Member Bio: Nora Ohanjanians
When she’s not teaching high-school English, Nora likes to dabble in writing. Words attract her and she naturally gravitates toward them. She likes them on paper, on screen, spoken and dramatized. She enjoys them simple or complicated, in English or other languages she knows. She just can’t get enough.
Family Wedding
By Nora Ohanjanians
Wrinkled skins
Flabby arms
Clumsy hands
Tender hearts.
We meet
For the first time
In 15, 20, 35 years.
Eyes sparkle,
Smiles freeze,
Souls leap.
We hug
And lock.
Our young have sprouted
We have shrunk.
We laugh at ourselves.
We can’t believe
What’s happened to us.
This is what happens
To old people.
Parents and grandparents.
This is the stuff of movies.
It can’t be happening to us.
But it is.
It’s not the hairdresser that’s
Coloured the dark hair gray.
It’s not the makeup artist
Who’s drawn the lines
Around the eyes.
We’re not acting
When we stoop,
Or move in slow-motion.
It’s Time and Gravity
Playing this practical joke on us.
But we laugh at the joke,
We’re game.
It is what it is. And it’s funny.
We’ve aged, but matured.
We’re old but patient.
We’re ugly but wise.
We’ve weathered storms
Fled war-zones
Been uprooted and rerouted
Scattered around the planet
Fought for survival
Raised families
Lost loved ones.
We fly in
To marry off our young
We toast and give speeches
We drink and dance
We talk and talk and talk.
The weekend we have together
Is crammed full of strange stories,
Unsolicited divulgences,
Unlikely alliances,
Undisclosed rifts.
We do our best to catch up
On 35 years in 2 days.
But Time strikes its gavel again.
“Time is up,” it says.
“We have to do this more often.”
“I’ll send you my pictures.”
“Let’s keep in touch,”
We say.
We hug each other again
And board our planesKnowing there’s a good chance
We’ll never see each other again.
Lovestowrite
By Nora Ohanjanians
There are many resident beasts living inside the outer shell of my body. Many of them I despise, so I try my best to obliterate, imprison or silence them. Some I like, but they are detrimental to my health, social or family status or otherwise my well-being. These I attempt to keep in check.
There’s one, however, of whom I am quite fond, but have a very difficult time communicating with. She’s an immature, capricious and unpredictable little girl who I’ve named Lovestowrite.
One of the most irritating things that Lovestowrite does is she often hides on me. During these disappearances, I worry because I don’t know if she’s playing a game with me, is safe and asleep somewhere or perhaps lost forever in the dark depths, and I won’t be able to find her ever again.
There are certain aromas though, that we both enjoy and, so far, have never failed to make her magically appear on my inner horizon. For instance, the aroma of a meaningful conversation, a clever argument, an exciting encounter with an interesting person or a loved one, or an enriching sensory experience are guaranteed to call her up. But these are few and far between. Yes, I do socialize, talk and listen and get input through my senses but memorable moments involving any of these are rare.
Lovestowrite and I also enjoy the arts. She loves it when I read good writing and vibrates with excitement when I enjoy a poem or a novel or sometimes even a clever wording in a newspaper article. She’s never missed a movie, play or concert that I have been to. Again, she resonates happily when I enjoy the performance.
Another thing that also sometimes gets her going is my getting together with people who write. She enjoys talking about writing and also jumps up and down with joy when she sees my name in print. Her friend Pride also joins her in these silly outbursts.
When she’s awake and happy, Lovestowrite is full of smart ideas and clever figures of speech and starts begging, coaxing, and cajoling me to write. She won’t take no for an answer. If I have the time to do so, she’s content and at times, even encouraging. If I don’t have the time or the inclination, she’ll keep nagging me for a while and then will sulk and disappear. Sometimes, when a few hours after her initial supplication, I find the time and want to write, she’s nowhere to be found. That behaviour frustrates me to no end but my attempts at communication fall on deaf ears.
Sometimes when the timing is right and I am ready to put pen to paper or hit the keyboard at her beck and call, the little missy finds me too slow, complains about my lack of concentration or accuses me of poor choice of words. She’s almost never happy with the final result and keeps criticizing and hurling insults at me. Needless to say, this behaviour is unacceptable, but my desperate attempts to modify it have not yet yielded any results. She doesn’t seem to be listening to me.
Now one would think that a little beast so stubborn with me would act the same way with others. Wrong. She gets easily sidetracked by her fellow resident beasts, such as Perfectionist, who never fails to interrupt us with his corrections of my spelling or grammatical mistakes; or Impatience, who shows up toward the end of our sessions and starts yelling and screaming, “Aren’t you done yet? C’mon, let’s go, LET’S GO!” Little miss Lovestowrite is totally quiet and passive when those two start bullying me.
Despite our communication problems, her temperament and third-party disruptions, overall, I don’t mind the havoc Lovestowrite wreaks in my life. After all, any relationship has its ups and downs and although, during the recurrent down periods we sometimes give up on each other, a spark in someone’s eye, a play on words or a clever argument summons her back to me and she starts pestering me to write again.
I think our relationship is going through growing pains.
April 15th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I just finished reading about Lovestowrite- Oh, how I can relate to her struggles! There is a certain comfort in knowing the symptoms we endure are widespread among those who practise the art of writing. We have all known the agony of the blank page,the sudden attack of constipation, and then there are the bouts of verbal diarrhoea,when every thought transposed onto the page is crap. But there are rare moments when a sentence flows across the page like a stream of pure poetry, and doesn’t that moment make what’s gone before so worthwhile? You can tell, can’t you, that I’m going through a dry spell right now! I shall leave, but not before I congratulate you on your work. Sincerely, Betty