Goodbye Summer

Goodbye Summer
by Ashley Sue Moore



September's come and gone
the days have left me hurting
and stuck between the crossfire.
You and I were happy once
we fell in love ....
Shot with 8mm HD App
Song and lyrics by Ashley Sue Moore
Copyright 2012

Hunger Games Song

There's a book called Hunger Games, which was made into a movie. I'm admittedly unfamiliar with the book and movie. Of course this confession will probably have my younger family members up in arms. Especially since my teen granddaughter has posted a youtube video of her "cover" for a Taylor Swift song that's in the movie. Keep your eye on her, 'cause she's going to be a famous star someday! Without further ado, I present Chloe:


 

Beauty in Sadness?

Sadness is like an empty church
cold, but suggestive of the untouchable.
A tinge of hope lingers in the soul
with a wish for comfort
a desire beyond desire
for that place called home.

It's where the eyes ache
with unrealized tears,
the throat feels too small
to cry out or moan
to assuage the loneliness.

Yes, sadness is a place
confined and trapped
a place inviting escape.
Listen, outside the birds
are silent in the darkness.

It's too much to grasp.
to stretch a hand out in need.
In lassitude, the sadness
holds tight the promise
of freedom.

In beauty vines entwine
but strangle the fence.
Sadness demands fidelity,
demands attention.
Taste the tears and sigh.

by Elizabeth Munroz

What does it take to be a good writer? A shy withdrawn personality with awkward social skills? A mind lost in contemplation and fantasy? Being called loony, insane? A diagnosis of Schizophrenia? That's what Janet Frame thought the requirements were for several decades of her life. It made it difficult for her as well as others. Yet, her belief and her personality helped make her a poet, a good story teller and an award winning author. It's too bad she was misdiagnosed. She really didn't need the stigma of thinking herself a crazy woman!

Janet Frame was born in New Zealand of a simple hard working railroad man, and a brilliant woman with a "high class" ancestry. She led a life of material poverty juxtaposed to literary wealth. She was fortunate her mother was well versed in poetry, literature, and music. Like a bubbling spring she continually blessed her children with her treasures along with their milk. Yet, the best gift of her childhood was a fascination with words so strong that she actually collected them throughout her life, the way others collect figurines or baseball cards. Janet wrote of her earliest collected words:

"I remember learning to spell and use these words: decide, destination, and observation, all of which worked closely with adventure. I was enthralled by their meaning and by the fact that all three seemed to be part of the construction of every story --- everyone was deciding, having a destination, observing in order to decide and define the destination and know how to deal with the adventures along the way. Partly as a result of the constant coming and going of our relatives and of our own shifting from place to place, I had an exaggerated sense of movement and change, and when I found I could use this necessary movement to create or notice adventures I was overjoyed."

I once caught the tail end of a PBS program called "An Angel at my Table" about Janet Frame's life.  I was so fascinated, I kept wishing I had seen the beginning and one day learned it was being aired again. Needless to say, I made sure I watched it. Was the story exaggerated? How could someone live such an impoverished and tragic life and make a success of it? The film director, Jane Campion, who produced the movie, was enthralled with Janet Frame's novels from the age of fourteen, and many years later she visited her odd eccentric home.

 " ...she took me through the house and showed me how she worked. Each room and even parts of rooms were dedicated to a different book in progress. Here and there she had hung curtains to divide up the rooms like they do in hospital wards to give the patients privacy. On the desk where she had last been working was a pair of earmuffs.


"I can't bear any sound," she explained... "

It was amazing to me that Janet Frame had become a well published author with her history of mental instability. She claimed New Zealanders had been so starved for something to read that they accepted her. That doesn’t explain, though, why they gave her every possible award for her works. I think she obviously deserved them. She also became so well known in Europe and the United States that the year before she died; in 2003, at the age of 80, she had been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature. That's more than sufficient evidence she was a talented writer. It's probably a good thing she didn't win, as she might have been burdened by the two million dollar award. Even after all those years and success, she still led an incredibly simple life eschewing grandeur. I suspect she would not have known what to do with the money.

I chose Janet's autobiography based upon my deep interest in her life as portrayed in the movie, and correlations to my own. I wanted very much to learn her style and what she might reveal about her writing journey. One problem we all seem to have is that a movie never really captures a book we have enjoyed. However, it is just the opposite in this case. I'm glad I never read her biography first. Otherwise, I would not have bothered to watch the movie. I sadly trudged my way reading through her autobiography. At 435 pages it is not a fast read!

Her life story had originally been published in three volumes. (To The Is-land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City) But, I went for the copy that included them all. Except for the first section, I was so disappointed I almost decided to give it up. However, I felt compelled to present her story, and continued to read as I had put so much emotional and time investment into this project.

