Children and Agents

It's been a busy two months.

Teaching is painful, joyful, hilarious, draining, exhilarating, and altogether eye-opening in a way I never really expected it to be. The students I work with are such an interesting and varied bunch, ranging from a handful who find it an insurmountable challenge to sit still and focus for more than three seconds at a time to several who are genuinely, startlingly brilliant. (Some of these students are one and the same!)

I have heard teaching described as a creative process, and my experience thus far has both challenged and affirmed that claim, in turns. While many days have left me feeling somewhat cynical, my students never fail to help reinstate my optimism that choosing teaching was a wise decision. It's difficult to describe to those who have never taught exactly what it feels like to be in the classroom. Often, it's kind of like having 100+ coworkers in your department, three quarters of whom are fighting to undermine your project. But as you slowly coax those renegades back over to your side, it's wonderful. I love these kids, and I will miss them (yes, even the goofballs!) when I switch to middle school in January.

Also on the creative front...I have an offer from a literary agent to represent my novel! I'm not sure how I'll manage to balance work and school and writing all at once, but I couldn't be more ecstatic at the prospect of taking the first steps toward publication.

Neighbors.

The old woman is missing. Or her car is, at least.

I first noticed the car when I moved here back in June. It’s hard to miss. I know next to nothing about cars, so the best description I can give is that it’s a junker. A small, boxy sedan, with the paint peeling so badly from the body that even the color is a sort of question mark, a mottle of grays and blacks. It was always parked in the first spot in the stretch of parking lot lining my building. I had read on an online forum, before moving in, that there were some questionable renters inhabiting the complex. I saw the junker, and thought: steer clear. A rough car like this probably belongs to a rough character. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I saw the frail, ancient woman climbing into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t until afterwards that I noticed that the objects dangling from the rearview mirror were not fuzzy dice, but shoes. Tiny, pale pink baby shoes, strung over the mirror by the laces.

She is stooped with age, but you can tell by looking at her that she was once tall—at least as far as women go.  Her brown face is craggy and leathered with age, but kind. Her black hair is streaked all over with white. As far as I can tell, she lives alone. I have never seen her with another person. Her car is seldom missing from its place in the first parking space (which I am careful never to occupy), and when I do see her coming or going, it is always by herself. I wonder about her. I wonder about the shoes. Once, I saw her returning from the store with groceries. I almost stopped to offer to help her; but it was only one bag, and I was laden down with all my books and bags and my computer, and so I merely smiled and hurried away up the steps.

Over the weekend, I noticed that her car was missing. It was unusual because it was late at night. There was little chance she could be out buying groceries. Maybe, I thought, she is visiting the person who wore those tiny shoes—a child, or perhaps a grandchild. Maybe she went to visit family for the weekend. Today is Monday, though, and her car was gone this morning when I left for work at 6:30am. It was still gone when I returned home from work at 5pm.

Now I find myself beginning to wonder, and to worry. I feel a sharp pang of anxiety when I look at the emptiness of her parking spot, the tangible absence of the old junker. I think about the woman whose name and story I do not know. I picture the slowness of her movements, the stooping of her spine, the tiredness of the drooping eyes, still small in her face despite her enormous spectacles. I feel retrospectively guilty for not asking her if she needed help carrying the groceries. I wonder, irrationally, if I should go to the front office and ask about her. But what would I ask? I didn’t even know her.

It really makes me think about neighbors. The word has connotations of not only closeness, but also of community, of companionship. I live in an apartment complex, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of neighbors; but, for me, these are neighbors only in the most literal sense.  They are nearby inhabitants, and little else.

I’m a student and a teacher. I interact with over a hundred people, individually, on a daily basis while in my high school and at my university. At home, though (during the few waking hours a day when I am actually there), I keep to myself. I don’t really know any of my neighbors by name, and only a few by sight. There’s the middle-aged couple with the fat old Chihuahua and the black and white cat who sit on the porch and watch the neighbors go by. There’s the chain-smoker who lives above me, all fake smiles and fake hair and the clothes that would be scandalous on someone half her age, with the yippy little dog that howled and howled all day and night the week she moved in.  There’s the old foreign (Russian, perhaps?) couple who lives across the hall. There’s the medley of kids who splashed and screamed their way through summer in the community pool, and then abruptly vanished when school began again. I don’t know any of their names. I’m a girl, and a byproduct of what one professor of mine called Scary World Syndrome, that constant reminder from internal and external sources alike that we should not trust strangers. I’m not around much, I’ll probably move next June, and most importantly, I don’t know want people to know I live alone. I smile at passersby in the gym and on the stairwell, but do not stop to chat. I shut and lock my door.

