Pat Bertram's Blog, page 209
January 21, 2014
Secret Stairs (Part I)
A friend invited me to go on a trip with her for a “secret stairs” hike in Hollywood. Even though I didn’t know what the hike was about, of course I said “yes.” I have developed the habit of saying yes to anything anyone invites me to do, even if my first inclination were to hesitate or even say no, a practice that has led me to many wonderful places and activities that I would never even thought of experiencing. Even if I weren’t already primed to accept, I’d have gone — I’ve never been able to resist anything “secret.” There are a vast number of secrets in the world, including life itself, and being gifted with an insatiable curiosity, I try to ferret out those secrets, but considering that so many secrets are . . . well, secret . . . by definition, I wouldn’t know that they even exist. And there, in a few simple words, I was being offered a chance to discover a hitherto unknown secret.
Secret stairs. Even the phrase evokes feelings of adventure, wonder, mystique.
Apparently, there are many secret stairways in Los Angeles in the steep hilly neighborhoods that were built back before cars took over the city. These stairs allowed people to get down the hill to schools, markets, and trolley cars. In fact, many of the houses in these neighborhoods had no other access to the outside world than these public staircases. The stairs were largely forgotten until Charles Fleming published his book Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles.
A friend has been doing all of the walks — 42 of them — and has finished all but the last few. The walk she invited me on was a combination of #36 and #35 in Fleming’s book. (It was such a lovely day, she decided to do two of them.)
We started out with an unplanned stop by a bit of sidewalk graffiti that seemed oddly appropriate:
Our first scheduled stop was the historic Highland Towers apartments, where William Faulkner is supposed to have lived when he worked on such films as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not:
We passed the Hollywood Heritage Museum, and walked up Milner to the first secret staircase — the Whitley Terrace steps, an L-shaped staircase with 160 steps.
At about the ninetieth step, there was a landing with fabulous views of the High Tower residential area — not that I know what the area is, but it was an interesting sight:
I paused at the top to take a photo of the steps we had just climbed before searching out the next set of secret stairs in Hollywood. (Hint — the key to walking up huge flights of outside stairs is to stop periodically to marvel at flowers or take photos of . . . anything. That way you can catch your breath without having to admit that you have reached your limit.)
To be continued . . . (But of course, you already knew I’d be continuing this saga since the title says “Part I” and you can’t have a “Part I” without a “Part II”.)
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: Charles Fleming, High Tower residential area Hollywood, Highland Towers apartments, Hollywood stairs, secret stairs, Whitley Terrace steps, William Faulkner and Highland Towers apartments
January 20, 2014
Thank You
A big thank you to everyone who responded to my post Enabling or Decency and Caring?, offering support and advise. I still am not sure what to do about the situation, but I am taking all your comments into consideration before deciding how to handle the problem.
During all these years of grief over the loss of my life mate/soul mate, I found comfort telling myself, “I am where I am supposed to be.” I don’t believe in fate, don’t believe that our lives are decided for us (at least, not always), and yet, there is serenity to be found in accepting that perhaps the universe is unfolding as is should. It’s possible this drama of mine is also unfolding as it should. It is bringing me closer to being emotionally free of a conflict that has burdened me almost my whole life. At the very least, talking about it has brought me peace.
I do not think I am in a dangerous situation (though of course, any situation has its dangers). I do not think I will be hurt and, despite my brief outbursts of unadmirable behavior, I do not think I will hurt anyone else.
I have finally come to an understanding that I did not create the problem, and that there is nothing I can do to change it. I can change myself, though, to the extent that any of us can change ourselves. I can make sure that I take care of myself, relieve stress with physical activities, lead my own life as much as possible under the circumstances, and most of all, find solace in the realization that all things come to an end.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: acceptance, enabling, finding peace, tough love
January 19, 2014
Excerpt from LIGHT BRINGER by Pat Bertram
Description of Light Bringer:
Becka Johnson had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?
Excerpt from Light Bringer:
The trail was a gentle decline, hard-packed, and free of rocks, as if it had been well traveled since time out of mind. It ended at a stream so clear its cobbled bed looked like a mosaic of semi-precious stones. On the other side of the stream, the tall meadow grasses, lavender in the mountain’s shadow, whispered softly among themselves.
Laughing, Rena caught Philip’s hand. “They’re inviting us to come play.” She ran the last few steps toward the edge of the water.
He pulled his hand away, hearing in his mind the sickening sound of ripping ligaments and tendons, and feeling the pain.
Walking carefully, he joined her by the stream.
“Too bad there’s not a bridge,” she said, “but the water isn’t deep. We can wade across.”
