Boston 100 Word Story

 The Crossing

Route 9 on my way toward Northeastern. Sometimes it's a benign trip--paperwork. Trains, cars, ambulances jostle near Beth Israel. I accelerate past the Mission Bar. Or a red light halts me, a blessing. I see my Dad. I had stolen a wheelchair. Have you hefted a wheelchair across T-tracks through a deadly intersection with your father in your palms? He sipped water. I nursed iced-tea. After the diagnosis, he returned to Kansas with a fatal disease. Now I idle in my car; I can smile at our audacity. I can tell the story. The stark terror of his crossing.

A Necessary Fiction

Notes on reading eros: the bittersweet by anne carson

He seems to me equal to gods that man

who opposite you

sits and listens close

to your sweet speaking

and lovely laughing--oh it

puts the heart in my chest on wings

for when I look at you, a moment, then no speaking 

is left in me

no: tongue breaks, and thin

fire is racing under skin

and in eyes no sight and drumming

fills ears

and cold sweat holds me and shaking

grips me all, greener than grass

I am and dead--or almost

I seem to me.

Sappho, fragment 31

"It is a poem about the lover's mind in the act of constructing desire for itself."

"There are three points of transformation on a circuit of possible relationship, electrified by desire so that they touch not touching. Conjoined they are held apart. The third component plays a paradoxical role for it both connects and separates, marking that two are not one, irradiating the absence whose presence is demanded by eros. When the circuit-points connect, perception leaps. And something becomes visible. . . . The difference between what is and what could be is visible."

***

"A space must be maintained or desire ends."

As a sweet apple turns red on a high branch,

high on the highest branch and the applepickers

     forgot--

well, no they didn't forget--were not able to reach

. . .

Sappho, fragment 105a

"The poem is incomplete, perfectly."

". . . this poem acts out the experience of eros. . . . Sappho begins with a sweet apple and ends in infinite hunger. From her inchoate little poem we learn several thins about eros. The reach of desire is defined in action: beautiful (in its object), foiled (in its attempt), endless (in time)."

***

"Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, between 'I love you' and 'I love you too,' the absent presence of desire comes alive. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh and self between you and me. And it is only, suddenly, at the moment when I would dissolve that boundary, I realize I never can."

***

"Words do have edges. So do you."

"There is something uniquely convincing about the perceptions that occur to you when you are in love. The seem truer than other perceptions, and more truly your own, won from reality at personal cost. . . . All at once a self never known before, which now strikes you as the true one, is coming into focus. A gust of godlikeness may pass through you and for an instant a great many things look knowable, possible and present. Then the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you know see.Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual."

"Desire changes the lover. . . . The change gives him a glimpse of a self he never knew before."

***

"In writing, beauty prefers an edge."

***

"Let us superimpose on the question 'What does the lover want from love' the questions 'What does the reader want from reading? What is the writer's desire?' Novels are the answer."

***

"To create pleasure and pain at once is the novelist's aim."

"Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love."

***

"All lovers believe they are inventing love."

"The novelists who constructs this moment of emotional and cognitive interception is making love, and you are the object of his wooing."

***

"Written letters have the presence and authority of a third person, who is witness, judge and conduit of erotic charges. Letters are the mechanism of erotic paradox, at once connective and separative, painful and sweet. Letters construct the space of desire and kindle in those contradictory emotions that keep the lover alert to his own impasse. Letters arrest and complicate an existing two-term situation by conjuring a third person who is not literally there, making suddenly visible the difference between what is. . . . and what could be. . . . From within letters, Eros acts."

***

"As you perceive the edge of yourself at the moment of desire, as you perceive the edges of words from moment to moment in reading (or writing), you are stirred to reach beyond perceptible edges--toward something else, something not yet grasped. The unplucked apple, the beloved just out of touch, the meaning not quite attained, are desirable objects of knowledge. It is the enterprise of eros to keep them so."

***

"Sokrates' central argument, as he goes on to reevaluate madness, is that you keep your mind to yourself at the cost of closing out the gods. Truly good and indeed divine things are alive and active outside you and should be let in to work their changes. Such incursions formally instruct and enrich our lives in society; no prophet or healer or poet could practice his art if he did not lose his mind, Sokrates says (244a-45). Madness is the instrument of such intelligence. More to the point, erotic mania is a valuable thing in private life. It puts wings on your soul."

"When you fall in love you feel all sorts of sensations inside you, painful and pleasant at once: it is your wings sprouting (251-52). It is the beginning of what you are meant to be."

