Writing

Yesterday, I set out to write an essay, and got it done. A first draft, at least. It's an idea I've been swimming around in my head for a while -- this idea that I do not have a history of oral tradition in my family. Being from the South, it is expected, almost -- at least outsiders expect it. But what I've discovered from writing and being able to write and be creative in that writing is that I have the freedom and the ability to create my own narratives based on the fragments of information I've collected along the way.
It felt good to write something. Even though it wasn't a poem. I haven't really been producing anything as of late, and I felt backed up. I can't really think of a poem to write, but I do have this desire to write a collection of essays, so I figured why not try that? At least, I mean, an essay.
Here's the first part: (there are 4 short sections) Oh, and the title is a working title.
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Southern enough

“My family believed I’d have words for others.” Elizabeth Alexander

I.

I only know the truths they told me. My family isn’t particularly big on secrets, but hierarchies, we’ve got hierarchies. Age determines the amount of truths you get; I was a child when all of the good stuff happened.

I should clarify. By family, I largely mean my mother’s side. Most of my truths are one-sided.

When I was young, I never thought the truths I carried were sufficient. But because of the hierarchy, I was unable to ask questions for clarification. I was expected to take what I was given. But I was curious, and always found myself on the perimeter of adult circles snatching pieces of gossip or stories until I was discovered, admonished and told to go play. Even now, as I write this, I do not know if anything I have just revealed – that I used to snoop around like a truth-detective – is one-hundred percent truth, but I know I received information from somewhere and at some point. Perhaps they have told this to me too, and that is how I’ve come to know what I do – not experientially. I do not know which is true.

A truth I know: I’ve come to realize people in New York City expect me to have folklore ready on my tongue. This is outside of the fact that I am a writer – but maybe it is magnified because I claim to be one – but more because of the fact that I reign from the South. Upon identifying as a Southerner, the interested party will ask: “Will you tell me about The South?” And I suspect they want what I cannot deliver: some complete fable, rife with spirits and back roads, moonshine in mason jars, Klansmen and burned crosses, “For Whites Only Signs” above water fountains, a rural and backwards south, some romantic other-world.Most of these stories they expect to have been passed down orally from generation to generation – all the way back to Slavery. I tell them I can’t get my family tree past Georgia. Only four or so generations.

But I do give them the fragments that I have: my paternal grandmother attested to having seen several ghosts while working as a domestic on the waterfront mansions in Charleston, SC; my maternal grandfather performed autopsies on the mentally ill and would bring whole brains home in jars; my maternal grandmother washed and styled her dead mother’s hair the night before my great-grandmother Georgia Mae’s funeral.