The Elisabeth Hegmann Interview (by Midnight Times)

The Elisabeth Hegmann Interview

Author of "Jeremy"

For the Spring 2007 MT Author Interview, JJ and I met online with Elisabeth Hegmann, recipient of the prestigious Chancellor's Scholar Award at IUPUI, as well as several other honors including Outstanding Film Studies Student, being elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges, and the Rebecca E. Pitts Fiction Award for a recently written story. Elisabeth has a diverse interest in literature and the performing arts, and is looking forward to finishing her English degree so she can spend more time working on a novel which is in the early stages of development. She provided some great insight into her story "Jeremy," as well as the fascinating trio of main characters involved. Time allowing and authors willing, Joseph and I will continue to publish a new author interview in each issue of the Midnight Times. Enjoy! -- Jay Manning, MT Editor

THE INTERVIEW

Joseph Collins ("JJ"): All right, Elisabeth, let's get started. Do you have any nicknames or do you prefer Elisabeth?

Elisabeth Hegmann: Elisabeth is fine. I never got any nicknames like Liz or Beth. I guess I was always really formal, so I'm "Elisabeth."

JJ: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What does your typical week day consist of?

Elisabeth: My typical week day is pretty boring right now--a lot of studying. But I'd say I'm ambitious, constantly learning, and in a state of constant change according to what I've learned. I'm a perfectionist, embarrassingly bent on getting things right. I demand a lot out of myself. Just a few days ago I learned I've been chosen for something called the Chancellor's Scholar Award, meaning (according to the powers that be) that I represent the highest academic achievement in my school's graduating class. But I never would have expected that in a million years!

JJ: That's awesome, what school do you attend and what degree are you working on?

Elisabeth: I'm at IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis), and I'm an English major. I thought they always gave those awards to sociologists or something, not aspiring writers. But I'm honored. Every test I've taken or paper I've written I always figured, "Oh well--I probably flunked!" So I was surprised, to say the least.

JJ: Well, that's awesome. Tell us a bit about your writing. When did you start and what are your long term writing goals?

Elisabeth: Oh gosh. I feel like it chose me more than I chose it. Like it was something people wanted me to do. People started telling me I should write when I was in 2nd grade. Later in high school people I barely knew would walk up and say, "You're a writer, right?" I thought they were crazy because I hated writing as much as most kids do. I guess I just seemed writerly or something. But I definitely have some major long term goals now--novels, graphic novels, operas. You name it!

JJ: You do have a penchant for the written word. Who were some of your writing inspirations? Who do you like?

Elisabeth: You know, my family members are all musicians and were involved with performance, theatre, directing, and those kinds of things. And I've tended to draw inspiration from the performing arts and visual forms--theatre, music, film, photography, and graphic novels. My tastes are so eclectic I stopped trying to make sense of them a long time ago. Lord of the Rings, Clint Eastwood, Vincente Minnelli films, Monty Python, Lawrence of Arabia. Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Kind of an odd mixed group!

JJ: Would you say you draw inspiration more from visual entertainment than things that are written?

Elisabeth: I do. I feel almost sort of guilty about that! I mean, I read of course, and there are many authors I admire. But my inspiration tends to come from other sources. I've always felt a kind of tension between what I most admire and what I'm best at. And yet I think that tension has worked to my advantage. I enjoy being able to cover a large area.

JJ: What is it about the other sources that you like? Just how things look, how they sound, the writing behind it? Some of the television programs I enjoy most are because of the dialogue, which is a credit to the writers, not so much the performers.

Elisabeth: I agree with you that the writing is definitely always an important aspect. For me, I think part of it is that my imagination tends to work visually. I'm not sure I really know, though! Nearly everything I like has an overarching "mythic" element, if you will, or else it looks at the world with a certain kind of whimsy or humor I admire. That's true of books and stories along with all the other forms I admire.

JJ: About your other writing projects, are you in the middle of any novels?

Elisabeth: I am, actually! I'm working on my first novel right now, maybe the first one in a projected series of three. I'm excited, but it's in the very early stages. I'd forgotten how much fun research can be. I'm currently researching Mediterranean islands and some crazy tower-like structures--issues that are crucial to the setting of the novel.

JJ: That sounds interesting. What is the goal behind your novel? What would you like to see happen for either yourself or the audience it's intended for?

Elisabeth: My main goal is always to stay true to the integrity of the material I'm working on, and through that to provide the reader with a valuable experience. And of course to continually increase my proficiency as a writer. In terms of this particular material, I've actually been kicking it around for many years, and I just hope it "works"! I had wanted to write it as a graphic novel for a long time, but I finally decided I would write it as a regular novel. Anyway, so far so good.

JJ: How many short fiction stories would you say you've written in all?

Elisabeth: I'm embarrassed to tell you: not very many! I tend to be really efficient as a writer, but not very prolific. In other words, if I start a story, I will always see it through to a finished "product." But I just don't necessarily crank out that many. That may change when I get out of school.

Jay Manning: "Jeremy" was certainly efficient.

Elisabeth: Thanks! I did work hard to make "Jeremy" as tight as I could!

JJ: How many short stories would you say you average a year?

Elisabeth: In recent years, perhaps four.

JJ: Some authors propose that there's a primary theme that tends to unconsciously flow through a writer's body of work. Do you find there's a theme that runs through your stories, or do you feel all the works are disparate?

Elisabeth: There are definitely some main themes. I've also heard the opinion expressed that it's better for a writer not to think about what the main themes are in their own work. But it's kind of hard not to, you know? Some elements that pop up over and over in my work are isolation, motifs of imprisonment, crucibles that force characters together. Kind of some dark stuff.

JJ: I've noticed that as well. I subscribe to the theory that it's not a conscious decision. I think it says more about what's important to you inside than a conscious effort...though some deliberately put repeated themes in their work.

Elisabeth: I agree that it's not usually conscious. It just "is!" In my own experience, material just presents itself to me to be written, and to say no would be selfish.

Jay: A question about something you mentioned earlier: for the setting of your novel you said you are researching some "crazy tower-like structures" in the Mediterranean. Why is that a critical element?

Elisabeth: You know, this material I'm working on now, it kind of came floating up out of nowhere. I don't even remember how I decided on a tower being the central setting. But, towers have so many things they connote--imprisonment, isolation (two things I already mentioned earlier!), as well as things like forts, defense, and a lot of other meanings. I hope to exploit all of the meanings of towers in this material. But to start off, its main meaning is imprisonment. The working title of the project is "Maker’s Tower."

Jay: Could you provide a brief plot synopsis? Who is the main character?

Elisabeth: I wish I could, but it's in such early stages there's not much more to say. I'm just so excited that I'm getting the opportunity now that school's almost over to get back to some of these other projects that mean so much to me.

JJ: Alright, let's talk about your well-written piece, "Jeremy." First of all, what motivated you to pen it?

Elisabeth: I adapted it from a dream, and there I'm probably revealing more about my twisted psyche than I want to! I always feel like it's cheating to write a story from a dream. But that dream was really vivid and I wanted to capture its feeling. It was also written out of admiration for Romero's zombie films--I love the zombie film genre, including more recent entries like Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.

JJ: Your story was very short in terms of word count, but in retrospect it seems much longer. You were very efficient with your writing style. You packed a lot of punch into a small space.

Jay: I agree. A lot happens in only 1800 words.

JJ: Jay and I both feel that's the sign of a great writer. So did you have a secondary meaning behind any of the events in the story or was it more what you see is what you get?

Elisabeth: Thanks very much! You know, it's a strange story because it's all narrative summary--all in the narrator's "head." But it was the only way the story worked. When I tried to add other elements, like dialogue, it fell flat. I think the only reason it works is because it's so short. I suppose the story can be read as a metaphor for some of the sadder aspects of relationships. And I suppose you're right--in a short space her thoughts about Jeremy and herself are complex and confused, quite a lot packed in a little space. She thinks all along that she has empathy for Jeremy, but only at the end does she really get it.

Jay: In the story there's a third main character: the "Invisible Man." Why add that aspect?

Elisabeth: Right. The Invisible Man exists only as a character in the narrator's own mind. That aspect was what I struggled with most as I wrote the story--it's what changed the most through the drafts. Earlier drafts had almost a "happy ending," with her ending up with the Invisible Man. But the story only began to work when it became, frankly, darker and more cynical, and she realizes the Invisible Man for the hoax that he is, and Jeremy as . . . well, whatever she realizes about him. That's the reader's business, not mine!

Jay: I felt that the Invisible Man provided a critical balance--the narrator seems to have the idea that somehow this other mystery man is going to help her escape the situation, but he never shows up in reality. There's really a lot of symbolism going on with that whole scenario. So how much of the story came from the dream you had? Can you describe that more precisely? I've written a few stories that came from dreams myself, and I think that's an interesting aspect of "Jeremy," since you mention it.

