THE NEWS FROM SPAIN: SEVEN VARIATIONS OF LOVE

Love is hard.

Love that is working and winning is hard.

Love that is falling and failing is harder still.

What does love look like in its many splendors, iterations, and disarrays?

It is a hungry mother giving her child the last bite of food in the cupboard.
It is a father working three jobs and still making time between two of them to read a bedtime story to his children each night.

Love is the teacher who buys a pair of gloves or shoes, a hat and a coat, a breakfast or lunch for her student.

Love is listening-- and really hearing--the person across from you or beside you.

It is my mother holding my dad's hand in his hospital bed and talking to him constantly, when the ventilator prevented him from responding in kind.  It is her kissing and rubbing the forehead that she has always loved. It is him holding  her hand tightly.

It is a father waiting up for his daughter to return after a date.  It is this same father holding her while as she cries through tears dripping from her broken heart.

It is a wife telling her husband to follow his dream of opening a business, knowing the risks and sacrifices that will be required are huge.

Do you remember what love looks like-- in your childhood home, in a honeymoon suite, in the hospital, in church, riding in the car across country, swimming in the local creek? Do you remember?

What is love?

Joan Wickersham offers us seven answers to this question.
She looks at love between husband and wife, parent and child, doctor and patient, caregiver and the cared for-- lovers, friends, and family.

Love.

Her collection of stories defies categorization. Each story carries the same title-- The News from Spain.

In The News from Spain  she explores our question in  seven responses in seven stories, each linked by the phrase the news from Spain, which occurs in each story -- each story an imaginative and revealing elucidation of love -- somebody's love.

In her marvelously connected narratives, subtitled 7 Variations on a Love Story, she offers us seven images of love-- without airbrushing the flaws, nor erasing the frailties.

Love and variations.

In Wedlocked: A Memoir , Jay Ponteri examines his marriage-- what is, what once was, what might have been, what could be. He is writing a manuscript that offers us variations of his life and marriage.  He becomes fascinated/ infatuated with a woman he knows-- she suggests/becomes his main character..   His wife discovers the manuscript...

Variations of love. 

What is love?
What does it look like?

 For more additional comments, images and resources on love, you may want to read the previous post, What Love Got to Do With It?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

What is love?
What does love look like to you?

Make a list of concrete images, feelings, and evidences for love in your life, the life of someone you know, or life in general.

Is there a phrase that ties all of these images and feelings and evidences together?
Write seven short pieces utilizing this phrase to form a unity between the pieces.
You may choose to write all nonfiction, all poetry or all fiction.  You may want to write a mixture of genres.

You may also want to write one piece composed of just seven sentences defining love (or exploring another single theme.)

THANKFUL I AM A WRITER

I am a writer.

I am thankful that I am a writer.

Writing is a way of life.  
When things are going well, I write.  
When life is not so right, I write.

Writing is how I think --and figure out what I think-- and who I am at this moment.  It's how I process my day, my week my being--this conversation, that event, this relationship, that  phenomenon.

I am thankful I am a writer.

As I sat in the hospital when my father was sick, when my father was dying-  writing is how I processed the thoughts, the fears, the wonderings that had no where else to go.  The vague thoughts, rogue ideas, and mental meanderings that didn't or couldn't enter conversations with my friends and family found their way to blank spaces in Evernote on my iPad.

Writing is how I talked to God about it all.

Writing is also how I hide and procrastinate... and live.

I am never at a loss for words-- but all words are not created equal.

Some words are written quickly --scribbled on a napkin, stuck in my purse, surfacing perhaps a day later or a year from now to my surprise or puzzlement or delight.

Other words are pondered-- tossed around and  turned over and over to see which angle catches the light just so, creating jewels to be offered at just the right moment.

Casual words written on cards-- signed with love.
Formal words spoken at formal events-- delivered with pomp befitting the circumstance.

Words ooze from my pen, swirling into quick lines and jotted meanings.
Words drip from my fingers onto white spaces creating shapes of lines and letters.

Some words are just for me and never shared.
Other words are for all who take the time to see or hear.

I am thankful I am a writer.

Sometimes I wonder how people who do not write manage to survive.
How do they know what they really think? How do they analyze their responses?

I lay in bed at night before I fall asleep--writing in my head--- my next blog post, a new writing prompt, a poem to sort out my feelings, and my wonderings.  I may wake to find myself with a perfect title for a piece in progress, a  new idea to try,  a next direction with which to experiment-- or an entire piece composed in my dreams.

I am thankful I am a writer.

Several  of my favorite authors have  eloquently told their stories--- why they write, how they write-- and gentle, practical suggestions on how we might write, as well..



The books above will illuminate the writing life for writers in  high school, college or adults

Ralph Fletcher offers the writing life and practical writing suggestions for elementary and middle level children in his several books and on his website.




I am thankful I am a writer.

