Sharing My Darlings
In 2020, I began a book about the houses I’ve lived in, both fictional and real. A year and a half later, I finished that book, but the river of life caught hold and my narrative swirled into a new eddy: late-diagnosed autism. Now all the moments in all the houses make a different kind of sense. My book about houses has transformed into a memoir of finding my neurodivergent self. It’s currently in the hands of beta readers, and while resting from writing, I’m enjoying reading old versions of chapters that didn’t make the cut. I might have killed a lot of my darlings in pursuit of focus and clarity, but some still spark out and catch my attention:
From the original Conclusion:
I have a thing for houses and probably always will. I have a way of running my line of vision across the lines and trimmed straightways of the interior of whatever home is presently mine, admiring the way walls intersect and outfold, critiquing the ways I wish the builder had done better - too short that wall, too high that ceiling. I am always wishing for the next house where all the corners and doorways, walls and windows, will come together into a homely, hobbitish perfection. They never will.
I have a thing for homeplaces: I will always want to return to that Asheville home and shore up some heaven of a life there for myself. I will always be wanting to go back when I must move forward, because that is the way the current carries me.
From the current final chapter, which is about Hallways:
The swamp the creeks the lowland the in-between from bay to solid ground, the marshes, the grassy islands where I can't stand, but the marsh periwinkles thrive. I can't be there in my body, but I want to get as close as possible. It feels like home, like a home I'll never set foot in.
From early notes before writing the book itself:
I want to wander through my days room to room like walking through a poem, my house the verse and all the enclosed world around me imaging the ideas, the music, the poetry: turning, refracting, the jeweled light singing off the gilded titles of books on the shelves, off the golden strands crowning the top of the children's heads. Nothing unnoticed, nothing unlit from the gaze of my opened eyes, from within itself. This shining world so full of meaning I am often almost crushed: let me step into it as into the world behind the worlds. The one that has always been there; the one I have forgotten to see.
And a shimmering excerpt from a novel I’m sure I’ll use someday, somewhere:
“Soon we shall die and all memory of those we have known will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” - Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey