The Assignment

I guess I’m in a funk. My writing class assignment this week is to write my biography in a genre. I’m at a loss Wednesday night at the time of direction, but today is the following Tuesday and I’m still at a loss. I’ve mulled it, tossed around some ideas, but still, I’m empty. I’ve visited ideas of romance, mystery, and fiction.

Romance? “Are you kidding me?!” to quote my 15 year-old-son. I can’t even read about heaving breasts more or less write about them. Plus, the more I think about it, I don’t think mine have ever heaved.

Mystery baffles me as well. The only mysteries in my life lately are why is the cat licking her fur off her hind end and where is all the money going lately? Not stuff in which to write an exciting biography.

Fiction is my last hope and that too, isn’t going anywhere fast. I’d have to make something up and the gloomy weather is stifling my creative self. The only thing that keeps popping into the crevices of voided ideas is that of an obituary. I guess that says a lot about where my mind set is these days. I toss that idea out to Joe, who from the other side of the couch, just looks at me like I’ve lost it. Again. I guess that’s out. But why do I keep coming back to that as my biography genre?

There was a story on CNN the other day about a businessman in North Korea who is making a fortune taking people through their death. His theory is that we need to take time to appreciate our lives and the people in them and by going through death, we appreciate life. He leads a seminar in which you prepare your own obituary by candlelight and really think about who you are. You are then asked to write a will that includes messages to people in your life that you are grateful to, love, hate, or have the need to forgive. He encourages the participants to examine their relationships and address those around them with handwritten letters. Next, the “dead “are dressed in traditional burial clothes and laid into faux wooden coffins as the simulated burial begins. The lid is closed and a hammer is used to pound invisible nails, sealing the coffin for eternity. The participants lie there meditating life, death, and changes they need or want to make in their next life. They are released 10 or 15 minutes later, reborn, refreshed, ready to start again, appreciating what they have and the people around them and thinking about the changes in their lives that need to be made in order to lead a more fulfilled life.

I don’t know why that story stood out to me--maybe because I have been in a reflective mood since January. Who needs a fake funeral to reflect on his life? I’ve been doing it since 2008 began. Is it because I found 2/3 of my frog population dead this past week? It must be the weather. Cold--still. Gloomy--still. Heck, it snowed, again, yesterday. Even if it was sunny and warm, my biography is not written.

With the project still looming, I think about who I am and what I have done. I soul search. I wonder who I am, what others would say about me if I was gone (horrors) and I know that I am way over thinking this thing. I think of a song by They Might Be Giants that I taught my kids to sing at the top of their lungs when they were little. Most people teach their kids to sing “Oh, Susannah” or “Found a Peanut” or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. I taught my kids this:

Did a large procession wave their torches
As my head fell in the basket?
And is everybody dancing on the casket?
Now it’s over, I’m dead
and I havent’ done anything that I want
Or I’m still alive
and there’s nothing I want to do.

I think that says a lot about where I am mentally most of the time. I’m trying to be more positive. I am, really. That is my goal for 2008. Maybe that is why I don’t want to write an obituary biography--too depressing. Maybe I’m just tired of eye-rolls in my direction and being scrutinized. If I write about me, I put myself out on that rickety limb of judgment again. It’s hard to climb out on that limb when I am already feeling a little vulnerable.

I will try, so not to let down my creative self, my classmates, and Frank. I guess my biography, if I wrote a one, would include this: she lives, has some great kids, got fired from a job or two, loves a patient man, wishes for peace in her soul, fights “the man” at every opportunity, and drives everyone nuts with her passion for everything from caterpillars to her Oreck. She laughs at simple things, hates to cook, and is annoyed by just about anything her mother says or does. She wants a house outside of suburbia, a new career now that the motherhood one is fading, and a turtle for the pond. She likes opinions, Jon Katz, writing class, and red-winged blackbirds.

It’s all very odd, but all the same, it is me.