I dance with the pen.
I sing with nuances.
I paint  with sentences.
I poet my truth
I create my realities
my fictions and my nonfictions.

I am thankful I am a writer.


For more on the writing life you may want to read the two previous posts:

The Writer's Notebook- Part 1 (What and Why)
The Writer's Notebook- Part 2 (Resources)

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

What role does writing play in your life?  How does it influence your thinking, your being and your doing?

Write a poem about writing in your life?

What are other elements play an important role in your life?

For example, you may be a singer, a dancer, a painter, a reader, etc.

Why are you thankful for this identity in your life?

Write a personal essay about being a writer or another identity. 

DREAMING OUR LIVES

What did you dream last night?

Even if you don't remember, for at least part of your sleeping time, you were living a life apart and distinct from your waking life.

You may have been with friends that you know or folks that you know only in your dreams.
You may have been in a familiar setting or exploring  a place to which you had never been.

 In Deeper Writing, I wrote the following in a writing invitation related to dreaming:

We dream at night-- adventures beyond our wildest imagination and hopes, tragedies more sorrowful than the Greeks ever wrote, and sometimes horrors that inspire more terror than the creepiest films created in Hollywood.   At night we lie in our beds waiting to enter a world not accessible through the door of slumber. Some sleep worlds we enter eagerly, welcoming the rush of color and vague people we know only with our eyes closed.  Other dreams we dread, and they may recur night after night. ( Holland, 2012)

I dream every night.  I love to dream. And unlike many folks,  I dream in color--- and I actually remember my dreams.

I have several recurring dreams that always cause bewilderment and frustration -- in these dreams I am always losing something.

In one recurring dreams, I have missed a particular class for the entire semester. Upon discovery of this fact, I am frantically looking for the building where the class meets and can't  find it.   I spend my entire dream searching.

In a similar recurring dream I am on vacation- sometimes with friends or my husband, sometimes alone.
I am searching-- this time for my hotel room.  I always know the number of the room (usually --789 or 817). .

The other item I spend much of my dreaming life searching for is my perpetually lost purse.

I am not sure what meaning these lost things have for my waking life. But they are definitely  part of my dreaming world.

In a recurring pleasant  and welcome  dream, there is a beautiful stone cottage in which I routinely find myself.  It seems to be mine.  I love this home-- but I have never seen it in my waking life. Maybe someday...

In my scariest dreams, I am being chased by an unseen person or some unidentified entity. I am safe only when I reach the porch of my paternal grandmother's house. ( She has been dead since I was 6, but her home still remains my place of refuge.)

As we search for meaning in dreams, we may turn to our friends.  Listen to what I dreamed last night. What do you think it means?

We may also turn to a dream dictionary, matching  the theme of our dream as closely as we can to the universal dream topics and symbols listed.  Two of my favorites are:

       
Click here to analyze your dream online.

For many years, folks, including myself, have used dreams to determine the best numbers to play in the lottery.  My grandparents lived in a state that had a legal lottery long before my own state. Most of  the older folks I knew had dream books.

Dream books were the quintessential reference tool for determining your lucky numbers based on last night's dream.

Unlike most people my dreaming life tends to spill over in my waking life ..often.

Like all of us. I sometimes experience deja vu moments. The difference is that I can usually pinpoint the night I actually dreamed the moment and why I have that  I-have been here/done this/seen this/heard this
feeling.

It alarms those who would prefer that dreams remain restricted to sleeping hours when I can say exactly what words will come out  of someone's mouth next and next and next... for a sustained conversation.

It raises eyebrows when you call me to tell me you had an accident, and I tell you where... because I dreamed it last week.

It puzzles folks when I call  out of the blue to check on them--- I never say I dreamed you were sick-- I just ask how you are doing. 

I am still puzzling over a recent dream in which I was given red rubber gloves-- in the dream I understood they were boxing gloves--although they looked more like cleaning gloves.

What did you dream about last night?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

One of  my favorite poems when I was a child was dream-based:

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night 

Sailed off in a wooden shoe,— 

Sailed on a river of crystal light 

Into a sea of dew. 

"Where are you going, and what do you wish?" 

The old moon asked the three. 

"We have come to fish for the herring-fish 

That live in this beautiful sea; 

Nets of silver and gold have we," 

Said Wynken, Blynken, And Nod. -

                     

To  read  Eugene Field's entire poem click here.

What did you dream last night? What have you dreamed the last few nights?

We can mine our dreams for information and insight about our own lives, perspectives on the worlds-- and other worlds.

 Click here to read two poems  I have written about dreams--Dreamscape about dream knowledge and The Key about a specific dream.

What objects in your dream are prominent? 

What do these objects mean to you in your waking life?  

What do they mean in the context of the dream?

What patterns do you notice?

What insight do you gain as you consider the dream?

Write  poem, story or essay based on your dream.