memoir

...the progression of Lillian’s dementia is there, just outside, and I have to encounter this slow, arduous and mysterious passage. Lillian was a painter, as I am.

In her 57th post, Helena grapples first with this column’s deadline, then with a transformative experience of both grief and love.

In her 56th post, Helena shares an exercise on building characters, along with memories of her beloved sister.

In her 54th post, Helena shares some fragments of nonfiction stories from her works-in-progress binder.

The clear takeaway, the living arc of this book, is how a love of poetry and a commitment to a writing life, or any artistic life, can bind two people to one another.

Helena offers some poetic “impressions” from her daily journaling practice, plus a requested and imagined end to the two-part monkey story from March and May.

In her 44th post, Helena Clare Pittman tells the second part of her March story of adolescent rebellion.

A memoir isn’t about recording everything that’s ever happened to us. It’s about building a narrative around a soul theme.

When I was fourteen and life had taken its hormonal turn, pushing me out of the childhood home that I thought was permanent, I bought a monkey...

I am still painting flowers in glasses. Different destinies. Different kinds of artists, people. Maybe stars. But it was a privilege to see, in a kind of secret act, that lovely little painting...