I wonder, though, is this a mistake? I wonder if anyone else has noticed the old woman’s car is missing. Maybe she is still visiting family. Maybe she’s getting a new car. Maybe I’ll see her tomorrow as I leave for work. If she is really gone, I regret not meeting her for real. I regret that she may not have known that there was at least one person here, in this building, who would notice her absence, who would miss her. She is a passerby like the rest. But her absence registers like a loss. The parking lot seems empty without them—the old woman, the beat-up car, the baby shoes.

Strong women.

"Strong female characters," in other words, are often just female characters with the gendered behavior taken out. This makes me think that the problem is not that there aren’t enough “strong” female characters in the movies — it’s that there aren’t enough realistically weak ones. You know what’s better than a prostitute with a machine gun for a leg or a propulsion engineer with a sideline in avionics whose maternal instincts and belief in herself allow her to take apart an airborne plane and discover a terrorist plot despite being gaslighted by the flight crew? A girl who reminds you of you.

Carina Chocano, of the New York Times, has some interesting thoughts on the current trope of the strong female character. I began reading this article already poised to disagree with it, but Chocano's argument ends up being rather insightful. Thinking of the books, movies, and television shows I've been exposed to recently, I can definitely see her point. There needs to be some middle ground between the fashion-and-boys-obsessed, swooning, girly heroine and the combat-boots-wearing, relationship-phobic, man-with-breasts heroine. When I think back over the characters I've identified with and loved throughout the years, so very few of them women. I think writers need to work harder to create women who are complex, compelling, and admirable characters...not because they are female characters who happen to have those qualities, but because they are characters who have those qualities. Pure and simple.

Fashionably Hitchcockian.

{"Just wait until you see my PJs!" Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window.}

Jeff and I watched Rear Window two weekends ago when I was in D.C.  He had shockingly never seen it before, and I thought it would be the perfect flick considering that he, like Jimmy Stewart's "Jeff," was also confined to his apartment with a broken leg. I love Jimmy Stewart in basically everything, but this time around it was Grace Kelly who really struck me. Maybe it was because this was my first watching of Rear Window since the wonderful "Literary Gothic" seminar I took last year at Penn State. We watched some Hitchcock as a part of the seminar, and at least a small part of our discussion was focused around the "Hitchcock blondes" and the director's infamous fascination (repulsion? obsession?) with and depiction of the feminine. Almost any critical analysis of Hitchcock is sure to address this facet of his films, so I won't rehash it much here. What I mostly want to draw attention to is the fashion.

Yes, the fashion.

The aesthetic of Hitchcock's heroines (and anti-heroines) is often as important or more important than the characters themselves, and he is absolutely masterful about costuming them precisely to fit the mood and mystique of their roles. I had no idea how intimately he was involved in the costuming process. This article (especially the second half) takes a look at this particular obsession of his, even noting how final copies of his scripts included detailed descriptions of the women's clothing - down the very fabric choice and color - in each scene. Toward the end, it details the entirety of Lisa Fremont's (Grace Kelly's) wardrobe throughout Rear Window in relation to the rest of the film. Interesting.

And as creepy and misogynistic as Alfred Hitchcock may have been, I have to say: he had a pretty keen eye for fashion. I still think Kim Novak's wardrobe as Madeleine in Vertigo is one of the most striking and iconic I've personally seen in any film.

{One of the best outfits ever, on one of the best characters ever. If you've never seen Vertigo, shame on you!}

The black dress, scarf, and gloves with the white coat...the sultry makeup...the cold, platinum hair.... Pure genius. I want this outfit for Fall!

Below are some of my other favorite Hitchcock fashion moments.

