to be in a time of return

to nap on a half-full flight. to be sat next to by a tall man in a cowboy hat regardless. to recite “prufrock” in your head before departing. to hug your mother’s husband. to realize that he smells like beer, but only a little bit, then to fear the drive home.

to wake up to a knock on the door. to hear that your grandparents have called. to call them, to miss them, to be called back. to smoke a cigar with the man who raised you who was not your father. to not tell your grandmother, lest you face her wrath and prayers. to be told to sit like a lady. to explain the things that make you tick, like gestures, intonation, and co-speech. to be met with a chorus of “bless your heart.” to, thankfully, be offered money, but to refuse it anyway because you’ve so carefully metered your stipend and refused yourself the therapy that you needed. need. to tell them that you’ve not time for boys, which is not technically a lie. to pray before a meal, to enjoy it wholly, and to realize how much you’ve missed the company. to feign support for a very angry, very orange man. to drive home safe.

to return to their home for sunday biscuits and jam. to wear skirts, and to skirt around the issues that nobody dares to face. to own at least five bibles. to smear a tinge of mauve-colored lipstick on a paper napkin and to reapply it while your grandmother takes out her curlers. to make the all-too-familiar drive to church. to be hugged by all the ladies who call you “sweetheart.” to question whether or not you should be offended by that one lady’s comment about your “slimmer” figure. to evil-eye the boy who sent you dick pics in the ninth grade and to question why you’d even have a boyfriend who’d send you dick pics in the ninth grade. to be called an abomination, albeit indirectly, and to be okay with that. to recite “prufrock”in your head while the preacher preaches. to be on the receiving end of a knowing wink from the only woman in church who wears pants. to return it. to remember why you do it all in the first place.

to trudge your way through christmas. to cry upon seeing your best friend. to drink top-shelf sake on his couch and watch cabaret. to stare at the ceiling and wonder why you’re here. to hike in the morning. to complain about christmas festivities on said hike. to drive past the places that destroyed you and to struggle through the tightening in your chest. to walk into the place that made you. to make your supporters proud. to make them proud under true pretenses (if that’s a thing). to make others proud under false pretenses because that’s just the arkansas way.

to create a delicate façade. to undo it all for therapy. to own your decisions regardless. to accept the context that informed your life, but to hate it nonetheless. to speak with a neurologist. to hear “bless you heart” sans malice from your neurologist. to have an mri and to recite “prufrock” in your head over the noise of the machine. to know that your brain was broken before you even got to use it. to fight to accept that unfortunate fact. to be grateful for what you have left. to accept condolences when they’re often. to know that hate crime does not define you, even when it feels like it does. 

to nurture—or, rather, attempt to nurture—a paper-thin relationship. to try to undo the undoable. to have a father after all this time, but only when things are good. to have things be good. to jolt awake to the sound of new year’s gunshots outside your window. to roll your eyes at the accompanying cries of “yee yee.” to accept tenuously-offered praise. to drive your car for the last time before going home. home-home. to sip on apple pie moonshine the night before a flight. to wear sunglasses to the airport because of said moonshine. to accept love when it is offered, even if it is offered under questionable conditions. to hate it all. to miss it nonetheless.

Process Notes: Before writing this, I made a list of things that I wanted to include. They were all statements that, for me, distilled my experience of coming home into a series of moments. I was greatly inspired by Lorde’s “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” specifically her statement that poetry is a “distillation of experience.” I tried to play around with language, as well, in order to give this work some semblance of form. It ended up being much longer than I meant for it to be and ended up going in a few different directions, but the role of those Southern sayings (read: insults) ties it to my topic. At first, I tried to do punctuation in the style of Adnan, but the commas felt like they conveyed a form of continuation that wasn’t working with my vision for the piece, so I compromised by maintaining her Linguistic style, but by employing periods instead of commas. I chose to work only in lowercase letters because it felt very stripped-down, just like the style that I was writing in. Ultimately, I like the way that this turned out. I found myself talking about some really difficult parts of my life, but it felt appropriate here.