Elisabeth: As I wrote the story, I hoped that it could be read on a lot of different symbolic levels. It's so "bare" it's nearly allegorical. Well, that dream, like most dreams, was mainly just a feeling and some images. I just dreamed that I was at a series of parties and that this rotting guy kept showing up. I wasn't freaked out or anything. He was some old friend of mine, and I was just slightly annoyed because he was rotting! There was some humor to it.

Jay: One can definitely read the story on different levels. I think it's easy to read it as a funny zombie story, but if you do that, you're missing a lot of the underlying elements. I also think that's pretty cool how the dream evolved into such an exceptional story. What I personally got out of it was not letting go of things. The narrator distances herself from Jeremy when she starts the story--"I don't think it had struck me until that moment that he had been interested in me in life"--but then it evolves into this whole ongoing situation where she can't break free of Jeremy, despite the fact that he's a pathetic, rotting corpse. The situation seems like a very familiar theme in regard to relationships. How much of that was intentional?

Elisabeth: When I get as close as I should be to the characters, they tell me their stories. I'm never aware at first of a lot of what the story is "doing." But once I start revising, I become more aware of those things, and I'm glad to hear that's what you got from the story, because that's definitely what I wanted to be the heart of it! And you know, I think humor helps provide some of that heart.

Jay: Yes. I agree.

JJ: Definitely. Alright, thank you so much for taking time out to meet with us Elisabeth. Do you have any special "plugs" that you'd like mentioned? Any last words to impart?

Elisabeth: I don't have any of my own, but I have some other arts events I'd like to plug. The first is the Indianapolis International Film Festival, April 25-May4 (www.indyfilmfest.org). Also, the 2007 River of Blues Music Festival at Muscatatuck Park in southeastern Indiana, May 12, 2007 (www.riverofblues.com). Tickets: 1-877-725-8849. The festival will feature The Elms, 650 North, The Early Evening, Don Pedigo, and others. I think it's so important to support local/regional arts and festivals, whether it's choirs, bands, filmmakers, poets, whatever.

Jay: Sounds great.

JJ: That's awesome. Well thank you so much for your story and for meeting with us today. We really enjoyed it. It was very nice to meet you.

Jay: Yes. Thanks a lot for submitting such a wonderful story and joining us for the author interview.

Elisabeth: Thanks so much for talking to me! So much appreciated! It was fun. Who knows, maybe soon I'll write something else you might like! Back to my binomial probabilities...

Jeremy

It’s true that after Jeremy died I hadn’t expected to see him again, yet I wasn’t altogether surprised when he showed up at the Woods’ party the day after his family had buried him.  He had always been so cheerfully stubborn, and it was easy to guess that he was just trying to make the best of things.  I stared at him as I sat at the kitchen table finishing off my drink.  He took a beer from the fridge, turned his whole body in my direction since his head wouldn’t move, and then stopped as if unsure whether he should approach me.  I don’t think it had struck me until that moment that he had been interested in me in life. He looked so lost that I waved to him in encouragement. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but it seemed the natural thing to do under the circumstances.

“I’m dead,” he told me sadly, and I turned away to hide a laugh.  I mean, was that the best line he could come up with? 

Then he came on.  Little mounds of earth clung to him, and it was evident he had clawed at his coffin – his hands were a bloody mess, the chewed nails now missing completely.

 “Claudia,” he said, reaching out stiff-armed and prodding me in the shoulder, and I think that was all he could manage, because his throat seized up for a while after that. 

As he greeted me, I looked around to see who had spotted him with me.  It wasn’t that people would be rude – on the contrary, they would smile and nod politely.  It was just that an understanding existed about this sort of thing.  An understanding as with old folks who smelled, or people with large warts, or women who grew beards.  

At times, Jeremy could be charming and a little funny, and in the past I had often accepted his company.  Maybe in my clumsy way I had given off a signal that I was more interested than I actually was. In any case, it was clear that he had come back to finish what we’d failed to ever start. 

That first night at the Woods’ he still looked fresh and was not much different than he had ever been. There was something a little strange in the way he moved, but that was all.  I wandered onto the patio, hoping that he wouldn’t come with me, but of course he did.  His throat unfroze, and we talked about nothing of striking interest – some people we had known in high school, what they were doing now.  The dullness of these subjects made me long to be rid of him. I was worried that he would try to follow me home, but near the end of the party I was relieved when instead he lurched through the garden hedge and out into the night.

#

Later I sat in the safety of my house contemplating what to do about Jeremy. At any other time, it wouldn’t have been so bad for him to be hanging around while I waited for him to rot back into the earth, but for the next few weeks I had plans every night. For many years at the start of each summer all of the couples on Longlane Road had hosted parties. Nearly everyone in the neighborhood attended and many people used the opportunity to look for a partner. It was an elaborate masquerade of slowly aging bodies, and I had always scorned such gatherings. But a few days ago I had received a letter from an admirer who called himself The Invisible Man. He instructed me to attend the parties and said he would manifest himself to me at one of them. I was entranced with the thought of him, but I wondered if he could love me now as I was accompanied everywhere by the slowly rotting Jeremy.

I climbed into bed as the sun came up and though I still held the note from the Invisible Man in my hand, I thought not of him but of Jeremy, and I felt ashamed of my suspicions toward him. Of course he’d had no intentions of following me home. He had always been polite, always a gentleman. Why did I suddenly suppose that he would become a lout or a rapist or a flesh eater?

#

The party the next night at the Chaneys’ passed in much the same way as the one at the Woods’ had. So did the party at the Romeros’ and the party at the Prices’. I would arrive and shortly thereafter I’d hear Jeremy at the door, his once sweet voice becoming thick with zombie phlegm. After the host or hostess let him in, there followed a discreet exodus of all guests within several feet of the entrance hall. Often I imagined that some voice I heard might have been the Invisible Man searching for me, but when I turned to look there was only Jeremy.

Night after night I retreated to secluded alcoves to drink cocktails and choke down hors d’oeuvres.  Night after night I waited in vain for the Invisible Man to show himself.  Jeremy was always by my side, droning on and on, a gargling death groan in my ear, and I tried to sink ever deeper into the alcoves so no one saw me with him.

Like anyone with an ounce of common sense and knowledge on the subject, I knew that I could simply blow Jeremy’s head off and that would be the end of it. After the first signs of rotting had appeared, I had almost been able to consider finishing him off. He seemed more revolting and less human, a creature that it might be appropriate to step on and squash. But I also knew he needed time to rot, just as most people in the midst of trying circumstances need time to heal. It was not his fault that his flesh was failing his will, nor could he be blamed for my inability to defeat my personal prejudices toward him.

On the fifth night after his return from the dead, Jeremy arrived at the Rottbergers’ and made an offhand comment about it being cold and sticky outside. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the weather or if he was making a self-deprecating joke about his own condition; since the previous night he had developed a covering of sticky, rancid film.

  I was becoming impatient with his nightly appearances.  I knew there was no future for us together, and that night at the Rottbergers’ the advanced state of his deterioration had become all too apparent.  A fold of skin hung loose from his arm, he smelled like rotten cat food, and a small section of his cheek was missing.  I felt a wicked urge to ask what kind of worms had eaten his face, what acid had he gargled with to make his voice sound like that, what sort of bacteria was it exactly that had advanced up his legs?  But instead I breathed slowly for a few moments, reminded myself that he meant no harm, and managed to smile.

I found an abandoned part of the garden where I could fantasize about the Invisible Man, Jeremy stalking along behind me. I longed for the companionship of the Invisible Man, the witty exchanges of dialogue I had imagined with him, the deep sharing of intellect and spirit that would take place once we had met. Though I had known from the beginning that I only had to wait until Jeremy decayed, I hadn’t understood how difficult the waiting would be. I told myself that the day couldn’t be too far away when the worms would overtake him completely. In the meantime, all I had to do was try to be kind just a little longer.

#

Several nights later at the Ashers’ house, all the skin sloughed off Jeremy’s right arm and fell to the floor. We looked at each other for a moment and then I pretended not to have noticed. Throughout the evening he had been so cheerful and upbeat, getting me drinks and making jokes. It was as though he thought of his condition as a cancer he might beat. But after the skin had fallen off, he seemed injured, taken aback. He was quiet after that. If there had been enough of him left, he would have cried.

