She is a Writer

She wanted to be a writer, even if all she had ever written was a single short story in 764 words, 8699 letters, including the blanks. Sometimes the spaces between the words or the width of the margins were the best parts of her work. Each draft of this same story had different layouts. Every morning she went through each word and sitting behind her desk, dreamed of replacing it with another word.

Did she ever do it? Who knows?

She carried the latest draft in her purse and anywhere she went, she brought up the subject of writing and discussed the reasons why one writes.

There was a kind of determination in her voice that made people trust her judgment. All strangers believed her story must have been a masterpiece. Everyone except her, because she was also a stranger in her dreams.

Yet, nobody was curious enough to push her to take the story out of its hiding, and to read it out loud. Because she didn’t know how to pronounce the blanks and the spaces in between.

Journal entry 1

If I had written one single page every day, I would have finished a novel as long as my life.

But it hasn’t been the case. My 400 page novel is still unfinished, and my life lacks a purpose.

That’s why I am making a public commitment to write, not out of despair to finish my novel, but only because writing has always been a true source of happiness. After all, shouldn’t happiness be the only goal for any human being?

But who am I kidding? Happiness is just a word, a word like God, or Pneumono­ultra­microscopic­silico­volcano­coniosis, something we’d never understand.

We wake up, we go to work, come back home, eat and sleep. If anything disturbs this primitive rhythm we might feel as a failure.

Where I work, everything has a specific place, especially people. They exist in this limited space, beyond reach. As I pass them by, I feel to be part of a colony of virtual humans, or even ghosts in a modern sense of the term. We smile at each other, and say hi and goodbye, and if any of us sneezes, everyone would bless the voice of sneezing, because we don’t have a face or a name or a head. We are just a bunch of voices greeting one another. If one day one of us disappear, we would share the emptiness that this departure has created. We get along, yet we don’t know each other. Almost as if we don’t exist.

It is a virtual world. Nothing has a true meaning, everything has a specific purpose. Nothing has a depth, yet everything’s layered, or as they like to call ”nuanced”.

Black by Thizz Clinton

Listening to Black by Thizz Clinton…obsessively.

A Book Review: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

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“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant “now,” even having … Continue reading →

The Move

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As soon as we passed Buena Park, the freeway grew larger, the lines wider, the cars bigger, the palm trees taller, and the lights sped away with a more arrogant glare. Irvine, California was only a few miles farther. Our … Continue reading →

The Writing Life by Les Plesko

The Writing Life

by Les Plesko

There is somebody in this room who will become a writer. There’s someone here seduced enough by the vision you see, or think you see, that you’ll keep going. You are the person here who has wanted this all your life.

You’ve spent your time seized by vague longings for a lost world you’ve glimpsed, and you can’t get it out of your head. The feeling is so strong it makes you desperate. Any small sight or smell can set it off. You have carried this seed around like a lump in your throat, or a swelling in your chest. You have felt It rise and thought, “Why not me?” or “I can do this,” but then, perhaps, “life” took over. Yet you always felt your real life was waiting for you somewhere else. You know there’s something you should be doing that’s being neglected, and it is. It’s your writing calling you.

If you follow your heart, if you don’t quit, as most do, because writing is hard, I can tell you what will happen to you. Luckily, you will forget it. Then remember, then forget again.

Writing will break you and mend you. It will tear up your heart, but the heart heals and grows stronger. You will shatter yourself as you now know yourself, and you will welcome the shattering. In the course of the writing you will know exhilaration such as you’ve never known, like the top of your head has come off, and your chest aches, and you’ll weep tears of joy. And tears of grief, and frustration, and a bottomless sinking, but you will forget this when the exhilaration returns. And you will chase this. You will find It again. You’ll say, “Yes, this is why.”

Everything you thought you knew will be proved wrong. Everything you thought was important and necessary will fall away. If you love someone, your love will be tried. It may survive. If you’re looking for love, God forbid, you’ll find it. You will be in danger. You think you’ll die but you may live. You will grasp a new reality only to lose it again, until a newer reality seizes you. You will see the light, then it will fade until another light appears. You will follow the lights down into yourself. You will be broken and you will be recast. You will have a deep and abiding spiritual experience, and then you will lose it and wonder, “Where did it go? What was It I felt?” And you will say to yourself, “Of course I can stop.” And of course you can. Sure, you can stop, but only at the risk of your soul. You’ll know this. So you will risk everything, again. You will be heartsick and afraid, then heart-swollen and fearless. Writing will infect your life until it is your life, and there will be no turning back. You will learn what bravery is. You will be utterly and irrevocably transformed.

