Tonight, I made my way to Noe Valley for the renewal of my writing course. The focus this time around is looking inward, writing experiences in the form of memoirs and personal essays and so on. I'm just excited to write more, to work that part of my brain, and feel that part of alive. Folk seem eclectic and vibrant and already I learned a new made-up word: glitchy.
"Memoir"
Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now---
radioactive to the end of time---
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn't peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon, under a locust tree
whose blackened pods were falling and making
illuminating patterns on the pathway,
I was seized by joy,
and someone saw me there, and that was the
worst of all, lacerating and unforgettable.
-Vijay Seshadri
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