He was like a sick animal with no understanding of what was happening to him, and while I looked forward to the day he would crumble and fall, I also dreaded it.  He was little more than a piece of meat even now, and it tortured me to think about his struggle as the flesh finally failed his will altogether.  After each party, he always told me he’d see me tomorrow. It was clear he would only realize there wouldn’t be a next time of seeing me when his body was so far returned to the earth that it couldn’t move any longer. Yet when I thought of this I had other fears.  Surely whatever was left of him at that point wouldn’t continue to crawl toward me. Would it?  I couldn’t bear to think of arms or fingers chasing after me and gamely trying to carry on conversations, determined to overcome all obstacles including no mouth or vocal apparatus whatsoever.

I tried to be more tolerant of Jeremy at the Ashers’ house because of his dejected mood. I didn’t want him to feel worse than he had to. I listened to his gargling speech, and yet my thoughts turned to my future with the Invisible Man.  I found I had no appetite, and took food off the Ashers’ trays just to be polite, then threw it away when no one was looking except Jeremy. He seemed concerned, and patted my shoulder with a bony, sticky hand.

Four days later at the Dustkills’ party Jeremy’s jaw fell off mid-sentence, and thereafter he was only able to make guttural sounds.  Party guests milled around the Dustkills’ landscaped pool while behind the hedges Jeremy growled and groaned at me lovingly, oblivious that half his face was missing. Still the Invisible Man failed to show himself.

#

When I arrived the next night at the Rippeys’ house Jeremy was not there. I thought perhaps the end had already come, but as I glanced out on the candle-lit terrace, I saw his torso crawling among the sweet peas and petunias.  His head was still attached, but not much else was.   I thought for a moment that I would pretend I hadn’t seen him.  But at least he was real. That was more than I could say for the Invisible Man. I got a drink at the bar and went to him in the chilly night with the forbearance that comes when we know the end is near. There would be no conversation, of course.  I sat there with him as the moon rose.  He seemed so bare. This was his love, laid out naked and rotting for me to see.  I had no jacket or I would have covered him.

“Manifesto” to John Kessel (October 8, 2007)

My Actual Statement of Purpose

Not that I was guilty of intentionally trying to deceive others when I applied to NC State; it’s myself that I’ve always been determined to deceive. This is more of a manifesto than an essay, per se. But I would rather err toward being too personal these days in order to offset what’s been wrong with my writing for the past ten years. That is, it hasn’t been personal for a long, long time. I’m extremely uncomfortable with this disjunction between story and self. Over the years I’ve justified it in a variety of ways, each of which probably has some truth to it: all creative work has some kind of value in it; I got awarded something for it or it got a good grade, so it must be okay; somebody found value in what I was writing, even if I didn’t. But I can’t go on forever not getting anything out of it. This truth must seem self-evident to most writers. Why would we go through the things we have to go through in order to write, only to write things we don’t care about? But the fact that I’ve possessed this disjunction for so long perhaps underscores how deep the problem is, that I’ve grown so used to it that I’ve refused to even fully recognize it, let alone stand up and fight for myself.

So in the name of standing up and fighting for myself, I would like to start at the beginning of the epic that is my life and take a look at what went wrong between myself and fantasy, which is the same as saying what went wrong between myself and writing. Some major themes will be isolation, shame, and self-doubt. There will be heroic deeds and cowardly betrayals (but no magic swords). And the eucatastrophe will be a collection of ideas to address fixing some of the issues. I’m not sure that qualifies as a happy ending, let alone anything to inspire wonder, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. 

I’ll start my story at a clichéd point – my decision to write at age fifteen. At that tender age, I never questioned for a second that I would write anything but fantasy. Nor did I think of it consciously as fantasy. I just wrote what felt natural, and it came out as something that would be put into the fantasy genre. I didn’t have enough access to the genre to be called a fan of it. I ran into a crisis with my decision right away, though it wasn’t a crisis of genre but of gender. Gender is an epic unto itself, but I’ll brush on it here, because as much as I’ve always hated the fact, there’s never been a moment of my life when gender was not an issue. The crisis was that, though there were quite a few female writers represented in my high school literature textbooks, I didn’t like any of them. I only liked the male writers. The result was that I quickly changed my mind, deciding I shouldn’t become a writer after all. My reasoning was that if women were lousy writers, if they only dirtied the art form that I loved so much, then I, a woman, would keep away from it so as not to debase it any further. Though my attitudes toward my own sex matured somewhat as I got older, this was not a conflict that I ever fully resolved to my satisfaction (even today, I’d say 90% of writers I admire are male, but at least I’ve found a few female ones I admire). After about six months I began writing again despite my grudge against my own sex, because I found I couldn’t be happy if I wasn’t doing it. But from the start, I was my own worst enemy. 

The crisis in gender bridged into a crisis of genre. When I was 16, I was asked by a talented artist (he’s gone on to do pretty successful work) to write his comic book.  I was actually so naïve that it wasn’t until years later that I realized that at least half his object had nothing to do with my talent but was to get me to go out with him. I became his girlfriend and wrote almost full time for about six months. He had a group of all-male friends who read fantasy, drew comic books, and played role-playing games. At that time and place, fantasy was exclusively a boys’ club. And while my boyfriend seemed happy enough with my writing, his friends seemed to find my role awkward, if not downright laughable. I remember that I felt deeply intimidated. I had no idea how to go about structuring such a complex story let alone how to script a comic book, and I was afraid to ask questions because I thought it would reveal a vulnerability and ignorance that would be laughed at and rejected. But because I failed to ask the questions, I didn’t end up with enough knowledge to know how to bring the vision into reality. The project stalled, the relationship ended. I lost months of work, and was heartbroken, not over the guy, but over the comic book. 

Related to this incident was a specific piece of self-doubt that plagues me still, which is what I think of as my “lack of inventiveness.” As a little girl, I always envied certain boys the way they played, spontaneously inventing hundreds of details, but I couldn’t seem to play like that. And in fantasy books I read, both as a child as well as later, I was so discouraged by the complex rollicking worlds I admired (The Scar by China Mieville is a fine example) that I gave up before I started. What I imagine tends to focus quietly on a very few locales with the sense of isolation I’ve always known. Further, any talent I have for insight is not anthropological but emotional and relationship-driven. I suppose one answer to this conundrum is that not all fantasy involves the kind of immensely detailed world building that intimidates me. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirlees seems to be a more “quiet,” self-contained world. Another answer might be that if I simply tried, it’s possible I could do it. For the comic book, I had managed to develop a complex mythology, though I ended up losing all my work. Hell, I probably could do it if I took seventeen years like Tolkien (longer, if you consider however much he developed even before that). Also, I might differentiate here: complex mythologies and complex details are not exactly the same thing. I’d probably have better luck with complex mythologies than complex details.

Through ages 17-18 I wrote a little collection of fantasy short stories; started several fantasy novels but didn’t have a clue how to structure them and abandoned each in turn; and decided against going to college to focus on writing and help in my family’s music business. Then I had a digression between 18-22 where I decided I should devote myself to a spiritual calling and duty to my fellow humans. I had not changed my mind about writing. In fact, I was devastated at giving it up. But I became convinced that I had higher obligations for a few years and that I was ethically bound to give up writing. Many of the fantasy writers I admired (and still admire) seem to have deep spiritual convictions through which they channel their work. I admire people who devote themselves to a good cause and high ideals and stick with them. Ultimately I ended up ashamed, caught between different worlds, not quite able to be in any of them. My unforgivable sin was that I was capable only of being what I was. That is, I couldn’t make myself stop wanting to write.  So, I turned back toward that path, though I no longer had any confidence that I could do it. Like many with deep spiritual convictions, my own emotions were turned up during those years of my life, distilled to an idealistic purity. I wonder if one reason I avoid the big, pure archetypal themes and emotions in fantasy is because they frighten me. During undergrad I retreated into ambiguity and cuteness in my fiction. It was an attempt to conform, but it was also a response to fears I didn’t want to face – like C.S. Lewis’s famous blurb about The Lord of the Rings, “beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.”

A lot happened during the ten year period after I went back to Indiana: I wrote an opera libretto; I read my father’s beloved copy of The Lord of the Rings for the first time (my only legacy from him); I turned back to writing prose; I earned a degree; I learned through a horrible experience on my undergraduate capstone project how not to tackle a fantasy novel.

But what really dominates that period is what didn’t happen. Basically, I hid for ten years. My own cowardice and timidity were happy to go into collusion with a situation of being overprotected, and the result was that nothing valuable developed in my life for ten years. Nothing grew. I only wrote one story during this period that I like (a fantasy story). Moreover, the goals I needed in my life, the events that would have helped me to move forward, didn’t happen – friends, marriage, children. And it has led to the ridiculous ongoing farce that this MFA and my life here in Raleigh are my first foray into any kind of independence. 

