Response to Cigarette Warning Label Campaign

During this morning's news, I saw a story about the new labels that are going on packs of cigarettes, complete with horrifying photos and warnings that "Cigarettes can kill you!" (Here's a link to the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20022483-10391704.html)

I hate cigarettes. The smell, the smoke, the danger, and the cancer. All the money that is poured into this horrible, life-threatening industry and product makes me sick. We could cure world hunger and homelessness with all the money spent on tobacco products. Such good could be done with this money; instead, only repeated, addictive destruction. Ending smoking forever would do nothing but good for the human race.

However, like prohibition, ending tobacco use permanently is neither realistic nor probable. I'm not naive enough to think this will happen in my lifetime, or ever. So what do I think of this new photo campaign? I think it's a waste. Of course, it's possible it could deter "potential" young smokers from picking up the habit, but it will do little to nothing to help career smokers quit.

Does the federal government really think that smokers are unaware of the dangers? That those who are so severely addicted to the habit are going to be shocked by the news that "smoking could kill!" them? People who smoke know they are destroying their lungs, heart, and mouth. In fact, most of the smokers I've met are always "trying to quit."

So what if the government, instead of this "scary photo" campaign, threw money into free quitting campaigns. I know there are resources out there, but do they work? Why not? How could they be more successful? I don't believe that scaring someone into a lifestyle change is really the best motivation. It could be effective, but it could just stir the pot and create more ill feelings between the government and smokers.

But as the Shaman says, "We shall see."

Haunting Poetry

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be.

(Neruda)

I've recently fallen in love with poet Pablo Neruda. I have never claimed to be a poet and have never written decent poetry. But I very much appreciate those who can. I do love poetry; I love its shape on the page, the way such few words can create a magical image. No other genre is as powerful or beautiful as poetry. All writing is art, but poetry really seems like art. It feels like art.

Evocation.

Poetry has this influencing authority, this command about it that makes you feel things...emotions you don't even want to feel. You look down to see tears staining the page, blurring the words in front of you before you even realize you're crying. Then you hate poetry for a raging moment--maybe cast the book to the floor, hate the poet for the turmoil he's caused to your insides. It's haunting, though. It won't leave you alone. That's the thing about poetry. Such few lines. Such power those few lines hold. So I always pick up the book again.

One final Neruda poem. It's been haunting me. So I let it haunt.

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

Nonfiction

Fiction. From the Latin, fictium. Meaning created. From fingere--to shape or fashion. Therefore nonfiction means not created, unshaped, unfashioned?

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?

I often tell those who ask that my favorite kind of writing is nonfiction prose. Personal Essay. Memoir. Reflection. Diary. But even as I reflect on the numerous nonfiction peices I wrote in college as a writing major, were those essays completely unshaped?

Nonfiction is such a difficult genre; though shouldn't it be the easiest? How hard is it to recount a story exactly the way it happened? We do it hundreds of times a day--I tell my husband about the fiasco I experienced at the grocery store, he tells me about an awkward elevator ride at work, my best friend tells me about something the kids in her elementary school class said, my former roommate calls with more nightmare stalking from her exboyfriend--and the stories go on. Nonfiction doesn't have the challenges of fiction. There is no conflict about where the plot should go, how to make the story move forward, which character is the murderer (it's always the butler anyway). With nonfiction, you already know the ending. You lived it; there's nothing to decide.

Right?

Nonfiction is unshaped--pure. Only it isn't. I took Autobiographical Writing my senior year of college, and a friend and fellow writer in the class posted on her Facebook status the night before a major peice was due: Writing a memoir feels a lot like making up things that didn't really happen in my life (Lacy Barker). I can only add that I felt the exact same way. Even if I wasn't making up things exactly, I was certainly attempting to attribute meaning and emotions that I didn't feel at the time of the events. Isn't that shaping?

I know that creative nonfiction has a long history and has certain rules of its own. And I'm not trying to make a moral judgement--whether creating emotions or shaping facts is right or wrong--I'm just a writer. And as such, we often consider ourselves to be shapers or creators as artists. The very words that are synonomous with fiction. 

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?