Five Things I’ve Learned as a Finalist in the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize

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#CanadaWrites, #CBCBooks, Canadian writer, Elaine Stirling, finalist in #CBCShortStoryPrize, writers write

1. Opportunity abounds.

On February 26 of this year, I was working on a short story when an email arrived. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the opening line, “Congratulations! You’ve made the longlist…” because I only had three days until the contest deadline for the story I was writing. And honestly, who pays attention to emails that begin with “Congratulations!”?

Happily, it wasn’t spam. Thirty-one writers had, indeed, made the longlist for the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize, and I was one of them. It had been months since I wrote the piece. I couldn’t remember the title and certainly hadn’t read it since then. I rummaged through a beautiful box that I keep just for stories, and there it was: “Restitution”.

Eight weeks have passed since that wonderful day. The experience has been unequivocally joyful, all the way through making the shortlist, and listening to David Heubert read his extraordinary winning story, “Enigma”, on the CBC Books website.

If you’ve spent any time with writers, or people who wish they were, or people who call themselves writers yet spend most of their energy making sure no one gets too happy, you may be persuaded it’s a doomed art. All the great writers are dead, they’ll tell you, or unapproachably brilliant. And then there are the ones who use the upcoming end of the world as their excuse for not finishing or not starting something. Fine. Whatever.

Fact is, there are more opportunities for writers these days than I’ve ever known. You can enter contests, submit manuscripts online (no more SASE, yay!), start a blog, share your work through dozens of social networks. Who cares if no one reads it? Someone might! What writing comes down to is output—i.e. putting it out there.

As it happens, I decided this year to take on Ray Bradbury’s challenge: “Write a short story every week,” he dares us. “It’s not possible to write 52 bad stories.” Turns out, the guy was right. I have written at least one good story, so far, with the creds to prove it. I have also learned that producing a story every week leaves you no time for hanging out with end-of-the-world whingers.

2. Enthusiasm is a flame. Fan it.

As emotions go, enthusiasm can be a matchstick. If you don’t bring it near kindling or a wick, it flares up and out. Life pushes in, wanting to look the way life did before that lovely but temporary thing interrupted it.

The hard-working, enthusiastic team at CBC Books made sure that didn’t happen for us finalists. They fanned our fires, both longlist and short, with Facebook posts, tweets, retweets, and frequent shout-outs. They created beautiful quote graphics, like the one you see at the top of this blog. When I read the longlist excerpt they’d created, I didn’t recognize it as my own writing. I was viewing my work through enthusiastic eyes. Fire fed!

What delighted me most was the attention CBC Books pays to the craft of writing. They wanted to know how it felt to write “Restitution”. What was the aftermath? Which author influences me most? Why? And my personal favourite: describe your story in five words.

As finalists, we basked in the enthusiasm of a publicist who shared (and continues to share) our bios and stories coast-to-coast. You begin to get the sense that, oh my gosh, this really is Canadian Broadcasting!

3. People’s reactions are their privilege. Enjoy and appreciate them.

The response from family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers has been tremendous. Until something like this happens, you just don’t realize how much love and support is ready to burst into bloom around you. Maybe the impulse to cheer is part of who we are—I believe it is—so any opportunity to celebrate each other is a good one.

On the other hand, there were silences. There were lukewarm, unconvincing responses from people whose opinion I cherish. That was enlightening too, a reminder like a bug bite that what others think, say, and feel about me will stop itching if I leave it alone.

The same holds true for what I write. My subject matter, genre, style, even my punctuation may rub some people the wrong way, and that’s fine. Each of us is free to choose where we place our attention and how we respond to what crosses our paths. For myself, I cheer what I love, I appreciate those who cheer me, and allow the rest their freedoms.

4. Disappointment is a fog. Walk through it.

On Tuesday, April 19, the winner of the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize was announced, and it wasn’t me. As a writer, I know I’ll be able to milk that whomp to my stomach and heart for years to come.

