Stories & Soliloquies

Author Archives: michellejoelle

• The Comforts of Reading

  Posted at 10:02 am by michellejoelle, on October 31, 2013

  I just read this post at Reflections of a Book Addict by guest poster Kelly Lauer; she sums up neatly why books are so comforting. This quote, in particular really gets to the heart of it:

  Books didn’t care if I didn’t know what the curse words meant.  Books didn’t care if I missed all the sub-context.  Books really didn’t care if I wore that neon green stegosaurus sweatshirt every freaking day.  Books don’t judge; people have the corner of the market on that one. And books were always there for me, because I was lucky enough to be surrounded by them and to be my mom’s daughter.

  I love this. Reading books is so important not just because they expand our minds, but because they do so gently, and without any pressure. I am a teacher, and I find great value in discussion, but it can often feel combative, or like a test. Books are patient, and willing to explain things to you over and over, and if in the end something is missed, there’s no shame. Lauer puts a point on why books can be so comforting, even when the material is uncomfortable. They give you a chance to face a challenge or problem without requiring that you are fully prepared to defend yourself or even to change something – not until you’re ready to, at least.

  Books let you feel at home in difference in a way that little else does.  They let you come and go and don’t mind telling you the same thing they told you the last time you came to visit.

  For all my love of books and reading, I spend a lot more time re-reading than I do picking up new books.  There are some obvious reasons – I like the comfort of revisiting a familiar world, getting new insights and details that I couldn’t have foreseen but which now seem so important given what I know of the ending.  But I think I actually prefer re-reading to reading the first time. Especially with non-fiction books, I sometimes find myself using the first read to create a scaffolding in my brain so that on the next time through, I can pick the bits I like and hang them where they fit best, so I can process everything, and try out new ideas. Then on a third read, I furiously redecorate everything until I get it all just right, and inevitably, I rummage around and find new things that I hadn’t originally had a place for, and the whole thing must be taken apart and the scaffolding rebuilt anew.

  I think I’ve read Plato’s Symposium at least twenty times in full, and have taught it nearly as many times.  I’ve read countless student papers on what the main message of text is, and yet, I still can’t decide if we’re meant to think the Beautiful is within our grasp, or if we’re all just the victims of a grotesque joke, like the poor split androgens in Aristophanes’ speech who think they’re happy when they find their other halves, but who have actually forgotten what they had wanted in the first place – to overthrow the gods, to get back to their cosmological parents. I think it must be the latter, as I’m sure I can read it another twenty times and never really know.

  But at least I have the comfort that the book will be there for me, should I have the urge to return and rummage around a bit more.

  Posted in Essays | 0 Comments | Tagged kelly lauer, reading

• Happy Halloween!

  Posted at 3:33 pm by michellejoelle, on October 29, 2013

  

  Pumpkins by us, circa 2012

  To celebrate Halloween, and to reward myself for a week of working on some very dense material for my day job, I’ve decided to leave books and writing aside for a moment and look at my favorite Halloween movies (and there’s one written piece thrown in for good measure).

  This is sort of an odd list for me to generate. For the most part, I don’t enjoy the horror genre. I tend to find it upsetting. I over-empathize with the characters. Instead of feeling titillated, I wind up reflecting on true stories of random horrible acts of violence, and well, it’s terribly unpleasant. There are exceptions though, especially when there’s a layer of self-commentary (Cabin in the Woods) or there’s political commentary (name your favorite zombie movie, and I’m sure it’s got some).

  I also don’t like to think of death as something scary, or of ghosts as evil. I think of the people I love who will one day die, and of people I have loved who have already passed away, and I just don’t find any joy in imagining them in any kind of torment, or as any agent of torment (as in stories of hauntings). I love cemeteries, because I love to think about the stories that all of the people there have left behind. I’ve been told that this is strange, but I find them peaceful.

  But this is what Halloween is meant to be about – remembering the dead, even honoring death itself. Our tradition has roots in Samhain, a festival in celebration of the end of the year, the death of the summer and the beginning of winter. Autumn is a time when death is beautiful – the leaves are the most brilliant just before they wither and fall. Samhain is a time when the barrier between the living and the dead is permeable, and the dead are giving a place at the feast. It also has roots in the Christian All Saints’ Day, wherein the living form spiritual bonds with dead who suffer purgatory, and the dead who are in heaven.

  Ghoulish, perhaps, but villainous and terrible?  Not unless the dead in question was villainous and terrible in life, please.

  So my list won’t include the scariest or most original selection of movies out there (Reader’s Digest can help you out there), but there are many, many stories that don’t push my general squeamishness too far while still capturing the spirit of Halloween. These are my five favorites:

  1) Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Not only is this a brilliant example of storytelling, but it has everything you could want in a holiday movie – including another holiday. Christmas is my favorite (ultimate hygge time), and this movie gives me a chance to secretly start cultivating my yuletide cheer a bit early, thus tempering my insatiable Christmas desire long enough to let me enjoy the Fall holidays first.

  2) Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. This is a masterpiece. Don’t expect a serious horror film, or else you’ll never make heads or tails of it. It’s take on the gruesome is comic, fun, and kind of beautiful. And you know – Johnny Depp with gadgets, Christina Ricci in a hoop skirt, and delightful autumnal scenery.

  3) The Shadow of the Vampire. Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich amaze me in this, and it’s incredibly scary.  Like, legitimately it frightens me, and I enjoy it, because it always makes me reflect on the vampiric power of film. It really sucks me in, you know? Pair it with Nosferatu for an excellent evening in.