You will wonder, “How did I get here?” But you’ll know how. Then you’ll get back to work.

Les Plesko

What Do You think?

As part of a research (for an art exhibition) about a Persian tale of the 12th century, The Conference of the Birds, I would like to know your opinion on the question below. I would be very grateful if you could respond with four or five lines.

 

About the story:

In the story, countless birds go in search of an ideal god-king, symbolized by a mythicalbird, Simorgh. They are led by a bird master-guide that encourages them to leave and shows them the way. Facing hardships and sacrifices required by the journey, many give up or fail. Only thirty birds reach their destination. At the end of their journey, they discover that the Simorgh is only a reflection of their own existence. Unified during the experience of this long and difficult journey, the birds themselves incarnate the Simorgh (In Persian Simorgh means “thirty birds”).

 

My question:

 

 

Based on the story, how do you think about your own path? Do you consider yourself closer to those who have achieved their ideal or those who have experienced deviated trajectories? In case you identify yourself more with the second group, would you consider yourself rather as a loser. a winner or neither?

 

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Please send your answers to simorgh@sfr.fr

 

Remembering Les Plesko

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Someone told me that as much as Les Plesko’s suicide is a pain we’ll carry for the rest of our lives, but knowing that he is finally free (free from his pain, free from the harsh life, the humiliation, the isolation, the abyss of this life) should be a consoling thought.

I told her that she was right. This pain will never go away and then told her that she was wrong since Les was always free. He died the same way he lived: as a free man. He did what he loved the most: writing. And he wrote the way he wanted to. He didn’t adapt to the changing world of publishing. He didn’t sell his soul to make a few more bucks. He taught the way he thought he would have loved to learn. In his class, we all read our pages and he always read at the end. We followed his doubts and struggle over his own page – brilliant page– while we were all in awe at his genius.

He lived as a modest man and yet was the most generous.

I still count on him to read the pages of my unfinished novel and to fill them with his crossed-outs, and Huhs and Cliches, plus – maybe- a few check marks. No, I am not ready to live in a world without Les. In my head, he is still looking at me shyly, with his toothless smile, wearing a white T-shirt from Goodwill, nodding “See ya next week!”, like telling me not to be scared of failing.

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Please share your memories of Les:

http://pleskoism.wordpress.com/

Les Plesko, the Poet of Prose

I woke up this morning and remembered that Les is gone..gone the way he did. The sun was absent and I was still in shock and there was no word capable of consoling me and all those who adored him, loved him and depended on him to realize their own dreams.

Les Plesko was my teacher, my friend, and my mentor. I took his classes for five years at UCLA Extension and at his private workshop.  The first time I met him, his toothless smile, his sun-burst skin and his distorted gaze reminded me of a homeless man. I had no idea that soon, his very class, would turn into the place where I’d feel the most at home.

Before knowing him, I was a sad mediocre housewife, a sad successful engineer, a sad anxious mother, and a sad good wife; just an ordinary woman with a dream: the dream of being a writer.

I met Les and my whole life changed. I was born again. Writing one single perfect page became my daily mission. I was saved from a full-length empty life filled with regrets. Because of him I dared to write. He made my life worth living. In the last years, he mentored me in writing The Suicide Note, a book born by the image of someone jumping off a building…and now this! Such an irony!

 It is impossible for me to describe Les Pleasko since whatever I say is cliché. All I can do is to write about what he taught me:

– Write every day
– Don’t over-think the plot
– Avoid exclamation points
– Be the protagonist and tell the story of his/her emotions
– Be scared of clichés! Cliché is the first thing that comes to your mind. Go the opposite way.
– Read your page out loud
– Read
– Read more
– Read good stuff
– Don’t rush! Nobody’s out there waiting for you and for your novel

He touched so many lives, like mine, and yet couldn’t save his own.

From now on, this vision – this dream– will break my heart, always.  From now on, and forever, every sentence I write will be marked by his absence.

Manos Lindas

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This music inspired me with this visual, these words, this image: There is a man This is a road, walking A road, walking toward the dusk The road, drained, tired The dusk, sweating alone The man, dreaming, His eyes barely … Continue reading →