Saturday, October 29, 2011

My Dream--that if it came to fruition, would blow my mind!

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”
William Arthur Ward




I need to remember to focus...I have a passion but sometimes I put it on the back burner because I hear my Mother's voice say, "...that just won't pay the bills...you're being impractical...".

I love movies...I mean LOVE them. The idea of sitting in a dark theater and escaping for 90 minutes is the most enticing thing I know. Movies are beautiful and can so wholly change the way others view their world. I remember my first memory. It was like a clip from a movie. Some people remember things by what was said or what they felt. I tend to remember things in terms of how 'the scene' was set. I always have. When I design costumes for a theatrical production, I see the characters in context. Where are they, who are they where do they live....okay now what are they wearing?

Many years ago, when I started college, I was in the cinematography program at UNLV when my family lived in Vegas but a near tragedy made my father take stock of his life and that of his children. They chose to leave Vegas and I was left without a place to live while attending school and so I returned to Wyoming with them. While there, I became involved in theatre and seemingly have been stuck there ever since. However, every time I see a movie that moves me or a bit of film that is inexplicably beautiful, I would pine away for what I could have done if I had just stayed at UNLV. Until very recently (last 4 years) I let that be my lot in life. Stupid, I know.


Then my brother, Terry, was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I quit chastising myself for what could have been because I wouldn't have so much to say without the life experience that I had been given. Here was my brother dealing with a much larger problem than my pitiful self sabbotage. Terry fought cancer for three years and during his last two months of life I was having a particularly bad year in my job as a professor at a university. When we were told that his cancer had spread to his brain, I dug out 3 composition notebooks that I had hand written a screenplay into on my lunch breaks when I was working as a freelance artist and part-time baker. I began typing the words and then remembered that a screenwriting text had 'mysteriously' found me at a thrift store some months earlier. I didn't have anymore excuses. My story was written in these notebooks and I had a map so there was nothing left to do but type. On the day my niece called my Mom to tell her that my brother died, I finished plotting out the ending of that screenplay. Terry had suffered a heart attack during a procedure to deliver chemo directly to the affected spot of his brain. My rough script was done but he would never get to read it.

Leaving St. George Utah, I drove with my niece, Hartsy, (who was staying with me for the summer) to where my other sister Becky was living. I picked up Becky (Bex, as I am want to call her) and her two children. Together the five of us drove seventeen plus hours to Auburn, WA in order to attend the funeral. The whole journey with my little sister and those beautiful kiddos made me realize that my brother was a relatively happy and young man to have died. I'll never get to see him read the words I spent so long formulating but I can see my work through--if I can keep focused.

Yeah, I write but I feel a little cliche` and pretentious when I tell people so I don't go around blurting it out. I'm not ashamed but it's personal and I have seen the looks and eye rolls enough times to keep me from shouting that I have a passion for writing. Wrong?-yes probably but I'm learning.

I'm at a place in my life when the universe should know and I'll proclaim it now, I'm ready for my writing to succeed. I want a second career in writing. I love it and I think that many others will too.

MLH

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