The day before, I’d prepared for the eventuality of hard news by completing a 6600 word story and walking it to the post office with days to spare before another contest deadline. I was proud of myself for that. From that low rung of positivity, I thought about the other three finalists somewhere in Canada and knew what they were feeling. Empathy: climb another rung.

I have other writing deadlines, in addition to Ray B. sitting on my shoulder, but I didn’t go near them yesterday. Instead, I spent time with friends, visited the library and bookstore—found treasures in both—and saw “The Jungle Book”. Bless you, Rudyard Kipling!

The email from CBC Books from a person I’d come to know as a true heart, was addressed to us four finalists. She offered commiserations and congrats! Our writing, after all, had risen above thousands of entrants. We had every reason to feel proud. And there would always be next year, and the year after that.

Disappointment is a fog. Today is sunny.

5. To be treated like a VIW is a reminder, not a fluke.

When you enter the CBC Short Story Prize, you can be sure of one thing. Your story will be read. The jurors are seasoned and respected in their fields. To be read by them is no small privilege.

From the moment you are longlisted to the moment of the final announcement and beyond, you’ll be treated like a VIW, Very Important Writer. Like a luxury spa or world cruise, the experience is delicious, and a part of you wants it never to end.

Good news is, there is no ending. Writing is important, and we humans cannot live without our storytellers. CBC Books keeps these truths alive by offering prizes and opportunities, year after year, to writers. I am forever grateful.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

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First Time I Heard the Word “Infidel”

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Charlie Hebdo, Elaine Stirling, essay, Paris, political asylum, religious experiences, UNHCR

In my first grown-up, career job, at the tender age of 22 or 23, I had the privilege of facilitating refugee hearings for people seeking political asylum in Canada. I felt like the luckiest person alive, being able to hear stories of survival and perseverance, and to be a representative of the Canadian government. I’d only just returned from traveling in Europe where a maple leaf and/or blondeness opened up pretty much every door. I am also the granddaughter of immigrants. I felt that I was doing good work.

The events this week in Paris reminded me of a Middle Eastern family who were seeking asylum. During our initial conversations, in preparation for the hearing, I found the parents to be warm and delightful. Their homeland was embroiled in civil war. I could feel how painful it was for them to leave everything behind and throw themselves at the mercy of a nation not their own.

Part of my task required that I obtain an Arabic-speaking interpreter. When I informed the couple that I had an interpreter and we were good to go, the husband asked me for the person’s name. An odd request, I thought, but I told him. There was an awkward silence on the phone. “Please find someone else,” he said. “Your interpreter is an infidel, and he will not translate in a trustworthy manner.”

I had never heard the word “infidel” before. I thought he meant that the interpreter was agnostic, something one could hardly gather from hearing a name. I tried to assure him that all of our interpreters were unbiased and well qualified. After he explained, I said, in my rosy naivete, “But it’s all the same God.” In the end, I had to find someone else…a “fidel”.

