Barbaric Yawps And Other Signs Of Life by Noelle Foster. Her writing is gorgeous! Enjoy.
I was in a yawping contest once. Paired with another classmate, I was instructed to holler as loud as possible out over the front lawn of our college campus. What a delicious, proud moment, heaving my voice out into the depths of that rich, southern atmosphere, professing my intent to become one of them. Kathryn Tucker Wyndham, beloved teller of tales, had even drawn me two buzzards for luck.
To my shame, I earned my degree, curtsied a goodbye to that grand old institution, and promptly forgot who that girl was. She hasn’t yawped in a very long time.
This is not the life I saw coming, now more than a decade ago. I turned thirty-five at the end of last year. In May, I will have been divorced for ten years and I have not yet written the Great Collection of Short Stories from the American South.
Once, I knew who I was, and what I was about, right up until I forgot. That girl died a long, slow, painful death, and the irony is, it took losing my job at a local funeral home for me to realize I wasn’t living, anyway. For the last ten years, I have been curled in my metaphorical corner, hiding from the temptation to dream again. In my estimation, there was very little disappointment to be had in settling. I proved to be right, until I wasn’t.
Nearly three months after leaving funeral service, my creative extremities began to wake up and tingle. I could have a prolific career as a professional daydreamer, because all the while I was performing in the drama of single parenthood, I continued to direct the goings on of the dramas playing out in my head. I have more friends than people in my hometown and I’ve seen more places than most of those same people, all from the comfort of my overactive imagination. Alas, my friends were no longer content tooling around in their protective confines. The natives became restless, demanding to be let loose from the sanatorium. I feared them to be on the cusp of a riot.
I, their fearful leader, inserted the key in to the lock of their overcrowded cell, yanked the door open, and crouched into protective position with my arms over my head.
Four months have passed and I have gotten acclimated to having them running roughshod over my life. A couple days a week I help a friend in the bookstore that she runs out of her home, but otherwise my time is spent arguing with my imaginary friends over who wore what and what the weather was like and just what exactly they may or may not say to whomever they may or may not say it to.
A renaissance is taking place, and for the first time since leaving college behind, I have come to realize that there is indeed a lot of disappointment to be had in settling for a life that is less than I am capable of living. I am dreaming and learning not to smother those dreams, but rather to let them burn alongside the fear. Fear of what? Rejection. Disappointment. And the beast that climbs on my shoulder and hisses into my ear as I begin to write, “Stupid girl. You do not have what it takes.” Well, I like to think I have a fair amount of grit, which is sort of the same thing.
I do not remember who was deemed to have hollered loudest on the steps that day, only that a handful of young women startled a passer-by or two as we did so. Over a decade later, as I wipe the sleep from my eyes, a shout begins to rumble from somewhere deep in my soul. Consider this me re-sounding my barbaric yawp, and may I be perpetually astonished as I become more of myself.
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Works Cited Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Poetry Archive, 26 Nov. 2021, https://poetryarchive.org.
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If you would like to obtain a copy of Feel More Alive, here are some choices.
The second edition of the book (December 2020) is available everywhere but amazon print, who continue to sell the first edition despite my publisher asking multiple times since then. Frustrating when you’ve made some changes! Thankfully, Kindle is the second edition.
Bookshop.org is a wonderful place that makes a donation to local booksellers.
I Am Books is a terrific Italian-American book store filled with books about Italy or books written by people of Italian American descent.
https://iambooksboston.com/product/feel-more-alive-30-brilliant-ways-to-reignite-your-inner-spark/
If you live outside of North America, please check out Book Depository with its free shipping. I believe it is the second edition, but am awaiting a confirmation.
Thank you!
Giulietta