Label It Lore, But Also Insane

My friend Ria first labeled my stories "insane lore," a compliment dropped amid our exchanged accounts of spiritual and romantic questing. Lore because the stories accumulated over decades. I'd paid enough attention to my unfolding life that I could now weave random strands into something sensical. (The grammar bot wanted me to change this to "nonsensical." Being a writer never gets easier.) I've kept journals for 40 years. I have reflected upon the insane.

I'd taken time to write things down, facts and feelings. I had noticed things said and done. I had considered the explained and the unexplainable, maybe because I was that day-dreamy kid staring out the car window at telephone poles going by, or maybe because factual events were kind of high-drama for rural Wisconsin in the late 1900s. Only later did I recognize I had often been riding the edge of the unbelievable – the insane. Death and brokenness, children crying and doing terrible cute things, beauty I was unprepared for and love that wrecked me and love that healed. Was this lore exceptional, or had I just dissected and recast what most people get through and leave behind? Ria identified it. My story, as it flowed out to her in an overpriced tequila-themed establishment, was insane lore.

Roundtrip is where I flow these stories for a wider audience. Nothing presented as factual is made up, especially the things that seem hard to believe. If my memory is fuzzy about details I will say so. Some names are changed to protect privacy or prevent serious embarrassment. Good thing I wrote stuff down in those old-school paper journals. (Grin emoji here.)

AI is not generating Roundtrip's content. I am a real and living writer who worked professionally as a reporter and editor, and who left that 10-year career to study spirituality. I earned a doctorate in practical theology. My first place editorial-writing award makes me proud; so do the three good human beings I raised even as the insane lore was forming.