I had been hungry to absorb the intriguing details of her life as presented in the film. I wanted to learn more about the tidbits I found in researching what the critics and historians wrote about her and sought diligently for them in her autobiography. But, the cohesive details were lost to me. Her life story was boringly written as though a news reporter was presenting dry facts. This interrupted the flow of the her gifted prose so well done in her novels. You might say, then, why did I bother to continue reading, if it was so bad? Wanting so much to complete my own life story, I was searching for this mysterious power she had to write poetry and fiction and her own autobiography, that won her so much acclaim. Someone had found her writing more than acceptable, not only in New Zealand, but in other parts of the world, too. What more was there than the intriguing vignettes of her life I had seen in the movie? What made this woman tick? And what could I learn from her to improve my own writing?

What a dichotomy when comparing it to her fiction!!!

Even though I did not find Janet Frame’s autobiography to be the enjoyable read I had hoped to have, I gained a lot from it. I learned more of her personal life that explained her eccentricities. Perhaps she was a high functioning autistic as some have said. What I gained was the knowledge that to write is to write, to organize, to set aside time, to stay out of the way of distractions. All aspiring writers know this. Yes? But, foremost, I learned from Janet Frame, HOW she did this.

Story of a Dreamer

He sat on my knee and talked to me all night long -----every night, while I slept.  His voice penetrating my dreams and the dark spaces between.  Sometimes, in the lucid dreamstate he had taught me, I strained to listen.

“What was that you said?”  I asked, but he seldom repeated anything, as though he must continue piling message upon message.  Sometimes I just let him drone on in his stream of consciousness way.  Sleeping through much of it, I didn't’t attempt to stay lucidly awake.  It just wasn’t humanly possible.  Yet, I knew every word was of utmost importance.  After all these years, I thought it would sink in on its own volition.  The sleeping brain being a sponge, and all.


In the beginning we did this only a little bit. But as time went by, and his appearance altered from one being to another, the messages became more detailed, more intense and instructive. It was very satisfying on one level and very startling on another, as the things I learned began to bleed through into my daily life. A subtle intimacy had developed between us. I hadn't realized until later.


It was the night he sat on my knee, like a little shaman when he nudged my mind with urgency, “Now, pay attention.  You need to pay attention!”

“Okay, okay.  I’m awake.”  But, barely. I tried not to drowse but I couldn’t keep focused through the haziness of twilight sleep.

“I have to leave you,” he said.  “You have one year to live,”  he said.

That woke me up fast.  I tried to sit up, but he gently laid me back down, relaxed.


“You must learn this!” He urged. My attention was focused deeply.  “Good,” he intoned.


He led me through a new practice.  Traveling through my body beginning at my feet and working upward, with specific instructions for breathing and tonal qualities.  Fearful that I might miss something of his one-time-over instructions, I concentrated deeply, doing exactly as he said, observing each step of the way, experiencing, with as much clarity as I could muster, the newness of it all.  Yet somehow this was familiar.  Hadn’t we done this before?  We left the solar plexus and rose up to heart.  I opened to love and compassion and we floated there a moment.  Suddenly he reached into my chest and pulled my ribcage apart yanking it wide open.  The excruciating pain of it was more than anything I had ever experienced before; more severe than childbirth, more than bone cancer surgeries, more than falling in love, more than hating.  That kind of pain was nothing I could escape. It woke me completely.

“Look!” he said.

I obeyed, looking down from a great distance into the gaping wound of my heart in total amazement.  The pain disappeared, replaced by the magnificence of a brilliantly, pulsating spiral. The Universe alive before me, within me, all around me. Bliss..... Cool, deep, dark soothing velvet embrace of timelessness....


Just being.....in this all encompassing spaciousness beyond thinking...beyond words.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. So, eternity ended and I followed him back up to my throat where, surprisingly, he repeated the instructions precisely, without the spectacular accompanying visual effects until I was able to recall them verbatim.

“I have to go now,” he said. And was gone.


The pain in my chest was nothing compared to the resulting grief of losing my twenty-five year long relationship with my beloved teacher.  I didn’t even know his name.  Did he ever have one?  Didn’t matter. The apparition that had become such a part of me no longer existed.


Copyright: Elizabeth Munroz  

Cousins

Thinking of my nephew, Raj today. This is him on the left. My son, Xavier on the right. Me above.

The boys are about fourteen or fifteen years old so pic was taken about 1988-9 in New Castle, Indiana

Dream of Mom and Dad

Dream of Mom and Dad
Feel so sad
Grief
Heavy grief

I get a message
from beyond
"see Brother Frank"
"talk to Brother Frank"

He can tell you
what you need to know.
The message is strong
it's fervent, impressing me.

I  don't want to
see Brother Frank.
I want Mom
I want Dad
I dont need preachers

Then the text
messages begin.
Messages from Mom?
Could they be from Dad?

All of them religious
one after another
messages from the dead?
or a hoax?

~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo is of my parents taken in the 1980's at Canyon Country California
They are no longer with us.
This month Mom would have celebrated her 92nd birthday.