Write down your stories. Each of us has life experiences no other human being will ever have. If we sift through those to find the nugget moments, we can share unique and wonderful perspectives in our stories.
Some may become the heart of a theme, or bring life and to the actions of a character, and make their reactions more believable. Others might illuminate a way of looking at the world, or a lesson learned, that could help a reader find peace, closure, or motivation.
But even if one of your personal experiences or stories never make it into your works of fiction directly, reviewing them from time to time can inform and enrich the well from which you draw your inspiration.
And beyond this, in the age of social media, sharing the moments of your life with an authors practiced hand to put the reader in your shoes, focus on the core wisdom discovered, and to draw the framework of a narrative template they can overlay on their own lives, can create positive ripples in the cultural reservoir of our society.
Maybe each contribution to the flow is just a drop in the ocean (like this note itself), but I like to believe that the right insight will find the right person at the right time: a message in a bottle.
If you discover something of personal value and choose not to share, perhaps that message that was meant for that person at just that point in their lives won’t be there when they get there, leaving a vacuum that nothing else will ever fill.
So don’t hold back. You may never see the result of your contribution but, as an artist, that is neither necessary nor does it diminish the power of your work.
My son-in-law gave me a book of 400 Ansel Adams photographs a couple years ago. Ansel is another of my heroes.
The book is organized chronologically, and the first chapter shows photographs Ansel took when on vacation with his family in his teens. Almost without exception, they are quite ordinary and pedestrian, showing none of the unique vision that would define his future career. (Did you know he almost because a professional concert pianist instead?)
When I first got a 35mm camera from my parents for high school graduation in 1971, I was eager to experiment and dive deep into this new form of expression. And like Ansel, my early photographs are nothing to write home about.
Here’s one taken in that first year – just a few days after receiving the camera. Having played around with the 50mm lens, I discovered the value of depth of field and of selecting a focal point that popped a shot.
Playing around with this new ability the camera afforded me, I snapped this shot of an amaryllis growing in the front yard. This is a poor quality can from a much more colorful slide. I should redo those early scans sometime.
But, you get the idea of the shot as I tried my hand at photographic self-expression while establishing my own artistic vision.
Now, some of you may say this is far better than any of my later work from the following 50 years. Perhaps you are right!
Bill and I did everything together. We shared the same outlandish sense of humor, were both very creative, and when we got together it was an explosion of humor, satire, and odd & wonderful ideas.
When we wanted to start a business I asked, what kind of business it should be. Bill responded, “Let’s flip a coin – heads we’re a clothing store, tails were a zoo.”
Once when shopping in the now defunct Akron store, he stopped by a display of brass items and proclaimed, “Oh neat! An astrolabe! (pause) What’s an astrolabe?”
And upon first seeing Old Faithful when he joined us for a family road trip vacation on year, “Actually, it’s a whale trapped under three feet of solid rock.”
Bill eventually joined the navy, then took a job as a prison guard out of state. He’s now retired, but just as much the irreverent wit in our conversations on FB.
This picture? It is of Bill in a building he and I literally demolished with our bare hands. It was a workshop on the property of the home my family was renting, but had become infested with termites, which was too bad, since it was actually a lovely little L-shaped building in the corner of the property with a Crepe Myrtle in a planter in the crook of the L in a little patio area. Many house-like windows and much light. Probably a great place to putz around in during its heyday,
My parents had contacted the landlady to tell her about the termites and she agreed it should come down. I put in my bid to do the job for a hundred bucks, and split the money with Bill. It took us a year to take it down and cart off the debris using nothing but non-powered hand tools. We started by poking a hole in the roof with a crowbar, then used hand saws to cut all the way around the supporting beams until the roof came down. It was built so solidly that it took forever, even with our best efforts.
Once, I was working alone, snipping restraining wires that were strung under tension along the inside layer of tar paper that formed a barrier in the walls, and the wire snapped and swung right by my eye, putting a groove in the white, but just missing the cornea and not breaking into the humors. Close call! I was more careful after that.
So, getting back to this picture, after the building came down, there was something a patio left from the foundation, and my parents put our old couch out there, and Bill is sitting there at the end of one of our rapid-fire conversations.
Please note, he isn’t holding a cell phone in the picture, though it looks like it. But those weren’t invented in 1971/72 when this picture was taken. Rather, he’s just holding his hand up against his head, though it sure looks like clear evidence of time travel to me.
On that note, Bill and I because enamored of the notion of time travel and one time we buried a time-capsule at the base of a huge tree – a note stuffed in the shell of a military gun cartridge that was about an inch wide and six inches high.
