Collage
While writing my memoir, I discovered the power of collage as a writing tool. When I got stuck in my writing process, making a collage helped unlock a scene and got me writing again. The process gave me access to memories and the ability to translate the spirit of those memories into words on the page. In the end, I had made a collage for nearly every chapter.
Try it…
You will need:
A stack of magazines
A glue-stick
Scissors
A piece of poster board or card stock cut to 5”x 8”
How to collage a scene:
Ruminate a bit on the scene or chapter where you feel stuck.
Sit with a stack of magazines, turning the pages focused on the images. Tear out any image that speaks to you, (you may not know why) just keep going. When you have five or six images, set the magazines aside and sit with your selection.
Cut out the elements that sparked your attention.
On a 5”x8” card start to play with the images, moving them around until you are pleased with their relationship to each other and content with the arrangement. Glue them into place. Sit with the image. Take notes. Title the card.
Learn more here: https://soulcollage.com
Buy supplies here: https://www.hanfordmead.com/product/getting-started-kit
Red Flags
He leaned over his plate and kissed me—an eraser of a kiss. Before I knew it, I’d danced over that nag of pain—did a tiny jig of adjustment—and as soon as we’d finished dinner, we waltzed our way to the bedroom, a trail of blue jeans in our wake. Red flags flapping in the breeze.
What we know and when we know it
My husband’s ability to lie and deceive was matched by my own to delude. I doubted myself. I denied my intuition—that fishtail flip—now a paddled thrash in my gut. I wrestled that fish and I drowned it. I swallowed his lie. Hook, line, and sinker.
Gaslighting
“Are you sleeping with her?”
“Kate! She’s engaged, for God’s sake! And I’m married to you, remember? Look, you’re depressed, and now you’re imagining things. I’m worried about you.”
The Big Reveal
I flew out the door. Bella, a fiery chariot on autopilot, somehow transported me from our house on Knott Street to the school where Charlie now worked. I was Judah-Ben-Hur, shimmering white stallions at full gallop out in front of me. Their manes, my hair, a fiery blaze streaking the sky.
Spinning
Spinning, no place to stand, gravity had abandoned me. I was circling the earth at the speed of light. No foothold possible. I looked back. I looked down. Everything—my children, my home, all of it—flew to bits and entered earth’s atmosphere, in chaotic orbit.
Devastation
I was devastated that something I knew that I knew—but was so desperate not to know—could break me so completely.
The Wake-Up Call
“This is the President of the United States, Charlie!” Somehow, in that moment, I knew they’d come for us.
By the end of that day our answering machine, which usually recorded carpool questions and potluck plans, was clogged to capacity.
It all happened so fast, like a tornado with no warning, no time to wonder how they’d found us.
I packed our bags.
Like refugees. We fled.
The Closet
Despite the January sun that streamed across Marina’s terracotta floors, I set up camp in the closet. There were no clothes in this closet: no coats, no hats, no boots, or umbrellas. Just music. This closet, a large walk-in, was home to Nick and Marina’s extensive music library. Hundreds of CDs, housed in jewel cases, sat silently on custom-built shelves, ready to spin songs. Songs of love and devotion and heartbreak.
Music. The irony not lost on me, I sat on the floor, and I faced it.
Face the Nation
On the night of January 27th, 1998, one night after the president’s televised denial, six days after going into hiding, we stepped out onto the front porch of the house on Knott Street into the blinding assault of camera flashes, the click-click-click of shutters like pistol fire, to make our statement. I stepped out our front door into that crowd of sorrows, their microphones, and video cameras, the brooms they’d use to sweep my home empty of its furniture. My hopes and my heart shredded but still saying YES. Yes to this mess and to all I was meant to learn.
Don’t Go Back to Sleep
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep. - Rumi
Broken Dishes
Sometimes rage, sometimes sorrow, on any given day, when the urge overtook me, I made the short pilgrimage across the yard to the little garden outside my workshop. I kept plates and bowls stacked at the ready just on the other side of the weathered picket fence…I would fling cups and saucers, dinner and dessert plates at the side of the garage with all my might. Shards would splinter and fly and find a new home in the fertile soil of my little vegetable garden. All these years later, I know that something in that shattering released me bit by bit.
Be Grateful for Whoever Comes
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out from some new delight.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. - Rumi