Cagan - Memoirs of a ghost : one sheet away

ANDREA CAGAN

MEMOIRS

OF A

One Sheet Away

Copyright 2014 Andrea Cagan
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1505319625
ISBN 13: 9781505319620
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921487
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina

Advance Praise for Memoirs of a Ghost

Above all I am deeply moved by Andreas honesty. Her intentions on finding, resolving, and acknowledging the truth of herself are so movingly written and so compelling in their revelationsa template for silenced women.

Olympia Dukakis, Academy
Award winner

Andrea Cagan has written a book that encompasses the entire range of female emotions. Its all here: touching, enraged, lonely, courageous, and loving. She goes off on tangents that are extremely heartfeltfollow her. The beauty is in her complex complicationsdrink it up! She writes just like a womanyes she does.

John Densmore, drummer, the
Doors

Memoirs of a Ghost reveals Andrea Cagan as a writer of gift and style, of revelation and insight. She travels from ghostwriter to soul searcher, all with the touch of a wise seer.

Lynda Obst, Academy Award
winning producer
and best-selling author

I dedicate this book to Jill, my beautiful sister, who has lent me her unwavering love and support, throughout my life,
even when I was being a brat.

Contents

For a moment, I could imagine what it would be like to be a ghostTo walk forever through a silence deeper than silence, To apprehend but never quite reach the lights of home.

Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

PROLOGUE

Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

E veryone has a story to tell, a song to sing, a poem to recite, a picture to paint, a grievance to be voiced, a bloodcurdling shriek to be screamed, or a lullaby to be crooned to soothe the hard edges of existence. We speak our minds and tell our stories with feather quills and fountain pens, typewriters and computers; we paint them on sidewalks, dance them in the streets, chalk them on blackboards, sign them with our hands, pin them on refrigerator doors, emote them in late-night poetry circles, brag about them, hide behind them, snore through them, and use them to wake ourselves up. We struggle to escape from them as we climb mountains and weather tempests for the sole purpose of finding our way back to them once again.

We all have our own individual styles, and we tell our stories on monitors, on parchment, on paper, or on canvas. We see them reflected in the gusting of the wind, the falling of the rain, a punch in the stomach, a belly laugh, a snort, a holler, or a really good fuck as we search for a revelation, a key to a gateway, a code to try to unravel the mystery. We drum up the courage to truly be seen with a kick in the pants, a smack upside the head, an encouraging pat on the back, a drop of human kindnessanything that might wake us up and guide us on the long and arduous journey back home to where we first took up our stories and where we will finally leave them behind.

Everybody has a story that yearns to be written. It spills off of fingertips as it races along, page after page, fashioned from twenty-six letters and a throng of punctuation, overflowing with commas, colons, spaces, quotation marks, exclamation points, and four-letter curses. Sometimes the words are free and flowing, pouring out like honey, smooth and refined, filled with honor, respect, wisdom, and mindfulness, connected in perfection, protecting us along the way, and healing our souls. At other times, the words are covert, fearful, and aggressive, breaking through barriers, chugging out like muddy gushes of stagnated water, clotted with blood, polluted by repetition, refried, blackened and lifeless, stained with algae building up over time and blocking the inroads, linked together in anger, sharp as swords, stinking like old cheese with the sole intention to kill the spirit.

And still, we search for someone, anyone, who will listen to our stories as we take our turn in the relay race of life. Pick up the baton. Meet a deadline. Beat the clock. Get there late. Make the grade. Take the cake, and eat it up. Hide the truth. Speak it loud and clear. Round and round, we strive to unburden our souls as we display our battle scars, both tangible and invisible, evidence of how we suffered, bled out, died, and then resurrected ourselves.

Everybody has a story that screams out to be told, and I help them tell it. I am the ghost, the hidden one who sees all, confessor to the rich and famous, keeper of their secrets, and purveyor of their furtive messages, languishing beneath my white sheet of invisibility as I listen, I empower, I encourage, I tape, I transcribe, I organize, I refine, I cut and paste and dramatize everyone elses stories, helping them face themselves in ways they never thought possible.

Now the tables have turned as I remove the sheet, bring my attention to myself, and surrender to the healing I took birth for. My own story has been lying in wait for me, hidden among the white, ghostly folds, faithful and unswerving, always here for me since the beginning. No matter what I was doing or thinking, no matter where I was hiding or how I got there, no matter to whom I was listening and whose life I was narrating, I was gathering fragments of my own story, following my inner creative thread, the connective tissue that has linked me to everything and everyone else since before I knew my name or even that I had one.

I have always been writing. From the moment I learned to read, I wrote. When I felt invisible, I wrote. When I cried or laughed, I wrote. When I left home to pursue my ballet career, I wrote through the loneliness. On one-night-stand bus tours, I wrote through the tedium. When I trained on bleeding blisters and sprained ankles, I wrote through the pain. When I swallowed the mind-altering drugs that defined the sixties, I wrote through the psychedelic passageways. When I cheated with a girlfriends boyfriend, I wrote through the guilt. When I traveled the world to research the faith healers, I wrote through the confusion and the wonder. When I was battered and broken, I wrote through my suffering and collapse, and then I wrote through my grief and recovery. And when I met the loves of my life, I wrote about each of them, and I did the same thing when I left them or when they left me.

Now, here I am, still writing, finally telling my story, tapping the letters on the keyboard while I still can, while my fingers still move and my eyes still see, while my brain still works and my ears still pick up the sound waves that sometimes soothe and bless, and other times irritate and aggravate.

In my life, I have been a hopeful child, a dancer in the clouds, a singer in the shower, a mediocre poet, a grateful sister, a graceful ballerina, an orphaned daughter, an adored lover, a battered wife, an actor, a liar, a truth teller, a miracle maker, a creator of beauty, an editor, a critic, a ghostwriter, and always and above all else, a storyteller, which I claim now in the name of women the world over. Women who have been silenced and annihilated for generations and cannot tell their stories. Women who cannot remember their stories and remain bound in their own sheets of invisibility, whether they were once adorned in silken gowns and jewels or tattered rags. Women who lunch, and women who starve. Women who nag and bark orders, and women with blindfolds, gags, and earplugs, yearning to speak, to be heard, to be seen, to sing, to scream, to find a way to matter, to be visible in the worlds in which they live.