April 11th, 2006
Contact
Posted by
djelloul in
General
Djelloul can be reached via e-mail at djelloul [a] djelloulmarbrook.com or at dmmarbrook@earthlink.com.
Site admin can be reached vie e-mail at kyle [a] kylejasterstudio.com
Mr. Djelloul
One night while I was restless, I came across your website.
Your writing inspired me. How? I’m a woman who was born into extreme poverty and neglect. I suffered as a child because I had no companionship. People knew my circumstance and refused to have their children engage such kinds as myself. “Words.” They were my friends. To read a book (which I was not afforded often) was an escape. Then, eventually, there were no words.
To read your dialect—it was like sunbathing on a cold winter day.
Thank you!
Sydne’
Dear Synde,
Thank you for your lovely thoughts.
You are a real hero, while the heroes we usually
celebrate are just pale reflections of our own
delusions. To face what you have faced and still be able to see the beauty of the world is true courage. On people like you the evolution of the human race depends.
Your friend,
Djelloul
Del,
I was wondering if you would ever write about your mentor, Ray Nelson. At his funeral, you eulogized him as a king, a ferocious and affectionate Viking, a loyalist, “a man absorbed utterly in the weave of a family whose interior beauty sometimes made our hearts jump.” You also said “He wanted new reporters to succeed, he helped them to succeed, and he basked in their successes.” Perhaps those young journalists that you mentor would like to know more about about this man, a reporter, photographer, jester, humanist, family man. “It was Ray who taught me conclusively that more often than not, the best information comes from the lowliest, for he no class consciousness, and he was uninterruptedly curious about everyone.” Please share more with your readers about your relationship with this man and his family. Don’t let his legacy be forgotten. Regards, johnny catholic
Dear Johnny Catholic,
Of course I know who you are, old friend. And this is a wonderful idea you’re proposing. Yes, I will most certainly talk about him to the students.
I believe in synchronicities, and so you may have picked one of my thoughts clean out of the air. I have only recently enrolled Ray’s name in the acknowledgments of a book of my poems to be published next year.
I tried to respond to you privately, but your e-mail address doesn’t work. Let me know how to reach you, will you?
I am so happy to hear from you after so many years.
Love,
Del
Hello,
My e-mail would seem to indicate that I am both a poor speller, insane or both.The former is true, the latter not too much. I do however have Asperger’s Disorder and was wondering if you knew anything about it? Much of your writing reflects my own thoughts and feelings but says it so much more concisely than I have ever been able to express myself.
I believe you may have Asperger’s, as well as some of the writers and artists you admire. I would like to know if you have ever considered that possibility? There is much misinformation about this particular “brain-wiring” that I would like to clear up. I am attempting this by publishing a magazine by and for people with Asperger’s to show their art, writing and passions. I feel it is a good time for them to come out of their “blogging closets.”
I realize that I am nobody and you may be a famous person or some such, but the compassion in your writing allows me to take the chance in being seen a fool by you. If you are interested in learning more about Asperger’s or are willing to submit any of your writing to our magazine, please contact me.
Denise Junk
I loved your writing, found it by accident, ha!)
Your feedback on my latest writing will be more than appreciated; I write of late facing my third episode of bladder cancer, so, as they say, (or maybe it is me) writing is cheap therapy.
Daniel Wellington, Florida
Never assume that the barren tree that stands stripped of twigs, branches and leaves has no history, no story to tell. The winds going by in the dessert storms hear the stories of the past in certain clarity, like dozens of orchestras singing in sync to the magic hands of the conductors visions of what sounds shall be played, where, and when.
Likewise, never assume that some day, your story, your stories will not be told, will not be carried on in your name, for time that cannot be measured, any more than the love you have for others, and the love that others have for you, can be measured.
Going into places like the infants mind, like the child’s dreams, and the young child’s imagination is no less real than the visions we see in the mind’s eye of every great artist, known or not. There is no place that we cannot go, in our mind’s eye that cannot be seen, or does not exist.
The tree listens as well to the wind that passes it by, and the clouds that cover the sun, does not mean that the tree, with the appearance of no twigs, branches nor leaves does not expand and contract within it’s basic molecular construction that once supported a more brilliant exchange with it’s surroundings. But the tree, with its history, does have its own story to tell and the molecules of this tree, despite its appearance of being barren, has its own vibrations, its own movements, and are not, and will not be forgotten in the cycle of nature’s drama.
Our lives are like dramas, too. We start, as the tree starts, and we end no different, be it in the dessert, or the rain forests of the greenest places on earth. We all have had our stories to tell, no matter what small or large spheres of influence we have encountered with others, in dwellings large or small, from tent to mansion, we all have our stories to tell. No matter who has listened, or who has seemingly not, the stories remain, untouched, not edited, not by the winds of the great atmospheres, or by the sun’s warmth beneath or on top of the clouds. The stories of our lives remain, and are heard by those who need to hear, who used to care, and for those who will care, as time unfolds.
We are,
Never alone.
Dear Daniel,
Thank you for these lovely reflections.
Lately I have been reading about String Theory, and I suspect that in one way or another none of our lives are in vain and that in each of us the lives lived over the millennia live again. I have thought for a long time that
true courage is not where we look for it. It’s in hospices, in cardboard homes, on park benches. The courage we tend to celebrate is often a politicized version used to promote an agenda. But real courage is what we encounter every day of our lives.
Warm good wishes and prayers for your well-being, Daniel.
Djelloul