{"id":4431,"date":"2014-10-17T16:22:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T20:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4431"},"modified":"2014-10-19T12:27:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T16:27:20","slug":"5-minute-autobiographies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4431","title":{"rendered":"5-Minute Autobiographies"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been rereading Deena Metzger<\/a>‘s book Writing for Your Life<\/a>, and was reminded of all the writing I had done with her in two workshops at Rowe and two week-long retreats. \u00a0The 5-minute autobiography is one of her assignments. \u00a0These were written in 1996, before I knew about PTSD.<\/p>\n

I was born to alcoholic parents.\u00a0 I should have been an artist, but they needed a baby sitter and the artist\u2019s temperament was too much for their fragile egos.\u00a0 I was left alone a lot, I had to figure out how to do my life in isolation, I wasn\u2019t very good at it.\u00a0 But I did learn how to do friendship, I have good friends, intimate friends, not many, but as many as I can keep up with at the level at which I like to do friendship.\u00a0 I was smart enough to marry a person who was capable of becoming my best friend and teaching him how to do it.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m trying to learn how to let the artist live in my life, to give her the chance she never had.\u00a0 It\u2019s like being pregnant with a whale, or some dark watery creature who speaks a completely different language.\u00a0 I\u2019m having to move very slowly, be very patient, wait a lot, be content to be silent.<\/p>\n

Second Round<\/p>\n

The \u201cout takes\u201d: I was nuts.\u00a0 I was a rebel gypsy Bohemian.\u00a0 I tore up the napkins at school and left little pieces under the table and the teachers got upset about it.\u00a0 I had a nervous breakdown at college, but they didn\u2019t call it that: I started sleeping over my homework and went into the infirmary for three weeks.\u00a0 I was hospitalized while I was in California.\u00a0 I lost it when my boyfriend left me without a word, just disappeared, and I went to his house and started smashing his windows.\u00a0 At the Health Center they were all afraid I was going to commit suicide, they filled me full of tranquilizers but I kept trying to go to class.\u00a0 It was the spring of Kent State and I stuffed the genie back into the bottle, came back east and went into a suicidal depression.\u00a0 Only many years later did I discover that my behavior was the legacy of my parents\u2019 alcoholism and being sexually abused in my childhood.<\/p>\n

\u2014 And what I really want to say is … \u2014 o yes I was inspired by Deena\u2019s 5 minute left-hand writing (she calls it automatic writing) autobiography.\u00a0 what stands out?\u00a0 Blood \u2014 words written in blood and pinned to the curtain.\u00a0 Overcharge\u00a0 supercharge\u00a0 cut into the rock and blood will flow like ink.\u00a0 Passion, passion for the truth.\u00a0 to follow the trail of the wily red fox.\u00a0 and then write until words spray out of your ears and the pen burns the paper\u00a0 cataracts and smoking volcanoes.\u00a0 Something moves in the depths and whole planets get lost in the boiling flow.\u00a0 Volcanoes.\u00a0 Molten rock from the depths.\u00a0 Where does all this lead \u2014 is this my life?\u00a0 emerging molten from the depths?\u00a0 Splashing red across a landscape of bitter craters.\u00a0 Trees won\u2019t grow here for a while yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been rereading Deena Metzger‘s book Writing for Your Life, and was reminded of all the writing I had done with her in two workshops at Rowe and two week-long retreats. \u00a0The 5-minute autobiography is one of her assignments. \u00a0These … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}