Category Archives: Literature

The Natural Sequel of an Unnatural Beginning

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

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I’ve been thinking a lot about Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Over the past few weeks, the following line from the novel slipped through my mind as I’ve walked to work, made a cup of tea, and absently stared at my balcony’s potted plants (when I should have been doing work): “[Anne Elliot] had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” 

The line refers to the life narrative of the novel’s main character, Anne Elliot. As a young woman of nineteen, her family persuaded her to reject the marriage proposal of Captain Wentworth, because he didn’t have a large enough fortune to provide a comfortable life for her. This was the prudence that she learned in her youth. Eight years later, she and Captain Wentworth meet again. He has made his fortune as a Naval officer in the Napoleonic Wars; she has rejected another suitor and learned to regret her earlier decision. They get a second chance, and this time, Anne, tempered by experience and wisdom, finally says yes to the dashing captain. As Jane notes, this is Anne’s “natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” Most young people learn such lessons of love and coupling the other way around.

“The natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” What a phrase. I think about it a lot, especially after turning thirty this summer. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was at twenty, and like Anne, I have learned a few life lessons in a backwards fashion. I have become less serious, less quiet, less wrapped up in the folds of my inner life this past decade. I often hid from my peers behind a book—or behind the words in a beautifully constructed paragraph—yet as the decade went forward, I relied less on books and more on the company and love and supportive energy of my life’s beloveds. A mode of being that many of my peers had engaged in since their parents dropped them off at kindergarten, but something I only learned as an adult, struggling with the demands and loneliness of a graduate school program. That is my natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. 

And yet, there was a sequel, to my life and to Anne’s, one that was not dictated by social expectations or some stock human narrative. Our narratives were formed through our choices and our willingness to examine and grow from them—and honestly, I prefer it that way.

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Saying Goodbye to Terry Pratchett

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Thursday, March 12, 2015, was a sad day for me. For it was the day that Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of Discworld, satirical-humanist extraordinaire, and recreational swordsmith, died.

Before leaving us at age 66, due to a rare form of Alzheimer’s Disease, Terry treated the world to more than 70 books, for young and old alike. After hearing the news, I wept, in sadness and in joy. For in losing Terry, I lost a beloved teacher. But in the wake of his loss, I also gained a sense of gratitude for exactly how much this white-bearded, epic-hat-wearing author influenced me as a human being and as a fledgling writer.

Terry was a gateway author for my 12 year-old soul, ushering me into a world where my small town life and my late middle school self were finally mirrored back to me. Through characters like Susan Sto Helit, Mort, Jeremy Clockson, The Abbot, Death, and The Sweeper, Terry gave me the courage to be weird. It was okay that I didn’t fit in with my peers, because there in Sir Pratchett’s novels were dreamers, philosophers, over-thinkers, humanists, people well-intentioned but socially awkward. You know, human beings that acted a lot like me. Through Good Omens, he introduced me to Neil Gaiman, whose work inspires me more than any other author. And it was the energy and crystalline precision of Terry’s sentences that first made me think: “Hm, maybe I’d like to spend more of my life writing. I’d love to create sentences like that.”

There is a question all this reflection brings up:  why haven’t I spoken about him more? When I was asked to name my major creative influences in a recent interview, Terry didn’t come up in my answer. Which was odd. I’m usually a person who is self-reflective and systematic about her writing. I can tell how and why a writer has had an impact of my craft and even show you examples. But why haven’t I ever mentioned Terry? I read him with just as much gusto and frequency as any of my other favorite authors. I think my previous silence about Terry was twofold—I was intimidated by him and I’m only now realizing the depth of his impact. This filters into one thing: his plot structure. God, the way he wrote plot intimidated me. It was full of scenes that popped and whizzed through your senses, making you laugh, cry, and ponder the mysteries of humanity. It felt frenzied, but the madness always breathlessly hung together with a careful precision.

No one plots novels like Terry. And to me, that’s what makes an artist—they create something that only they can create. His plots are so beautiful and personalized to him, that I don’t know if I could ever directly use his tactics in my work. Yet, thinking of writing scenes of varying length that carefully fit together instead of writing in well-measured chapters, is getting my first novel draft on the page. Who knows if this is how I will keep it. But Terry’s  writing style encourages me to think of the piece like a clock, to write it so that my character’s worlds and desires click and whirr together, freeing me from chapter quotas and keeping me ever mindful of how the larger project may end up fitting together.