  4) Donnie Darko. This is sad, triumphant and thought-provoking all at once, and it always sends me to my homemade VHS of Harvey, which I taped off of Turner Classic Movies on a VCR.  Because I am from the past, and I really, really want to read that time-travel book.

  5) Teig O’Kane and the Corpse, as found in W.B. Yeats’ Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, translated by Douglas Hyde.  This is the one that isn’t a movie, though I would love to see it adapted into a short film. It’s deliciously ghoulish, spooky, traffics in both fairies and ghosts, and says something about both death and life. It’s a wonderful campfire read for any season, but I especially like it when its chilly out.  It’s a perfect Samhain tale.  You can find this tale here, but I recommend getting the book so you can take it with you to travel.

  I make no apologies for my puns. It’s a holiday, after all.

  2024 Update: Over the Garden Wall. It’s quite possibly the most perfect piece of Halloween storytelling; it’s sad and full of longing, while also being charming and inspiring. It’s beautiful and old while also being modern and relatable. It’s timeless, but also nostalgic. It’s really just perfect.

  Related articles

  • Merry Samhain & Happy Halloween (springwolf.net)
  • Top spooky ancient Irish myths surrounding Halloween (irishcentral.com)
  Posted in The Waste Book | 3 Comments | Tagged film, Halloween, Ireland, Samhain, Tim Burton

• Sacramental Imagining Part 1

  Posted at 8:49 am by michellejoelle, on October 28, 2013

  I started this essay after meditating on my preference for writing and reading in environments that are beautiful, natural, majestic, cozy, and old – environments that have texture and history and meaning unto themselves, which smell like old books or pine needles in the rain, with light filtered through stained glass, or a large window overlooking trees or a stream.  There’s likely a significant amount of hygge involved.  Somewhere along the way, I found myself once again returning to the topic of a writer’s responsibility to a reader, and so I’ve decided to break this essay into two parts.  In this first part, I focus on my experience of writing as it is rooted in my physical surroundings.  In part two, I turn my attention to the potential consequences of experiencing writing in this way.

  Part 1: The Writer

  I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to realize this, but I most often get inspired to write at the most inconvenient times.  When I’m at a conference, listening to papers in an historic classroom.  When I’m wandering around on cobblestone streets in a beautiful city.  When I’m hiking by a waterfall in the woods.  When I’m waiting for a train on a rainy day and world feels sad and beautiful.  When I’m out with friends and I’ve just had a fascinating conversation and everything feels just right.  These are the moments when I feel most like writing, and am least prepared to do so.  When I’m at a desk, during work hours, and have all the time in the world, just about nothing comes to mind.

  And it’s always inconvenient, because I like my outdoors environment to be as rustic and un-manicured as possible, and my indoors time to be antique and historic, or else personalized and full of memories.  In short, I like to be in a space that is storied and rich with texture, as opposed to a clean and simple new space meant to limit overstimulation and distraction in favor of efficiency.  I like old things, artful messiness, overgrown gardens, and untouched landscapes.  I like the ruins of an old dock strewn over a tumult of rocks better than white sandy beaches, ancient and outdated libraries with cavernous halls better than sound proof study rooms, and an old chair with too many blankets by a drafty window than a temperature-controlled room with an ergonomic seat.  I read better, and I write better.  Ideas and images come to me here better than when I’m set up properly in a clean or conventional space.

  These are just my personal aesthetic preferences, but realizing how this attunement to my physical environment affects my literary imagination raises some questions about place and imagination that go beyond just my taste.  Reading and writing is supposedly an interior function, allowing us to see with our mind’s eye something utterly different than what is immediately around us.  We’re supposed to soar over our environment to another place by the sheer power of our imagination, guided by words which call ideas to mind that are foreign to our experience and make them ours, pushing aside our present thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  The power of words is supposed to be that they can make us forget who we are and where we are such that we can transcend reality as it is.

  But more and more I discover that my experience of reading and writing is greatly elevated when I am in a place that has something more to offer me than merely what I “need”.  I don’t know if the quality of what I produce improves, but it certainly feels better to me.  I will sacrifice comfort for ambiance because the beauty of a rich environment has a dual function for me: it somehow grounds me in my bodily experience, yet untethers my imagination and sets me free.  While I know that for many this aesthetic experience is not necessary, I think that it adds something an author couldn’t create through pure contemplation.

  For me, writing and reading are best when they are bodily experiences.  The transcendence seems not to be over and out of the body and its present surroundings, but indelibly linked to them.  The transcendence, for me, is not just bodily – it’s sacramental.  The smell of old books and the haze of stained glass windows in the vastness of an old hall do more than make for a pleasant background: they call to my subconscious attention a host of emotions, memories, and influences that seep wordlessly into my imagination, coloring what I see with my mind’s eye, adding depth and richness to my train of thought.  It adds texture to the main voice in my head, which seems like it should succeed best when it drowns all that out, but instead does better when it stands as the tip of an iceberg of sensory experience.  This added texture allows the images to get traction – if they were smooth and clear they would glide right by, merely imparting a fleeting glimpse of a story rather than gripping us utterly and pulling us in, as words are meant to.  As stories are meant to, when you read them, and as I’m finding, when I write them as well.  Underneath the story is, if I’m doing my job right, an unspoken wellspring of unwritten feelings and thoughts and questions and hopes and images.

  Check back next week for part two, where i will explore the reader’s side of the equation.

  Posted in Essays | 0 Comments | Tagged hygge, nature, writing

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