Fine, so I sabotaged my life. But why didn’t I at least do something about my writing at that time? I had plenty of opportunities, plenty of time. One answer is that it’s difficult for most people to be very productive when the majority of their life is broken. Another answer is that I did do something. I have multiple notebooks of extremely disorganized fantasy material from those years that I have to deal with one of these days. But I didn’t do nearly enough.

I think the most interesting reason goes back to something much deeper, way back to the very nature of imagination. I was one of those exceptionally introverted and introspective child with vivid, complex daydreams, definitely of a fantastic nature. And that was my favorite pastime. I called it “telling myself a story.” Around age four or five, I ventured to make this strange hobby known to my family and told them what some of the stories were about. But my mother reacted with strange looks, derisive laughter and such, and it became a point over which other family members made fun of me. They were quick to tell me that this was a temporary phase that fell into the category of “imaginary friends.” In essence, I got the message from my parents and from teachers that it was something abnormal to be ashamed of.  I wonder how many gifts, and how much natural joy we bash to the ground in the name of conforming, or making kids manageable, or selling the latest designer drug.

In any case, my “forbidden place” was also the source of my greatest joy, and to have been encouraged to use it, to develop it in harmony with my outer life, to direct it in some kind of outward pursuit, would have had much happier results for me in the long run, I think, than fighting against it and exiling it as an enemy. It’s striking to me that in his book Strategies of Fantasy, Attebery says that, “Dream, daydream, hallucination, and visionary states have all provided guidance for writers of fantasy” (7). Also, that “many fantasy writers describe the composition process as the cultivation of such states, in which the mind generates vivid and unexpected scenes which can then be assembled into narratives.” And according to C.S. Lewis, many of his books “began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures” (8). That all sounds awfully familiar to me, and if it’s good enough for C.S. Lewis, it’s good enough for me.

It was my own timidity and lack of integrity that allowed me to be railroaded, and it’s my own responsibility to fix things. The point is just that I quickly learned that the “forbidden place” was something abnormal to be ashamed of and to be hidden from all adults and all peers. I never spoke of it again and I directed it even further inward, looking on it as some kind of festering, malignant disease. My shame increased as I got older and it didn’t “go away,” didn’t pass as a “phase.” Remarkably, even after I decided I wanted to write, I thought creativity came from “someplace else” other than the source of where these thoughts came from. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I realized that the enormous “thing” I had been suppressing all my life was 90% of the source of my own imagination.

It’s hard trying to write while running on only 10%. Most of the time it results in no writing at all. But I’ve found it’s even harder learning how to access the 90% when it’s something you’ve been ashamed of all your life and have worked hard to suppress. This difficulty is one that I’ve already been working on for a few years now. I think it’s the primal source of the disjunction I talked about in the first paragraph. It’s a disjunction within myself that causes the majority of my creative life to remain without expression. But I think it can be healed through thoughtful reflection and through the writing process itself. I think of it as building a bridge. In recent years I have reclaimed perhaps another 20% from the “forbidden place,” putting me now at about 70/30. A good goal for the work that I do here would be, I think, to get to at least 50/50; that is, to write work that reaches toward a fuller expression of fantasy. I would go for 100%, except that I don’t think that’s realistic. I don’t have the maturity, either emotionally or technically, to get there yet. 

Having brought my story up to the present, now comes the part where I try to learn from it. I see that a common thread that runs through it is shame over a variety of failures: failing to be male, failing to know enough about fantasy, failing to be bold, failing to be inventive, failing my own conscience, failing to establish a successful life, failing to be a normal child, failing to have enough integrity. And a lot of these failures turned into vicious circles. For example, the older I got, the more ashamed I was that I didn’t write the way I wanted to, and so the less I tried. The most basic answer I have for myself in regards to my many issues of shame and fear is: Tough. Get over it. The problem with a vicious circle is that there isn’t any way to stop it except to simply act, to break out of it no matter how difficult or painful. And truthfully, I think these fears get blown out of proportion the longer they’re maintained. The first story I workshopped this semester incorporated some fantastic elements, and in most respects it was a pretty silly story. But everyone was very nice about it, and some liked it. They didn’t bite my head off and drink my blood, or anything like that.  

Isolation is another common element throughout my life (and above I didn’t even mention other events like a long childhood illness that tended to isolate me, and the death of my father when I was ten). But though my lifelong isolation may be a problem, I think it’s also a solution. Once, in an undergrad class, my instructor Jim Powell mentioned strengths and weaknesses as two edges of the same blade. I’ve felt for a long time that if isolation has contributed to my weakness, then it also plays a strong part in my writing.  In a sense, it must; I can’t become a completely different person.

Beyond that, here are a few more ideas that occur to me, not intended as a rigorous plan, but as some jumping off points:

1. Often to examine a demon or a ghost under a bright light is to cause it to vanish.  In other words, simply to recognize some of the problems may be enough to exorcise them without any other fixes. In fact, while writing this, a greater number of fantastic elements wiggled into my fiction on their own accord, apparently as a result of just having acknowledged the issues.

2. Surround myself with people who encourage me and help me to be productive and independent. Even if I’m coming from a ten-year period of mostly wandering in the desert, I’m surrounded by friendly people in the program here, so it would seem I’ve taken a step in the right direction.

3. As I’ve already said, be brave enough to test whether or not I can be a little inventive, and patiently work toward drawing from the “forbidden place.” There’s one simple word that sums up what I’m going for: integrity.

4. Resign myself to the fact that I may not be able to write work that I like, no matter how hard I try. Because of gender and many other factors, what I’m capable of writing may be different from the writers and work I admire, from what I wish I could write. However, I think the gap can at least be narrowed.

5. It might help force me to write fantasy if I also acknowledge that I have no choice but to write it. As I read the more, well, normal fiction of my compatriots, it strikes me that I seem to lack almost all of the ordinary experiences of life. I still hope to gain some of those experiences, but at the moment, the bizarre is all I know.

6. Fix my life. If the likes of Tolkien, Lewis and Gene Wolfe had faith, hope, and love in their lives, and the greatest of these is love, and I have none of them, where exactly does that leave me? I’m not sure what the answer is, but it’s not pretty, let alone any beauty that cuts and burns. Fixing my life is a tall order, and it will be a slow process. At the beginning of Gene Wolfe’s The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian brings the dead soldier/Jonas back to life, and reflects on how difficult the experience must be. The soldier comes back in slow stages, at last managing some death rattles and groaning. I’d say that’s about where I’m at in the process. But that’s not to say that I can’t do good writing in the meantime.

7. I’ve always possessed an enormous number of stories (from the “forbidden place”) with no structure or vessel to put them in. The challenge is to be true to those stories and ruthlessly practical at the same time. That is, to find a form that makes them useful and valuable to a group of readers. What I have failed to do all my life is gather enough knowledge of genre, craft, etc., to form a vessel. I sense being close to a major breakthrough, but it’s still just out of grasp. It’s necessary then to do what I can to grow tall enough to reach it. As Tolkien recently reminded me in “On Fairy Stories,” one can consciously think about one’s principles and goals in writing and formulate an approach. I need to deliberately analyze what I like and don’t like in a variety of books within the fantasy genre and without, decide what to borrow for my own writing and what to banish. A lot of the contradictions have to be resolved through the constant accidents of the writing process itself.

   This concludes my manifesto and my list of commitments. Now to see if I can keep them. 

Letter to Jill McCorkle at the Start of My MFA (Sept. 5, 2007)

Dear Jill,

I wish I knew something more specific about my current strengths and weaknesses, but I haven’t written anything for almost a year.  I guess I’ll find out soon in workshop (and probably wish I hadn’t).  I can only put vague labels on what I want to accomplish.  I want to be useful.  I want to contribute something.  I don’t consider myself a “literary” writer by any stretch of the imagination, and am surprised to find myself here.  I’m just here to learn whatever I can about myself, about writing, about others, and to improve my ability to help others.  It’s a pretty open-ended proposition.  More than anything, moving to North Carolina to get an MFA was part of a larger and very necessary lifestyle shift for me.  Even if I do poorly at this, it will still be a success if I become a better person in any way.

After four years of being an undergrad hypocrite, one of my goals is to be more honest.  It’s hard in this world to have complete integrity, but I would be happy to at least become less of a hypocrite and state some of my actual goals instead of a bunch of pretended goals that “sound good.”

My writing background: I started when I was 14, and it was encouraged because I’m from a family of musicians and English teachers. I had the opportunity to write a comic book with a talented artist when I was 16. I flubbed it. I’d still like to write a comic book one day. I wrote a little collection of short stories at 17 and tried to start a novel. I lived in NYC between the ages of 18-22 and didn’t write at all. After losing that time, I went back to Indiana and wrote a libretto at the urging of my best friend, a composer. Our show was workshopped and performed by a local theater group. It was kind of bad, but showed promise. Then I did my undergrad work at IUPUI, where I got a few short stories written and a few published, and they gave me a couple of awards, God help them. 

