Sara Ryan

Man, limited Internet access is giving me fits. I don’t want to spend too much time in the coffeeshop; the whole point of this trip is to be with my mom and help her with various projects. But as I catch up (more or less) on email and blogs, my entire online reading experience underscores how dependent I am on being within a few clicks away from anything I’m researching — or even merely idly curious about.

Not to mention how used I am to responding quickly to anyone who contacts me. Argh.

Today my main jobs are to kill spiders and box up books (in that order, so I can avoid boxing up spiders) and I do not need the Internet for that.

But I miss you all, my friends inside the computer.

Just because you think of yourself as something of a weightlifting badass, and just because every other woman in the class is twice your age and using one pound weights, it does not mean that for the very first step aerobics plus weights class you have ever taken in your life, you should pick the eight pound weights. Maybe five pound weights next time.

They’re playing Bonnie Raitt, not Iron and Wine. The guy at the next table is reading the Bible, not the alt-weekly. But they’ve got soy lattes and free wifi, so here I am. On the way to the coffeehouse, I heard “Blitzkreig Bop” on the radio, repurposed as an Ohio State fight song. O! H! I, O!

It’s my first trip back to Ohio since my father died in February. It is exactly as hard as I thought it would be. Yesterday Mom and I went to the cemetery, and I found myself wishing I could bring tomatoes, peppers, radishes — things he used to grow. Mom pointed out landmarks en route to Dad’s grave. Once there, we watered, in hopes that the grass seed scattered on top of the dirt will soon germinate.

Now they’re playing “Cherish,” and I can’t write about Dad with Kool and the Gang in the background — the juxtaposition of grief and overplayed, overwrought R&B reawakens my sense of humor. The world so rarely provides a really appropriate soundtrack.

It’s one of the first questions in my FAQ because it really is asked frequently: some variation on “Did the story in Empress of the World happen to you?” My answer: No. If it had, it would be an autobiography, not a novel. But it was certainly inspired by people and events from my life.

It’s that caveat in the answer, the yes in the no, that’s always intriguing. I’m experiencing it now from the other side as I read Danit Brown’s short story collection, Ask for a Convertible. She grew up in Ann Arbor, like I did. We went to the same school for a while as teenagers. I remember the science teacher mispronouncing her name. I remember wanting to get to know her better and being, as was often the case with me then, too shy to try.

The collection is excellent — funny and poignant, with subtle and smart links between the stories. And yet, as I read, caught up in the characters’ lives as a reader, admiring Brown’s prose as a writer, I also felt, sometimes, like I’d gone back in time to eavesdrop. Wait, who’s Sanjay? I found myself wondering, as if some version of him is bound to have existed. Or I disputed details: It wasn’t the class president, it was the valedictorian, and she didn’t have to resign. Leg warmers and acid-wash, yes, but didn’t you also see how much the popular girls loved Forenza sweaters?

What is it that makes readers so suspicious of a writer’s ability to make things up? I imagine the only folks who get to escape this are genre writers — I assume no one asks Holly about her faerie blood, or Mette about her animal magic, or Libba about the weather in the Realms this time of year. But maybe I’m wrong…

On the Internet you can read about people who write and do cool things. Also sometimes you can listen to them or look at pictures of things they make.

• Did you know that you can get hold of L.M. Montgomery’s journals? Thanks for the tip, livygrrrl!
• And because now I know there are a lot of Montgomery fans in the house, I’ll also point y’all to this title I just discovered: Through Lover’s Lane: L.M. Montgomery’s Photography and Visual Imagination. “For forty years, Montgomery photographed her favourite places and people, using many of these photographs to illustrate the hand-written journals she left as a record of her life. Artistically inclined, and possessing a strong visual memory, Montgomery created scenes and settings in her fiction that are closely linked to the carefully composed shapes in her photographs.” I haven’t read it yet, but I can’t wait.
• Seeing Voices: A Conversation with Nisi Shawl
  
• WGN Chicago audio interview with Julia Durango and Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
• KPBS San Diego audio interview with Jim Ottaviani
• Detroit MetroTimes: “Odd jobs: cleaning up crime scenes and other extraordinary gigs” — all fascinating, but especially check out “Witness to an exhumation” by Sophia Raptis and “Graveyard shift” about cartoonist Suzanne Baumann’s job in headstone design
• The fabulous work of costumer Miriam Chin, who’s just moved to Portland

“I really need to get a better camera,” I said. Jay dissented: “Cell phone photos are the new Polaroids.”

