Book in the Hand

September 20, 2015September 20, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

A cardboard box of advance reader copies of my book–my first book–appeared in the mail. Returning home from work and school, my daughters and I had gone in through the kitchen door, and it wasn’t until I was at the kitchen counter slicing tomatoes for dinner that through the window I saw the box on the stone step at the back door.

It was the most curious feeling to pull out crumpled paper and find my bound books, so beautifully designed, crafted with such care and attention–this novel I have spun from nothing but my own experience and language, through all those hours scavenged, often late at night, early in the morning, during child naptimes. Like nothing else, this book in my hand is a bridge between the mysterious well of my working imagination and the world, a tangible here I am.

Whenever we give our pen some free will, we may surprise ourselves. All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one’s own strange self on the page. […] Writing or making anything — a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake — has self-respect in it. You’re working. You’re trying. You’re not lying down on the ground, having given up.

–– Sharon Olds

Stillness

September 16, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

The middle of September arrived today, with a reprieve from the prior days’ intimations of winter and dark, the imminent long gray Vermont cool-down of each fall, the lingering death of summer before winter’s glittery beauty. Through the window in the dentist’s office today, the sky shone flawless azure, tantalizing in its loveliness.

“Summer Morning,” by Charles Simic

…I hear a butterfly stirring
Inside a caterpillar,
I hear the dust talking
Of last night’s storm….

And all of a sudden!
In the midst of that quiet,
It seems possible
To live simply on this earth.

Photo by Molly S.

Chimney Sweeps

September 15, 2015September 15, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

Until recently, I never really thought all that much about cleaning. A chore, an activity, play some music and make some headway. I’ve been in filthy houses, spick ‘n span abodes, the whole gray gamut of in-between. I once participated in an extremely late night board meeting in a school my children never attended, and towards the end of the evening I looked around the room, noted the chaotic clutter, and wondered how anyone worked in that classroom.

Today, as the cold weather begins digging in, I swept the ashes from my wood stove and readied my beloved stove for the months ahead when I will never allow the fire to burn out. The chimney, too–from basement to roof over three stories tall–needs cleaning. I pulled out the stovepipe and thrust my arm into its chimney’s cold center. I found thick layers of creosote, crumbly and pitch-sticky, two strange opposite and simultaneous qualities.

In the sooty, dirty basement I’ve knelt before the opened clean-out door and shoveled bucket after bucket of creosote scabs, then held a mirror flat in my hand and showed my little child the daytime stars in the heavens, visible only through that extended canal of darkness.

I’ve never cleaned this chimney before, but I feel certain my teenage daughter and I, with our strong backs and gritty muscles, could force that sharp-edged wire brush down that channel, scrape free the debris of last year’s long winter’s cold, and shove that brush, pole length by pole length, down to the chimney’s very root. This chimney is the lungs of our house, the passage of air and smoke that allows our hearth to burn, hot and truly. My teenage daughter is determined to begin this heating season with a scrubbed right chimney, and no fears of our house engulfed in nighttime flames.

Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain. If you make something out of it, then you’ve no longer been bested by these events.

–– Louise Gluck

Woodbury, Vermont

The Change

September 14, 2015September 14, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

The children came up with a phrase one nighttime this summer when they were supposed to be tucked into their beds and sleeping like little dears, but were not. The older boy said, The change is coming. We can’t sleep.

I told him to go to sleep, and I went downstairs to talk to his mother.

This illusive change reappeared in various contexts in the coming weeks. Missing chocolate bars and crocs were blamed on this change, a screen pushed out a window, irritable tempers. For all this and more, the change took the blame. But I told you, the boy laughed, I warned you the change came!

The change has arrived here. Walking after dark with the younger girl, she remarked on how quickly the days are ending now, and the sky presses lower, filled with dark. The garden’s growth has entirely dwindled, and our northern piece of this earth is slowly rotating towards cooling. Ever cheery, my younger girl remarked, But this makes the house so much cozier. It’s board game season.

Work

The voice of the laundry says, Hang me;
hang me, or I will mold.
The voice of the clothesline says,
tighter or I will sag…
While the subliminal shrews are ferociously
eating, always eating, in order to waste away.

–– Ruth Stone

Work/Photo by Molly S.

September

September 11, 2015September 11, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

EVERYTHING

after 9/11/2001

Milkweed pods
crack open
seeds dishevel
fall

Everything
sweeter and
more fragile
now

–– David Budbill

Photo of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont, by Molly S.

Pieces of Writing, Things of Life

September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 / Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Twice this summer, as I’ve driven along the Vermont interstate, a blue pickup has swung out in front of me at the same exit, a man at the wheel, but what caught my attention both times was the Greek omega symbol on its side, leering up at me like some distant memory of high school science. As a writer, I can’t help but think, That needs to wind into my book.

One keen advantage of writing is that, while I’m often half-blind, at times I’m tuned in razor-sharp, wondering in what way the universe is patterning around me, with this truck and this omega so near I could stretch out my arm and grasp its curve. Perhaps the deeper advantage of this is that writing forces you to look, and look hard at times, for meaning and relevance in the world.

Writing a scene the other morning, I realized a female character, in a dim kitchen, held an ear of corn from her garden and was abstractedly picking the ear apart, peeling loose the husk and each strand of silk, bit by bit. Inside, she discovered those gleaming, uneven rows of kernels, new as milk teeth. Would she eat the corn raw? Steam it? Offer it to her stepdaughter? Heave it in the compost? Chuck it out to the chickens?

The things of the world we live in matter. It’s different to wear acrylic or hemp, to eat fast food hamburgers or brandywines from the garden, whether your house has walls of glass or hardly any windows at all. Neither, perhaps, good nor ill, but the things that return into your life might not be wholly arbitrary. What’s near to your hand might be there for a reason.