I’ve just spent four years writing things I don’t care about. For example, the last story I wrote that won one of the IUPUI fiction awards, I designed to win an award. Frankenstein-like, I pieced together elements I knew the judges would be looking for.   And it won. And I absolutely hate how cynical that is. I don’t like the story. To be frank, I also don’t like the stories that got me into the program here. It’s just that they were all I had.  They weren’t what I wanted to write. What I would like to do for this workshop (and for my two years in the program) is to write work that I at least half-care about. I’m not sure that full-caring is possible for me. But half-caring would be a big improvement, and improvement is, I think, what we’re looking for.

Other miscellaneous things about my writing: I guess the way I sometimes describe my writing is that it’s barely holding on to reality. My story concepts are rarely subtle, usually bold and dramatic. I think one day I might make a good writer of adolescent lit.  I’m drawn toward the fantasy/sci-fi genre, but I can’t seem to find my place in it. I’m not at all prolific. I like my stories clean and simple, with clean and simple language. Devices and fancy tricks don’t interest me.  I don’t like clever phrases or insightful observations. To take it a step further, I don’t like words and language. And I want to keep it that way.  I used to love words back when I was in high school. But something happened in NY.  I became angry with words, and I believe it’s better that way. I think tension is more productive than complacency, and less insulting to all concerned.

I only like the most direct way I can find to tell a story. I like very straightforward forms, mainstream forms, classical forms. I’m not an innovator or an inventor or even an experimenter. But I’m smart enough to know I at least have to pay attention to what other people are doing and learn from it. My current tentative agenda is to write at least two very different ghost stories for this workshop (and one other story about who knows what). I’ve never written a ghost story, and it’s a challenge that interests me for some reason. Of course, I’m willing to do something different if I get tired of it, or if it doesn’t work out.

I have very little background in lit.  Given a choice, I’d read classics (like the 25-book required reading list for the MFA program) and comic books/graphic novels with some sci-fi and fantasy thrown in. Beyond that, I’m not much of a reader. I can’t seem to get into it. However, I do like engaging with the work of someone I know to see if I can encourage them with it in any way.

One thing I learned in undergrad is that I’m not very good at criticism, but I’m good at enthusiasm and encouragement. And if it had to be an either/or proposition, I’m not unhappy with how things turned out. At IUPUI it seemed to me I met twenty people good at criticism for every one person good at enthusiasm and encouragement. I know that the most rewarding thing I’ve done in recent months was to show my excitement over the work of a massively talented 20-year-old back in Indiana (has made three movies, has just completed his first novel, has an ongoing comic book series). What I’m occasionally good at tends to occur one-on-one, or in writing. And ironically, I think I’ll do okay as a TA, because I tend to do fine as a mediator or if specifically put in a position of responsibility where I’m “given the floor.”

But I’m afraid I suck in workshop. Part of it is painful shyness and part of it is just that I’m terrible in a group dynamic. I’m not at all an articulate person or a flashy person or a confident person. I will probably (if past experience proves anything) get better as the semester goes along. Whatever strengths I have are essentially just in endurance, in never giving up. Definitely in the long run, never in beginnings. But for all I know, my strengths may only show up two years from now, when I’m finished. All I can say is that I’m doing the best I can with the challenges I’m faced with. As my father used to say, “Any landing you walk away from is a good one.”

I’m a bit terrified and overwhelmed by my course load this semester. My goals are to get grades good enough that I don’t lose my TAship, and to complete enough credit hours that next year I can be at my apartment often enough to have a dog again. If I can get a dog, I’ll be grounded again, and will have the benefit of being reminded daily of the very simple things that provide me with most of my joy. Those are the factors motivating my writing right now – terror and love.

 Sincerely, 

Elisabeth

The Line (2004)

I have a problem with the line.  I refuse to draw it.  I’m not denying that fantasy and reality have separate existences, nor am I denying that it’s a good idea to have a solid grasp on the difference between the two.  I’m only expressing personal distaste for the line.  This distaste for defining fantasy and reality in strict terms will undoubtedly have profound effects on my real life.  Some of these effects might be – and probably already have been – quite negative.  But my feelings about the line have nothing to do with my real life.  It’s my concern for maintaining a healthy relationship with the arts that makes me suspicious toward the line.

I realize it defies logic to put art before life.  But the problem for me is that art does in fact draw from life.  If I formed definite boundaries in all my thoughts, including those in my real life, it would affect my writing in ways that I don’t want.  If I were to define my life in an exact way, it would make my art exact in a way that I don’t want, in a way that I don’t choose.  And after all, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the line.  There are always a great number of artistic sorts who are unwilling to draw it.  It’s a naturally occurring phenomenon.  Maybe it has something to do with maintaining a balanced ratio in the artistic pool.  Some draw the line way up here, others way down there, and some refuse to draw it anywhere at all.  Somewhere out of all of this comes an eloquent – if not always coherent - expression of the art forms in their various facets.

In Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert expresses his opinion that the line has got to be drawn somewhere.  There is fantasy; and there is reality.  The line needs to be drawn more firmly between the two.  If it is not drawn, the ramifications are dramatic.  Disaster will ensue.  A beautiful woman will have affairs, ruin her family, and take her own life.  In this view, Romanticism is out of control.  It consumes everyone and everything that it touches. Romantics have to be saved, says Flaubert.  They are a liability and burden to their families, a menace to society. 

And yet, Madame Bovary is fiction. Every story necessarily makes the line blurry to a greater or lesser degree. And like all things that are reacting against something, Madame Bovary over-reacts.  Flaubert was trying to make a point, so he chose a dramatic way to do it.  Emma Bovary is supposedly drawn from real life, and from these sorts of out-of-control feelings.  But is she really?  She’s as silly a fictional creation as any Romantic heroine.  Perhaps things were more dramatic and miserable than I realize in France in the 19th century, but Madame Bovary’s struggle with the line seems like a rather extreme case.  Not one in a million goes mad and commits suicide while grappling with the line, just as not one in a million people who play role-playing games go psychotic and chop up their friends with a battle ax, as some conservative groups would like people to believe.  Refusing to draw the line doesn’t necessarily create a cruel, superficial, reckless person.  Emma Bovary is just one portrayal of what could happen.  But her example – a fictional example, no less - is blown up so large, it’s made to seem like some kind of ultimate portrayal.

I think a more accurate description of the struggle with the line would be Thoreau’s “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  And the line, of course, isn’t so much of an actual line.  It’s probably more like a Dead Letter Office, as in Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” where many attempts are made to reach, without ever achieving the aim.  Quiet desperation is the result.

In one of my own stories, a character named Dobbs is trying to reach through music to find what lies beyond. As I wrote the story, I considered that I was just trying to describe what it feels like to listen to a Romantic composer, specifically Robert Schumann.  But one day while listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, I realized that Dobbs’s fevered attempts to reach into the voids of Schumann’s music are actually my own efforts.   Bach’s music – and Baroque music in general – has no such voids.  Instead, it’s driven by a dynamic tension – a kind of tension that I deeply admire.  This tension – this line – in Baroque music comes from man, feet firmly planted on the ground, reaching for the eternal.  There is a line there – man in the clay, God in the heavens - and it makes a beautiful tension.  Romantic music (and Romanticism in general), on the other hand, has something unhinged about it, something dangerous.  Romanticism didn’t merely dabble with the line a bit, but attempted to erase it altogether. The line is not drawn in Romanticism.  There is still the reaching for the eternal, but feet are no longer planted on the ground.  Instead, it’s like soaring at great heights. It’s dizzying. And the tension there is not a taut, dynamic tension as in the Baroque.  The tension comes from wondering how far you can reach into the void, wondering if you can go all the way, and what will happen to you if you do.  It’s not quite certain whether it’s very good or very bad. 

All of this poses an interesting dilemma for me on a personal level.  I deeply admire dynamic tension, but I refuse to draw the line.  Is there any way to have dynamic tension while at the same time refusing to draw the line?  Can I be pragmatic in one realm while reaching into a void in another? 

I think the answer might lie in irony, if irony is defined as more than one consciousness existing in the same space at the same time.  That’s a paradox, but most answers that have ever made any sense to me were paradoxes.  If two consciousnesses can exist at once – as happens in irony – then one consciousness could remain grounded, and one could reach eternally at the same time, in both art and life.  The dynamic tension is between these points. Rather than the ignorant consciousness/informed consciousness of irony, the tension is between a grounded consciousness/infinite consciousness, with no absolutely defined lines.  I think this kind of dynamic tension must underlie a lot of modern literature, including the fantasy genre, when the fantasy genre is actually good.  It’s a lot of what makes The Lord of the Rings work.   

