Making it (slightly less) funky
I was tentative at first, hid myself behind veils and
a false
name.
Over time, the veils slipped away, I walked out
from behind the curtain, showed my face to the
light, revealed my name and purpose. And being
seen is ok. It's good. I want people to know me
for who I am, for who I was, to keep the secrets
from defining me.
Because the secrets don't define me. Even better,
after seeing the light of day, after being
transformed into stories, they have become
almost
irrelevant, forming and
transforming experiences, important ones, but not the
core of who I am.
Visitors to this Web page, however, may have a
different impression. In the interest of
shaping writing to survive
to better reflect
reality and also to bring a more professional feel to
the page, I have made a few changes. They're subtle —
a new tag line, slightly different selections
in Excerpts from
Life, a
more complete look to the food writing page, which
I've renamed Kitchen
Detour.
Most of the old stuff is still here, stories of
angst, secrets revealed, but you have to dig a
little deeper to find it.
Next post: Crumbling beneath the Formstone. Or
something along those lines, with a departure from
post titles derived from pop music.
(Image: Mirror, Little House by Jennifer
Trinkle, 1986.)
The end of anonymity
In the beginning, there was Anonmomous.
Then it was simply Jennifer. But there were slip-ups.
The PublicLiterature.Org stories with my full name.
The e-mails I sent to others from my personal gmail
account. The few blogging awards that went to
Jennifer Fullname instead of to just Jennifer.
My father found the blog. I accidentally sent an
e-mail to my ex-husband from the writing to survive
account and I'm pretty sure he's been here. I have a
sneaking suspicion that my brother-in-law has visited
at least once. A friend from elementary school found
me here. For a while the first hit on a Google search
of my name (yeah, I google my own name. I'm not the
only one, right?) was the blog, for reasons that are
somewhat mysterious. Until today, the two weren't
directly connected.
It's one thing to write to complete strangers. It's
quite another to realize that people who may be a
part of my story are reading. Or that casual friends
might come upon this and find out more than they ever
wanted to know about me. But as I kept on leaving the
door ajar, I realized that I want to be open, needed
it. What's there to hide? Just me.
So.
Here I am.
Jennifer Trinkle.
All other names have been changed
to protect the innocent. In most cases.