Writing That "True" Sentence

Ernest Hemingway in the autobiography A Moveable Feast states, "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know". How does one accomplish this? The phrase "the truest sentence that you know" rolls over and over and over through my brain.

I suppose we must first define that "truest" of sentences. I love cherry chocolate chunk ice cream. While this is as true a sentence as one could speak, I do not believe Hemingway this meshes with Hemingway's quest. I also love beautiful women. A weakness, to be sure. A truth undeniable, yet this sentence feels far too superficial. Even should I put the two sentences together, while it may stir my passions a bit, I still do not possess that "truest sentence".

What did Hemingway look for? I don't wish to read his works at this moment to find out, I simply desire to explore this "true sentence" thing. A couple come to mind, and since we remain complicated creatures, I do not believe more than one sentence would foul the works too much. We'll see...

My first sentence begins, "My mother and father are still alive. I don't know how I will react when they no longer share this earth with me." They both approach their eightieth birthdays, seemingly faster than I approach sixty. I can not imagine this world without them, but intellectually I know I need to prepare myself. I know regrets will pepper my heart once time runs out. All the moments missed, all the past sins (both ways) not addressed, all the happiness not remembered and all the joys still cherished in all likelihood will press to destroy me.

For years I thought growing up in our house detracted from the quality of life once I left. Then I got married, my house filled with children, I learned how horrible others like my wife had it growing up and I realized my childhood defined the word awesome. The only pressures I felt came from the 'chores' department. The only "true" complaint stands as a lack of demonstrative love from my father and at times mother. Yet, I always knew love. I always felt it, even in the pain and hurt feelings that seemed to lather up within the family.

Lessons taught through other's pain continue to shock my emotional system. I sit dumbfounded through some of my wife's therapy as my ears handle what my heart cannot - the abuses and virtual absence of love and kind words as a child. How two people treat children so cruel escapes me. My world would cease to exist if I changed places with her. No way I could handle the heartless, faithless and shameful conditions in which she grew up. In the end I find my heart laden with sadness that those two supposed parents know so little about love and compassion. As my wife learns to understand emotions I see a progressive and lovely garden springing to life after all these years.

Another "truest sentence" follows the line of, "Where is it in my heart that I weep? I want to know because someone left the water running...". My tendency to melancholy and sadness stems from some deep sorrow that travels with me throughout the years like some depressed hitchhiker. I cannot remember a time when this gloomy feeling absented my body. Sometimes it fades into the background like a fading vocal at the end of a song, yet the sadness returns without fail.

True sentences about this feeling flow freely in my poetry. Poetry allows such a cleansing of dark and wretched emotions. By addressing these passions through printed words, freedom whispers in to my eyes with a direct conduit to my heart that all will be well within me one day. As days roll on, I sense this not only untrue, but quite the opposite happens. My need to write increases with every purge of negativity.

Yes, sometimes to write the joy of no more hateful shackles for a while, but my need and desire to write soars each time I do it. The dynamic here owns an endgame where I no longer respond at some point. Where that point lives and what I will do about it could easily be the catalyst for birthing "truest sentences".

Music fills the next "truest sentence" that comes to mind. For a number of years now I've neglected my extensive music library. My sentence here would go something like, "Losing music befuddles, confuses and disappoints me."

For as long as I can remember music lilts through the corridors of my life, yet lately it appears I banished music from my life. The absurdity of that thought collides with its reality. One aspect of my musical demise traces itself directly to the pace of technology and the mega-corporate insistance we upgrade how we listen to music every five years or so. I've gone from 78's (remember those?) to 45's and 33's (lp's) to 8-tracks to cassettes to CD's to mp3's to thumb drives and laptops and Sirius and need I go on?

I may write myself into a music renaissance by writing record review of my old albums. Too many gems there to fall unforgotten into an ear-less world. Music defines moments, people, places, loves, hates and a myriad of other events of my life. I still remember with diamond-in-the-groove clarity riding to my uncle's farm and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road playing on the car radio.

Then the trip from West Virginia to North Carolina and Elton's Someone Saved My Life Tonight again on the car radio and my little sister and I crooning like two little songbirds... Driving to West Virginia from North Carolina as an adult and Carly Simon's Anticipation driving my wheels to the woman who fit that song like an aural glove... James Taylor in Carmichael Auditorium at the University of North Carolina singing Carolina On My Mind three times at the demand of an ecstatic, delirious crowd of music lovers...

Throughout my search of a "truest sentence" I sense an interconnectivity of everything I've written so far and the still stirring emotions underneath and as yet unwritten. The sadness and melancholy stands ever-present, as temporal and impossible to please as our human nature. Is this the age-old thought processes of 'life is too short' and 'why am I here?'

One aspect of this remains certain - as a writer, when you pursue "one true sentence" you will cover a vast landscape of possibilities. I foresee this exercise as perpetual and life consuming and the ultimate sentence always in the next series of keystrokes, forever eluding that closure the writer chases. Truly a chasing after the wind, but like any self-respecting dog, chasing his tail in the wind while the world indifferently speeds by I don't really care. The journey defines the pursuit and the "truest sentence" most likely ends up teasing me to my grave. I pray I die with a keyboard at my fingertips...