Letter to Pat Conroy

Ah no! Well, first, Happy 70th Birthday, and second, thank you for the process of trying to discover yourself through the process of writing, your novels have changed me, and third, you'll give the Big C a good fight, and a run for its money. I will keep you in my thoughts. (As my argument with organized prayer, or maybe it's the word itself, is about as epic as your argument with family and society...) I suspect the act of writing is my paeon, my homage to the concept of prayer, so I will write for you. I will write. True. And fearless. Because that's all I know how to do in the face of adversity. You have lived life fully, left no metaphorical stone unexamined, and you will continue to live life to its fullest. And that in, and of itself, is a prayer, and affirmation to life. And you will be fearless in your fight as well. Godspeed, O King of Tides. Your work and vision have sustained so many of us. Given us the courage to examine our own lives.



See THE BEST REVENGE, RIGHT?

THE BEST REVENGE, RIGHT?

THE BEST REVENGE, RIGHT?

When I question my motives
as to why I lean so heavily upon memoir,
Pat Conroy's dark family secrets,
posing as fiction, came to mind.
He said you need to know
"...how to differentiate
between getting even
and getting it right,
telling off, and telling the truth,
and why we sometimes choose 

fiction over memoir."
That last one is where
I struggle the most,
the compulsion to tell
the truth as I perceive it,
is so enduring, so obdurate,
why it's hard to ameliorate
something as hard as stone.
Who might or might not be hurt
by my words, or if they would ever
even bother to read it.
It's always a gamble.
The dark truth over beauty.
I envy those fiction writers,
how they transcend those secrets.
But then there's always the unsaid:
Getting it right is the best revenge.
Funny, how Pat's father didn't think so.
As Pat's stories, like shining swords,
severed darkness from the past,
and yet still drew fresh blood,
he became a pugnacious apologist,
saying, That wasn't me. He said,
That wasn't me. That
wasn't me.... rubbing
salt into the wounds
of the past.

8/26/2015