We said in the note that if time travel had been invented in their age, come on back and see us! Then we put plastic wrap over the open end of the cartridge, held in place with a rubber band, and placed it about one foot down into the ground.
Since nobody showed up, we figured either time travel didn’t exist, or the note didn’t survive or was never found, or there was time travel but they wouldn’t or couldn’t come back to tell us.
Since then, the tree has long been cut down and that part of the yard (which is next to an alley) was paved over to make a parking lot for a small storage building the new owner of the property put on the property when he bought it from our old landlady, shortly before I left to get married.
And that, is today’s glimpse back into the past, and a little slice of our family history.
“Heiress Tottle” is a pen name I use as the fictional “author” of a long series of bite-size philosophic sayings and pop culture observations.
In fact, I am currently working on a book of Tottle’s proverbs and axioms which is a bit difficult to organize because they are so far ranging and address so many different topics and aspects of life.
I came up with the name Heiress Tottle in one of my binges of building quirky character names, such as Noah Vale, Fuller Baroni, Elroy Hubbub, Barry “The Hatchet,” and Jimmy “The Lock.”
But I found it especially appropriate since Benjamin Franklin (a hero of mine since I was 12) published his proverbs in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Of course, there was no Poor Richard. But even more so, his brother refused to let Franklin post anything in his own rival publication, so he sent in letters to the editor signed Silence Dogood.
Silence became quite popular to his brother’s readers, and his brother, I imagine, was rather mortified when he discovered the ruse.
And so, Heiress Tottle is the name I’ve chosen and fully intend to write a short biography of this great American intellectual in the prologue with a credit “Compiled by Melanie Anne Phillips” for myself.
What proverbs does Tottle offer? Such fare as:
Don’t take “know” for an answer
The squeakless grease gets the wheel
Is it possible to write a Haiku so well no one knows you have?
Over a period of about 30 years, I’ve composed hundreds of these, and truly hope the effort in creation, organization, and publishing is returned in vicarious adoration of my fictional author by the reading public, and ongoing proceeds from calendars and coffee mugs.
One of my first attempts at an artistic portrait. My folks gave me my first 35mm camera for my graduation from high school, and it was that very summer that the family gathered at my childhood home (perhaps even a graduation party) when I clicked a few portraits of family and family friends attending.
It’s not an outstanding shot by any means, but I’ve always had a knack of catching something special, something true to the inner self of the person I am photographing.
Aunt Toots was a free thinking woman with a sly sense of humor – always full of energy and loved a good party. I think you can see that in this image, which is why, to me, it transcends a simple snap shot.
For the family – Aunt Toots was my grandmother’s sister.
This is Tippi – not sure of the spelling. Not my dog, but belonging to my Uncle Bernie and Aunt Kay. Aunt Kay was my grandfather’s sister.
Why am I posting a picture of Tippi? Well my Uncle and Aunt had no children, and there’s no one left but me who actually met the friendly critter. There are no family members left to mourn his/her loss from time to time.
But I have this picture, and quite simply, I refuse to be the one who allows that little furry spirit to slip into oblivion when I’m gone.
So, now you keep a little bit of Tippi alive in your memory as well – like a corner cut from a hologram that still contains the full image, but just from one side.
It’s been a tough couple of months, but I’m finally back in the zone. We’ve been pulling all our boxes out of the carport where we keep them in storage and also plan on bringing down all the stuff we still have in storage in Big Bear.
We want to pare it all down ruthlessly – tired of being chained to all that crap (with a little good stuff mixed in). With all my parents and everyone of an older generation gone now, I’m kinda cut free from anyone who remembers my childhood.
It’s like a bubble leaving the wand – nothing else can go in it and it is no longer connected to you in a way you can change anything.
But I have all these photos, several moving boxes full that have never been looked at by me, much less scanned. And albums too. And then all the snapshots and slides I took in my early years, and all the digital photos when that came into vogue. Not to mention home movies on 8mm, Super 8, VHS, 8mm tape, and digital as well.
I honestly don’t think I even have enough time left on this planet to look at them all and give each its due. So, I’m going to try and gather the physical pictures together by person, group, or event in plastic bags – something for the family archives. And I’ll be doing the same for the digital stuff as well.
And when I skim through this material and encounter the odd shot that brings back a special memory or exemplifies someone or particularly contributes to the family history, I’ll post it here, for the kids and grandkids, for the record, and for any other friends or family to whom it might bring a smile or conjure up a recollection of their own.
So here goes….
Cousin Darline (Sklenar) Martin – Three shots I took at the house where I grew up with my mom and step dad when her family visited mine. I know I’ve posted these before, but 1971 is the first year I’ve sorted things into so that’s what you’re going to get over the next few days / weeks.