Like Allison, the relationship between Carmel and Eugénie struck me. It was challenging to read because the power dynamic was so strong for so much of their storyline. Eugénie had such power over Carmel that she was more than willing to yield despite her young age and that was difficult to grapple with. Therefore, when those hierarchical lines began to blur, it made me rather anxious.

I found it fascinating, yet rather unsurprising, when it came to light that Carmel’s connection to Eugénie was more transactional than anything. She was able to gain a form of very limited power through learning from the other girl, which was greatly appreciated in the wake of Carmel’s wholly unjust treatment and position. It brings a certain level of complexity to this narrative that I’ve never heard of before. The depth that Keene lends to these characters is absolutely stunning and it’s something that brings forth an important perspective.

On another point, to echo Sofia, I found the tone with which Keene told Carmel’s story to be rather detached. I feel that I’ve learned little about Carmel through the tone of the narrative that surrounds her. The image that I have of her feels very one-dimensional. At no point do we really get to hear her voice as it is, so I feel like there’s a lot to be questioned surrounding her characterization. It’s interesting that, even in a narrative like this, we never get to hear the voices of those who were so often left voiceless. No matter how much we think we know about these experiences, how much do we actually know?

Southern Lady Code: a technique by which, if you don’t have something nice to say, you say something not so nice in a nice way

In truth, I’m not sure why I expected to be met with anything different. I agreed to go to the party at the behest of my mother, who had so kindly tolerated the scorpions that my grandmother called her friends the month before. She said that everyone we cared about would be there, even the Gentrys, an older couple who ran the local Cotillion chapter that I had taught during high school. That should have been the first clue that something unpleasant would go down. Mrs. Gentry had always been a bit of a tool, ranging somewhere on the mean girl scale between Regina George and fucking Paris Hilton if the two were old, sour Southern women. I tolerated her for all those years because I was obligated. Now, that obligation was over. I was, however, still tied to my grandmother through blood and jewelry, so I donned my red pantsuit (“very holiday appropriate,” she said) and pearls, girded my loins, and walked into that hotel under the influence of far too much shiraz.

It was the final comment of the evening that got me. I dodged comments about my weight (“your face looks so much slimmer, sweetheart!”), major (“hope you have a good backup plan”), and love life (“I don’t see a ring on your finger yet, darling.”) for a whole hour and a half until my grandma pulled me over to see Mrs. Gentry, who’d been nonchalantly chatting with the new Chamber of Commerce President for much of the evening. After shooting the breeze for a moment or two, she’d asked my grandmother something (I can’t remember what) and, as usual, my grandmother responded. Now, apparently, I’m the “creative type,” whatever the hell that means. Probably a knock at the fact that I refuse to bring home the good ol’ Christian boy of Joyce’s dreams. 

Sometimes I really wish she’d just go out and say what she meant. To hell with all this “Southern Lady Code” bullshit. If she wanted to call me a helplessly ugly lesbian with more mental illnesses than IQ points, she really should have just come out and said it. But no. Of course not. It had to be dainty. Well, “creative” my ass. If that’s what she wants, that’s what she’ll get.

Process Notes:

I acquired the above definition from a book that I came across in the Bookstacks called Southern Lady Code. My original plan was to work out of a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette, and I may eventually write that story, but the “Southern Lady Code” definition felt very fitting. I wrote this piece from the perspective of a less-than-sober character who resembles myself in many ways. She has an overbearing grandmother and had faked her way into Southern society before leaving for college. When a similar thing happened to me, I didn’t react with the anger of this story’s narrator, but I thought it would be interested to address what would have happened if I did. Originally, I also wrote a dialogue involving this character and another that may very well end up in my final portfolio, but I’m not so sure. Anyway, this piece wasn’t too difficult to write. Honestly, it was kind of fun to isolate one of these moments and blow it up to this proportion. Also, highly recommend the book that inspired this piece! So funny!

Model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWYcobbgIU0 (It’s an SNL skit. I realize that someone else did a similar thing, but I swear there was no funny business here! SNL has a lot of really interesting content.

“Hey, I’m really not so sure about this. Like, I’m all for doing this skit or whatever, but I think it would be funnier if we were more honest here.” 