He put out a foot, drew it back. “You go. I’ll wait here.”
She nodded in understanding, and took his hand again. “That’s okay. I can go another time.”
They sat on the forested slope, listening to the whispering of the grasses increase in pitch as the day came to an end. After the sun set, they headed home in a rich, warm alpenglow that turned the world to gold.
***
Where to buy Light Bringer:
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo)
Tagged: Colorado, fiction, Light Bringer, mystery, novel, search for identity, Second Wind Publishing
January 18, 2014
Falls and Follies
Ever since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’ve made an effort to do new things, especially things I would not have had an opportunity to experience if he were alive. (It helps me make sense of his being gone. If I continued to do only what we would have done together, I’d feel as if I were wasting his death.) Now I am continuing that effort, not just to honor his death, but to help me survive a stressful family situation. Oh, who am I trying to kid? I just want to have fun!
My two most recent experiences were a trip to Palm Springs
to see the Palm Springs Follies, a Las Vegas-style production
where all the gorgeous showgirls were over 55, some even over 75! We weren’t allowed to take photos during the show, of course, so I hope they don’t mind my using their photo:
And then today I went on a hike with the Sierra Club to a lovely riparian area in the middle of the desert. (Riparian means relating to the banks of a natural course of water.) At the base of this looming rock formation
is a lovely grotto, like a natural shower stall, with water cascading down the walls (I’ve been told that when the area isn’t on drought alert, there is so much water, it is very much like a shower, and perhaps the local tribes once used it for such a purpose.)
I have other trips planned — I’ve been invited on a walking tour of secret stairways, and I have tickets to Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all male dance troupe that is supposedly as funny as they are accomplished. I am also planning to plan even more trips, maybe take myself on a date since I’m not having any luck finding anyone on the online dating sites, perhaps even go away for a weekend by myself. I’ll keep you posted.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: Arastre Falls, grotto, Marilyn Monroe Palm Springs, Palm Springs Follies, riparian area, waterfall
January 17, 2014
Enabling or Decency and Caring?
Kaypacha Pele says that this week’s mantra is:
“I feel that Life is upping the stakes,
Just to see what it will take,
To get me to stand up tall and straight.”
Oh, so very true! I’m in a difficult situation, one in which there is no real solution, no right way of dealing with problem, no wrong way. And the situation keeps escalating beyond anything I’ve ever had to deal with before. (I was going to say escalating beyond my power to deal with it, but that isn’t correct. I am dealing with it. Just don’t know what the right way is, or if there is a right way.)
In
Applying the Lessons of Grief, I wrote about a homeless sibling who is depressed, possibly bi-polar, probably an alcoholic, verbally abusive, furious, manipulative, desperately needy, and relentless in pursuit those needs. (He’s also brilliant and exceedingly creative, and spent most of his life composing music and writing songs.) He has been living here for several months, and therein lies the problem since his anger now seems to be focused on me. (He thinks I have it easy looking after my father, and doesn’t see how stressful it is being torn between the two of them, as I have been my whole life.) If I could find out what he wanted, perhaps I could help, but he is cagy (paranoid is more like it) and talks around his needs. (He hates being a charity case, hates when people do things for him, and hates even more when people don’t.) He won’t go for treatment, blames everyone else for his problems, and doesn’t know how to take care of himself. Mostly, it seems as if he is lost inside a whirlwind of unfocused energy.
Although my father would like to invite him to live here, it’s not possible. My brother is restless, doesn’t sleep, is unable to stay still. He’d wander away in the middle of the night, leaving the front door wide open. He is a pack rat, surrounding himself with piles and piles and piles of trash, never shuts up, drinks constantly, all of which made my 97-year-old father a nervous wreck. And me, too, actually. When my brother stayed in the house, he used to come into my room every night and scream invectives at me (“porky pig” and “whore” are about the two nicest things he has ever said), because he thought I was working against him in his efforts to reconcile with our father.
For the last few months, he’s been camping out in the garage, which has seemed to be the best solution all around. My father could relax and go about his business of growing ever older and at the same time could be assured my brother was taken care of. Of course, that care fell on me. I’d make sure he had food, clean clothes, access to a shower, arranged for dental care and even made sure he kept the appointments. A couple of times when he was too crippled with sciatica to make his daily trek to the liquor store, I made the trip for him. (I can hear you screaming “enabler!” But it is not my place to decide when he is going to stop drinking.)
