Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "sadness"
Aging Writers
Young people can write, I will admit that. They can have talent, style, and a sense of story. But one gets a sense of life and living from the older writer that comes only from experience. Sadly, it is often sad.
Look at Mark Twain or William Shakespeare. As they aged, their works became less and less fun, more and more dark. Masterworks, some of them, but no happy endings.
I'm reading Walter Mosley's THE LONG FALL right now, and there's a passage that describes the "hammer", something waiting in the sky to hit a person when he least expects it, a staggering blow that surprises and stuns. It requires everything a person has just to go on afterward.
Life brings lots of hammer blows. The more I talk to people, the more I realize that we all have things to bear that are unbearable. Is is the piling on of hammer blows, one after another, that makes us old?
I guess the solace in it all is that we become better able to present reality, better able to capture the ups and downs of being human. Better able to write.
Look at Mark Twain or William Shakespeare. As they aged, their works became less and less fun, more and more dark. Masterworks, some of them, but no happy endings.
I'm reading Walter Mosley's THE LONG FALL right now, and there's a passage that describes the "hammer", something waiting in the sky to hit a person when he least expects it, a staggering blow that surprises and stuns. It requires everything a person has just to go on afterward.
Life brings lots of hammer blows. The more I talk to people, the more I realize that we all have things to bear that are unbearable. Is is the piling on of hammer blows, one after another, that makes us old?
I guess the solace in it all is that we become better able to present reality, better able to capture the ups and downs of being human. Better able to write.
Moments to Remember
There's a poster somewhere that says something about not remembering days but moments. I think it's true, but why do some moments stick with us and others fade?
Why can you remember that day in elementary school when you were humiliated by some nasty teacher, but you can't remember the day they gave you the attendance award? (You have it; your mother saved it, but you don't recall receiving it.)
Why can I remember the feeling of that first roller coaster ride but have no memory of the first time I drove a car? Surely that was a big day, but it's gone.
Sadly, a lot of my vivid memories are bad ones: the doctor's face as he looked over my father's shoulder and shook his head at me, indicating the prognosis was bad. The time I went to the wrong funeral and realized it only after I'd said some things that undoubtedly puzzled those in attendance. The time I fainted in the emergency room...I wasn't the patient. I was holding my daughter's hand while they stitched up a cut in her foot.
Those moments seem to come back more intensely. I can almost feel the emotions again. But my wedding, the news that my first book was chosen for publication, our many happy vacations? There's a glow, yes, but it's dim, like a faraway campfire. It's the cutting memories that stay close, reminding us that life is always ready to keep us from becoming too secure.
Why can you remember that day in elementary school when you were humiliated by some nasty teacher, but you can't remember the day they gave you the attendance award? (You have it; your mother saved it, but you don't recall receiving it.)
Why can I remember the feeling of that first roller coaster ride but have no memory of the first time I drove a car? Surely that was a big day, but it's gone.
Sadly, a lot of my vivid memories are bad ones: the doctor's face as he looked over my father's shoulder and shook his head at me, indicating the prognosis was bad. The time I went to the wrong funeral and realized it only after I'd said some things that undoubtedly puzzled those in attendance. The time I fainted in the emergency room...I wasn't the patient. I was holding my daughter's hand while they stitched up a cut in her foot.
Those moments seem to come back more intensely. I can almost feel the emotions again. But my wedding, the news that my first book was chosen for publication, our many happy vacations? There's a glow, yes, but it's dim, like a faraway campfire. It's the cutting memories that stay close, reminding us that life is always ready to keep us from becoming too secure.