The brunette at the table’s corner spoke candidly after a long, frustrated sigh. They’d been in that room for far too long, writing a skit that the (arguably) most Southern person in the room found questionable at best. She stared down at her feet, brushing the nonexistent crumbs from the Pret croissant that she’d grabbed on the way to 30 Rockefeller Plaza that day from her sweatshirt. She usually agreed with the skits. Hell, she was usually the one cry-laughing as soon as it all came together onstage. This one, though, felt inaccurate in a strange way. The hair and the names and the accents were just spot on, but the key calling cards were nonexistent.

The man to her right shifted slightly, turning his head to face her. “Come on Keegan, it’s a caricature. It’s not really supposed to be completely honest.”

“Bill, I just…come on. Where’s the ‘bless your heart’ or the sweet tea? I mean, the box wine is pretty solid, but their issues? Someone needs to complain about their son butchering their crape myrtles. Someone needs to talk about the backstabbing bitch at their daughter’s cotillion. Like, come on. Caricature is valuable, sure, but I think that being specific to that area could also be really interesting. I get that bigger is better, but not at the expense of leaving a stereotype just half-done.”

Keegan gesticulated wildly as she spoke, quite nearly knocking her coffee directly into her lap. It was strange and almost eerie in a way, this process of going back to her own childhood. She could hear her mother now, screeching “good God” with her intense Alabama drawl. She knew that, if her aunts saw this, they wouldn’t be pleased. And it wasn’t really a question of crazy. They knew that they could be ridiculous. However, they also knew what made them ridiculous and it wasn’t losing a foot or stealing from the couch cushions. 

“We have to pander to everyone, not just the people that resemble the characters. Is it a spot-on characterization? No! But is it funny? That’s the question.”

Keegan sighed, rubbing her temples. “Good Lord…okay. Fine. It’s fine. The skit is fine. Just don’t change it. Don’t take it bigger. There’s a difference between a stereotype and an attack.”

And then, there was silence. At least for her. The meeting itself dragged on for a few more minutes at, at noon, they took their lunch breaks. As Keegan sauntered out of the room, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned quickly, her heart racing at the unexpected contact.

“Hey, it’s just me. Don’t worry,” Bill stated, letting his arm drop to his side. 

“Oh, hey. Sorry about that.”

“You’re good, really. I get it. I just noticed something while you were speaking. I didn’t realize that you had an accent.”

Keegan cocked an eyebrow, looking up at him curiously. “Huh. Really? When did I have an accent?”

“I’m not sure…I think it was the “Good Lord” that got me. I guess I forget that sometimes. You know, the whole Alabama thing. Maybe we can try a more “honest” skit someday? I think you had some good ideas there.”

Keegan shook her head and smiled softly, thinking. “Maybe. Can there be sweet tea?”

“There can always be sweet tea.”

Notes: I really enjoyed writing this piece. I definitely think that there’s a lot of work to be done if it is going to go into my end project, but I love writing narrative and this felt like it had a lot of opportunity. This skit is something that I find really interesting. Like Keegan, I don’t think that it’s entirely accurate per-sé, but it’s definitely putting forth some effort. I feel like it’s missing a lot, and I thought that writing from the perspective of a Southerner could be really interesting. If I had more space, I would probably try to focus a lot more on the narrative itself and a bit less on dialogue, but I felt that the dialogue was an important part of telling the story

While reading Sabrina, I found that Drnaso’s style affected me, as the reader, greatly. Between the relatively large number of textless cells, the occasional moments in which one action just jumps to another sans explanation, and the way in which many of the characters sort of blended together, I found myself experiencing a delirium of sorts that mimicked the one that I feel when grieving. When my grandfather passed away last week, there were things that just didn’t seem real and Sabrina made me feel similarly.

For me, one of the major factors that influenced my feelings while reading this graphic novel was Drnaso’s style of illustration. The colors were generally muted and the characters seemed flat, almost waxy in a way. This is a style that I generally appreciate because it allows me to focus so much on the storyline without being trapped in a sensory hall of mirrors. I wouldn’t say that this work embodies Calvino’s idea of exactitude, nor would I expect it to. However, I find that it does embody some form of exactitude. It is more of an emotional exactitude where one might not see or hear every detail, but instead may be more likely to feel them.