{Grace Kelly's blue dress in To Catch a Thief}

{Psycho's sexy but somehow innocent Janet Leigh.}

 

{Even screaming and with her hair askew, Tippi Hedron still looks impossibly chic in her green suit from The Birds.}

{Also, check out the fur coat.}

{Rebecca's Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) was no Hitchcock blonde, but her dark, severe, and subtly masculine style powerfully enhanced her sinister presence. One of my favorite Hitchcock characters.}

A room of one's own.

{Virginia Woolf's writing room, a little out building in the tangled and lovely gardens of Monk's House. This summer cottage is in Sussex, and is well worth the visit if you ever are in England.}

As a few of you may know, one of my most ardent (material) desires is for a writing room. Not a desk. Not a home office. A writing room -- a room with space for bookshelves, a big wooden desk, a comfortable chair, art and other pretty things that inspire me, and a window, preferably with a pleasant view, to let in plenty of natural light and air. Maybe some houseplants for oxygen and good measure. And a globe! Definitely a free-standing globe. Mostly, I want a quiet and peaceful room that is designated specifically for writing. No homework, work-work, bill-paying, online shopping, or other administrative tasks allowed! Naturally, when I discovered this series on writer's rooms, via The Guardian, I was instantly compelled to click through the lot of them.

Particularly mind-boggling to me is how chaotic many of these rooms are. I know there are some stereotypes floating around about "artsy types," but I can't even imagine working in some of the sloppier rooms featured here. Even some that are clearly organized are still overwhelmingly cluttered. I just picture all that claustrophobic weight squashing any creative energy into bland jelly. Yikes!

{Just looking at Eric Hobsbawm's writing room makes me want to maniacally pitch my computer out the window.}

Stress and distraction are heavy in my nature. For me, writing requires a certain amount of focus and isolation. I can't just tune out the world and bang away at it. Have you seen Jane Austen's "writing space" before? I have no idea how she ever managed to get anything accomplished. It's amazing. Never. I could never, ever do it. I need to sort of...get in the zone. I need to escape.

{This just seems like cruel and unusual punishment.}

I personally find it very difficult to "escape" from the constant mental-reiteration of all the upcoming tasks I need to complete, and from the low but persistent hum of anxiety that generally plagues me. If I'm feeling anxious about upcoming due dates, I feel too guilty writing when I could be working ahead. If I'm sharing a living space with others (even my parents' house) where I feel I might soon be interrupted to have a conversation or to carry out a chore, I hesitate to even begin to write. The biggest and therefore most logistically frightening project I have undertaken as a writer is S'QUATCH, the novel I wrote this past year as my honors thesis. Honestly? It was a nightmare. Writing that thing involved a lot of intense thinking while doodling in lined notebooks at my parents' house, followed by a lot more intense thinking while mournfully downing gallons of coffee and watching my cursor blink at my apartment in State College. After almost a year of this, I finally banged out most of the 200+ pages of text in a near-psychotic daze of caffeine and sleep deprivation over the course of the final two weeks before the book was due. I have no idea how I managed to submit it in any sort of acceptable form, either than the fact that I spent a lot of time hanging around the least populated and most silent computer labs on campus between the hours of 12am and 6am.

I have plenty of peace, quiet, and space now. Things are much better on the writing front. Still, it would be nice to write in a space not populated by stacks of education textbooks, bills, binders and fileboxes of handouts, and calendars filled with my schedules for work and school. I'd much rather be writing in a place like this...  Hey, a girl can dream.

{I love the light, the high ceiling, and especially the beautiful exposed beams in Kevin Crossley-Holland's writing room.}

Chopin and She.

I spent much of this weekend reading - and even doing a bit of writing! My personal sources of literary inspiration are diverse and fluctuating, but lately I've also been feeling inspired by media outside of the literary realm. Photography and music are currently dredging up a lot of creative impulse and emotion to play with, and I think they are great starting points for writing exercises.

Photography... Well, you know the old adage about a picture's worth. Enhanced picture quality, artful editing tools, and the popularity of digital photo-streams have created an abundance of visual smorgasbords accessible with just the click of a mouse. I'm a sucker for the whole atmospheric aesthetic, and surfing through these offerings makes me itch to delve for some words to capture the mood a specific photograph elicits. A beautiful image is a reminder of the visceral power of detail, and a call to incorporate the visual - something that too often becomes fuzzy or lost altogether in the jumble of character and plot and convention - more poignantly in my own writing.

