An Autobiography of Sorts

She preferred to tell people that she was named after a George O’Sullivan song. It seemed like a much more interesting tale then the truth of her life, her namesake being a distant relative who had been a hero in the Second World War. No, she simply did not find this truth to be convenient enough for her personality: a free-flowing spirit much more attuned to a generation of love then one of hate. The spelling always presented an issue to her contemporaries as well and she had since devised a perfectly good explanation. Her name was the Irish spelling thank-you-very-much and not as she had been unfortunately told years later by her mother, a simple result of convenience and style. Her name was Clare- a source of pride and anguish for her soul and the focal point of her very existence in this world.
She was an odd girl of sorts with unbridled curls and a quick smile that had bewitched many a stranger. She might have won over the hearts of a millions if she had not been a little too introspective and calculating at times, the result of a brain that worked endlessly behind resilient green eyes. Clare; the name fit her like no other ever could and she was not of the persuasion of girls who fancied what their names could have been if only their parents had had an ounce of originality. Clare: it was simple yet unconventional, concise yet mysterious.
She spent her days away with the two great loves of her life: books and poetry. She could read books end to end, an odd quality that spoke more to her slightly obsessive nature then her lack of social life. To her, books provided the perfect social mechanisms: a world of ready made friends that would last with her as long as she might desire. The pure perfection was met by an equally concise conclusion: the sad endings to her friendships. Each time she would bemoan silently as she carefully read the last page of a particular novel and felt the onset of the melancholy loss envelop her being. It would be simple to begin another sordid affair with a new protagonist but she endured this sadness stoically as though it were her lot in life to bear. To have the joy one must accept the pain.
Though you might be beginning to think that our heroine was a bookworm of sorts, this was simply not the case. She lived fiercely. Her life had been the inspiration of a near-death experience that did not come close to killing her but had left its mark like a brand on her chest. Existing was not an option for Clare and though her obsessive love for the literary was ever present, you could find her indulging in her passions in the various countries of the world. She had read Hemingway in Spain and Rand in England. She had written verses whilst perched on a seat in the middle of Oslo and once by the light of a torch on a train ride to Milan. She rarely wrote of her near-death experience that did not come close to killing her yet it was a constant theme in her work. An homage of sorts that she hoped would one day be sorted by some brilliant mind at Harvard or Cambridge many years after her death. She believed it to be a tragedy and sometimes a comedy though certainly on the darker side if any at all and if it were to be a tragedy then it would be the best kind: the tragedy of a life well lived. This was her story and though she had never once considered writing an autobiography she could not think of a more clever mind to begin the tale. Yes, a tragedy and the beginning of a tragedy is always the most important line of all. How hers would begin remained a mystery yet not a hopeless one because she had believed since she was a little girl that the best answer, the truest art, is never created but discovered. So how would it begin?
“The girl who lived.” Eh, too Rowlings and entirely too contemporary.
‘The worst of times…” Respectable but recognizable.
“a ruin so strange it must have never happened.” Poetic and her absolute favorite but Kingsolver was far too honorary for her to plagiarize.
She could set her mind to discover this simple line if she could find a moment to think. It was hard to sum up ones life and package it in such a way to make it both appealing and compelling. The line was almost there, she could feel it in the marrow of her bones.
Voila!
“She preferred to tell people that she was named after a George O’Sullivan song.”