When he gets wound up in his whirlwind of unfocused energy, he becomes relentless in his need to be heard. He often knocks on my window at night, wanting to talk, and I used to answer the knock because . . . well, isn’t that something we all want? To be heard? Unfortunately, what he usually wanted to tell me is how fat, lazy, stupid and useless I am, living in a cocoon of ease that I don’t deserve. When I refuse to answer his knock, he bangs on the window every few minutes for hours. I’ve gotten used to it, and ignore it, though a couple of times the neighbors called the police. (I asked the police what they could do — they said they could arrest him. “Then what?” I asked. They said, “We let him go. If he comes back, we can arrest him again.” I asked, “Then what?” “We can arrest him again.” I said, “Then what?” “Arrest him.” Oh, yeah, like I want to spend the rest of my life caught in the hamster wheel of the justice system.)
It all came to a head yesterday. After a sleepless night due to his shenanigans, I went out to tell him I’d be gone most of the day (to keep him from disturbing my father with his endless pounding on my windows for attention) and found my car covered with invectives written in black marker. Some of the markings came clean with toothpaste (makes me wonder what it’s doing to our teeth if it’s such an all-purpose cleaner) but other markings didn’t come clean at all, not with Windex, Magic Eraser, isopropyl alcohol or any of the other possible solutions I found on the internet, so I painted over the words with acrylic paint. He was lying in his sleeping bag, laughing drunkenly at me while I was cleaning my car. I was so angry, I kicked him and kicked him again. (Not something I am proud of. I also almost strangled him once and slapped him another time. Never in my entire adult life have I lifted a hand to another human being, not even in self-defense, and yet somehow, he raises true homicidal tendencies in me.)
I cleaned my car, went to an exercise class, and at lunch afterward (well, we had to replace all those burnt calories, didn’t we?) I mentioned my problem. Later, I got a call from one of the women, a retired psychiatric nurse. She was kind, but pointed out that I was enabling him. That I had to call the police, get him out of here. At the very least, she told me I needed to start keeping a journal of his abuse. (I started last night.) She also suggested my leaving for a while or spending entire days or weekends away so that my father wouldn’t take me so much for granted. (He can still mostly take care of himself, so it’s not a problem if I leave.) Told me that I’m being torn between two puppet masters.
Oddly, hers wasn’t the only unsolicited advice I got yesterday.
A friend who is a holistic therapist with Buddhist leanings told me that there was no right or wrong. That if I kept helping my brother as a fellow human being, that was okay, just not to take his karma on myself.
An astrologer told me that according to my horoscope, I need to let go of being attached to a past dysfunctional emotional pattern or pain that began in childhood. (Oh, so true! One reason I am sympathetic to my brother is that I remember the bewildered boy and angry teen trying to deal with a my-way-or-the-highway father.)
A writer friend told me to keep a journal of what my brother does, and to write a book about it someday.
This is all so complicated. I do understand about enabling and tough love and all the rest of it, but where does one draw the line? It’s important to me to be decent and caring. It’s also important to me not to end up in prison for manslaughter. (How fitting that word its! The mans laughter was the final straw.)
I considered leaving and letting the two men fend for or fend off each other, but I am making friends here, have made various plans for the next couple of months, and am not yet ready to be homeless myself.
In the end, it was my own response to my brother’s abuse that turned something off inside of me. I can see that as a fellow human being, he deserves certain basics, such as cleanliness, so I told my father that from now on, if my brother wanted to take a shower, he was to come to the front door and ask. If he wanted food, he was to come to the front door and ask. Since this is my father’s house, it is up to him to allow my brother access or not. I don’t want to have anything to do with my brother any more. While I might be sympathetic to his plight, he made choices that I never did. (We both knew from a young age that we inherited a tendency toward alcoholism and substance dependency. I stayed away from both; he ran toward them with open arms.)
Life. Such a strange thing it is. I hope I am standing up tall and straight.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: abuse, dealing with an alcoholic, enabling, homeless, self-protection, tough love
January 16, 2014
Excerpt From “Grief: The Great Yearning” — Day 288
I’ve come a long way in the three years since I wrote the following journal entry. Saturdays have ceased to be difficult, though I still don’t understand the nature of life or death. Still don’t understand the point of it all, but the questions don’t haunt me quite as much as they did during the first years after the death of my life mate/soul mate. I’m learning to live without him, learning even to want to live without him. Sometimes I see his death as freeing us — me — from the horrors of his dying, and I don’t want to waste the sacrifice he made.
I still yearn to talk to him, though. I miss talking to him, miss his insights, miss the neverending conversation. (“Neverending” is a misnomer — the conversation that began the day we met and continued for decades until he got too sick to hold up his end of the dialogue, did eventually end.) He was easy to talk to. He never misunderstood what I said. I could make a simple comment to him, and he understood it was a simple comment. He didn’t make a big issue out of it, just answered back appropriately. It seems now every remark I make to anyone becomes a major deal as I try to explain over and over again what I meant by the first remark. It’s exhausting.