As for music, while I love me some Pink Floyd, Lady Gaga, Guster, Mumford and Sons, etc., it's the violin that best gets me writing. I can't concentrate of writing when there are lyrics to listen to (ok, to sing along to). The violin is such an exquisitely beautiful and expressive instrument, and was also a major part of my daily life for many years. I have no time now for orchestras or private lessons, and apartment life makes it sadly impossible for me to play here - but you can bet that I'm fiddling along vicariously through at least one of my characters! This nocturne by Chopin has been haunting me - and my writing - all day. Played here by the lovely and talented Sarah Chang:

Of course, the reality is that books still play a hefty role in my daily inspiration. The one that's been on my mind today is H. Rider Haggard's She, an extraordinarily strange Victorian adventure story that involves three British explorers seeking out a two-thousand-year-old, white enchantress ruling over a crumbling city deep in the jungles of Africa while she awaits the reincarnation (and, she hopes, the return) of a long-lost-love.

{I own, and would recommend, this Penguin Classics edition.}

The titular "She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" (or, to the brave, Ayesha) is simultaneously powerful, childlike, beautiful, frightening, feminist, wise, and naive. One of the most intriguing and complex characters I have come across in my reading. I never heard a thing about this novel before reading it this past spring, a fact that seems almost criminal. It's a remarkable novel, and one that raises all manner of interesting questions. I later discovered that two film versions (1935 and 1965, respectively) have been released. What's available of them on YouTube is pretty appallingly silly. Someone should seriously revamp this! But for now, She is at least on my radar as I write.

I'll leave you with a fun fact: According to Wikipedia, Ayesha's costume in the 1935 film version seriously influenced the design of Snow White's wicked queen. Who knew?

{"How do you like them apples?"}

{Like everything else in the sixties, Ursula Andress's "She" was decidedly more sexed-up.}

Good eats.

It was beautiful out today, so I took advantage of the weather and spent some time wandering around a little local farmer's market. Everyone was so friendly and personable! I guess I'm used to the farmer's market back up at Penn State, which is usually mobbed and leaves little time for vendors to really stop and chat. This new one was small and uncrowded (unsurprising for mid-afternoon on a week day), and literally every vendor I strolled past gave a big smile and a hello plus a little chit-chat. It was an interesting array of people - some bubbly ma-and-pop types, a very intense and formal Asian woman, and a few strapping young vegetable-selling lads who could almost pass for "bros," to name a few. For $13 I got: a big ear of corn, a humungous tomato, a cluster of basil, a basket of white peaches, and some absurdly delicious banana-coconut-pineapple stuff called "aloha bread." Between my good haul at the farmer's market, my light and early lunch, and the fact that I spent the rest of the day vigorously cleaning my apartment (with all the back and forth between here, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and D.C., it was getting more than a bit chaotic around here), by the time I looked at the clock and realized it was 6:45 I was famished. Not to mention craving the basil, which was (and is) making my whole apartment smell divine. The solution: a feast fit to celebrate my last "real" day of vacation! Bon appétit!

{Light and pretty. A perfect summer drink.}

I wasn't in the mood for wine, and once I decided on Italian I couldn't help dreaming of limoncello! I didn't have vodka, so I improvised for this lemon-inspired cocktail. It's one part Bacardi Limón, two parts diet tonic water, and a little splash of pink lemonade for color and taste.

{Heating up some plain tomato sauce before adding the chopped basil.}

{I like the chopped leaves medium-large. So tasty!}

 

{Almost finished, with the sauce poured over whole wheat pasta.}

{Pasta with tomato sauce and fresh basil, spring mix salad with balsamic, and my lemon concoction. So delicious.}

{If only I had room for dessert...}

Above is the aloha bread. I chopped the loaf into eight smaller sections and wrapped them - all the better to take to lunch with me next week when I start my student teaching! Not sure if you can see the grated coconut on top in this picture, but trust me...it's there, and it's amazing. I may or may not have sampled some while repackaging it this afternoon.

As for the rest of my evening? I have a date with George Orwell.