***

"In any act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other but also keeping visible their difference. It is an erotic space. . . . When the mind reaches out to know, the space of desire opens and a necessary fiction transpires."

What This Hutchinson Woman and Her Family Learned from the Syrian Migrants in Budapest

My essay as it appeared in the Hutchinson News:

http://www.hutchnews.com/news/what-this-hutchinson-women-and-her-family-learned-from-the/article_aa32ef44-feb6-5449-a6d9-9d0d1e936bd0.html

School started Sept. 1 in Budapest, but one of the most important lessons my kids will learn this year happened the night before.

My husband and I took my kids, ages 6 and 7, two metro stops down to see the migrants gathered at the Keleti Train Station. We had passed out oranges to the Syrians we found gathered there a few weeks ago as we boarded our train to visit Transylvania. We returned to the station this past Monday afternoon empty-handed to spend time walking among them.

The reality is that I am a migrant, too. I am an American living in Hungary. While I am here by choice and reside legally, the people we saw are trapped. They are not welcome here.

I didn't worry about taking the kids to see the squalid conditions at the majestic 19th-century station, nor did I wonder about our safety in a frantic crowd of refugees traveling with only what they carry and desperate to find a safe haven in Europe. When we passed through a few weeks prior, the refugees were a peaceful crowd. It was a sad campground set up in the modern corridor of the newly renovated metro station hallways.

That night, a few trains were allowed to leave for Germany, but shortly the entire station would be closed to all migrants and international train service suspended as Hungary struggled to create a safe environment for all passengers. Days later, they would start their march on foot toward Austria and Germany before Hungary shut down its border, forcing people to find another route to escape the violence of their homeland.

We were in a hurry then as we had flown in from the States the day before and wanted to make the overnight train to visit Grandma in Transylvania. I bought two shopping bags of oranges along with our snacks for the train, and we left in time to drop the oranges at the migration aid station.

Jet-lagged and cranky, we lugged our bags through the metro and toward Keleti station. When we arrived, however, we didn’t see the volunteers, who would soon be fully organized. Instead, I simply handed an orange to a family with small children. They smiled. I smiled. My kids, who had been reluctant about the idea, saw the exchange and reached for their own oranges to share.

It was my husband’s idea to leave the security of our neighborhood and return to the station the night before school started. It seemed impossible to go about my calm, ordered, privileged routine while hearing the stories of their suffering at the station.

My kids didn’t have much to say while we walked through the crowds, stepping over discarded blankets and filthy toys. Weaving a path around piles of belongings, we made our way to the central crowd. Volunteers passed out food. Another group had brought blankets and art supplies and sat, their laps filled with warm, eager little people happy to play and color even though they didn’t share a common language. A musician had set up and soon a crowd gathered to sing and move their bodies in the release of dance.

This is what I wanted my children to see: the refugee family, clutching only what they can carry, in a foreign land. This is deep down courage. This is what it means to be human. And our response to their plight defines us.

Later, we explained to the kids that these people were trapped at the station because the trains were not running to Germany. We said they had left their homes and all their belongings behind because of war and poverty. They wanted to find a safe home and a chance at a better life.

We were in awe of these people who had risked their lives to escape war. Their futures were uncertain and would be decided on the whim of which train might leave or which rumor they take as truth guiding them along their route.

The next day, my 6-year-old son, entering the first grade, came home from Keleti station and began work with some paper, scissors, tape and colored pencils. I was impressed with what he did. He had drawn a train, cut it out and taped it together using six sheets of paper. It was a long, beautiful train.

He told me he thought we should take it down to Keleti and give it to the kids there. He wanted to give them what they deserve, a chance to grow up in a safe place.



--Janet Kelley grew up in Hutchinson and lives with her family during the school year in Budapest, Hungary. She is a 1993 graduate of Trinity High School. Follow her on Twitter @hutchkelley5

#Hungary #Refugees #Keleti

Shit English Teachers Think About During the Summer

Thoughts on Harper Lee

GSaW is about Scout developing her individual moral consciousness, separate from her Father. The moment happens, but we are not given evidence of how she has really changed. I think Lee used that as the central storyline, the racial tensions are context. Yet by the time she finished TKM, she seems to set aside this feminist awakening and instead focuses entirely on the race issue. In part because she goes back to tell the story from Scout’s childhood.  But I also see that she in TKM actually embodies Scout’s awakening in GSaW and writes the story that demonstrates her feminism without having to explicitly use it as a plot device.  I know this collapses Lee into Scout, which may be unfair. In her case, as these are her only two extant works, it is certainly tempting.  

