#amwritingVermontLiteraryFiction

Author-ity

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

With my sixth-grader’s basketball season’s schedule, I’ve been spending some working hours hidden on the elementary school’s back staircase, working at a child’s desk so old it has an inkwell hole. I love this old schoolhouse; dating to the first World War, the schoolhouse is not only solidly built, but beautifully as well, with interior windows, pressed tin ceilings, and detailed woodwork. Schools are built like prisons now, with none of this school’s elegance. Carefully kept up, the schoolhouse isn’t shabby at all, but is comfortably well-used and loved.

The other day, a teacher stopped to talk and then showed me two books her students had written and illustrated which made me laugh out loud. The kids’ books were just so darn good. What the teacher had done was allow the children unfettered freedom. I’ve found unbinding myself from the expectations of peers and the social framework around myself very difficult at times. Think how hard that is: to dig deeply into the unknown terrain of creativity – and then know how joyous that is, too.

The teacher told me about one little girl who said, I am the author of my book.

How powerful that knowledge is. Whether that child becomes a novelist or a welder, I think of that statement like a candle that girl may hold before her, a single flame, burning brightly.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

– Marcus Aurelius

 

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Put on Sunglasses

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Thaw. The wind screamed all night, breaking the deep cold’s back, strewing broken branches around our house, and even shattering a storm window. In return, we have a reprieve from the deep cold, and the earth – still buried beneath snow – exudes the fragrance of spring’s promise, albeit months yet in the coming.

That there’s promise in scent is remarkable in these monochrome winter days, when much of the talk seems about politics and what the future might bring. None of us know.

My teenager insisted on driving to school this morning on an icy road. I gave her two pieces of advice and let her go. How could I keep her now, at nearly 18-years-old? It’s been overcast for months in Vermont, and perhaps all over the country, and yet she and her friends insist on wearing sunglasses, these young women, so full of giddy promise.

Old man’s love affair;
in trying to forget it,
a winter rainfall.

– Buson

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Sap line

Ancient Arts

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Oh, Vermont community! Young and older women came out on a cold morning to my library for knitting lessons, with bags of yarn, needles, questions, and a lot of desire. At the end, a young woman who had capably learned the three key skills – cast-on, knit, purl – smiled and said she hadn’t believed she could ever learn to knit. But I so wanted to, she said.

One of the things I love most about knitting is its communal aspect. Begin knitting and the world of knitters will come to you, drawn to the creation your fingers are spinning from yarn. Write a book, and you remain in your own solitary interior world, but cast on some stitches, brew a pot of coffee, work and chat. Creative counterbalance.

One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive.

– Elizabeth Zimmerman

 

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My 11-year-old daughter’s life skills

Winter Sky

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Last evening, I stopped by Lake Elmore, summertime sacred scene of popsicles, barefoot children running over immense lawns, swimming and more swimming. My daughter’s happy birthday parties, the little girls in their flowered dresses.

8 degrees Fahrenheit under a half moon and scattered stars, Orion’s belt hung over the snow-covered lake, hoarfrost creeping up the crumpled remainders of weeds. Scraps of clouds passed quickly over the moon. After too many meetings and too much talking, I gulped the cold eagerly, my boot heels on the sand-scattered road the only scuffling sounds. Ancient, great-horned Taurus, the bull in the spinning constellations, hung above me, familiar and dear as the oldest of lovers.

… There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed….

Robert Hass, “Meditation at Lagunitas”

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A sunshiny bit of my world….

Early January, at Home

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In the morning, driving along the Lamoille River and its flanking snow-buried farm fields, my daughter and I note the river’s ice buckled across its serpentine surface and speculate about its thickness. With this year’s early insulating snow, the fire department posts warnings about treacherously thin ice.

These days are long, beginning in darkness and ending in darkness, arcing over the eye of grayish light in the middle. Last night, our windows filled with spinning snowflakes, while my teenager and I held onto the day, talking, talking, our words swirling around each other, sharing our worlds.

Later, as the wind howled over the house, I read from my library book Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times – irresistible title.

Poetry is like the sawdust coming from under the saw
or soft yellow shavings from a plane.
Poetry is washing hands in the evening
or a clean handkerchief that my late aunt
never forgot to put in my pocket.

Jaan Kaplinksi, “‘Once I Got a Postcard…..'”

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North Calais, Vermont

Stillness

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Repeatedly, I’ve said that Vermont winter has two saving graces: its exquisite beauty and skiing.

On my way home from work today, I stopped briefly at #10 Pond in Calais, where it was just me and a black crow and two pairs of footprints with a sled trail.

Winter, perhaps, is equally about economy, and economy is poetry.

There are certain times where it does not matter if you hear the word yes or the word no in answer to your question, whether you turn left or right, you will reach your destination.

Not many but some.

Joy Williams, “89” in Ninety-Nine Stories of God

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#10 Pond