Friday, September 16, 2005

I never wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl. I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a rock star. I use to believe there were people behind the trees who were writing down all the songs I made up and sang out loud, because every so often I would hear them on the radio. As a child I had no idea how the body remembers.

Here is the color of love. I tell my girl this when we’re all together. Remember this day, remember this color. See the thing is, I’m not a writer I’m a remember, everything in me is being stored. Everything you ever said, all the words can fall away but in me they still exist. And I will write them down.

When I wrote my first song on the back of my school book, my teacher made me go to the office. The office had me go to the “special trailer” where all the kids drooled and wet their pants. The woman there smelt like lemons. She told me, she was a special teacher, a person for the kids who drooled and a person for those kids who wrote poems on the backs of their books. The kids who were so smart, things didn’t always fit in their heads. She told me I was gifted.

My first poem was the thing that saved me, from boys on the playground who made me eat dirt, from Mrs. Truscott who spelt like glue. It gave me a small tin house filled with books, a woman who brushed my hair back from my eyes, who read me Whitman and Hugo. My first poem told me I was special.

I never wanted to be writer. I wanted to be a rock star. But the poems found me and they told me to remember.

12 comments:

Charles said...

I still want to be a rockstar.

Radish King said...

I wanted to be a pirate, and was until I was 12, in spite of all the dolls and home-maker toys that were thrust at me. I carried a sword, a big wooden sword that my brother made me. It had a sharp point. I wore an eye patch. I slapped a girl off her bike for laughing at my eye-patch. I lived inside of books. Mostly pirate books, but also poetry and biographies. I wrote my own. I wrote a novel when I was 9 about a pirate girl who played cello. I was a pirate but I wanted to be a musician and a writer when I grew up. I spent lots of time with the droolers and bed wetters.

By the way, Monday is national Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Radish King said...

p.s. I still spend a lot of time with the droolers and bed wetters. They're my best friends.

early hours of sky said...

Yes I know

and someday you will tell me and I will make you hibiscus tea. I am having some now.

Maybe you will teach me how to be a pirate. I need to start carrying swords.

Radish King said...

I'm making a pot of chili and getting ready to build a big fire. It's cold here and I have no heat in my house. I figure the chili & damp alder wood will at least give the illusion of heat. Gather up the girls and come on over. I also have vodka and cranberry juice and limes. I'm learning how to make cosmos.
xxoo

Martina said...

It was only by chance came upon your blog, but how nice that I did. Your words are so evocative. I've enjoyed reading them. Thank you!

early hours of sky said...

Martina, you have one of my favorite names and welcome.

Anne Haines said...

Here is a secret: before I do a reading (before I leave the house for wherever it is the reading is) I put on music and strut around singing along like a rockstar. That's how I warm up for a reading. I'm sure it looks silly as shit, this forty-something-year-old librarian holding a hairbrush to her mouth like a microphone, but that is why I live alone, so I can do stuff like that. :)

early hours of sky said...

Anne, I love you....

early hours of sky said...

R- Cosmos are my favorite drinks and I really wish Seattle was next door.

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