Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Deep Thoughts from Sunday Reading

The better part of Sunday was spent by me, on the couch, under my mother’s cream-colored afghan, rain outside, book in hand. In my world, this is a luxury.

As a writer, I believe the act of reading should be considered part of my work. However, I find it challenging to find the space to read with so many daily tasks that call me. And on this particular golden Sunday, there was nothing but chicken soup warming on the stove, cheese bread in the oven and a cloudy day. Still, I found it difficult to let myself ‘do nothing’ but read. Yet, I persevered (hah!).

If an afternoon of reading is a rare luxury, it seems meaningful to reflect on my chosen title. I’m still pondering what it was, exactly, about Joyce Maynard’s At Home in the World, that pulled me in, chapter after chapter this Sunday.ahitw_pb_cover

Her memoir is a recounting of her early days as a writer in the 1970’s, her experiences being published, her intense affair (and first-time love) with J.D. Salinger and her subsequent journey into a life of house holding and children (with another man). Throughout everything, she is always observing, always writing.

Blazing through her nearly 400 pages in a few days, I’m left to wonder what it was that captured me most in this story. There is the obvious intrigue of a glimpse into the world of the notoriously reclusive J.D. Salinger and the 53 year-old’s affair with an 18-year-old girl. Her retelling of this relationship has brought Maynard mixed reviews, raising the question of motives, truth and discernment.

I don’t believe that many are questioning the veracity of her story depicting a love shared for nine months with Salinger. But the theme of truth and its telling runs throughout her book.

There is her father’s alcoholism, the elephant never spoken of, even in a house of master communicators. There are Maynard’s own deep secrets: her unhealthy eating patterns, her virginity, and ultimately, her hidden relationship with the very private Salinger.

urlA Home in the World, lifts the stones and shines some light on all of these layered hidings. Though as Maynard exposes these most tender truths, she admits that even as she has written her way through life (not only publishing works in her youth, but continuing on to chronicle the daily married life of raising three children in a New Hampshire farmhouse) she hasn’t always been fully honest. In this memoir, she confesses, that she omitted things. Retold a story, but may have left critical pieces out.

I’m left wondering if she made these omissions by choice, or unconsciously. I’d imagine, oftentimes, it was a bit of both. Sometimes the truth is too close to write. Sometimes we are not ready, yet, to share it.  When do we dare?

As writers who draw upon life for material, how do we discern?
Is full disclosure always necessary?
What is fit to tell?
What is fair to tell when your story involves other people?

Was it ‘right’ for Maynard to share the private life of J.D. Salinger – often casting him in a less than complimentary light – even if it is her story of how their lives entwined?

Maynard’s forward in the reprint of the memoir (originally published in 1998) makes no apologies for expressing her truth. She explains that in doing so, it banished the sting of shame.

Maynard credits Salinger for encouraging her in their early days together, to write with her own honest voice. To stay true to herself, no matter what others may try to do to shape her into their own making, specifically in the publishing world. She says she still holds to this creed.

We all have stories and we all have our ways of telling them. As we share them with each other, I’m also left to wonder about motivations.

Which stories do we share and why?
What is the intent?

And when we do divulge our tales, are we willing to stand behind them, even when others question?

And in that steadfastness, are we also willing to admit, that there are at least two sides to every story? Your version will, most likely, be different from mine.

This Sunday I delved into the story of a girl who became a woman and, eventually, a mother. She loved deeply, she watched intensely, and she wrote her way through all of it. Finding herself, finding her voice, finding her place.

What a luxury to find my own little place, curled up on the couch, rain outside – reading – soaking it all in.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Published

It’s true, I’m officially published. Not by clicking my own button here at WordPress, but through an anthology put out by the Pacific Writer’s Connection, called Ho’olaule’a (roughly translated as “celebration”).

courtesy of http://www.pacificwriters.org

Not only am I honored to have shared numerous weekend workshops with many of the writer’s highlighted in this compilation, I feel fortunate to be included in this work. But I’ll be honest, it’s not exactly what I expected.

Ok, I’ll admit, when it came time to submit work for consideration for this publication, I was in the chaotic throes of motherhood and work life. I was in a burgeoning romance with the Bohemian. My attention was scattered in a smatter. So I squeaked in by the deadline with a few written pieces I was proud of, though they were perhaps, not my best work. For good measure, I uploaded a few photos to go with my submission, as PWC was also soliciting images for review.

Well, none of my writing made the cut, but I have four photographs included in this beautiful book.