I’m grateful we met and had so many years together. Grateful for all the words we spoke to each other. Grateful I once had someone to love. Grateful that when my time comes to die, he won’t be here to see me suffer. Grateful he won’t have to grieve for me or be tormented by unaswerable questions.
Excerpt from Grief: The Great Yearning
Day 288, Grief Journal
Saturday, again. I stayed in bed all morning reading because I did not want to get up and face another Saturday. Friday nights and Saturdays continue to be difficult. I watched movies last night until my private witching hour of 1:40am.
The longer Jeff is gone, the more I see what I’ve lost. When we were together, everything was normal, so I couldn’t see how extraordinary our lives were. We created all our own recipes and fixed all our own meals, built our own business, spent years researching the mysteries of the world. And we had such wonderful marathon talks that lasted for days. We didn’t try to convince the other of our position—we each brought truth and thought to the conversation, and together we created a greater reality. There was no reason to argue—it was never about his opinion versus mine. It was about the truth—the truth as far as we could reconstruct it together.
A woman who lost her mate four months after I lost Jeff asked me the other day if I loved Jeff more now than when he was alive, and in a way I do. The problems of his growing ill health got in the way the last few years, clouding my vision of him. Now that those problems and my reaction to them are no longer a factor, I can see the truth of him again (or at least more of the truth than I did) and the love shines through.
Grief comes and goes, but love stays. And grows.
Click here to find out more about Grief: The Great Yearning
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: grief and gratitude, grief and healing, grief and searching for meaning, Grief: The Great Yearning, neverending conversation
January 15, 2014
Yay! I’m a Winner!
Today I received the following email:
Google Security Department®
Belgrave House,
76 Buckingham Palace Road,
London SW1W 9TQ,
United Kingdom.
Dear Lucky Winner.
We wish to congratulate you on this note, for being one of our lucky winners selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active use of the Google search engine and the Google ancillary services. Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and patronage to this company. Google is now the world leading search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, an online e-mail balloting was carried out on the 21st of December 2013, without your knowledge and was officially released recently.
We wish to formally announce to you that your email address was attached to a lump sum of ?750,000.00 {Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand Great British Pounds Sterling} only.
A winning Cheque will be issued in your name by the Google Promotion Award Team, and also a certificate of prize claims will be sent alongside your winning Cheque.
Your Award Winning Details.
Code Number: GUK/3554749405GK
Ticket No: GUK/1008272745GK
Winning Number: GUK/99334353734GK
Information’s required from you are part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. To claim your won prize, please contact the Google Award claims Manager (McCarthy Robert) neatly filling the payment release form below.
PAYMENT RELEASE FORM.
*First Name
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*Have you ever been an Online Winner?
You are advised to contact your Foreign Claims Manager with his private email details below to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:
**************************************************
GOOGLE AWARD CLAIMS MANAGER.
Dennis Morris
Google Security Department (United Kingdom)
E-mail: mailoffice1a@yahoo.co.jp
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For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information’s confidential till your claims have been processed and your money remitted to you. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned.
Note: You can fill your payment release form by printing and manually filling or you can fill directly on mail, or provide the details on Microsoft Word.
Please do not reply if you are NOT the owner of this email address.
Congratulations from the Staffs & Members of Google Board Commission.
Yours Sincerely,
George Wilkins.
Regional Coordinator,
Google United Kingdom.
©2013 Google Corporation.
I sent them all the information they requested, and will soon be rich!!
Well, no. I didn’t send them the information. This is a scam. But I got a blog post out of the deal, so I actually am a winner after all, just not a rich one.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: email scam, Google Board Commission, Google United Kingdom scam
January 14, 2014
Today I Will be . . . Habromaniacal
Most days, I post a resolution on Facebook. I need to post something, and since I don’t have cute cat videos, dear dog photos, or pithy thoughts that can be posted in the few words that most FB perusers can absorb in the few seconds they allow per post, I’ve been posting resolutions. Even if no one reads them, it’s a way of concentrating my thoughts on a particular area I need to work on that day, and it helps. Yesterday, for example, I knew I would have to be conciliatory and kind to someone I wasn’t feeling kindly toward, so I posted, “Today I will be . . . humanitary.” I couple of days ago, I needed to be firm and steadfast in a decision, and so I chose “staunch.”
