in my afternoon shower yesterday i realized what book i would write. it wouldn't be a book thief, a keturah and lord death, or even a beauty, as much as i lovelovelove them, i am not that kind of storyteller. it would have to be about what i know best, which is me and my story, and the things i'm interested in most, like memory, family history, death, loss, and where they all meet: place.
so my book would be a mosh of eat pray love and housekeeping. not that i aspire to reach the literary acclaim that either of these have achieved, but merely that one is a larger story that unfolds within all these smaller stories of traveling—vignettes lined up and put on display like beads—and the other is one person traversing through a family history and how she has navigated their story and hers simultaneously. its soul is the ephemeral and its legacy is the loss.
so this trip i have envisioned, traveling back to my hometown has always included writing as well as several unconventional cameras {holga, pinhole, etc}, but now the goal might be writing, or perhaps an intersection of the two {see: extremely loud & incredibly close}.
yes, this is the book i would/could/will? write.
2 comments:
Did you ever read "Always Coming Home" by Ursula Leguinn? I kind of picture you doing something like that except more visual.
It's a novel, but all the chapters were put together by archaeologists based on what they found. So one chapter is someone's shopping list. Another chapter is a fragment of a letter from a child to their parent while on vacation. And so on. Was one of my favorite books of hers.
hmmm....always coming home. i think that's cream, right? you gave me your copy so it sounds like i need to go rustle around and find it so it can be bumped up to the top of my reading list. it sounds fascinating the way it's constructed. i like that kind of unconventional approach. my book would definitely have images and sketches and artifacts too.
thanks for pointing me in a different direction.
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