FORMER EDITORIAL
6th Feb 2006
Flowers in the Attic
The attic is an underappreciated, though frequently utilized space...
It’s a space where we keep those things that have sentimental value but that we no longer have a place for in our everyday lives. We store our memories, good and bad, so that we are free to go about the process of living. As writers, however, there are times when we must make the climb up those dark, dusty stairs to find the very things that we labored to put away. Even though the remembering is sometimes difficult, and often painful, there is calm in knowing that this storage-place is close by.
Writers are not normal people. We know too much, and we intuit even more. Normal concerns itself with surfaces and reflections; for example, it only shows what is on display in a home. You may sit on the living room couch. You may eat at the kitchen table. Yet, you may not allow yourself to even think about the shadows in Normal’s house. Writers feel crazy, almost disconnected, because while everyone else poses for their Rockwell painting, we excuse ourselves and sneak away to the attic to find out what makes Normal’s house a home. We are not surface people. We are life-shatteringly inquisitive and observant. We cannot rest until we’ve opened all the boxes and disturbed the dust.
More often than not, we find our nightmares in those stored boxes. Our dreams of good, pleasant and plenty are on mantles and bookshelves. They are the best of us, the story we want told. In our attics we find our shame and our sadness, and we want to burn all of those stored rememberings, but neither fire nor flood can destroy them. We want to run away from them, and oftentimes we do; however, we can not forget these boxes or their place in our homes.
Pursued properly, writing is lonely, painful and deeply satisfying. It is a strength-builder and creates a connectedness to self. And, though there is a hellish hurt that comes from opening those boxes, the nightmares that have resided in the dark for so long, never seem to be as bad when we bring them downstairs and see them in a new light.
LaMonique's newsletter is called Slice produced by P3 and is available on request email LaMonique@aol.com . Also, her book of poetry Under Every Deep is available from pumpkinpie.
