A Legacy Of Words

Here I am today, upon my wicker ‘throne, feeling the cool morning breeze and listening to the sounds of the village outside my window. Legs curled up in my Buddha pose, on this chair that once was Tim’s.

Yet, not to be worshipped, but rather perhaps more in the worship of words.

So, Mom, the Discover prompt this week is to create something that expresses your origin story. I’ve been going over everything and thinking “where did this all begin“?

Well, first off I began inside you. A product of you and Dad, so there’s that beginning.

Yet we are all though a lot more than just the product of our parents. That is, you provided the nature I have (to a degree) and you nurtured me. However, is that the origin of me? I mean, the me that sits before this screen today typing away to you? The one who writes these letters to the dead, about the dead, and all those many beginnings.

As I peel back the layers and examine all the ‘me’s’, the version 1.0 through to this ‘me’ today would be…version 7.0?

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”
― Roger Zelazny, Courts of Chaos

This me, this Journal me, this me that one day long ago was a dream. Why?

Way back, before roger.the.dodger, before that day in 1999. Back in High School, I imagined myself in a little place like this, within the confines of this quaint village, doing exactly what I’m doing right this minutes. Writing.

Oh, sure, I dreamed of making my living as a writer, but one mustn’t quibble with such details. The fact is, I’m doing MOST of it. Therefore, I see no reason to believe I can’t get that monetary bit, someday.

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”

― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

So, at first I read. And read some more. Read fantasy, sci-fi, read mystery, and non-fiction, memoirs, biographies. I read about other writers, and dreamed someday of maybe someone writing about me. I mean, why not, eh? If you’re going to dream, might as well dream big.

All the while I wrote, from when I was young and you gave me that first diary. And of course came the various journals I wrote in as an adult. I didn’t think of that as writing though.

So I crafted short stories, and wrote poems upon poems, for no particular reason other than I had to get some of it out. Had to dislodge some of the words that spun around inside of me. Words spun together as a spider’s web, only to be later abandoned in the corners.

To what purpose? Why must I write?

You know why Mom? I bet you do. Took me a bit to recognise why, but I do it for the same reason GrandmaN did, and maybe why you wrote to me, and I believe it is to her I owe my thanks for this desire.

I do wonder, is that why you began the Red Duo-tang? Was it because of her spiral ring journals?

She may not have had the means for a monetary legacy, but this thing inside me, this desire, is a far better inheritance than mere coinage.

Those stories she told, with her simple sketches. Of dresses she wore, and people she knew, the houses she lived in. All the tales of our ancestors, penned in her careful, graceful hand, these she gave to us. That rare treasure, of memory and of who she was, and the way she saw her world.

After Tim’s death, and with days of grief ahead, I decided to write it all down. Journal it, just like she did. And so I created The Temenos Journal. But I had no idea, until now, where that inspiration was born

Didn’t think of it in that way, until I got to thinking about what my origin story was.

Realising that without even being aware of it, I was following in her footsteps; just in a different medium. I mean there were a lot of things I wanted to say, but I’d never blogged before. So, in the beginning, it was really all about you, and Tim, and grief.

And, so I wrote some more. Sometimes to you, but not always, since you don’t have to know everything. I am compelled to create, tell stories, for much the same reason she had I would imagine…because…
“… word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”