Field Notes

Even if we share similar experiences, the complexity of the human mind and its emotions could be written a million different ways, and in each way, be as uniquely personal and infinitely layered as the last.

These tales of family, grief and loss, life and love are the stories of the now. Interwoven with our words of the past they have created a tapestry of our six members, our stories forever intertwined.

That’s the beauty of fiction! A writer can take every crazy idea that flits through her brain and mash it, smash it, filter it, funnel it, bury it, burn it, or type it fast in all caps. The intent is there but not there. A moment of insight, a stab at the truth, a flash that fades as fast as a closed screen.

In time, I’d recognize that pull as a desire to write myself. Not songs, but stories, which feels fitting because, though the harmonies are lovely on that album, it was really the storytelling above all else that moved me. The brevity, the oddness, the glimpses of worlds existing beyond three-minute tracks.

It was not that long ago that communities supported the idea of the prophet within all, hidden under the blanket of sleep. Similar realms include that of daydreaming and meditation. When we listen to our intuition, heed our dreams, and allow our senses to roam outside of the tangible world, that is when we can access our full creativity.

In the intervening years, I have come back again and again to those old radio country songs because they capture that same fresh liberation they did when I first heard them over a gas station milkshake on a dusty 110-degree day. They express what I never could.

The instructor asked if we chose the stories we wrote, or if the stories chose us.

The editors of Porter House Review recommend some of their favorite books in translation.