Someone commented recently that these things can often shift our focus and change our course of direction. Am I a photographer, not a writer?

I’m smiling, because I know I’ll never stop writing. And I think that any of the writers in Ho’olaule’a could appreciate my candid questioning, here. Perhaps every artist will occasionally pause to ponder something like this.

For now, I am simply grateful for the Pacific Writer’s Connection for making yearly writing retreats possible here on my little island. I’ve been under the tutelage of Kim Stafford, Kathleen Dean Moore and Hope Edelman, who have honed my writing skills with incredible insight. I have shared rough drafts and polished pieces with the many writers who come to this annual event, year after year.  Their work is now highlighted in this enriching book.

The anthology is soon to be available for purchase, and I have a sense editions may be limited. Check out the experiences, conveyed with exquisite detail and open heart, from writers here in the Pacific.

Here’s to celebrating!

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

What’s Left When Fear Falls Away?

I’ve been falling asleep in dim light, grasping a page at a time, to the passages from my birthday book “When Fear Falls Away” by Jan Frazier.

Gifted to me by my friend, The Artist, it chronicles the experience of a woman (and she insists she is quite ordinary) who had a sudden shift in consciousness. She claims that her entire life changed, deep to the core of every moment. That she went from being a woman living in extreme anxiety around repeated cancer scares, to someone that began existing in a state of great peace. That the fear simply went away. And what filled the empty once occupied by fear, was an infinite well of love.

Her book describes this experience, not as one that had a beginning and an end. Not one that had a peak of sorts and then faded. It explains that this shift within her was so authentic and profound that it sustained, no matter the circumstance, no matter the calendar days that passed.

What she tells is that she was a simple woman, filled with lots of fear. She did nothing special except that one night, filled with anxiousness for the next cancer test, she decided to ask. Asking no one deity in particular, she was not religious. She just asked something – that thing that was bigger than herself – if she could stop being afraid. And what she reports is that the fear did indeed go away. Not for a night or a week, but permanently. Frazier’s account describes her journey through this experience, all the while insisting that this awakening is possible for every person.

She recalls a time in life before this shift, when she could simply not believe that she would ever awaken to any kind of divine state. That she could read of masters living in this way, but that it was not accessible to her.

I can relate. Reading her words I reflect on this in my own life. I dwell with my beliefs. Just take a look at my own mind and how it can so instantly jump to “Nahhhh. Not me. I could never really be completely free of fear. I’m not one of those special human beings that could live in a state of grace, 24/7, no matter the outer circumstances. That is a state beyond me. Impossible for what I am capable.”

I realize these thoughts play quietly in the deep recesses. Strong enough to make a song, but sounding low enough that I do not notice them, though they hum assumptions that color my days.

How curious to simply listen to this song. Question it. Feel the freedom of even just considering singing a different tune.

Where else am I closing doors where I could be swinging them full open?

For inspiration, I’m including a quote from Frazier’s book “When Fear Falls Away.”

Here’s to the profound – found – in the every day.

“…The main thing is the experience deep in that has nothing to do with what’s going on around me. Trying to describe it is like trying to speak a language I don’t know: I’m new in this country. But also, it’s hard to put words to, because if I were to just say it like it is, say the way it feels, I fear I would sound immoderate, unseemly. And yet the experience inside is so incredible, it is for that very reason I am compelled to describe it. It is so very important. It is, in fact, the reason we live at all. Not a reason: the reason.

How can I keep quiet about this, self-conscious though it make me?

It’s the joy I refer to. The no-good-reason joy. It’s love that I feel-enormous love, vast, undirected love. Undiluted, unfunneled love. I know of no other way to say it.

I feel large, huge, vast, like what is in me pumps out into the world around me and fills it. Infects it.

It isn’t happiness. It isn’t directed at one particular person or place or idea.

But this isn’t what is most startling. It is the power that has opened to me, because of giving in to this force of love. I feel an enormous power inside-like I’m capable of more than I used to be.

God, I swear this is the best kept secret. Everybody can do it. I know this. I could have done it all my life.

It’s like I read once: The universe exists so God can hide and we can go looking for God. One big game. But the whole time, all we have to do is look. Right there. Right here: in this kitchen, where I sit in my wet socks, my coffee cup beside me, my boots on the floor, snow and mud melting out of the their treads onto the linoleum…”

– Jan Frazier “When Fear Falls Away, The Story of a Sudden Awakening“