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Reflections of a working writer, a university screenwriting professor, and the editor of Oregon Literary Review.

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Charles Deemer

Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

The eagle flies!

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Ron Silliman, contemporary poetry and poetics

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The Writing Life...
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

"All my best friends are writers and are dead."
A friend over beer, Berkeley, winter, 1959

"And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?"
The Half-Life Conspiracy

After October 31, 2006,
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The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

 
Friday, June 20, 2003  
Sonnets & Seattle
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
The sonnets came in a great rush out of nowhere. I never wrote sonnets. Suddenly one appeared in my head when I woke up in the morning, fully formed, and the next morning another one appeared. I seemed to be writing them in my sleep. Soon I decided to see if I could write one while awake and discovered I could.

Because my affair with Zeena was topsy-turvy, as she continued to move between Mike and me, unable to give one of us up for the other, the sonnets ran the full gamut of emotions, from ecstasy to despair. Here are some examples:

The inside of my head is my country.
It does not matter whether trees and lakes
surround me; whether gulls above the sea
adorn my walk; whether sunsets make
the curtain of my day. My own thoughts
are scenery enough. What my thoughts need
is ground. The dazzling dance of thinking, caught
up in itself, can recklessly not heed
anything but its own reward. Mind
for mind's sake is no way to live a life.
I need the space where mind can best unwind.
I need the sheath in which to rest the knife.
I need, darling, for you to come to me.
The inside of my head is my country.

If our lips should never meet again;
if your arms should not around me wrap
in such a way to tell me of your ken;
if our bodies never draw the sap
each from each, flesh to flesh, the way
we've done before in miracles of night;
if it doesn't happen how it may
have been between us if my health was right;
if, I say, all dreams are lost and barn
doors closed; if this should be, my heart of hearts,
do not grieve for us or weep or mourn.
For a brief time we knew Cupid's darts!
Cherish the way women can touch men,
instead of pining for what might have been.

The smallest things demand the biggest heart.
Passion has its place, and lustful screams
that penetrate the silence of the dark
can get two lovers through their lonely dreams.
And then the morning comes, and day is long;
the screams gone, silence fills the room
and what was passion doesn't seem as strong
as when the screams were offered against doom.
But flowers make their gesture toward the sun:
as day is when the bee will come to drink,
so day is when the finest deeds are done,
and day is when the mated become linked.
Screams of passion often have their say -
true lovers bond in silence through the day.

I wrote dozens of sonnets during my tumultuous affair with Zeena. Later I collected 27 of them into a chapbook called The Moods of Love. Zeena was the first woman who inspired me to write poems I later considered sharable, publishable. I have no idea where this energy came from. When we broke up, the energy was gone. I haven’t written a decent sonnet since.

Even the end of our affair was complicated. Zeena finally chose me over Mike but in the meantime I’d made a decision that would not permit us to remain together. I decided to get sober. Zeena, a daily drinker herself, wasn’t ready to quit, which meant that she became a threat to my sobriety.

I used a similar moment in my play Bedrooms & Bars, a play that owes a lot to my affair with Zeena (I even use some of the same sonnets in the play):

QUINN: I've been thinking a lot about what I want, Deadra. The first thing I want to do is get healthy. That requires a lot of change, and sitting in a bar watching you get drunk isn't cutting it. Maybe the person I'm becoming isn't someone you want to be around.
DEADRA: That should be my decision.
QUINN: I can't party the way I used to.
DEADRA: I can't either.
QUINN: You did a pretty good job last night.
DEADRA: It's my birthday, for Christ's sake. So what are you saying? Suddenly you don't want to be around me because I drink?
QUINN: That's part of it.
DEADRA: Then I'll quit.
QUINN: Don't be ridiculous.
DEADRA: I'm willing to make sacrifices here, Quinn. Accommodations. It would be nice to see you do a little of that in my direction.
QUINN: You don't really want to quit drinking, Deadra.
DEADRA: Quit telling me what I want.

I was at a point in my life when I knew that my choice quickly was becoming one between sobriety and death. Ironically enough, I got my first insight about this, which eventually was going to drive Zeena and me apart, as a result of something that happened on a wonderful trip we took together to Seattle.

My first sonnet was about a ferry ride we shared during this trip:

The skyline hangs above the bay, a mist
of mystery as in a dream, and we
stand close upon the ferry's deck and kiss,
and I feel all the world as it should be.
These are moments that my heart holds dear.
When you are near, somehow I am alive
more than I've been, and everything is clear
to me: I know for what I want to strive.
Yet I don't want my love to burden you,
a chain around your heart, presumption of
your time. The things that I would hope to do
for us are full of caring and my love.
I love you for each moment that I have
and ask from you such love as you can give.

I never had the good sense of the persona in this poem (I’ve never had the good sense of any of my better characters). I demanded much more from Zeena than “such love as you can give” and often felt insecure in the relationship. Every time she went back to Mike, I thought it was because I wasn’t good enough a lover for her. Since sex was often the main reason why a woman and I would stay together as long as we did, this felt like a different kind of rejection than I was used to feeling. I didn’t like it.
But all insecurity momentarily faded during a wonderful weekend we spent in Seattle, during which a single episode signaled that it was time to change my life.

6/20/2003 07:24:00 AM | 0 comments

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