Thank you Sir Terry for your wonderful stories. You truly were a writer uniquely your own. I shall deeply miss reading your new words and I am grateful for the continued guidance of your old ones.

Friendship and Wrapping Paper

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

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One of my first Christmas gifts came earlier this week. After a lively lunch, a dear friend of mine handed me a long, cardboard tube.

“I had to give you your Christmas present today,” she said. “You’ll see why when you get home.”

And I did.

Christmas Books

Rolled up inside the tube were six sheets of paper, lined with the images of colorful, gilded book bindings—lovely antique visions from the Bodleian Library’s Christmas Book Collection. My friend was right, she had to give me my Christmas present early. As a librarian with a deep partiality for exquisite, old books, how could I wrap my Christmas presents for family and friends in anything else?

I delightedly texted my friend, thanking her for her thoughtfulness. As I hit send, I reflected on just how wonderful a gift it was. Gifts can be rather singular and rather private in nature. A gift passes from you to a friend. If your friend likes it, or even if she does not, your gift will spend the rest of its existence inside your friend’s home, visible to only those your friend permits over her dwelling’s threshold. But that is not how wrapping paper works. It longs to know not just one of your friends, but all of them, as well as your family and co-workers. It wants to chat with others, rather loudly, about the nature of your friendship with the friend who gave you the paper in the first place. For each object that you wrap with the jolly print, becomes an introduction to your other friend when the receiver exclaims: “What lovely paper!” You can then reply: “Thank you, my friend Sally got it for me. She’s also a librarian. You really must meet someday, I think you two would get on well.” 

The gift under the paper may be singular, but the wrapping paper wants to be everybody’s friend and happily wishes that everybody else also wants to be friends with each other. As I hope C.S. Lewis would quip, if he had written The Four Gifts rather than The Four Loves—wrapping paper is the least jealous of the gifts, always ready to extend its cheer and warmth to all.

What a fine way to introduce the wrapping paper giver to others I admire and love. And, what a fine way to start the Christmas season.

Oh God. Writing Fiction Is Terrifying.

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Next month, a short story of mine will be appearing in the inaugural issue of The Young Raven’s Literary Review. You can preview an excerpt from “A Fruitful Tale” here: http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/

The preview also includes an interview in which I talk about my major creative influences as well as my major crush on the character, Daniel Deronda (seriously, it was a very good day when George Eliot decided to tell Mr. Deronda’s story in 800 glorious pages. I honestly believe his existence cancels out all the whiny douchebaggery of any Charles Dickens hero).

Most of me is excited for the world to read “A Fruitful Tale” next month. It is a story that I needed to write, and, it has delighted and helped my inner circle of friends. If it has helped and delighted me and those I hold the closest to me, I’d be a short-sighted story miser to keep it from others. But, there is simultaneously a small bit of me that is currently going: “OH GOD. OH GOD. OH GOD. I’M EXPOSING BITS OF MY INNER LIFE TO STRANGERS. I FEEL SOOOO NAKED AND VULNERABLE AND THAT NAKEDNESS AND VULNERABILITY IS SUPER PUBLIC AND THAT COMBINATION IS JUST THE WORST. WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?”

I shouldn’t be surprised that this small bit of me has such a big worry. I am putting a piece of fiction into the world, and as a writer, I find writing fiction to be much more exposing than writing non-fiction. In non-fiction, I can direct my audience’s gaze, neatly hedging in their reading experience with carefully articulated facts and emotions. The pronoun “I” can be used to create intimacy, but it also can be used to control. I am letting you into my head. And I am tightly controlling your perception of my narrative.

That’s not how it is when I write fiction. There is something about a narrative which is created from abstraction that leaves me and my most inner of inner lives completely naked. I’ve been writing fiction since I was ten and this truth still surprises me. Creating a fictional story turns off the hyper self-aware part of me, leaving me to show my audience only how I feel. Fiction cannot be distracted by a sequence of exterior events—it is crafted from the ideas and joys and muddles that are always flowing through my body. Writing fiction is as interior as I can get, and with me, deep interiority is tied to inarticulate notions of privacy, intimacy, and vulnerability.

Gah, so utterly terrifying.

Yet, so utterly exhilarating.

Since fiction is such an exposing craft, it allows me to give words to that which is most private and unsayable for me. By articulating this, I get to see me and my desires and my longings better. Which, in turn, helps others to see themselves and their desires and their longings better. My willingness to tell a secret story swirling around in my subconscious will help others to be brave and start telling their own.

