Green eyed camera

This is being written to thank Emily for her last article on creativity.

For me I think it is critical to observe my history as a writer and nonwriter. The history that has included so much self-criticism, so much negativity, so much fear that my desire to write was silly, adolescent, really something to be hidden.

My father wanted to write . But he chose to "make a decent living." Late in life he began to write and wrote several novels. Oh, God, they were so bad. I can remember climbing up on a chair to pull one of his reams of paper down. I read a romantic scene and was embarassed. At l6 I could have written better romance. I felt so badly for him. But then, he turned and begin to write articles for adolescents using my name. He won the state Voice of Democracy; the American Medical Association Essay award, was published often in the Progressive Farmer section for adolescents , and on and on and on. I hated it. I raged about it. He said we needed the money.

It's probably something I can say only because he is deceased. That was a bad time for me/abortive in every sense. And surely that was not good for him.

My own writing he said was too personal, too emotional, too much like me. That is really the root I just realized. My writing was like me. And it was not acceptable.

I may still be struggling with that and not really aware of it.

I want so much to be my own camera. To tell how I see and experience and have learned about the world. It may not be anyone else's way, but it's where I've been. No one else was with
Steve in the shabby 34th street hotel. It wasn't a pretty scene in any way, but I was there. And I remember early in the morning waking to find myself facing a small brown mouse . We looked at each other. He ran. I felt disgust. Someone upstairs threw something down the airshaft.
That's part of my photographic memory.

There's much more. And often I despair of getting even a fraction of it ready to share- ready to say to myself - this is as good as I can do.

But, hell, I'm in the water. Kicking. Trying. Going through periods over and over of feeling I'm a fool for doing this. But this time not quitting, I think. Perhaps becuase I have tasted more of the support from people like you/like Emily who say, "Keep on trying." I need that terribly. And I also need to continue focussing on my need to mentor myself, mother myself, care about myself, have compassion for me, love me. This odd tall girl with frizzy hair and no eyebrows but wonderful eyes. Flat feet and pretty hands. A head full of dreams. A passion to be different, unique, to move away from the ordinary.

Can I be 66. It can't be true. The desk clock says 10 to ten. Time moves on. This route although sometimes estatic, enriching, can also be painful and sad. But where else would I be. Homeless without my need to write. Claire Holcomb