In any case, she had to write GSaW first. She had to write her way through Scout's (and her own?) awakening. And thus Lee found her power and her voice, which became the younger Scout and her ability to tell Lee's story about racism and the South.  

June Eighteenths

Brought to you by yet another external memory device, Facebook notifications. We are cyborgs.

**

June 18, 2014 

I had my first shot of espresso at the newly opened Mantra in Budapest.

June 18, 2012

It was Move-in Day at our new apartment in Budapest. It was a Tuesday. The forecast called for 90 degrees and 0% chance of rain. I wore red shoes, a yellow shirt, a white top, and a summer straw hat.

June 18, 2011

I brought my daughter to the emergency room at St. Janos Children’s hospital in Budapest. She had gashed her chin by falling off her bed onto a hard wooden floor, chin first.  She wore silver strappy shoes, a blue and yellow printed skirt, and a yellow shirt. She smiled for the camera. She had two large styes on her left eye, a bandage on her chin.

June 18, 2009
My midwife told me that I was positive for strep B and would require an IV at my second birth.  This was bad news. Then my husband walked into my consultation room with two freshly broken arms. He had been in a bicycle accident and rode himself to the doctor’s office.  This was really bad news.  Iza was seventeen months old and not yet walking. Leo was born on June 30.

Top Ten Books

I compiled this list in September, 2014 in response to a Facebook meme.  The idea was to list the first ten books and/or authors that came to mind and describe why they are important.  The books that came to mind (without the aid of my bookshelves) are those that are connected to a shared reading experience. 

I dug this out of my writing notes today because I just finished reading Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen, his memoir.  It prompted me to consider what episodes and texts in my life I might include in a memoir.  

Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter.  

This book was given to me by my Grandma Anna Mae Kelley as a Christmas present when I was around ten. 

John Grisham

Reading his thrillers in high school was one of the first times I got drawn into the excitement of waiting with a friend for the next book by an author. 

Stephen King

Reading anything by him when I was in high school was intense.  Again he created a little society of readers who dared to read him.  The experience of reading Gerald's Game in one night through the dawn was terrifying.  I didn't read him again until The Cell. 

The Places You Will Go by Dr. Seuss

This was a key book at my high school graduation and at my wedding. I loved rereading it recently and noticing how the difficulties of life are so vividly portrayed. 

Blindness by Jose Saramago

This is a hard book.  I like hard books.  And that scene on the balcony is worth the entire book. And I'm afraid of going blind.

The Red Tent By Anita Diamant

This book is on the list because of the foundational role it played in my book club.  The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd also makes the list for the same reason.

The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich

It is an epic tale of living in America as an immigrant.  It is a book I've found myself giving to people.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

It is a short book, yet it captured life in contemporary Japan and caught the imaginations of my classmates at Saint Mary's. 

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I am not even sure why/when I first read this.  Not even sure why it is on the list other than perhaps it was one of my first tastes of the modernist style.  And I once quoted it at length in a love letter.

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

This play became the heart of many relationships for me.

My Revolution: I am not a survivor, not yet.

I am a mother, a teacher, and a writer.

I am not a survivor of domestic abuse. 

I am not a survivor of sexual assault or rape.  At least not yet.

It is the “not yet” that I have grown up with.  That is the story I was told by my mother, and caring adults who wanted to keep me safe.  It is the only story I knew.

When I began working with V-Day and One Billion Rising, I heard many stories from survivors.  I am not a survivor, but I listened to their stories.  I became a witness.

And once you are a witness, you have a choice.  I choose to stand up for them.  I choose to stand against violence.  I choose a new story:  This is my revolution, a new story. 

Stand up! Shout it! Celebrate it! Write about it in your novels.  Write new song lyrics.  Include it in your paint.  Serve it with your evening meal. 

Tell this story:  you don’t have to live with the “not yet.”  You don’t have to accept the fear, the sadness, the anger, and the helplessness.  Whisper it into every child’s ear at bedtime:  You are loved.  Your body is holy.  We are beautiful creatures.  Whisper into your son’s ear:  You are loved.  Your body is holy.

1 in 3 women, 1 in 6 men are abused, assaulted in their lifetime.

Let’s take those numbers and bear witness to them.  Be in awe.  Be in shock.  And then do something:  Tell a new story.  Together we can bear witness and demand change.

I am not a survivor, not yet.  My children are not survivors, not ever.