At the beginning, I just chose one of the words from the word art I use as my cover photo for my profile — words such as playful, daring, intense, bold, whimsical, mysterious, legendary. But when I stumbled on the book, The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene Ehrlich, I started using words that few people knew, words such as alcatory (depending on luck or chance), magniloquent (lofty in expression), veridical (truthful), cachinnate (laugh loudly). The odd thing is that most of the adjectives in those 192 pages were not exactly uplifting. As interesting as the words look, dysphoria, fractious, louche, purulent are not states to which I aspire.
It’s become something of a treasure hunt to discover hidden gems such as eupathy, which means a happy condition of the soul. Don’t we all strive to be eupathic? It gave me great pleasure to bring this jewel to light.
Today I discovered another wonderful word. Habromania — a kind of insanity in which there are delusions of a cheerful character or gaiety. [It comes from the Greek words habros meaning graceful or delicate and mainesthai to be mad] I don’t imagine that it’s a comfortable state since it is a form of insanity after all, and yet, those who have it would, by definition, be happy. David E. Kelley, the man responsible for Ally McBeal, seemed to like habromaniacs since he used them occasionally in the series. In one show, an old man was wonderfully happy, giving away his fortune to the dismay of his children. It wasn’t until the man’s wife died and he found himself unable to cry or even be sad at her passing that he allowed himself to be treated.
It seems to me our world could use a few more habromaniacs — people who are happy even though sanity seems to dictate misery.
So, today I will be . . . habromaniacal.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: Ally McBeal, daily resolutions, delusions of cheerfulness, eupathy, habromania, insanity
January 13, 2014
Is Marriage a Good Thing for Men?
Three months ago, someone left the following comment on one of my blog posts:
Only an INSANE man would get married in America today, considering how biased the divorce courts are against men and how useless 99 percent of American women really are.
71 percent of men between the ages of 18 to 34 in America have no interest in marriage:
And the following essay really explains very lucidly exactly why so many men are avoiding marriage:
http://dontmarry.wordpress.com/
Why Modern, Western Marriage Has Become A Bad Business Decision For Men
T
he above comment didn’t fit with the post on which it was supposed to be a commentary, so I’ve kept the comment in moderation all this time, thinking I would use it as a blog post sometime, but I could never think of anything to say about the situation. I’m not a man, so I don’t know the man’s viewpoint, but it seems to me from my research on various online dating sites, that many men are looking for wives. These men, of course, are way beyond the age 34, so perhaps the statistic about the huge number of men younger than 34 who don’t want to get married is a sign of their immaturity, not having met the right person, meeting too many willing partners, no interest in progeny, or a total focus on business. Or something else entirely — skewed statistics perhaps.
At any rate, I thought the points in the articles were interesting enough to save.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: marriage and men, men avoiding marriage, why men don't want to get married
January 12, 2014
Waiting for Late-Blooming Genius to Flower
I’m not a creative genius by any means, and that’s probably a good thing. A large percentage of such geniuses (77% for novelists and 87% for poets) suffer from some sort of mental disturbance — schizophrenia, cognitive disorders, depression, bipolarism, neuroses, alcoholism. I don’t even have the sort of mental dissociation that many creative non-geniuses have, such as sitting back and letting my characters tell the story, like some form of spirit writing. My characters never do anything that I didn’t intend them to do, they never take on a life of their own, they never appear to me in my dreams. They are a deliberate construct, created by carefully chosen words.
On the other hand, there is still a chance that I will end up as a one of those poor tormented souls. There are two kinds of genius — the wunderkind kind where a person is born with their genius, and the late bloomer kind where a person develops their genius through experience and trial and error. (To the extent that I have a talent for writing, mine is the late blooming kind. I tried to write a novel when I was young, but when I sat down to write, hoping the words would flow, my mind was a complete blank. Throughout the years, though, I did learn how to write.)
There is another possibility for such late-blooming genius to flower in me. Dan Chiasson, writing about poet Marianne Moore who became a star in her seventies, said “Poets often make a sudden advance with the death of their parents, as though a curfew has suddenly been lifted; for some, it happens just at the moment the imagination has stalled.”
If this “curfew” is lifted from other creative types, too, then when I am free from the responsibilities of looking after my father, my creativity could erupt. (And anyway, I used to be a poet once upon a time, so either way, the curfew lifting could be a boon.) I have the stalled imagination, that’s for sure — for several years, I haven’t been able to write much of anything except blog posts with sporadic forays into fiction writing — so who knows what will happen in the coming years. I just hope that if genius decides to descend on me, I get to keep my normalcy. I have no desire to suffer from any sort of mental disturbance. I’ll be satisfied with being just a garden-variety, everyday, creative non-genius who writes magnifient books.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.
Tagged: creative genius, creative genius and mental disorders, Dan Chiasson, late-blooming genius, Marianne Moore
