Pat, Valeria, Prema: Three Writers in Friendship
In 1960, my senior-year English teacher chose an essay I wrote about my feelings to submit to a contest. I had felt surprised, and also pleased… then had forgotten about it for twenty-one years.
That was when I made a first call to Pat Schneider inquiring about her writing workshops. It ended with my telling her that I wanted to join hers; I would write with Pat for ten years. Thirty years later, with a pre-publication copy of my book, A Flower for God,* in hand, I visited her. “Would you like to read this,” I asked, but she replied, “Just put it in my hand once it’s published.”
Pat passed before I could do that, yet it ended only any more opportunities to be with her in person, for her influence on me remains to this day.
To grow in craft is to increase the breadth of what
I can do, but art is the depth, the passion, the desire,
the courage to be myself and myself alone.
PS 2003*
September Light
The September light moves in and my mind starts filling with images, wishes and dreams of Greece. The sea at this time of year so gentle and villages regaining their true state of being… but I am here, sitting by my window, sorting out old scraps of paper with words scribbled upon them in past years…
Sounds of tractors below my open windows, the fields are ready to be plowed after having been so hardened by the long drought
At Assisi, tall horse chestnut trees frame the curving road that circles the ancient stone walls encircling the town, their thick manes swaying. Trees that create a rich green canopy that will soon turn to enchanting gold and rust.
So suddenly summer ends and one starts longing for the presence of the sun.
Valeria 2024*
March Night
The waxing moon is visible in a sky past pale blue. Hair strands, blowing, frame my face.
I’m seated on a tree-stump chair where I’ve laid a scrap of towel across.
Above me, leaves of the chiku tree are slightly shifting, the second crop of fruit since picked.
A chime hangs from the open metal stair grid above me that reaches the third floor porch where
I do not go, afraid of heights. My kitchen light alone is visible out here.
Across the main road, two buildings away, the voices of children tell me that there are several.
The planet to the west can now be seen. Soon, dim stars.
I wish I could sleep out here…
it is so peaceful.
PJC 2024
My realization is, “Friendship crosses all boundaries of time, place, and individuality.”
* In A Flower for God: A Memoir, Prema Jasmine Camp (Seattle WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021), 37.
* Writing Alone and with others, Pat Schneider, (UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 22.
* Personal correspondence.