On the Personal Essay |
I love blogging. I am blogging for years. Now I want to learn more about the craft of the personal essay. With the help of Phillip Lopate's The Art of The Personal Essay (1995) and Crafting the Personal Essay, A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction by Dinty W. Moore (2010). Charity Marie - <3 formed a group at Slack with WakeUpAndLive️~Happiness and daninidaho to explore this interesting genre. I am really excited! "The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom. Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue - a friendship, if you will, based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship." Phillip Lopate in The Art of the Personal Essay. Greetings, PETRA "Crafting Essays Mentoring Program" by Charity Marie - <3 |
Almost impossible – Assignment My mother died in 2000. I was there when she passed away in her bed minutes before I watched her deliriously from the morphine grasping with both hands in the air as if she was seeing something, or someone and wanted to be there, make it her own. Then she looked at me, not straight at me but I could tell she knew I was there, and then she said: “I am so sorry.” And instantly I knew what she meant and I replied, “Oh mom, it’s okay.” Then she started dying. I shouted to my father and brother in the other part of the house: Come here, quick, she is going! We sat there, all three of us, and watched her blow away her last breath. What was it that she meant to say? What was it that I immediately understood when she told me: I am so sorry. I am so sorry I never loved you! That’s what she meant. And I knew and I forgave her, that instant. Because that was the truth of our complex relationship all those years. She never loved her firstborn child. Me. I have always known in the back of my head, I have always felt that there was something essential missing in our relationship. Then and there I knew what it was. It broke my heart and mended it at the same time. Why did she not love me? Why was she incapable of loving her firstborn? That’s what I had to find out, that was my quest. Of course, it must have had something to do with her past being in a Japanese concentration camp at the end of World war 2 in Indonesia, where she was born. She took that war trauma back to the Netherlands as an 11-year-old child facing a new life in a different country The Netherlands. It must have something to do with her complex relationship with my father who was dominant and overbearing at best, who raped her during the interlude between their engagement when they were apart for a few months. He forced himself upon her and that was the start of my birth as their firstborn. She told me years later. It also must have something to do with her younger brother Frits who was a soldier in West-Guinnee during her pregnancy and was coming home, only to have blown to bits on a land mine on his way back. All that trauma must have been so overwhelming on a beautiful Indo-European woman back in 1961 that it overshadowed the joy of becoming a mother. We never got a chance! 15 minutes contemplation I don’t know why but I have a hard time focussing on the different kinds of essays by the writers that are presented so far. It’s difficult for me to grasp their significance by only reading snippets of their work. I find that I am skipping chunks of text and reading on. So, I concentrate on the prompts and exercises. |
Personal Essay, deadline 8/30 meeting - Pick one childhood memory and pursue (Splash) (Chapter 7) - Three quick tips: tackle something you don’t understand, make a list with common points around the subject and then don’t use any of them, surprise yourself. (Chapter 6) - 15 minutes of contemplation/journaling of what you have learned and will use in your writing - Pick one childhood memory and pursue (Splash) (Chapter 7) Splash, taking a bath The metal bucket full of water. Taking a bath, the three of us. We fit together in the tub, having a good time playing. Mother comes and sits with us. She hands out the soap we wash our faces, our ears, our hair. She helps us with our body and arms. One at the time, while the others are carefully watching. The basin on the patio at the back of our house. So we can splatter at our hearts' content. We sprinkle and play and the world is fun. Our weekly bath. The three kids together in the nude. A happy memory, one in a million. Splash is one of the few memories I can recall of my childhood years. In detail, I see a grey basin full of water in our backyard in Pretoria Street in The Hague. The basin is oval in shape, large, it must be large because at one point we all fit into the basin, the three of us. 2, 5, and 7 years old? Probably. We left that house when I was 8 to move to a nearby town. - Three quick tips: tackle something you don’t understand, make a list with common points around the subject and then don’t use any of them, surprise yourself. (Chapter 6) Why did my parents have kids? It was common in a marriage They loved each other The church told them They thought they would make good parents My parents were 26 and 28 when they got their first child, me. They would have three. I think everything was sort of okay when we were very young, but my memory fails me a bit. Still, marriage was not a safe environment for us kids growing up. We fought a lot and were very jealous of each other. They had a difficult understanding among themselves: a lot of bickering, verbal fighting, and a total lack of fun for us kids. What will I use for my own writing? I am not sure. I loved the story of Virginia Woolf’s moths, but the other anecdotes didn’t do it for me. Although I loved the fact that memories will flow if you give them a chance. The exercises are good. Surprisingly enough I could remember more than I thought I could. |
Reflections on Chapters 1-3 Crafting the Personal Essay I am afraid my memory is not good enough for writing personal essays (memoirs). I read some of Dan’s work and I am in awe of his details. I don’t have that, my brain isn’t working like that. I tend to forget easily and move on. How will I recollect those memories? Because they are there, I am sure. Perhaps: ask the right questions? I had a notion: perhaps I rush a little when writing. Stop, pause, think and let the memory take over is something I never tried before. I might just do that. 2. The Personal, not private essay Exercise: The Flood of Memory: find one small detail, write for 10 minutes Holiday with my grandparents when I was a kid. A forest in the south of the Netherlands. My grandparents lived there when I was a kid. The three siblings fought on the way over, as we always were. My parents fought with each other as they were always doing. Not a nice start. But when we arrived it was good. A big house with a cherry tree. We helped pick them, my grandmother put them in jars for the winter. We ate a lot of cherries. The boy next door had a harelip, and the family living on the opposite side of the road had three or four kids we always played with. My cousins lived in town, we had sleepovers. There also were bad memories. My grandfather put his tongue in my mouth once, I was shocked and told my mother. She didn’t dare to tell my dad because she was afraid of what he would do. Later I learned he had tried something on her too. Dropped his pants in front of her. She never told my father. After that, I stayed over with my cousins most of the time. It was a nice holiday, playing, reading, and visiting their other grandparents, in a beautiful house in the country. With lots of other kids, cousins of my cousins. An orchard, long tables with food, chatting people, fun. Exercise: Gestures: Small gestures that reveal little details: My mother’s face grew dark all the time when my father badmouthed her or they fought with each other. His face was stern, as his face always was. When did I ever see them laughing, or smiling? Except for that one time. I must have been three or four years old. There was a long hallway in our house with a glass door. My father was chasing my mother for fun. They were laughing and giggling. I was watching them. Suddenly my mother broke the glass door, there was blood, it was awfully red. I screamed and screamed. Exercise: The Full weight: poem What I remember, my dog Arie died June 2, 2021 What I remember Remember fifteen years Love of the canine breed It is when we first meet An instant click. Fox-terrier, you were Loyal, goofy, and smart Closed you into my heart Went all the way. Those last days of sorrow Old, grey, and with a fit Your eyes suddenly lit -it's time to go. I held you in my arms Carried you in the night And at morning light Off to the vet. So, there you were put down I watched you leave this world Back home in bed, I curled I was alone. My little friend, my all Rest in peace; you'll be missed Within two months, I kissed Another dog. |
Recollections about the essay form. My earliest memories of writing an essay were in kindergarten, age 10-11. Topic: the carrier pigeon. Note ▼ |
Introduction on Slack My name is Petra, (Wies Blaize as my pseudonym) and I found the program via Charity’s invitation. |
Why do I write? Note ▼ |