The last few years I've been working less on fiction and more on family history, memoirs and my--mostly--Monday Memoir essays about things I recall from times gone by. The memoir essays are shorter--anywhere from two or three pages to ten or a few more. They are by no means chronological and mostly have come out of a group I took part in for awhile that focused on getting 'seniors' to write about their lives, often covering topics the "millenials" and later generations have no clue about. My 'official' or more formal memoirs will hopefully be mostly chronological, at least following logical and time-linked progression through various topics such as school, my cowboy girl days, wife and motherhood roles, and similar somewhat distinct epics. Since some will overlap, that pattern will not be perfect but much more organized than the random recollections.
Yes, I do at times stop and ask myself who in the world will be bored or so uninspired as to want to read all this drivel. Will even one soul ever get an ah-ha moment and think, "No way! I am not ever going to do that!" Will someone laugh tolerantly and see just a vague, blurred reflection of their own one-time folly? I may well delude myself to harbor even one thought that my words and experience matters. Well, who knows. I give an eloquent shrug learned from many Latina friends over the years and say, "Quien sabe?" But I am a writer and writers write. I always have--since age six or so-- and probably always will. I started a diary or journal at age 12 and carry that on to this day. And I've put my heart and angst into many verses. In another guise, I write fiction, love stories, naturally, with 'adventures' happening all around.
And titles! Ah, that is kind of fun. I've been calling the short essays "Memories of a Rawhide Butterfly" for some time now. That odd phrase came to my mind a very long time ago. I was in the throes of getting ready to leave what had become a safe haven and routine in college, ending a couple of star-crossed love affairs that were almost intertwined, and jumping into the unknown with a new job, a new home and yet another attempt to reinvent myself, at least in part. The dichotomy and paradox of those two words fascinated me and seemed to represent the somewhat schizophrenic or split personality creature that was me. On the one hand I was hard, tough, strong and enduring, made so by the life I had lived up to that point, the cowboy girl. On the other I was a dreamer, an addict to romance in all its forms, sensitive and fragile in ways I mostly tried to hide, more out of self-protection than being abashed to admit to them. So that phrase became my self-vision, the persona which now I open to anyone who reads some of my adventures and escapades.
On the other, both by chance and at times by choice, I seem to have always taken on difficult, challenging and sometimes downright unbelievable jobs, life styles, goals, dreams and causes. What would best describe that? I stumbled upon "Shoving Smoke and Herding Cats" I think that covers it rather well! At times I almost succeeded for a minute or two; maybe the Powers-That-Be took pity or felt a twinge of remorse for the stumbling blocks that were forever littering my long and winding road! Like a small win at the gambling table, that would induce me to keep believing, keep trying, keep reaching and striving. Even on my darkest days, of which there have been many, a dim spark still lingers and flares now and then to make me get up and try one more time. I really do not know how to do anything else.
A poem, my first use of Rawhide Butterfly, written in early 1971 I believe. The verse comes out of my Walking Down My Shadows anthology. Yes, another title with a story, to save for another day.
The Rawhide Butterfly
Love has to be a butterfly
Iridescent, flying free—
That only lights to fly away
Leaving a haunting memory.
Rawhide bound the west together
Before the barbwire’s day
It lasted, lasted, lasted
In the Red and Brown men’s way.
Would not a rawhide butterfly
Live for a thousand years
Though parched by droughts of
loneliness
And stained and stretched with
tears?
My love is a rawhide butterfly
That lingers, binding tenderly,
That has too strong a will to die
And lasts almost eternally.
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