I’ve always refused to draw the line.  I have always insisted that if I can imagine something, it can somehow exist.  It has nothing to do with logic.  I just insist.  My mother insists, with equal conviction, that there is only one possibility of existence – for example, that loneliness is the only possible state of being.  I argue with her not because I have any evidence to the contrary, but on the grounds that I refuse to accept any lines.  If something is impossible in the human condition, and yet I, in the confines of the human condition, can imagine it, then why shouldn’t I at least try to portray it?  If this dynamic tension between the imagined and the real exists in the most inward part of the human condition – within one’s mind — then it seems an outward portrayal of this tension is only logical and natural.   My earliest memories as a very young child are lying in my crib, playing with my feet, making up very simple stories, and imagining feelings and things that I couldn’t experience in reality.  To fail to convey the possibilities of those experiences onto the page would, to me, defy logic.  If the tension exists in the very inward-most condition, then the tension must exist on an outward level, too.  Different kinds of consciousness must exist at the same time, eliminating the need for an exact line, and forming a dynamic tension that drives creation. 

There’s nothing unnatural or silly about this tension and the desire for the imagined – that is the human condition.  Reality by itself is not the human condition, which is what makes Madame Bovary a silly representation.  Accepting fantasy may be too simplistic, but completely rejecting it is also too simplistic. Absolute fantasy may not exist, but neither does absolute reality – at least not in my experience.  Reality when married to the infinite is the human condition, and the resultant tension pervades everything. And though I have a firm grasp on the difference between reality and fantasy, I refuse to draw a line.     

Cinephobia (2005)

Fear of music: melophobia.  Fear of poetry: metrophobia. Fear of books: bibliophobia. But in all my searching I can’t find anything about the fear of films. How could compilers of phobia lists overlook the abject terror brought on by Dumb and Dumber?  Books are frightening, too, but it’s easier to escape a book than a film. A book you can set down. Once eight dollars is forked over and your rear is seated in a theater, it’s hard to escape a film. You’re held captive, and sitting through until the bitter conclusion is inevitable.

While driving to the theater, I always wonder whether I really want to see the movie du jour badly enough to go through all the expense and trouble. Once I pull into the parking lot I don’t immediately enter the theater.  I sit in the car for ten minutes, engaged in a deep philosophical soliloquy worthy of Hamlet. Up until the moment I buy my ticket, I still consider turning around and walking out. The ticket purchase is the point of no return. Then, and only then, am I resigned to stay in my seat and suffer through the ordeal. But even as the opening credits start, I wrestle with unwieldy existential questions, degenerating into nihilism: “Does it have any meaning?” I ask myself. “It’s only a string of images after all. It has no purpose. I have no purpose sitting here, do I? I have no meaning.”

Cripes, all this doubt and turmoil can’t stem merely from high box office prices and two hours of my life lost to a potentially bad movie. It can only come from some kind of fear. An irrational fear, right?  What could possibly happen as a result of watching a harmless little flick? 

 Well, first of all, there’s a whole group of risks associated with failing to connect with the movie, with your fellow moviegoers in the theater, with the cinematic collective unconscious.  Hating a film that was loved by all the critics and the entire population of the United States can be quite embarrassing, like walking around a Star Trek convention without any Klingon gear. Somehow this is more traumatic than liking a film that the critics panned. That phenomenon has always had an aura of populist “cool.” But you really begin to question your instincts when everyone except you was impressed. Though I’m not anti-movie musical, I never did understand what everyone saw in Chicago. I thought it made more sense left on the stage. And my experience with an indie film called Primer was especially jarring. A friend and I had gone to see it because of the nearly universal rave reviews from the critics. Neither of us are total slouches in the IQ department, but we left the movie so confounded by the convoluted plot that we sat in the car for a long time just shaking our heads and making strange squawking noises of disbelief. We double checked the reviews to make sure we hadn’t accidentally read the wrong ones. We hadn’t. That night I doubted both my intellectual powers and my understanding of my fellow film-watching creatures. A truly demoralizing failure to connect.

But matters could be worse: one can fail to connect with what even makes a film a film. I found this out after taking several courses for a minor in film studies. “Not to stick Elisabeth in a category,” said my professor one day, “but what she’s saying about High Noon reveals a literary sensibility, not a cinematic sensibility.” There I sat in the dark, mostly empty auditorium, excluded from the universe of film with my lousy literary sensibility. Take and shove my damn literary sensibility, I wanted to tell him. I want to connect instead with this mysterious and magical phenomenon known as the cinema.  

Though connection failures are distressing, I think most of the worst risks of cinephobia are associated with successful connection with a film. Usually the movies I love most are the movies that repel me the most. As a result, in the past, I often bought the movies I loved on DVD and then never watched them. Once seated in a theater, money paid, there’s little way to escape the experience without looking foolish. But at home there are a thousand ready excuses not to watch a movie. Sometimes in years past, I spent an embarrassingly large percentage of my tiny income on DVDs, only to opt instead for the thrilling Friday night entertainment of doing the laundry and reorganizing my desk.

Successful connection can result in a certain kind of unwanted, or at least unbidden, inspiration. Once inspired, one has to go through the terror of being roused out of complacency toward awareness and action. I guess for some cinephobiacs, this kind of stimulation might come from political films or documentaries. But being the romantic that I am, I get motivated by big, sweeping epics with mythic themes. I recall watching Lawrence of Arabia for the first time around age fifteen. Afterwards, I stood in my backyard in small town southern Indiana, fists clenched, staring straight ahead, eyes glazed, mind on fire with the ambition to do something noble, all while chlorinating the swimming pool. I got some chlorine on my jeans and had to hurry into the house to wash it off. My brush with greatness had been foiled again.

Suffering from overwhelmed senses sometimes results from successful connection with a film. It’s a kind of over-connection and is a fairly plausible fear since it even has concrete and measurable physical effects. I often leave movie theaters with a headache from eye strain, or from being browbeaten by the digital audio. I left in that condition after Batman Begins, a virtuoso movie which was essentially about fear, and which used arhythmic visuals and a grating soundtrack to create a sense of discomfort and paranoia. It worked. After about an hour of gunfire, screaming, and fists hitting batsuits, I went to the bathroom just to massage my temples and have a break from the assault on my senses. By mistake I walked back into a different theater with a later showing, and experienced a nightmarish repeat of scenes I’d already had to suffer through once. 

Though obviously the sound advances of recent years are a great leap forward, and most moviegoers (including me) are thrilled about it, I seem to be a little high strung.  It’s like putting headphones on a Chihuahua and turning the volume up all the way. After awhile I’m physically exhausted by the sound. Then I just feel embarrassed and wimpy, like going to the movies should be some kind of gladiatorial feat of derring-do and I deserve to be annihilated for my lack of fortitude. Though I respect digital perfection and a good sound design, I’m happier sometimes to have lower quality in order to simply relax. That’s when I decide to go to a comfortably primitive drive-in with its distant screen and its sound filtered through viewers’ car radios.

Another well-known type of over-connection is the fear of losing oneself in the gulf of a work of art. I rarely cry as a result of life, but I cry very often in response to movies or books. My emotions run the whole gamut, from grief, to powerful desire, to utter outrage. Depending on the nature of a movie, I sometimes leave emotionally exhausted. And when I achieve especially successful connection, an empty feeling inevitably takes hold when the movie is over. I don’t need to elaborate on this kind of post-coital emptiness. We all know what it feels like to wake up from the dream.

Delving inwardly a little deeper, a movie may also have a powerful and anarchic effect on one’s inner creative life. Watching a film is not a passive experience. I become the experience, if the experience has won me over completely. And if I give myself over to it completely, I don’t know how much of my old self I’m ever going to get back. There may be a coup. A new actor that I find provocative might throw out an old character in my head or institute himself as the inspiration for a new character. A director may present a story so vividly that it establishes an entirely new paradigm that I feel compelled to build on for months or years. Or a thoughtfully explored idea may cause me to wrestle with, and try to answer, question after unanswerable question. While this upheaval is exciting, it’s also demanding and exhausting, and once it happens there’s no choice in the matter. I find that being moved to this degree is fairly rare, but as I prepare to enter a movie theater I always know it’s possible. When I come out again, my mind might have to work overtime and all my internal workings be rearranged.  Once I’ve left the theater, nothing may ever be the same again.

Though this last risk is particularly challenging for me, I experience all of the different aforementioned fears at different times. The type of risk depends on the film. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m an idiot because I didn’t understand a movie, and other times I’m terrified of being engulfed by the lead actor’s charisma. These are not rational fears, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re useless fears.

