Thank you to my fellow author and friend, Ron Terranova, for his review of my upcoming release, Our Genlte Sins, June 21!
“Lace has woven a wonderful tale with themes and characters that are universal and recognizable. Such issues as a woman’s personal sovereignty within a relationship, the oppressiveness, both subtle and overt, of patriarchy and the mixed blessings of liberation are explored. A wonderful, readable story, ideal for Summer reading. Kudos to Noreen Lace.”
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It’s do over time. Sort of.
I play with this idea a lot, and we all do it sometimes. We think about something that happened where we could have said or done something different. As children, we had little power over our greater environment. We may have just wished things had taken an alternate path.
Some psychologists believe that it is our perception of events that does harm. If we look at the same event in a different way, it’ll appear possibly not as we first thought. (While I can see their point, I immediately think of traumas that can not be explained in lesser terms.)
However, let’s try an event we experienced as children or teens and rewrite that. Whereas we may want to come out as victors, trust the story to develop itself. Begin the incident and change one detail, maybe two. Follow where it goes.
I sometimes refer to this as reparenting ourselves. I feel if we do this enough it may give our inner children the power to feel at peace.
Feel free to share here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/writingtowellness/
I’m considering a Discord account for those who don’t use Facebook. Let me know what you think.
Our body knows! Our sixth sense, our gut feeling, our fight or flight response, those tiny little hairs on the back of our neck, that imagined voice in our ear – we know – but we second guess ourselves. We put ourselves down – oh, you worry to much, we whisper to ourselves. We use logic and emotion to try to talk ourselves into things because we have really no SEEMINGLY valid reason to feel this way. We ignore our instincts and end up in a bad way.
I’m not talking about the worst of the worst – but that happens too! But even that date – we knew something was off, but couldn’t put our finger on it and we end up having the worst time. We make that deal, buy that product, maybe because we need it, but we knew we shouldn’t have and it turns out not as promised. Damn it!
Let’s write TO that instinct. Not about it. But to it. Let’s give that instinct physicality – what does it look like? give it personality – what do they sound like? how does it act? Maybe we should name it! And let’s be honest with our new friend – we need to learn to trust them more often.
Feel free to share it here! I can’t wait to read these!
I may make a Discord group for these prompts. Let me know what you think!
My short story, All the Beautiful People, has been accepted by Hoxie Gorge for their Spring/Summer 2022 issue!
All the Beautiful People was inspired by a past time of mine – people watching. I think individuals are beautiful and one of the most wonderful things about them is that, in all their anxieties and insecurities, most seem to overlook the loveliest parts of themselves. It might be their smile, their kindness, or even their imperfections!
I spent Sunday at the Norton Simon museum. I watched a group of visitors take selfies with the Picassos and Reniors. They fussed and posed, smiled and laughed nervously. Gorgeous in their own individuality.
All the Beautiful People is told by a first person narrator who looks for this beauty even as she pushes down her own pain.
In 1809, a baby boy was born. I imagine his mother knew he’d change the world; we mothers know those kinds of things. He triumphed over numerous challenges that made his writing deeper, darker, stronger. He created a truly American literature that separated us from the mother country, transformed literature at the time and formed what literature has become today. We owe a lot to Edgar Allan Poe.
My tributes to Poe include Eddy. Eddy was born from my passion to understand his darker urges. In 1848, he bought two bottles of laudanum (morphine, heroin) from a pharmacist and seemed intent on ending his life. Eddy is the imaginative version of those moments – and what brought him back from the brink.
I was interviewed about Poe’s Mysterious Death on SuperNews Live – Dark Times.
In 2018, I read Eddy at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Virginia.
My other blogs include A Poe-Cation, The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, Fast Facts about Poe, and check out my Poe page.
Charles Baudelaire, a French Poet and Poe’s contemporary, recognized Poe’s genius and gifts then, acknowledging that American audiences didn’t know what they had.
We do now. We have for a long time.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Poe. Happy Birthday.
Have you seen this photo? I admit it took my breath away. For a moment, I thought it was a scene cut from the Great Gatsby. But there’s no Leonardo to be found. This is real. This is someone’s real life. Of course, in some abstract way, we know people are wealthy and have these lives and obviously get married in an extravaganza such as this. But, for a second, I forgot.
So enmeshed in my humble life, satisfied with my little home and my lovely garden, grateful for my girls, and proud of my job – that my mind neglected to remember that some people have larger lives.
I don’t think I’ve been to a concert venue as large as this scene since the Richfield Coliseum. (So long ago, it was before event centers were named for companies and instead for the cities in which they were built.)
Ivy Getty is a part of THE Getty’s. Granddaughter of John Paul – I know the name from The Getty Museum, which I’ve enjoyed on a number of occasions. They used to offer music on a Saturday evening while the galleries and gardens were opened late. Some people know John Paul Getty descended from the JPG The First who was (once) the richest man in the world.
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Many years ago, I heard the theory that, prior to our birth, we choose our lives and the events that happen in our lives.
I railed against the idea. There’s a hellava lot of things that has happened in my life that I would have never agreed too. “I would not have pressed that button!” I insisted.
But now, years down the road, all I’ve been through, all I’ve learned, there have been benefits. I’ve gained levels of empathy that some people can’t comprehend. (A person with a P.H.D in Religious Studies once asked how I could forgive someone who had harmed me when they never asked for forgiveness or showed remorse.) I have a deep gratitude for the things I do have and put people before material things.
