Author's Note
For my work-in-progress memoir
For my VEEPS! (Very Exceptional Electric Persons)
I know you get a ton of email so the fact that you opened this up and you’re reading it, well, that means a lot to me. Thanks for being a supporter of the independent artist.
Here’s a sneak peek of the memoir I’m working on along with my latest painting.
Author’s Note for my work-in-progress memoir:
~~~
I am at the keyboard again, making the music of my choosing, not worried about the sound. I ignore the construction workers outside my door with their demanding noise, insisting that I hear how things are really built.
I build my own worlds. I’ve been writing since I was eight years old, and boy, are my fingers tired! But not too tired to keep clickety-clack, clickety-clack until my ending days. I would write if I didn’t have fingers. I would magic carpet ride if I didn’t have time. My dad is a playwright, legally blind, with cognitive decline. His writing turned into a voice in his head, a hallucination, a man telling him things, all sorts of things. I named the invisible man Nudnik, Yiddish for 'pain in the ass.' He inspired out of me —a book of poems and art, a documentary short and a stage play. Thanks for the inspiration, Nudnik. Now leave my dad alone.
I am a writer the way a dog is a dog, the way a peach is a peach. I never aspired to be anything. Who has the time for that? Just do the thing you do, and you are it. If you don’t do it from the start—start now, and then this moment becomes your start— you do the thing, you claim the thing. You are the thing. Yes, it is that simple.
I write because it slows me down, makes me clear, gives me a place to be cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and it’s A-okay. More than okay—it, meaning me, is okay. I’m sometimes ignored for the way I string these words along, but sometimes I’m applauded and who doesn’t like a little (a lot) applause in their life? Such a lovely sound. Such a gorgeous feeling. Like a cupcake storm on a salty day.
I healed myself, more or less, by writing a play after my brother’s sudden death. I soothed myself, as well as I could, with a year-long blog, after snuggling my ema, my favorite human, in her hospice bed, whispering for her to join the others—I’ll be fine. When I was younger, I escaped a much older abusive asshole. The experience of him haunted me. The poems I wrote for myself kept me centered enough so I could eventually stop checking the obits—is he dead yet? How about today? I can kill him with my arrangement of letters and stay out of jail. I can let my loved ones rest with pretty words, ugly words, and nonsense words. All of it is for me. I do it for me.
But the shrapnel of it all—sometimes it’s also for them, and for you too. Yes, for you.
And I love that.
I really do.
More ways to enjoy and support my work:
Etsy Shop (signed books/prints/gifts/some art)
💖💖💖
Love the art - Love the words.