And knowing that my vulnerability in fiction may help others, makes all the trouble worthwhile—even though there is still that little bit of me breathlessly rambling on in all caps.

The Dark: Children’s Books and Adult Experience

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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For his third birthday, I bought my honorary nephew The Dark, Lemony Snicket’s newest book for children. Before the purchase, one of my dearest friends and I stood by the children’s book island in the middle of the Strand, a famous New York city bookstore. Though the city, with its ever lively pace, still moved around us as shoppers and tourists, we were suspended in the quiet, honest loveliness of the story. Huddled over the book’s crisp, yet textured, drawings of oranges, ambers, blues, and blacks.

We took turns reading each page out loud to one another. The story went something like this: Laszlo was afraid of the Dark, but that was okay because the Dark, who lived in the basement, stayed out of Laszlo’s room. But one night, when his night light burned out, the Dark visited him. This encounter taught Laszlo that: “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb.”

By the story’s end and with our shoulders touching, my friend and I were both quietly crying.

After reading a few more children’s books to each other, we wandered around the store’s remaining floors (Three to be exact). I suppose the experience was impressive, but my senses dulled towards the towers of books that towered above us. My mind was still with Laszlo, slowly re-feeling its way through his encounter with the Dark. Yes, the book was for my nephew, but the more I thought about it, the story was also for me.

I am not a young child, afraid of the dark in my bedroom—that doesn’t mean my adult life has not had its share of darkness. These past five years have put me in places and experiences where I have seen (with much surprise and sadness) how pain, fear, anger, and loss can wind around a person, hiding them from themselves and disordering and dissembling every important relationship they have. It’s horrible to watch. It’s even more horrible to be on the receiving end of its desperate grip.

God, “…without the Dark, everything would be light, and you would never know if you needed a light bulb,” is such a powerful line for me. When the Dark visited me, its presence hurt. But, its presence also tuned my senses to quickly see and deeply experience life’s blessings and joys—proverbial light bulbs—whenever they enlightened and enlivened my messy little bundle of experience and truth.

Apparently, The Dark helps my honorary nephew fall asleep. That’s what his mother told me yesterday. This knowledge makes me smile. We all have little stories that we tell ourselves, to make us strong, to make us brave, to help us not be afraid of the dark. I’m glad The Dark is such a story for him. And, I hope its wisdom will continue to walk with him and to strengthen him for the rest of his life.

Freestyle Disco and Drinking Games: Jane Austen on YouTube

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Oh my gosh you guys, after four months riddled with various high pressure deadlines, I have a break. An actual break. And nothing says taking a break from high pressure deadlines quite like silly YouTube Videos about Jane Austen and her books (well, at least for me). So, for your viewing pleasure, and my easy access, here are some of my favorites:

1.) The Peloton—The Jane Austen One

Ah, polite  Nineteenth-Century conversation:  where everyone beautifully says nothing.

 

2.) Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Because sometimes, you just have to knock a teacup out of some heiress’s hand.

 

3.) The Mitchell and Webb Look—Posh Dancing

Thank you, Mr. Darcy, for yelling at Miss Bingley what I’ve been longing to yell at her every time I read Pride and Prejudice. You are also very good at freestyle disco.

 

4.) The Jane Austen Drinking Game (Live)—Mostly Water Theatre

“LOSS OF COUNTENANCE. THAT’S TWO DRINKS!!!!”

 

5.) Pride and Prejudice: The Art of Argument According to Jane Austen | Ignite Phoenix #15

Oooo!!!! Rhetoric skillz. Mr. Darcy has those. (n.b. This video is more informative than silly—but, is informative in a very charming way.)

 

6.) Jane Austen Old Spice Parody

A video that proves once and for all Henry Tilney’s superiority to all other Austen heroes. Sadly, Mr. Darcy and Captain Wentworth are not him.

Pillows and Dragons

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

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Though the sun is out and I am not yet physically tired, I am in my pajamas, under my bed’s covers. The sunbeams that sprint across my bedroom floor are excitable and bright—so different from my current mood. I roll onto my stomach, smashing my face into my pillow’s dark silence. Thankful that my bed is warm and my blankets are soft.

What a two weeks I have had.

Actually, what a year I have had.