-----written for One Billion Rising Revolution 2015

One Billion Rising Budapest: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Onebillionrising-Budapest/386519391435246?ref=br_tf

One Billion Rising One:  http://www.onebillionrising.org/

Secretions

The baby did not blink as creamy white milk thickened with stomach acid cascaded over her lips and down her bare stomach. The vomit coated her mother’s breast and fell onto the couch as she straightened her elbows. That was when the baby shrieked. She was dangling midair, naked, shivering in her own spit-up. She peed her diaper. Then she stopped crying. She always calmed down after a good pee. The sweet release of pressure in her stomach made her placid. Until the damp made her itch. Then she simply whimpered. Relief of one kind led to discomfort of another degree. And now her stomach, a greedy walnut, echoed across its emptiness. A groan only she could feel. A groan it would take years to put into words.


The mother set her down on the changing table and dangled a toy within her grasp. They both had the motions memorized now: the wet cloth diaper removed and tossed in the diaper bucket, the lid quickly replaced. A wipe gently eased around the babies soft, plump folds. A dry diaper velcroed into place, a tab on each side.


The mother didn’t bother with a fresh onesie and instead swaddled her firmly and put her back to the breast. Left breast, ten minutes. Then right. Then left. Right, left, right. This time the mother would fall asleep, her head angled backward into the couch’s corner, before the baby. Soon the baby would follow, still latched to the left breast. It was the sleep of exhaustion. The kind that controls you. The sleep that has no regard for hour of day or night. When the body stops, sleep takes the mind. Sleep is supposed to allow the mind to process new information and make sense of the world. This sleep cannot rise to that function. This is the sleep of the parent with a newborn. It is the sleep of the body. The body gets to reclaim itself. It is work. There is no rest. Even sleep becomes labor. Even sleep is not solitary. The baby’s sweet pucker is latched to her breast; they are still one body.


The mother remembers her panic when the baby’s cord was cut. Her husband severed her flesh with surgical scissors. She felt nothing as the scissors shut, except her heart skipped a beat in the moment after it was done. They were two. She took a deep breath and gathered the hot, slippery baby to her chest.


Now, months after the birth, the mother’s body is still the source of the baby’s every ounce of nutrition. The mother is fucking growing a human being, even now, outside her body. Yet not outside. Attached. And this connection is terrible. It is fundamental. It is the irrefutable definition of humanity. It is who we are. It is what a woman can do. It is singular. It is universal. It is the beginning. It is the future. It is tiresome. It is one long paragraph that lasts for three solid months, so far.


The mother woke from the pain in her neck and let her head roll to the other side, then down to her chin. She breathed in the air her baby exhaled. The baby made gurgles in her throat. The mother will not wake her. The baby has fallen off the breast, her face gone entirely milk drunk. The mother stared. She reached for her phone and fumbled with one hand to take a photo of this adorable baby. The mystery of her silence, her inert happiness fills the room with a giddy electric buzz. The baby will sleep for a few hours. She can see that now. She eased the baby out of her arms and into the deep cushion of the couch, placing a pillow next to her. She stood and looked at the small bundle, swaddled and serene.


The mother would fix a sandwich, a weak cup of coffee. She might dare take a hot shower, the hottest water good for her milk-heavy breasts. She will wait. And see. And scroll through the hundreds of photos on her phone since the birth. And she will be proud that this baby, her baby, exists. It is almost more than she can bear.

bouquet of first lines

They asked her her name and said that was a lovely name when she told them.  Violets were held out to her to smell.  They said where they’d picked them.  A dell they called the place, near the fingerpost.  They could have picked an armful.

“We hoped we’d see you,” the taller woman said. “For you, my dear.”

Again the violets were held out, this time for Cecilia to take.

“We’re not meant to pick the flowers.”

Both smiled at once.  “You didn’t pick them, you might explain. A gift.”

---from The Women by William Trevor

***

Daniel stands in the funnel, a narrow path between two high brick walls that join the playground to the estate proper.

He hasn’t talked to anyone today. I haven’t talked to anyone today.

Madeleine and I are waiting at the bus stop at the bottom of Beech Grove in our school uniforms:  green print dresses, short white socks and sandals, blazers.

Growing up in the listless 1980s, Cecilia Normanton knew her father well, her mother not at all.

I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town.

Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family.

While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. 

For the heart, life is simple:  it beats for as long as it can.

At dusk they pour from the sky.

The afternoon my parents died, I was out shoplifting with Irene Klauson.

The moment builds; it swells and builds—the moment when I realize we have lost.

Empty, vast, and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen.

‘Get out, you cunting, shitting, little fucking fucker!’ were the first words I ever heard.

We made our vow on a windy night in 1962, by the light of a full moon, three young women, with a priest as our companion.

***