Even though he hadn’t seen Batman Begins, Spinoza once said that fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. I guess I’m always hoping for connection when I experience a movie – or any type of art – but fearing that the connection will be so successful I’ll get lost in it. Maybe fear, rather than pure appreciation, is my best homage to movies, my highest compliment, my acknowledgement of the worthy risks involved in the attempt to connect. After all, I desperately love film. There’s a lot of fear in love.

On Becoming a Wife (2005)

1. Miracles

In my early twenties, I was so naïve that I thought writing and marriage happened by magic.  After sweating out a few opera librettos I was disabused of my notions about writing, but I still expected marriage to come off in a flourish with flashes of light and sprays of glitter. I found dates on the internet, but always overwrote all my personal ads, probably coming off as desperate and silly. At any rate, I found myself going out with a lot of desperate and silly men.  In the midst of these charades, I met and became friends with Thomas Williams. Tom was a freelance writer/artist, twenty-five years my senior, married with two teenaged kids.  He revealed right away in our correspondence that he was still married and quite sincerely thought it would be ending soon.  But after a few months, he decided he wasn’t quite ready to scrap it after all. We continued to correspond about our respective writing projects, and occasionally met for coffee.   

After I had known Tom for about two years, he invited me on a trip to Arizona to explore the possibility of collaboration on a libretto, and I agreed at once. He would be attending a court reporters convention at the Arizona Golf Resort in Mesa and thought we could work in the hours he wasn’t at the convention.  At this point, Tom was someone I would consider sharing a room with, in separate beds, on a platonic basis.  He was paying for most of the trip.

Just the day before Tom called, I had pledged to accept whatever miracles the universe provided me with, and this seemed like the universe stepping forward in good faith. Tom’s offer involved writing, the chance to meet new people, and stimulating travel. 

 2. Romance

I had never been out west.  Though Tom flew, I decided to travel by train to get a sense of the land, to see it framed through the train window like a John Ford western.  Actually, I may have taken the train more because I don’t like to fly than for the view, but the John Ford version sounds more romantic.

After the train, I boarded a bus that would take me from Flagstaff to Phoenix Skyharbor Airport.  The man sitting in the seat next to me fell in love with me.  All right, not in love, but he was interested.  He was John, 30 years old, single.  I was Elisabeth, 26 years old, single.  I was a writer, I told him, and soon to be a full-time student, and I was excited, so excited about a bus ride that was like a journey from one alien world to another, the mountains and pine trees and snow of Flagstaff giving way to the desert and cacti and mesas of the Southwest, all within two hours, and who knew that such startling and miraculous transformations were possible in life?  John was in concrete and cement.  And I was “Wow, look at the colors in those mountains,” and “Gosh I know I’m talking in clichés but photos just don’t give you a sense of the hugeness of it do they?”

He wasn’t in love with me. He was in wonder at my wonder, in love with my sudden rush of love for everything around me. Under certain bizarre circumstances, being a gawking and unsophisticated tourist becomes attractive. John gave me his phone number and was more than happy to help me if I got lost in Phoenix.

Later I realized I should have called John, but I never did.  I hated to admit it, but I was pretty bored with the idea of concrete and cement. Still, I was encouraged by his attention.  If a guy could show interest in me in twenty minutes flat, then my soul mate might be just beyond the next mesa.

John’s encouragement had come at a good moment; his attention on the bus was wanted attention, but earlier, on the train, I had received unwanted attention from more predatory types of men.  Their advances were the sort that made some women into man-haters. After chatting casually with one man for all of five minutes I was offered an all-expenses-paid trip to London.  Later I struck up a five-minute acquaintanceship with another man and was promptly informed I would be spending the night with him in Flagstaff.  I retreated from the observation car back to the solitude of coach in the hopes that I would be forgotten before Flagstaff.  I was.  This guy’s penchant seemed to be blond women, and I was only one of many on the train. 

I didn’t know anything about traveling as a single woman.  I didn’t know the old trick of wearing a gold band on my left ring finger.  But after awhile I did have the sense to invent a fictional fiancé, based loosely on an old childhood friend, so that I could more convincingly render the details of the character:  “Yeah, I’m engaged.  I miss him so much, but he just couldn’t take the time to come with me on this trip. He’s really working hard in school right now . . . the wedding is set for June.”  

After a time, I was lonely and a bit scared.  That’s why I invented these fictions. And I guess I didn’t really understand the style of these men’s seductions. I was puzzled since I expected so strongly to stumble into an intense and romantic experience of love.  I still expected magic. 

 3. Becoming a Wife

Instead, I accidentally spent the next three days at the Arizona Golf Resort posing as Tom’s wife.  We had arrived at the resort late at night on a shuttle from the airport with a group of fellow convention goers.  I stepped out of the shuttle last, and as everyone looked on, I fell over my luggage, tripped down a few stairs and landed sideways. 

“Are you all right, Mrs. Williams?” a woman asked. Tom and I looked at each other, but he didn’t correct her.  I was still sitting dazed on the concrete.  Tom smiled at the woman and helped me up.

 4. The Reality of Phoenix

The Arizona Golf Resort turned out to be a cheery constructed community of container gardening, intoxicating orange blossoms and perfect sidewalks to walk on.  Very nice.  But neither Tom nor I had budgeted to rent a car. The reality of Phoenix is that without a car you are essentially imprisoned wherever you happen to be.  In our case, at the Arizona Golf Resort.

In Phoenix you are a Lilliputian in Gulliver’s world, little legs worn out before making it from the resort to the next strip mall. Or even across one of the many-laned roads for that matter. Trapped in Mesa, you have only a few choices: play golf, shop, eat, or walk.  If you’re broke and don’t play golf, the options become very limited indeed.  You will need to go for a lot of walks among the orange blossoms. 

Tom and I frequently chose to exercise the “eating” option. At lunchtime we sat in the dining room at a big table with others from the convention. “What do you do, Mrs. Williams?” they asked me.  “Do you like it here, Mrs. Williams?” Tom smiled at them and looked at me to see what I would say.  Since I couldn’t seem to think of any tactful way to get out of being Mrs. Williams, I answered their questions politely.     

Oh well, I thought. It was only for a few days, and I was always better at organizing intimate spaces than at traversing large ones anyway. With no place else to go, I soon set up housekeeping in our shared resort room.

5. How to be a Good Wife  (with advice from a 1950’s home economics textbook)

Have dinner ready.  Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal—on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

Every day Tom gets up very early to start the day’s activities at the convention. Since he’s a big eater I walk to a huge grocery store about half a mile from the resort. I pick up fresh fruit, cereal, milk, soup, and a few bagels. Well-dressed gray haired folks wave at me as I carry my groceries back to the resort. I read on the patio for awhile as men in plaid pants walk by with their golf clubs and say hello. Everyone in Mesa is talkative, helpful, smiling.  Tom comes back to see me during his lunch break.  We either go to the dining room, or else I put forth my humble culinary efforts in the kitchenette and we eat at a table with a striped umbrella out on the patio. 

Prepare yourself.  Take 15 minutes to rest so that you’ll be refreshed when he arrives.  Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair, and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may be in need of a lift.

After lunch, I take a nap.  I get up, touch up my makeup, make coffee, and take a walk in a nearby memorial park full of fountains. I read a guide to the area, find dozens of things I want to do, and conclude I can’t do any of them due to lack of transportation. I have the idea I could go swimming if I had a swimsuit. I go to every shop within walking distance.  They have every imaginable item except swimsuits. I go back to the memorial park. The dead have no advice on where to get a swimsuit. When Tom returns in the evening his boring day seems to be in need of a lift. I try to be gay and a little more interesting.   

Listen to him.  You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first. 

He talks for a long time. He tells me his marriage is still struggling, that there’s no love in it, no sex, no comfort. He just doesn’t know what to do about it.  

Make the evening his.  Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to be home and relax.

One night we go to happy hour at the resort bar and drink merlot. 

Another night we take in a movie and some beer and pizza. We trudge along on foot and ask a man in a truck for directions. He’s helpful in such an eager grinning way that it’s both endearing and funny. At the theatre after the movie, a complete stranger walks up to us, smiles, and says, “See ya!” As we wait outside for a cab we’re treated to the manager’s reviews of current movies as well as his cheerful Oscar predictions. 

We go to another movie and eat at a steakhouse. I drink Cosmopolitans, and Tom tells me about his daughter from his first marriage. He tells me about his current marriage again, how empty it is, how meaningless.  

The goal.  Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. 

Each afternoon the Chicana maid comes to the room and is overly polite and deferential, bowing her head and averting her eyes. She does the dishes and makes the beds. I begrudge her this, thinking it should be my job as a proper wife. 

I lock myself out of the room one day and try to wait for the maid to let me in, but she’s late. I walk to the desk to get another key. I forget and identify myself by my real name, not as Mrs. Williams. The lady at the desk asks whose name the room is in. I have to tell her Thomas Williams. 