I never thought that managing the grief surrounding my mother’s death would be so hard, so time consuming, so revealing of my internal strengths and weaknesses. Both friends and acquaintances are quick to assure me that I’ve handled this year with patience and poise—I’m glad of their assurances and relieved that those in my community have experienced my grieving process in such a manner. For me, there isn’t a choice between being gracious as I process my big emotions through writing, and being a noticeable mass of sorrow and pain as I air my emotions out in public. I’ll always choose the former, if I can help it, for the latter is hardly a constructive way for me to live life.

In those moments when I feel deep pain and loss, I need control. The librarian in me needs to define and arrange those emotions and the writer in me needs to make sense of them. Manners and writing both have rules and expectations that are easy to follow, easy to understand. It is their structure that gives me assurance that not everything has to change in the midst of emotional upheaval.

But, it’s all so exhausting—maintaining order, wrestling with chaos.

Today is not the first afternoon that I’ve sought the solace of my pillow while daylight giddily tripped across my bedroom floor. This ritual of pajamas and blankets and bed I have practiced all year. Perhaps I should be more vexed when I am facedown in my pillow on a sunny afternoon:  Yet, I cannot be. I need my pillow to remind me that yes, this year has been an emotional hell, so I’d better get some rest. I have to continue fighting the good fight when I get up again.

coloring-pages-dragons-4From: karenswhimsy.com

Any other day, I would savor the sun and its glowing warmth. I cannot take it today. I roll onto my left side, away from the sun and towards my bedroom wall. It meets my eyes with a tiny patch of paint bubbles, speckling its surface. I absently study it and think of heroes and knights craning their necks to read their destinies in the stars. Though these warriors answer to varying names like King Arthur, St. George, and Ivanhoe, we tend to tell their stories in the similar ways: The hero sets off on on a hard (but epic) mission, solves the riddles, slays the dragon / monster / enemy, saves the princess / noblewoman, marries said princess / noblewoman, and then proceeds to party hard with his bros—drinking horns and boar’s heads abounding in his castle’s great hall. And that is where the story ends. We walk with the knight through his struggles and leave him as his narrative reaches an euphoric pitch.

But what happens next?

What does the hero do when his bros are gone and his beloved is embroidering something in the solarium?

I’d like to think that he stays in bed, buries his face in his pillow, and thanks God for the momentary reprieve from life’s quests, riddles, and dragons. And in the silence, he finds the strength to get up again

 

Happy Badass Librarian Day!

14 Wednesday May 2014

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Today is Badass Librarian Day. And since I’m a librarian, I’ve enjoyed being thanked for my badassness throughout the day. All this love got me thinking about the many ways being a librarian is, indeed, a pretty badass occupation:

1. You get to help people find shit. Like a boss. Well noted on lol my thesis.

2. Collaboration? With Artists? Patrons? Scholars? Other Librarians? We love it so hard.

3. Why yes, cardigans, piercings, tweeds, and tattoos do go together. Thank goodness the librarians of the Rhode Island Library Association helped us all to see the light with their “Librarians and Tattoos” Calendar!

No tattoos for me, though (Yet. Sometimes, I fantasize about getting strands of blue Celtic knots on the top of my right foot). But like any good Yalie, I’m rather partial to my pearl set. You know—necklace, bracelet, earrings…and nose stud.

4. We’re super into knowledge (and literacy) for all.

5. We stage creative protests. Remember this awesome campaign masterminded by the librarians of Troy, Michigan, a few years ago? Even today, watching their YouTube video gives me glee!

So, Huzzah for being a (badass) librarian!

Opposite Sides of the Same Coin: Writing and Music

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

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I have so many long, high-stakes writing projects due in the next few weeks. So, after work, I come home, get out my laptop, and type towards what feels like a ridiculously large word count. As I write, I usually listen to music—The Shin’s Oh, Inverted World, Telemann’s Pastorelle en Musique, and Dvorak’s Requiem seem to be my most intimate tonal companions at the moment. Of course, these familiar songs and movements remind me of my dear musician friends:  Lovely people I cannot actually talk to right now, because I have to not suck as a writer.

Yet, I feel their presence as I write. My musician friends are some of the deepest delights of my life. I love them for their kindness, their sensitivity, and above all, their patience. They gamely tolerate me, singing in their choirs, attending their premiers, and gracelessly trying to discuss music theory with them. They are the people from my inner circle who get my quiet, shy, inner life the best, understanding what makes me tick as a creator of stories.