Ever since, I’ve been trying to rejoice in my camera’s limitations, rather than lamenting them.

I don’t know what kind of tree this is, but they are all over town.

At the Springwater Grill.

I like taking pictures of windows because they remind me of comics panels.

Because it looks like a bunny.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a longtime fan of the Anne of Green Gables series, too. (Click the link for Gwenda Bond’s excellent recent NPR piece about the Anne books.)

But not as many people ever seemed to know about the Emily books, and that automatically made them more appealing to me. That, and the fact that Emily, from nearly the very beginning of Emily of New Moon, was established as a writer.

I always looked for books with writer characters. Writers are often warned not to write about writers or writing, and of course it can be coy and cloying, not to mention putting unnecessary, distancing layers between writer and reader. But when I was a girl who wanted be a writer, a girl who wanted to be a writer was exactly who I wanted to read about. Here’s Emily writing about the Murray relatives she’s just met:

For a moment she thought she would throw herself on her bed and cry. She COULDN’T bear all the pain and shame that was burning in her heart. Then her eyes fell on the old yellow account-book on her little table. A minute later Emily was curled up on her bed, Turk-fashion, writing eagerly in the old book with her little stubby lead-pencil. As her fingers flew over the faded lines her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone. She forgot the Murrays although she was writing about them–she forgot her humiliation–although she was describing what had happened; for an hour she wrote steadily by the wretched light of her smoky little lamp, never pausing, save now and then, to gaze out of the window into the dim beauty of the misty night, while she hunted through her consciousness for a certain word she wanted; when she found it she gave a happy sigh and fell to again.

I also wanted to read about the aspect of Emily’s character that made her seem like a heroine from one of the other kind of books I loved, fantasies. Emily has a curious, never-explained ability to experience what she calls “the flash”:

Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn’t exactly describe it. It couldn’t be described–not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else.

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside–but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond–only a glimpse–and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely–went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it–never summon it–never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.

Can I possibly explain how much I wanted to have “the flash”? At least as much as I wanted to be able to kythe.

When I reread the books now, their sweeping sentimentality and loving extended landscape descriptions can feel overblown. There are wince-inducing dated attitudes to be found as well. But the humor — often springing from the contrast between Emily’s dreamy, passionate nature and the flat bluntness of other characters — holds up. So does Montgomery’s gift for vivid and specific details of setting, as in this description of the kitchen at New Moon Farm:

Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden walls and a low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens, and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow.

And the characters themselves, not just Emily, but all of them, are still absolutely alive.

Postscript: In looking for links for this post, I discovered that there’s an Emily of New Moon anime series. I’m frightened but intrigued. Anyone seen it? Should I?

Perhaps he’s trying to hide from the heat?

It’s just that I experienced both extremes of Attitudes Toward Cyclists during the same ride:

Take One: After work, I’m part of a large bicycle flock occupying the majority of N. Vancouver Avenue. As we approach the corner of Vancouver and Mississippi, two pedestrians start cheering. “WOOOOO!! No fossil fuels, all RIGHT!”

Take Two: Intersection immediately before crossing the Broadway Bridge into downtown. I’m in the bike lane, waiting for the light to change, next to a truck. Two helmetless cyclists approach — coasting fast against the flow of traffic, giggling. One yells “Sorry!” Truck driver leans out of his window and addresses me: “You understand I don’t feel bad when types like that get run over.”

• That crud I had, summer cold 2.0., I was already recovering. But thirteen miles worth of biking today really made me feel better. I can feel myself turning into yet another one of Portland’s bicycle evangelists, a gleam in my eye, chainring heart sticker on my messenger bag, one pant leg forever rolled up. I have yet to write a zine about it, but hey, I’m blogging.

• Brave new (well, belated, actually) congratulations to Hugo winner Jeff Prucher!