I am by no means perfect. I falter in my empathy. I’m occasionally short on patience. When rushing, I can be careless in thought and deed. But mostly, I have sought higher levels of understanding about our purpose and place.
And more often than not I think – maybe I did choose this life.
If we are to believe we are here to learn lessons, to become better beings from incarnation to incarnation, to free ourselves from the evils of humanity – pettiness, jealousy, greed etc, then isn’t it probable that we chose hardships that might teach us acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude.
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If you’ve read this blog for long, you’ll know I was raised in poverty, became a single parent, struggled to put myself through school while raising my children. It might be easy to fall into step with the green-eyed monster and wish for money and power. Wouldn’t that have made life easier? Many of us think it would have or will. However, the financially gifted have their own issues.
John Paul Getty III was kidnapped. His grandfather didn’t want to pony up the dough. So the kidnappers mailed him Junior’s ear. Then a negotiation began. Can you imagine the richest man in the world refusing to pay a ransom for his flesh and blood? Can you imagine your grandpa refusing to give up a paycheck for you?
Streaming services (in addition to the pandemic) has cost higher paid actors their expected income. Health care they were once promised has been affected. We have a whole generation of “stars” who may not be able to live the lives in which they have become accustomed.
In other words, the wealthy have their problems.
One of the reasons I suspect old money doesn’t like to mix with new money or either of those with us peasants is they fear being used, liked, or appreciated only for their $$ and connections. Anyone ever use you? During my college years, I had a few who seemed to only desire my editing skills (such as they are.)
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I am grateful for the lessons learned. I’m grateful the things that happened weren’t worse. I’m happy I am able to help those I can. Thank you, Universe, for healthy offspring, a brain that works, friends that are true, the capacity to love, the understanding to forgive, the acceptance, empathy, and desire to strive to continue to become a better person. (I imagine these are gifts bequeathed to me from challenges faced and overcome.)
I wish Ivy (Love that name!) Getty and her crew the best. May their marriage be loving and their children healthy.
Let’s be honest here – had that body cam video showed anything other than a privileged white male, Petito would probably not be dead.
Had he not been a privileged white male – he’d not be free and on the run right now.
The most hated man in America – Brian Laundrie – is free due to a system that has always believed the white guy, gave him another chance, let it play out.
While many of us are sitting back saying – WHY DID THEY NOT ARREST OR DETAIN OR QUESTION HIM before he escaped? the FBI and police were also working under the challenges white privilege carries. If you arrest someone without all the proper paperwork, you risk the expensive attorney making a case from the lack of dotted i’s and crossed t’s. They FBI and police were playing it by the book because had they not built a proper case to send the person to prison for life, it would have resulted in a long and costly waste of money that would’ve allow him to walk the streets anyway.
Brian Laundrie is the most hated man in America not only because he seems to be getting away with something what we all feel he did, but because of his sociopathic behavior – he drove Gabby’s van home, refused to speak while he hid at the safety of his mommy’s bosoms seemingly going on with his life as if nothing happened. His parents seem to be sociopaths as well – they went on with their lives as if their child hadn’t just returned without his missing girlfriend.
Everyone who has a child can relate to Gabby’s parents. The horror of not knowing where your child is – the outrage that the person who knows refusing to speak.
But do they relate to Brian’s parents? Maybe that’s why people are pissed off too – while we want to protect our children, how many of us would go so far as to hide our child and help our child to escape a murder charge? How many of us would even be allowed to proceed with life as normal if our child was a person of interest in a missing person’s case?
It seems a mom of two, attorney at a lawfirm, has offered a $20, 000 reward for information leading to Laundrie’s capture. I say we get a gofundme page going and donate more – let’s put a bounty on this guy’s head so large that anyone in the world would turn him over –
because, ladies and gentlemen, his parents have most likely gotten him out of the country. He’s on his way – or already in – a country that does not have an extradition treaty with America. They had enough of a head start. And how long could he hide on American soil?
I have faith he’ll be found. He’ll be brought back. He’ll face charges. And I hope his parents do to.
But let’s not wait until then to talk about the women of color who are missing in the same state without the same media circus.
Love this book!
I really don’t know how many people read my blog posts. For the past year or so, at various times, I have posted several pieces with subtitles like “A stream of consciousness rant, or lament, etc. from “The Red Wing Chronicles (A stream Of Consciousness Personal Exorcism). This is my latest book- part memoir of my first 30 years or so, and part stream of consciousness rant. Stream of consciousness is a technique in which the writer’s thoughts are quickly rendered into written words with minimal thought or fermentation. James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, and Virginia Wolf have used this technique in various of their works and when it is successful it often is akin to a jazz improvisation in words.
Although the words often flowed, this was a difficult book to write. My childhood was hardly a pleasant one. It was rife with serious illness, bullying and family abuse. The…
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Be determined!
Be excited.
Make the most of every moment.
Sing!
Gumballs can be used as marbles. (Use what works)
Play! (Park playlands make for a great workout!)
Spend the least time doing things you don’t like.
Laugh!
Don’t worry about what other people think.
Hug hard.
Nothing is really out of reach. (Goes back to where we started.)
*
imagine what we might accomplish!
Noreen Lace 
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