Open the Door

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Visiting the University of Vermont today with four high school senior girls and one sixth grader, our tour guide informed us he grew up in Brooklyn and had hardly been outside before he enrolled at UVM. My gaggle of girls and I looked at each other in disbelief. The poor soul.

We may not have represented the highest SAT scores in the room, but at least the girls know the importance of matching footwear with the weather.

Here’s a few lines from the novel I’m reading, suitable for craft of fiction advice:

Detail established truth. The color of the dog. Without detail, truth was a metaphorically unstable idea: too general, too big….

– Melanie Finn, The Gloaming

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Burlington, Vermont

 

Burrowing Into the Shell

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In the afterword of her late husband’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, Lucy Kalanithi writes about retreating into the meat of her marriage after his cancer diagnosis, seeking succor. In different ways, I see my own children gathering strength from friendships, art, running – all creative, growing activities, rather than comfort in destructive habits. Early this morning, I found myself pulling the predawn darkness around me, the familiar patterns of wood stove kindling, coffee grinding, and reading.

I was also thinking of my brother and his insistence that free will and responsibility are central human tenets. Or, I might rephrase, small lights as a way out of the darkness.

“…Have you done anything good? Anything beautiful? Have you created anything? Music? Art? Have you made anything better? Even in a small way? A small light in this dark world? Have you even been happy?”

She throws the lit nub of the cigarette out the window. “You should ask yourself what the hell you think you’re here for.”

– Melanie Finn, The Gloaming

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Burlington, Vermont

Antidote

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

A substance taken or given to counteract a particular poison.

Ingredients of today’s antidote:  discussing a local school board plan while those mysterious blue flies re-emerged from frost-trodden greenery in the unexpected balminess, the tiny creatures hovering in the balmy air, trimmed with daffy fuzz like bits of milkweed. Oatmeal raisin cookies.

 It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

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Woodbury, Vermont

A Sharp-Edged Sword

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In my novel, I’ve taken a line from my daughter and woven it into a teenager’s dialogue: “What the flip?” the adolescent says, over and over, a tepid variation of an obscenity. At a tense junction, the girl uses obscenities, hammering her dialogue like a weapon.

In our house, we have a phrase that language can be both tool and weapon. To my great satisfaction and joy, I’ve honed my literary skills as tools of beauty and hopefully some measure of illumination – but I’ve also witnessed myself parsing writing in the sharpest and most cutting of ways, with keen intent. Truth is, I can use language as either, but striking out has never brought me any pride.

On this eve of this election, may what musters as democracy in our country emerge as tool, and lessen our divisions.

People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild one way or another.

 

– Rebecca Solnit

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Settling In

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

Years ago, when I sold syrup at the Stowe Farmers Market with my toddler, she spilled water down her dress, and I hung the wet one over the back of a wooden folding chair to dry. Later that day, a customer appraised my booth and noted, You’ve really set up house here.

I had. With a blanket spread on the grass, a jumble of toys and three-year-old art supplies, snacks and the perpetual baby dolls and that drying laundry and likely my camera and notebook, the gypsy blood in me came out those market days and I came prepared.

If you’re raising kids, why not settle in?

In these dim November days, the trampoline is taken down for the season. The neighbor boy arrived to our delighted laughter on his unicycle this afternoon, and the kids have spread out before the wood stove making origami chairs. Warmth, sustenance, art supplies: ingredients for a Sunday near-to-snowing afternoon.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

– Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

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The Town at Night

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Driving through Hardwick, Vermont, last night, beneath a crescent moon, the 11-year-olds in the backseat playing a word game and clapping, the 17-year-old  dreaming thoughtfully at the wheel, I marveled at how good Hardwick looks in the dark, the handful of streets lit up, the Town House’s double doors open for a musical, foyer chandelier shining welcomingly.

Run-down Hardwick, with its perpetually empty storefronts, the town of two auto parts stores, five gas stations with cheap greasy food, one food co-0p with pricy produce, and one thrift store. Reservoir of cheap beer and highly-taxed cigarettes and way too many scratch-off tickets. A town of more well-heeled days, called theirs now by those who have moved in with plenty of money or education or both, while those who have lived here for generations frequently are scant on both.

I left the Town House before the finale, standing outside in the cold. Freakishly, a structural fire burned behind the Town House, bright flames turning billowing smoke and steam bright red, split through with blue police lights. The cold gnawed at my feet. Overhead, clusters of stars and that curl of moon pushed through the streetlights and hazy atmosphere. From the closed doors, I heard a girl’s clear song, her voice graceful as a heron in flight, slowly winging its way through the sky.

Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the children. Only the governesses.

The Sound of Music, 1965

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Hardwick, Vermont