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One of my closest friends, an excellent musician and a profound writer in her own right, describes musicians and writers as opposite sides of the same coin. I get that. Especially now that I am spending most of my free time in front of a laptop. For me, music and prose are artistic expressions of sensual textures, technical excellence, and emotions. In order to produce something decent, you must mix these three things together in balanced, interesting ways. If you posses empathy and good technique, your job as a musician or writer becomes much easier. And, if you plan to read your work out loud, the sound and rhythm of words can have just as much of an impact on your audience as a beautifully sung aria.

Where they differ is in how they connect with others. Music is present, immediate. Writing, not so much. I can write in my room and have no idea what impact my work is making on others. In a music hall, there is instant gratification. You can watch the body language of the audience, wink at a friend, catch the eye of your teacher or director for affirmation. People influence your performance, whether you want them to or not. Another musician friend of mine put it well when he said:  “I have spent my entire life learning how to forget that I have an audience.” This experience of forgetting is not one that I live out as I “perform” the task of writing. Instead, I spend most of my time remembering that I have an audience.  Being tweeted and quoted by strangers helps this process—but, I still am surprised when the creations of my private inner life become public.

All I need to create is me and my laptop. And, I cannot get reassuring gazes from my laptop. Its screen simply mirrors me: my emotions, my fears, my mistakes, and my hopes for myself and my life with others, as I play with words and fight grammar.

 

On Bobbed Hair and Freedom

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Fashion, Feminism, Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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Image courtesy of: Lillian Goes Vintage

As the days begin to get warmer and we begin to anticipate spring, I get to anticipate something else, just as lively, just as youthful: bobbing my hair.

After work, I shall happily walk to my downtown salon where my stylist will greet me with a hug and a smile. It will be under her loving and creative eye that my thick, wavy locks will become straight and precisely angular. Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

I used to have long hair as a teenager. Like really, really, long hair. All the way down to my waist. It took forever to wash and dry every morning because it was so thick—I’d spend at least an hour on its upkeep everyday. And, in order to tame its long, wild waviness, I spent a lot of my allowance and summer job money on hair products and blow dryers.

But, when I bobbed my hair in my early twenties, something wonderful happened: My hair regiment became both luxurious and speedy.

Now, I could justify buying expensive hair products. A twenty dollar bottle of shampoo would last me months rather than weeks. And, if I’d let my bob air-dry with a little bit of leave-in conditioner, I could fill up my mornings with new activities. That hour I used to spend washing and drying my hair I currently spend on doing household chores and writing. Both activities are much more sanity-inducing and soul-nurturing than standing in front of a mirror, blasting my head with hot air, ever was.

Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

 

I must confess that wearing my hair in a bob makes me feel like a rebel. Though, given this haircut’s legacy, I think that I have every right to feel a bit daring when there is more of my hair on the salon floor than on my head. Did you know that in the 1920s bobbed hair was met with raised eyebrows and shock? Young women who undertook the cut were considered unladylike upstarts by America’s then older generations. Simply by shedding those extra layers of tresses, young women began to give themselves permission to take new, individual risks in their daily lives. Risks that worried the conformist, virtuous group-think of those who came of age in the mid to late Nineteenth Century.

My favorite contemporary example of this courageous personal daring occurs in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Bernice, a pretty, but timid and dull Midwestern girl, visits her lively East Coast cousin, Marjorie. To help her overcome her dullness (and give herself something to do), Marjorie teaches Bernice how to flirt with rich, Ivy League boys, an action that costs Marjorie her own popularity. To regain her status as alpha female, Marjorie then emotionally blackmails Bernice into getting her hair bobbed—right before the young women attend a ball at the home of a staunch anti-bob society family! So, what does timid, dull Bernice do in return? Not what you’d expect. Her short hair gives her the freedom and the courage to enact revenge on her catty cousin in a rather fitting way: Marjorie also gets her hair bobbed before the ball…but, the cut happens with a pair of household shears and while she is asleep.

I think about Bernice a lot as as I rush around my house in the morning, barely keeping to schedule, but always deeply grateful for those few extra moments of writing time, or chore time, the a.m. hours continue to grant me. I think the older generations of the early Twentieth Century were right to fear the bob. It did (and does) give a rather particular freedom to women. The freedom to pursue personal development rather than a generic, societal beauty role. Though Amanda Palmer said it (or something very similar to it) about the maintenance of female body hair (or perhaps it was one of her fans who said it and she took up its mantle), I think it also applies to the bob: “The less time I spend on hair care, the more time I have for the Revolution.”

I couldn’t agree more. Even if my “Revolution” is an open space for morning writing and chores, my bobbed hair and I definitely have more time for it.