Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Research & Write

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PROMPT INSTRUCTIONS: Do some research relevant to your topic, then apply it to a section of your prose that felt insubstantial or thin.

Feedback on previous pieces, has requested more background on what is not working between Rex and I. By going back into my journals I found concrete details and then created a hybrid of them as a journal entry below.

 
JOURNAL ENTRY

September 30, 2003

I’m here on the bed, while Rex is in the other room, babying his acoustic guitar. I can see him winding the fresh, new strings, plucking each one to vibrational perfection. But I feel no harmony.

He’s mad, and has turned to his instrument, polishing the curves of its wooden body, with rapt attention. I’m jealous of a guitar. My burgeoning belly begs for just a simple touch. The Mama Massage Oil we were gifted hasn’t even had the seal broken. I want to scream, then sob. But I cannot risk to feel the loneliness of this pregnancy. I, too, am stringing a symphony – our mutual composition – of neuro-pathways, fingernails and a nervous system. I want this being to sense only welcome, not one trace of sadness in my veins. Yet tonight is just another night, watching the hunch of Rex’s shoulders, him facing anything but me. And I’m here with my body, beautifully transforming, in our house thick with tension as he strums.

I’m trying to take responsibility for my part of all this upset. Rex says I need to meditate. I’m sure it would be beneficial. But it’s hard to take that advice from a man whose meditation nook is covered in dust and dried gecko poop. Which is the source of tonight’s upheaval. Apparently, in my attempt to dust the myriad of saintly photos collecting spores galore, I accidentally bent Meher Baba’s picture. So as the Indian-style font beams out from beneath his holy beard, “Love Alone Prevails,” Rex is reprimanding me like a child, scolding me for carelessness.

This outburst leads to his more favored form of meditation these days, a cigarette break outside. It’s supposed to keep the second-hand smoke at bay, but smokers never realize the clouds they create. Their sooty exhalations are far-reaching, impervious puffs that slink in sideways, heavy, invisible but stinking.

courtesy of Daniel Costal
courtesy of Daniel Costal
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 3 Comments

Re-write An Existing Piece

courtesy of Hubble ESA
courtesy of Hubble ESA

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PROMPT INSTRUCTIONS: Re-write a piece that needs clearer purpose. Identify in one sentence the goal of the essay, then advance that purpose.

 

One sentence: Convey the sense of abandonment felt during a child-birth experience and the subsequent feelings of failure and self-doubt that arise as a result. (Note: Sally is the midwife)

 

Sally moves her face back to mine with a look that solemnly conveys, either get this child out, right now at home, or we’re going to the hospital.

I am not religious, but I believe myself to be spiritual. In this moment, however, the delineation between the two is meaningless. Religious or spiritual, it matters not. Life and death weigh upon me, and I call upon every deity, avatar and saint that I can conjure: God, Goddess, All that Is, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Mary, Meher Baba, Mary Magdalene, Infinity…please help me birth this baby. Please offer up your divine powers to help me get this child out.

There has never been a moment when my prayers have mattered more. Yet, as I hear my inner pleas to every figurehead I can imagine, all requests fall flat. It’s as though my words are rote recitations, no substance. I flail to feel some kind of connection to these supreme beings. In the flickers of candlelight, the thumb-tacked, wise-eyed photos of a few, gaze upon me from a nearby wall. All seems a mockery, two-dimensional, paper-thin. I fumble at the door of distant acquaintances, wondering if they ever really lived there.

I am stunned to silence, falling. Fast and certainly, I am encompassed by a void of black nothingness, infinite in its depth, indifferent to my plight. There is no ground in this abyss. Any thought, any semblance of a foothold to secure me, quickly evaporates into empty space. At the time when I need Grace most, I am free-falling into darkness.

If God exists, but is not here with me, than I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. Sally says I’m not pushing correctly, and it seems even my prayers are failing. My utter inability could mean death. I flounder in defeat as the next contraction builds.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About A Story Your Parents Told You When You Were Growing Up

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

PREFACE: Since all experiences in life come through our own personal filters, so it is when we hear stories, as well. Every tale we’re told comes through this same filtration, as we take in the details of our choosing. Mom, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this story of yours so publicly, and I hope I’ve at least conveyed the gist of such a transcendent, personal experience. It’s interesting for me to consider that perhaps this is my version, not my mom’s story at all, as it’s the one I’ve created over the years, based on what I remember of her telling.

Childhood with my mother was sweet like the juice she’d squeeze, fresh from the trees, in the orange grove where we lived. She was beautiful in her two long braids, tied with leather cord and turquoise, looking at least ten years younger than her age. Perpetually positive, she’d crank John Denver while doing the dishes, then swoop over to hug one of her three children with soapy hands. I never doubted my mother loved me, and it seemed as though my siblings and I were, absolutely, one of the best things in her life.

But the story goes that it wasn’t always that way. It was hard in the early years, with kids close in age, and each of us in some form of diapers. Dad was working ranching hours- gone early, home late. When he was with us, he wasn’t always present. Unhappy and struggling, Mom thought she was sick, and went to an MD for diagnosis. He gave her a clean bill of health, but saw pain in her soul. His suggested remedy, a book by Billy Graham, “How to Be Born Again.”

For a series of days, Mom set up childcare, while she parked our station wagon in a quiet, shady spot behind the citrus packinghouse. She read the book in detail, finally coming to Graham’s instructions on how to ask Jesus into her life.

Over the years, she would recount to us her supernatural experience, there in the car that day. How she made her request, and the undeniable, loving presence that responded. The voice from within that she vividly heard: Go home and love your children to the best of your ability. Her perspective was completely altered, returning home to us, seeing nothing but absolute perfection.

In a bubble of deep love, she joyfully floated. For days, weeks…years to come.

 

courtesy of Tom Hilton
courtesy of Tom Hilton