            Sabrina wasn’t particularly flashy or ostentatious, but I found that it was very honest. Those pages contained a distillation of these characters’ emotions in the wake of tragedy and how the internet can put those feelings on blast, making their personal experiences more of a reality show than actual, human experience.

Italo Calvino’s text, Mr. Palomar, was poignant in the strangest of ways. Calvino’s titular character is characterized as a “nervous man who lives in a frenzied and congested world.” He deals with the so-called frenzy and congestion by greatly limiting the world that he encounters. Although the world passes by him as normal, Palomar opts for a more refined existence. According to the narrator, this more refined existence is generally characterized by a limiting of socialization and sensation. In short, Palomar seems comfortable with the idea of just existing with himself.

His relationship with the idea of exactitude is also quite peculiar. He craves a profound existence and searches for it by scouring everything around him for meaning. He seems to have this crushing need to see the world exactly as it is. Truth is simply not enough for Palomar. As Kathleen said in her own response, he desires exactitude in “behavior and understanding.” She notes that this makes him a rather dull, tiring man. These are points that I absolutely agree with. I feel that his analysis is, at times, misplaced. He ignores his own shortcomings and his own mistakes in his conquest for truth while mocking others’ follies.

Despite his claimed commitment to exactitude, I’m not so sure that his current way of life is compatible with that notion. He goes over all he sees with a fine-toothed comb and loses the exactitude of reality in the process. Palomar focuses so much on the movement of the waves and, as much as he desires to see an end to their crashing, he’s ignoring everything that is going on outside of his own head. The waves are not the sole focal point of reality for the majority of people, it seems, so Palomar’s view of the world seems very narrow. Although he seems like he kind of person who would argue that his reality is, in fact, truthful because it is his reality, he forgoes a more functional truth while pursuing a more ultimate exactitude of life.

Draft 1:

My Granny’s pearls are soft, just like she yearned for me to be. There are no edges. The necklace exists as a collective of little white balls with all the meaning in the world and, yet, I could never quite comprehend them. When I scrutinize them closely, they’re not exactly white. Not exactly. The oh-so-familiar sheen casts back the irregularities of my face. It’s the eyebrows that she begged to have waxed, the acne that cleansers and serums couldn’t fix, and the pale pallor of an indoors-y lifestyle that stare at me, not the elegant, hand-picked gems that make this piece so precious. In truth, it is almost as if they lose their dearness when admired. The perfect glaze isn’t marred by any reflection, any passer-by when left alone in her jewelry box. As lovely as it would be to just let them stay there, to allow them to exist in a world where nobody or nothing can hurt them, that would defeat the purpose of having a necklace like this one, wouldn’t it?

The clasp is gold. It’s 18 karat gold, specifically. Much like the stones that it holds together, it has a way of throwing back into the world everything that it encounters. Its tiny claw has been replaced time and time again, but it doesn’t show. It really has weathered every storm. Through war, marriage, children, college, life, it has been bent and broken, but never beyond repair. Much like its owner, it serves as the “glue” of the system. It pulls everything together, despite the pressure of dozens of pieces, without complaint; when outside influences push and tug, it stays strong and forces the collective to which it belongs to do so, as well.

When the pearls are worn, the whole world stops. My Granny has exited the room and Joyce has glided in. They rest delicately around her neck, only dipping slightly in the hollows of her collarbones. The ethereal ivory quite nearly blends into her skin. “Tasteful,” is what they’re called, supposedly, but I’m not so sure about that. By themselves, they represent southern womanhood. They are southern womanhood, or at least a part of it. On her, though, they’re a calling card. When she wears that necklace, everyone knows that she is la jefa, as my mother would call her. She’s the one in charge. They’re Batman’s mask and James Bond’s suit. They serve as a form of armor, one that’s just subtle enough to be acceptable. She is untouchable in those. Now, I’ve learned that I am, too.

