March 25, 2008
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Meanwhile, back in the here and now…
Writing my memoirs is work. Blogging is play, even (or especially) when its subtext is The Work.
I have been doing a lot of work lately, experiencing a drive to finish the memoir and get it published while I still might enjoy the material fruits of my labor. This exchange today in comments reminded me that this work has borne fruit for me in other significant but subtle ways:
what a long way our world has come. I can hardly believe the police
felt that sending him off to the army was the right thing to do. that
is just amazing. thank you for sharing what have to be some very
painful memories with us.illgrindmyownthankyou…and my response:The memories are not painful. There was a time, early in this memoir
writing process, when it was painful to reveal things of which I was
ashamed. I got over that. Now, the only difficult part is the effort
to remember details.Really, people, none of this stuff hurts any more. I got the hardest part, separation from my kids, over and done with years ago. I suppose I should also mention that it can get to be a drag, focusing on the past when so much is going on around me in the Now, but the emotional healing is done. What remains to be wrapped up now is the editing and publishing.
And, BTW, there are still judges who offer defendants military service, just as they offer traffic school or 12-step programs, as an alternative to incarceration. The all-volunteer army is made up mostly of the poor and unemployable, and criminals. I thought everyone knew that.
This needs to be made clear:
I report. I do not judge. I do not say that one thing is “right” and another is “wrong.” I neither condemn nor condone. I accept and try to understand.
Any of my readers who express moralistic judgments in their comments are expressing their own opinions, not mine. For that, I do not judge them.
I think I need to find a place in my header or some other prominent spot on my site for that disclaimer.
“Quote”“What’s Life? You start with nothing, end with nothing. In between, it’s all jazz.”E. J. Gold
It starts in less than 23 hours. Tomorrow — 10 AM, Wednesday March 26, 2008, on Front Street in front of the Board of Trade Saloon in Nome, the hundredth anniversary running of the All Alaska SweepStakes begins. The winner will get $100,000, the biggest dog race purse in modern times.It was conceived a century ago as a long-distance race, “…in order to force the drivers to nurse their dogs…! To further insure against any cruelty or over taxation of the strength and endurance of the dogs, a very salutary rule was adopted, that each driver must return to the starting point with every dog that he started out with and none others, so that the driver of each team was forced to take the utmost care of each dog in order to comply with the rule.”
In this era of the Yukon Quest and Iditarod Trail, the 408 miles from Nome to Candle and back is a mid-distance race. Lance Mackey has predicted that it will be a “slugfest” between him and Jeff King. Fourteen other teams are entered, three of them driven by women, but King and Mackey are odds-on favorites.
One of the women is a serious musher, maybe even a serious contender. Who knows. It’s a different race, with different rules.
Another of the women, I just don’t know. Her son got her interested in dog mushing 3 years ago. Under “describe your racing experience,” she wrote, “A person has to start somewhere.”
Comments (16)
That’s a pretty interesting structure – colorful. Both the stack of “house-boxes” and the memoir. One of the things that I have appreciated about your recounting is the way that you simply tell the story and leave all the judgment out of it. I wonder if it’s time that enables you to do that, but at the same time I have a friend working on a memoir who is still exressing rage over things that happened 40 years ago. So I credit you with evolution and enlightmentment.
I am not judging. my sister has finely left her abusive marriage (he only tried to kill her 3 times). this subject hits close to home for me. men who abuse their wives need help. the army has it’s hands full, I don’t believe they were ever intended to fix peoples lives. I am sorry if what I wrote sounded judgemental, that was not my intent.
you have come through to the other side and are able to look back on events that some people are in the midst of even today. I see you as an encouragement to anyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship. you give others hope weather you want to or not.
@illgrindmyownthankyou -
The disclaimer was not aimed at you. It was aimed at letseewhatthiswilldo, whose semi-coherent comment I deleted.
@quiltnmomi -
No, it is not time that enables me not to judge. It is Work. Transcending such things as judgment, dualistic thinking, and belief, is a lot of work and I have spent a lot of time on it, so I suppose that time did have something to do with it.
@SuSu - okay – shutting my mouth now. crap
bigger than the Iditorod? Wow
and you mean to publish your memoirs as a book? wow, i didn’t know that (or maybe i wasn’t paying close enough attention) but that’s really cool, best of luck to you on that
Quite an interesting “apartment complex”. Thanks for sharing that. RYC, I’d seen that site before but neglected to bookmark it. Thanks for sending the link.
I didn’t know anything about the all-volunteer army……
See? I always learn something here.
Very interesting picture…..I wonder if people actually live there?
I think we all make choices based on the info we have at the time to go back and second guess those only serves to make us question more…and memories godd bad and in between always have the purpose of help us learn and grow
I did some research about this race after reading your blog….it’s really interesting. I think the dogs enjoy the challenge….it’s odd that so many people think that the dogs are being abused. It’s wild! In order for the dogs to compete they have to be in tip-top condition.
Those high-rise stacked trailers are an F6 Tornado waiting to happen.
I kind of get it that you are over it. It was what it was. Still, as a reader seeing what you went through for the first time myself, I get an emotional response as if it happens now. Does that make sense? That last image in today’s blog really blew me away. I kinda wanna live someplace fun like that…
@butshebites -
I suppose such immediate emotional responses are what I want — or what any writer wanting to sell her work would be wise to want. I made the decision early on to write this from my POV at the time, as much as that is possible. What I find myself incapable of doing is to inject all the denial and rationalization I was indulging at the time. The more or less impartial reporter is a compromise. From what you guys keep telling me, it’s working.
Thanks for the feedback, BTW.
I’d like to live in one of those trailers up top, and like to have the stamina and agility to negotiate the ladders.
I do offer my opinions or observations. I hope you don’t think I stand in judgement of anything I read so much as I stand in admiration of your writing.
@fatgirlpink -
Darlin’ even if you were to judge something or someone, I would not judge or blame you for it. My disclaimer was a response to a highly judgmental comment on an earlier post I had deleted the comment. It was also ungrammatical and not completely coherent, and I could not tell whether the person thought my reporting on Al’s behavior was “pointing the finger” at him, or if she was pointing her finger at something someone else wrote in a comment. It was also unclear whether or not she was blaming me for what was said in comments. I just tried to cover all the bases.
Keep on doing what you have been doing. I love it, and I love you.
I still remember the days of “join the army or go to jail.” It’s not like that here anymore; you can’t even be an infantryman without graduating at least from high school and most now actually have BAs and just can’t get jobs elsewhere without even more education than that. Ppl with criminal pasts don’t get in, even those who have had personal bankruptcies are scrutinized… anyway…
I know that the 5 months that I was separated from my kids were the worst in my life, worse than any beating or rape that I ever endured. My sister is going through something similar, although for her it is over a year and will be over a year more before it is all resolved. My heart breaks for her. The craziest I have ever been, during any and all lapses of sanity in my life were during that 5 months. You are a very strong person to have survived it. I suppose if I had had to survive a longer or permanent separation from my kids I could have, but I am glad that it was not put to the test.