Dropping the Eyelids: Nonfiction for the Soul

By Ernest Dempsey

In this latest collection of nonfiction stories and essays, Ernest Dempsey takes readers to the darker corners of human consciousness that make the boundary of our collective vulnerabilities. In these pages, readers will walk through episodes of heartbreak and grief, memories of childhood peace oblivious to the violence lurking in future, and daggers of disillusionment slashing the great expectations out of a naive heart.
While themes of these stories and essays are varied, due to multiple accounts weaved around real-life deaths, Dropping the Eyelids can be called Dempsey's unofficial sequel to his short fiction book The Blue Fairy and Other Tales of Transcendence (Modern History Press, 2009). However, the narration and mode of the entries in this collection are more critical, self-conscious, and poignant than reassuring and veiled.
Dropping the Eyelids is a book of nonfiction for the soul, and at the same time it marks a campsite for the author, who ventures into the creative wilderness--unarmed but undeterred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781615996384

Book preview

Preface

Writing nonfiction, to me, is always an act of returning to oneself. It’s the time when I become me and my voice goes out to the world straight from me, not via another character employed as my envoy. Yet, my voice resonates via all the entities and the void that make the narrative. I fill these things, places, people, and air with my voice. It’s the echo of me that tells the story, delivers the message, and returns to me.

In putting together this book, I literally returned to myself. Though these essays span over 15 years of my writing life, most were written within the last six years. The idea for putting together a book of nonfiction, however, came fairly recently. The practice of regularly penning down a set of nonfiction essays started with my creative nonfiction course that I took at the Portland Community College, Oregon, in winter 2014. A few months ago, as I was going through the writing assignments of that folder, the muse fired that flame at me, one that makes writers what they are. I wrote some new essays as they came to me, here in Orlando, FL, with the motivation to create enough to put together a short book. Finally, I threw in a few older essays and edited or re-wrote some to vibrate with the prevailing mood and spirit of writing.

The return to my voice as me, instead of lending it out to fictional characters, necessitated that certain names and identifying characteristics be changed to protect the privacy of real-life people mentioned in some of these essays. Individual writings vary in themes and accordingly the narration, but I suppose the general feel of these pieces tends to shift to the darker side. I prefer, however, not to preset the reader’s reception by getting the author out there before the book.

I thank you all for taking the time to read these essays. Do share your comments, thoughts, and/or questions. I’ll try to respond via [e-mail].

Ernest Dempsey

December 05, 2021

Apology to Old Companions

Sitting in Portland, Oregon, past midnight, sipping coffee, I write these lines to you all who kept me good company in my years of difficult times in Pakistan. I remember having just a few hours of steady power supply and internet connection back there; but all the time having your company for pleasure. The moment I needed you, I always found you ready for a silent embrace. Such was our sweet bond. Your faces on paper—what appeared to be an arrangement of letters—served as a cordial when everything else was falling apart: the terror-struck land, the dry and rough weather, terrifying levels of pollution, and above all, those attitudes and utterances I hardly want to remember.

Yet I chose to leave you. I flew to a country with many dear friends waiting to welcome me. And I had to leave you as papers filled with ink, in my hand, caged inside closets in two rooms in different houses. Worse, I didn’t even say to you