When she gave them to me, I felt the weight in my hand. They were light, sure, but there was a certain heft there that I didn’t quite know how to understand. It wasn’t the first time that I’d felt them. A few months before, they hung around my own neck while I presented research at my first symposium. This time, though, they were no longer borrowed armor. They were mine. She presented me with care instructions: clean them, but not too often, take them to a reputable jeweler if there are any clasp issues, and wear them when you need to own a room. These perfect, little roundnesses were a major responsibility and that part weighed on me more than their physical form ever could.

When I consider them in my own drawer, in my own jewelry box, I am brought back to my younger days. My face no longer ruins their smooth surfaces, but instead adds to them a certain sense of belonging. I’ve learned that I can own a room with or without them and that, much like the clasp, I can be the glue for my own life. They rarely see the light of day, but when they do, it is marvelous. I was never the elegant gem that my grandmother wanted, nor was I the model southern woman that the other women in my life expected. However, those pearls remind me of where I come from. With them or without them, I am la jefa. Joyce is with me, and that’s all I need to know.

Draft 2:

The clasp is gold, 18 karat specifically (my grandmother was a strong believer in investments). For me, at least, its length is the first factor that flags its value; I’ve never seen a cheap, nor new, necklace with a clasp like that. I stare at it and it stares back at me. There’s something about my reflection in the polished metal that is knowing. Jewelry like this is for a time of need. Maybe it knows what I need, after all. I’m impressed by the job that it has done over the past few decades. It holds the milky little stones together effortlessly, never complaining despite the fact that those pearls are heavy. It doesn’t really get enough attention. Everyone sees the pearls and what they represent, the statement that they make about elegance, class, and their respective places in Southern womanhood. It is, after all, a pearl necklace. Tiffany. It was a gift. My grandpa didn’t buy it for the clasp. That’s all I notice, though. I own a priceless piece of finery and all I notice is the freaking clasp. But is that so wrong?

Without that clasp, my grandma’s prized jewels would be nothing but a pile of beads. It takes charge of the collective of pretty little gems and makes it something. It makes it do something. The shiny gold pieces of this oft-ignored thing (I know no other word) work in tandem. Its inner workings are stunning. The claw’s arc-like path as it pivots on its pin mesmerizes me, even as I will its movement in the first place. Despite the pulls and pushes of daily life, of children and husbands and runaway hamsters, it has held strong and forces the preciousness that it holds to do so, too.

Around my own neck, these shiny bits are armor. No amount of patronizing can conquer my admittedly-weak psyche when those stones graze my collarbones, dipping only slightly in the hollow there. She always told me that, with my mouth and those pearls, I could do anything. I forget that sometimes, but this gift reminds me.

When I put them on, I feel the weight of her expectation. The pressure of it all and the guilt that accompanies it is overwhelming. However, much like the clasp that I see so often, I just have to handle it. My grandma always wanted me to be a pretty little gem like the ivory stones at my throat, but maybe I’m the clasp after all.

Process Notes:

Writing in this style was definitely not easy. I struggled to focus on the process of observation in and of itself instead of using it as a method of storytelling. Time and time again, I found myself frustrated with my mind’s inability to focus on the pearls themselves instead of what they represented. In the end, I didn’t really succeed in producing a work of pure observation, but I still think that there’s something valuable that I gleaned from the experience and I wouldn’t have settled on these works if I hadn’t thought that there was a certain degree of observational narrative present.

The first task posed an interesting challenge to my writing style. I use certain types of language to convey the uncertainty that plagues my storytelling journey and, in general, life. I often interweave moments of vague language with moments of exacting language. However, I also notice that doing this sometimes leads to a certain degree of monotony in my creative diction. The exercise that was assigned interrupted my process in a really valuable way. It forced me to break out of my normal ways of writing and to try something that I may not have otherwise considered.

The second task, that of rewriting without reflection, allowed me to consider a new perspective. My first draft was very much so focused on an approach characterized by a big picture zooming into a smaller picture. I tried to look at the necklace as a whole and then analyze each of its individual parts. In the second draft, I explored an approach that was characterized by focusing on the relationship between an individual part and the whole. Although I generally prefer the way that the first approach turned out, I can see a lot of value in my second approach and feel that it would serve my writing well to consider these different perspectives.