Keeping on keeping on June 18, 2013

 

 

 

Looking back over the last year. I realized I have not written so much about one person since my best friend died and I began to put together a history of his life.

To write about someone extensively. I have to be inspired by that person on some level.

I don't even write a lot about those women I claim to have loved and the bulk of what I have written has been primarily about three women in my life my ex-wife and my childhood sweetheart Peggy the stripper and now this poet.

Because my ex-wife was my first serious love and me because we experienced so much together during our time as a couple I have written massively about her in poetry. Journals. short stories and novels -- maybe 15 novels all totaled and well more than 100 short stories even a few songs.

Peggy. the stripper. dominated my journal for a while -- much of which went into creating two novels. some poetry and a number of songs because she was so much into my performing for her.

After a year now I can honestly say the poet inspired me, too although most of the journal became a kind of therapy for me, an attempt to understand her and my reaction to her.

By far the most talented person since my best friend, trying to understand her became a literary science her poetry providing an Avenue into her soul and a rare phenomena that most people don't get to experience.

Dissecting her poetry, however, is among the biggest challenges I've had since college.

My journal has been hey combination of documenting my experiences and a lesson in poetics.

 I have written a poetry journal that is partly about her.

In the journal, I have been forced to retract some conclusions I had about her work and will still likely require more revisions in the future, a significant challenge and at times a humbling experience especially at those times when her insight and conclusions show me up and reveal how -- even at my age -- how childish I am.

How much more I will write in these journals depends on her though, as time advances I have less and less direct experience to convey except in retrospect and rely more and more on her poetry and I suspect when she ceases to post poems I will cease writing about her.

I have intentionally avoided writing songs about her -- the way I had for Peggy and for my ex-wife -- primarily because she is a musician and my creations aren't good enough or on the same level as hers.

I can hold my own in poetry and writing and photography to some degree. I would be a embarrassed to craft music so much in inferior to hers.

Of the three women I have written about extensively, the poet is the most complex for a number of reasons, partly because of duality of who she is inside and what she allows to reveal of herself to the general public.

I know more about her than I have any right to know, and yet, I know nothing.

She is much more mystery than any woman I’ve known, even those I have invested tens of thousands of pages on.

I don’t know what will become of all this writing, whether I will someday turn it into a non-fiction novel, the way I did for Peggy, and many times with my ex-wife – changing the names, of course, to protect the innocent.

Maybe I’ll do nothing with it all, leave it to rot into dust on my bookshelves, having had the satisfaction of being challenged emotionally and intellectually by a woman – to coin an old cliché – it out of my league.

Ultimately, she will find her place in the world, and will be recognized for her achievements. I doubt, however, I shall live long enough to see it, let alone document it the way I have during this last year.

Anyway, until then, I just keep on keeping on.

 

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