Suddenly I’m not a wife anymore but a prostitute, a tawdry creature with a sugar daddy. The lady at the desk is overly polite and deferential, bowing her head and averting her eyes. She gives me another key. 

6. Diplomacy

“I have many wives,” Tom joked one day.

“I enjoy being part of a harem,” I joked back. And I did. I had fun playacting, and didn’t see it as degrading myself, at least not until the lady at the desk saw through the ruse. For a short while, I understood the allure of being a housewife. I felt secure within bounds I completely understood, and yet my time was free and autonomous – in a very limited kind of way. Not much work got done on the libretto Tom and I were supposedly collaborating on as I went about my wifely duties. Fortunately my little prison sentence lasted only a few days, unlike 1950’s housewives whose frustrated ambitions lasted a lifetime.

Both Tom and I had benefited from our arrangement. I was provided with food, drinks, and entertainment, and I had enjoyed taking care of Tom enough that I knew I still wanted to be a real wife someday, though only in an equal partnership. Tom had gotten to talk to a much younger woman every night as she took her hair down.

The only challenges came after my hair had come down and Tom tried to take the opportunity to consummate our imaginary marriage. He tried plying me with alcohol, not knowing that I always stay well in control of myself. 

“I can hardly keep from touching you,” he said the night after the merlot as his hands groped around. (Yes, he actually said that ridiculous line.) I smiled, changed the subject, and eventually he fell asleep.

“I’d better get ready for bed,” I said the night after the Cosmopolitans. (Yes, I actually said that ridiculous line.) His hand had been feeling its slow and methodical way up the inside of my leg. I thought about how good it felt and how much I wished he were someone else. I wanted a man to be touching me who I wanted to be touching me. I stood up and went into the bathroom with my toothpaste.

The next morning Tom stated his desires more explicitly. But diplomacy is one of my better skills, and I said no without his knowing I had said no. He left the resort on the shuttle, his marriage and sex life still a shambles but not feeling rejected or hurt.

We remained friends, and sometime after this trip his marriage began to improve.  It’s now a full, happy and satisfying marriage. “Things grow steadily better and better here at the Williams homestead,” he said in an email a few months ago. More happiness to him. I continue to date occasionally, but haven’t made any more friends that way. 

Roadkill (2005)

1. The clean up crew

Some people slam on the brakes or swerve, others don’t even slow down.  They know the limp animal will just bounce off the car. Bloody entrails and matted fur will stain the road for only a few days. The clean up crew - maggots, bacteria, vultures and other helpful workers – will take care of it.  After their services are performed, the roadkill will be nothing but flattened bones, a slight jolt as a wheel rolls over it.

We drive to connect in the Midwest.  We just have to.  Everything is so damned spread apart.  In order to get to anyone or anyplace, we have to climb in the car.  Most of us don’t mean to kill anything in the process.

When I lived in the east I didn’t have a car at all.  I went everywhere on foot, a method of transportation which may result in the deaths of a few ants but doesn’t threaten mammalian life.  Rats were a common sight, and sometimes the person I was walking with shrieked at them.  For me it was more a matter of nodding and saying hello.  We walked away, and the rats went on about their business, which is the business of a clean-up crew.  They clean up human trash, the things we leave for dead.

2. Cats

Domestic roadkill makes some people sadder than feral roadkill because it used to be someone’s pet.  I personally feel the same amount of sadness for both wild and feral roadkill, regardless of the human factor in the equation. 

Though cats are usually thought of as independent creatures, the truth is that they prefer to live in colonies or groups.  However, since they are lone hunters, they lack advanced communication skills. They don’t need them. 

A group of cats is called a clowder.  Males are toms.  Females are queens.       

3. Humans

I have very few female friends. All my life I’ve watched females go off in little groups, but I never developed an understanding of what this is all about or how to be involved in it.  Once I spent about a week researching how to intentionally cultivate female friendships, looking into online groups or organizations I could join. During this time a stray cat decided it loved me and moved in.  A female.  As I continued my research at the computer, a furry black and white arm began to reach in under the door, feeling around for me. 

4. Rabbits

I’ve never hit one, but many times I’ve seen them hopping in the road, uncertain which way to go to escape the danger.  They perform a mad, frantic dance.

5. Humans

I went to my first dance in junior high with a few other awkward girls.  For the first hour or so we flailed and writhed around to the music and had a lot of fun.  Deciding to dance our way over to the concessions stand was our mistake.  Ebony Harmon, popular and coordinated, covered her mouth and laughed at us while pointing us out to her own group of gracefully dancing friends.  Suddenly we were uncertain which way to go.  Soon we hurried home.

 6. Skunks

Skunks are unusual in the pantheon of roadkill because you can smell them before you see their corpses.  It’s like a final act of defiance.  I admire skunks. 

7. Dogs

Dogs are a sadder form of domestic roadkill to me than cats because we mow them down in spite of their trust in us. Though cats may like to live in clowders, dogs take it a step further and consider us humans an actual part of their group.

Unlike cats, dogs hunt in groups and have advanced communication skills.  A group of dogs is called a pack.  Females are bitches.  Males are dogs.   

8.  Humans           

In high school I went to my first rock concert with festival seating.  I trusted that when the doors opened there would be a surge of camaraderie, that the crowds would joyfully cooperate together in the run for their seats.  What really happened is a massive pack of adolescent boys in black concert T-shirts nearly ran over me.  I raced down an aisle in blind panic, the boys shoving me and hitting me from behind.  “Stupid Cow!” they yelled as I ran for my life.  “Fucking Pig!  Fat Whore!”

9. Raccoons

I hit one a few weeks ago.  I had no time to react at all.  I was traveling late at night, the only car on the highway.  The coon must have sensed the relative calm and thought it was safe to cross.  He darted directly into my path and looked up.  I had time to see his terror, and then he was dead.  For the next week, I had to commute by his corpse.  When he had finally deteriorated to the point I could no longer recognize him I felt immensely grateful toward the hardworking clean-up crew.

10. Squirrels

Not long ago, I made friends with a squirrel in Indianapolis.  Using almonds, macadamia nuts and pieces of dried apricot, I drew him toward me.  I realized right away I’d probably done something people would hate me for.  My mother has told me that when she lived in Indianapolis the squirrels were a nuisance.  They were so tame they came in people’s kitchens and tried to eat their food.  If my mom’s husband had a few free moments with nothing else to do, he stepped outside the backdoor of their house with an air rifle and shot squirrels.  Both my mom and her husband were struggling student musicians without much money for food, so they skinned the squirrels and ate them.  I worried I might have made my poor little friend so tame that he would wander into someone’s kitchen and be knocked off with an air rifle by a struggling musician. 

I know squirrels are supposed to be prosaic and uninteresting.  But I had never seen a squirrel close enough to consider how his gonads were arranged.  Squirrels all seem smooth bodied and genderless from a distance.  But there he was, standing on his hind legs in front of me, everything on display.  A little pervert flashing me in an island of trees in the city.

At first my friend kept his distance and I threw him nuts and pieces of fruit.  Some of these he buried for later.  Though he was very jittery, eventually he came up to me.  His little hand, if it can be called that, reached out and took a banana chip from my hand.  But after he had grasped it, I stupidly withdrew my hand by reflex.  He was startled by the movement and retreated several feet to begin contemplating me all over again.

 11. Birds

I hit a bird on the interstate.  The day was very gusty, and she was blown off her intended trajectory and into the path of my car.  She tried to pull up, but there was nothing either of us could do.  

12. Deer

People will go to great lengths to get their car stopped before hitting a deer since a deer won’t just bounce off.  A deer involves big dents, police, insurance, and sometimes a totaled car.  Several times I’ve seen cars get stopped in time before hitting a deer. Sometimes the car can’t move for awhile because the deer stands there just looking around, looking at the car, taking her time.  I admire deer. 

13. Humans

People are mad at most kinds of roadkill because there are too many of them, and that’s why they end up in front of our cars.  But of course one big reason there are so many of them is because our towns and suburbs scared away their predators. Predators are notoriously shy and fickle.  Build one too many housing developments and they’re off in a big huff.  Their erstwhile victims are more affable, which is why they now live with us comfortably in our suburbs.  They are the animals that don’t mind homogeneity.

14. Possums

He dashed out on a busy two-lane highway and danced for a few seconds like I’ve seen rabbits do.  Then, in an act of dramatic desperation, he decided to play dead. With cars zooming by him on both sides, he threw himself onto the median, fainting like a silent movie drama queen. God help him, it was all he knew to do in the midst of all that.  He didn’t know it was of no use, not there, not in that place.  My heart ached for him.