|
Post by thecatsmother on Sept 24, 2012 18:33:07 GMT -5
Who are you? I asked, pleading and demanding by turns, sometimes even whining. It was no use. The old lady in black whose image floated in my mind's eye wouldn't acknowledge me. She sat in a dark house above the city, silent and alone but for the sorrow that hung so heavily in and about her. Who was she? When I plundered my memory for the answer, the fragile image with its tentative associations shimmered dreamlike into fragments. Only to rise again within hours, silent, sad and enigmatic.
|
|
|
Post by scribbliz on Sept 25, 2012 9:06:52 GMT -5
interesting; this makes me wonder, is this a story you are writing, and the character faces this specter? or is she the story, and simply refuses to tell you what's happening?
|
|
|
Post by Freedom on Sept 25, 2012 19:28:40 GMT -5
^^I want to know too^^
I really like the memory conundrum -- our lightest touch is too heavy for the fragile memory...
Like it.
|
|
|
Post by thecatsmother on Jul 21, 2013 7:15:21 GMT -5
For some reason I hesitated to say more about this at the time. It was the start of something part autobiographical, part family history that I was working on at the time, but somehow couldn't find my way into. Several years ago a book I was reading sparked a recurrent picture in my mind's eye of a sad and lonely old lady. After some time I realised this lady was an aunt from several generations back I'd heard of years ago, who had lost her children in an accident. Eventually I went to look for her grave. That search resulted quite unexpectedly in my becoming involved with a historic site where I still volunteer regularly.
For several years I have been trying to piece together the history of this aunt, to discover what she did and what she was really like, in particular what she was like before the events that shattered her life. It's very difficult going. As with so many Victorian women few traces of her survive. Or few that I've managed to find so far.
Strangely a shadow version of her has appeared in my Nanowrimo Camp project. The dowager queen is not at all nice. Originally she was based on a rather nasty distant family member from the present day but somewhere along the line the character fused with my mind's eye image of my aunt and with some of her history, to create a different person altogether.
It's certainly not a portrait of my aunt, who was remembered as a kind old lady by my grandfather. But the fact that I "borrowed" from her to create this unsympathetic character does make me feel like redoubling my efforts to discover what I can about who she was in reality.
|
|
|
Post by scribbliz on Jul 21, 2013 10:26:03 GMT -5
wow, that must be facinating!! i would have no idea where to start to find out info like that.
|
|