I don’t know if you have discovered Althea Officinalis: MallowDrama. If not, you may want to venture there and stay awhile. You won’t only learn about the author, Melanie, but you may definitely see in her stories (and life experience) a bit of your own experience.
Most refreshingly, her thoughtful approach to each story, even each character, is like opening the curtains onto a splendid view. She simply explains things in a way that we see both the body and soul of the thing.
I was impressed by a couple of paragraphs from her latest short story "Echo Running," in which she is writing about a young woman who has just walked away from a relationship that has gone sour.
You would never know it from some of my actions, but I have a natural distrust of people as a group. I put myself into the situations that I do because I do not want the bad humans to dictate my choices to me. Also, it would be really nice if humankind would cooperate by proving my cynicism to be unnecessary. I may be distrustful, but I am ripe for convincing. I want to be wrong.
Perhaps that is why the wanderlust is so strong. Perhaps I am looking for a place where things will be different enough that I will know it is worthwhile to try having faith again. New places mean new possibilities, and trust is a possibility like any other. Shark's teeth on a mountaintop in the desert can prove to me that a whole city was once a part of the ocean. Maybe I am hoping that some similar sort of proof will surface along the path, if I wander long enough, that lets me know where the scale balances. Even if it does not, at least I can feel that I have given the search a good try.
There is a beautiful verse by Lucille Clifton on this month’s calendar page that seems to represent Melanie’s gift of writing about life. It reads:
I keep hearing
tree talk
water words
and i keep knowing what they mean
There’s a high level of awareness one obtains when they tune themselves into the things that are happening around them. They know people like the back of their hand; read facial expressions like a book; interpret the tone in someone’s voice like a prophet; and from the sense of all these gifts be able to predict actions and reactions like a seer. In her writing, Melanie seems to have this level of awareness for her stories and the characters that live and breathe within them.
Lastly, Melanie comes across as someone you can trust–she knows people, knows how the world works, and how it should work. With knowledge like this, however, one can easily pick up an attitude and pass judgement. Melanie does not do this. She leaves this to the reader. In her post, New Orleans, 1976, she relates the tragic event in which she was suddenly taken away from her mother by police and given to her father. An unseasoned writer might easily fall into melodrama, spitting out sophomoric condemnations about anyone or everything. But Melanie simply relates how she remembered that horrific day. We are left with a memorable, powerful, and truly disturbing story that allows us to feel how she felt. Most importantly, it allows us, the reader, to pass judgements based off of our experience.
I see Melanie as much more than just a storyteller; she’s an interpreter of the human experience.
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