I Hate Being Sick

I haven't written much in the last few days. In my defense I have been sick with either an old bad cold, the flu or the jungle rot, take you pick. Dottie has also, and hers is even worse than mine is. Hopefully it will begin to go away sooner rather than later. Sick or not, I plan on tackling Chapter 8 at some point today, you can't fill up a book sitting around feeling sorry for yourself because you feel like crap.

The graphic on the left is how I picture my mother trying to climb into the upper echelon of my hometown's so-called elite, which is almost laughable. I am noticing a trend as I slowly compile this book. I am painting mother as a 100% tyrant, with no redeeming features. I also find that I can't help but portray her that way, because that is how I think of her. When my mother was "good" it was always for a purpose, and that purpose constantly was meant to showcase her own self in a good light. I don't believe she did anything spontaneous, she was like a master craftsman in that she crafted her life and those closest to her, namely me and my father, in the image she had envisioned for many years. That vision had to do with disassociating herself from her birthplace, Walker Creek. She was a cruel woman who used whatever means necessary to achieve her place in our small southern town. She never made it, however, although I imagine she thought she had. Taylor was a one-horse town with a one-horse mentality and she never came close to being in whatever passed for "high society" in that small southern Arkansas town.

She had her "good" moments, however, and I assume I will begin to insert some of those attributes of her when I begin the rewrite. I imagine there will be a LOT of revision for the simple fact that as I go along with the writing I find myself remembering more things I wish to include. This memoir is supposed to be about my life, and so it shall. But my life was influenced by many things, not the least of which was my mother's domineering, no, totalitarianism way she ran her household and raised me AND treated my father, who was a good, but weak man. We are all the results of our upbringing. That accounts for a good percentage of why we do as we do. The nation also has an influence on us. Back in the nineteen fifties we were programed to fear the Soviet Union (with good reason I might add) and when I decided to leave Taylor Arkansas to see what the country held in store for me, our nation was in the beginning of a sure-fire revolution. I darted in and out of this revolution, never quite able to give in to the anti-American voices -- That was where my upbringing came into play, the one who grew up in the patriotic fifties -- But I did find out that those days made it very easy to become a wanderer.

All this, and more of course, will soon be in the book . . . Stay tuned . . .

MY NOVELS:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742