I'd always had differences, maintained an angry sort of distance, than I could about the grandson who has, for all of his twelve years, been more precious to me than my own life. And it's around that grandson that most of my first half journal entries revolve.
So, I don't know. Maybe my contemplated "2009: Selected Entries from a Live Journal" will have to "fade back into sepia" per the original plan. I just don't know. It did seem a little easier the second time I went back to it and maybe once the writer/editor takes over I'll be able to handle it.
As long, I guess, as the writer/editor isn't similarly buried in the dysfunction of present time...
(Huh. Funny. Now that I'm thinking of it, that's exactly what "Fading into Sepia" is about. In it, I throw a fading photograph, a memento of my father's WWII experience with the Army Corps of Engineers, back on the table because I can't "handle the weight of it.")
LPK
LiveJournal
3.3.2015 (a)
I eventually called this grouping "Fading into Sepia," the title of one of the pieces in it, and, having realized that it essentially covered the second half of that year, considered making it part 2 of something that would encompass the whole year. The first half would be whatever I could mine out of the earlier part of that year's journal entries.
Which is roughly in line with what I had decided, some time ago, to do with my journal. To go back to its beginning and pull out pieces that had a common theme or whatever else might make them work together. But I'd always thought in terms of unifying theme, not events strung along a timeline, as driving the process of selection.
Now, I guess what I have is sort of a hybrid of those two ideas and I guess you have to say, as writers always have, well, whatever works. But having gone back to the beginning of that year, I find the weight of it, the nature of those events, is really, really, difficult to handle.
It seems that I could rather easily, by comparison, write about the decline and death of my own father, with whom I'd always had differences, maintained an angry sort of distance, than I could about the grandson who has, for all of his twelve years, been more precious to me than my own life. And it's around that grandson that most of my first half journal entries revolve.
So, I don't know. Maybe my contemplated "2009: Selected Entries from a Live Journal" will have to "fade back into sepia" per the original plan. I just don't know. It did seem a little easier the second time I went back to it and maybe once the writer/editor takes over I'll be able to handle it.
As long, I guess, as the writer/editor isn't similarly buried in the dysfunction of present time...
(Huh. Funny. Now that I'm thinking of it, that's exactly what "Fading into Sepia" is about. In it, I throw a fading photograph, a memento of my father's WWII experience with the Army Corps of Engineers, back on the table because I can't "handle the weight of it.")
LPK
LiveJournal
3.3.2015 (a)