I don’t recall whether the family’s claim was successful, and it doesn’t matter. What stayed with me, though, is how much distrust and worst case scenario thinking we drag around with us, even when the opportunity for something better stands right before our eyes. Their children would be about the age of the suspects in the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. Each of us grows where we’re planted. Some of us never get the twists out. I offer these flowers, focused and unfocused, in tribute to all who are suffering today.

~~~
© Elaine Stirling, 2015

The Four Most Powerful Words Never Used in Business

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#longreads, brave new business leadership, Elaine Stirling, essay, The Corporate Storyteller

I don’t often talk about the day I was fired, ordered to clean out my desk with a security guard in attendance, and escorted off the premises like I was some kind of criminal. A shocked colleague pressed $20.00 into my palm in case I needed cab fare, mouthing the word, “Why?”

When I do talk about that day, it’s to my corporate clients when they’ve hit a log jam, when nothing else will persuade them that finding—and using—their own voice is everything.

I’d been working four months in the corporate head offices of what is known as the second most regulated industry after nuclear. The security investigation prior to hiring is fierce. Their internal, tongue-in-cheek tagline is, “People watching people watching people.”

But that’s not the fun part of this story.

Where it really began was the year before, on a Saturday night at 2:00 a.m. when I was so exasperated with my cash team, I wanted to throttle every last one of them. The honeymoon period of our gorgeous new bookstore was over. Cashiers leaned against walls, chatting. Crap piled up on the cash desks. No one wanted to work the upstairs cash, where they’d miss the best gossip.

I’d finished counting and locking up the cash and was about to leave the store when an impulse hit me. I sat at the computer, and my last lucid thought before entering a fugue state was, “You wanna act like 3-year-olds? Fine, I’ll treat you like 3-year-olds!”

The two-page document, written in 14-point Comic Sans MS, took me twenty red-hot minutes to write. I slapped a copy into the staffroom communication binder where all ninety employees, forty of them my team, would have to read and initial it before beginning their shift. Sunday was my day off. I didn’t give any of them a second thought.

Monday morning, I returned to work, mildly curious as to the effect of my vent. Most likely, the GM, with whom I got along well, would have read, chuckled, and removed it.

The smiling faces started to gather as soon as I entered the store. Floor staff who’d never wanted to work cash, thinking it was intellectually beneath them, asked if they could be cross-trained. Members of my cash team came up and hugged me, some with tears in their eyes, for reminding them of how much they loved their jobs.

Over the next few days, my management colleagues thanked me for making Manager on Duty the new dream job. Our GM, thrilled with the soaring morale, sent a copy of my doc to Head Office, calling it genius. Of our ninety employees, eighty-five made a point of coming up and telling me how much they appreciated what I’d written.

That was only the beginning.

Over the next six weeks, our store sales climbed higher and higher. Customers were so happy with our service that I designed a campaign for employees to record the testimonials. We called them Indigo Moments, and the results were so measurably positive that Head Office invited me to to launch the program, nation-wide.

We were in the midst of working out the logistics when I was recruited by a training director who no longer worked at Head Office. She was now at that other place, the super-regulated one. She had created a position for me at twice the salary because of my demonstrated skills in motivation, innovation, and creativity.

They were the same skills that would push me out the door four months later, especially that last one. “You seem to think that every problem has a creative solution,” said the director who’d once sung my praises. “Well, it doesn’t. And it’s obvious you have no understanding of corporate restraint.”

On that last point, I had to agree. Corporate restraint, which consisted, as far as I could tell, of staying at one’s computer with shoulders hunched and no clue of what anyone else did made no sense at all.

Within six months of my being let go, the first of a series of corporate scandals hit the “people watching people watching people” industry. Senior executives were charged with fraud. Theft and corruption were revealed at the lower ranks. Over the next eight years, CEOs were brought in and let go, board members and entire executive teams replaced.

Their reputation and morale must have hit a new low when in 2010, I received a phone call from the HR director inviting me to design a set of workshops for their senior executives. “We want you to teach us how to tell stories, how to be creative.”

I had only one moment of panic re-entering those halls, when the executive assistant to the woman who fired me stepped out of an elevator. But no one recognized or remembered me. And no one, presumably, had checked their files.

As it turned out, they never ran the workshops. They’ve had two more CEOs since.

Now we come finally to the four most powerful words never used in business. Only I did use them on a Saturday night at 2 a.m., and they changed everything.

The four words are, Once upon a time…

The rest of the sentence read, there were three little cash desks.

And here is the whole story, exactly as it appeared, except for the Comic Sans MS font.

THE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE CASH DESKS

Once upon a time, there was a store called Indigo Yorkdale, and in this store lived three little cash desks. Their names were Lower Cash, Upper Cash and Front cash.

Lower Cash was the oldest of the three. He was also the largest. He had six registers, a look-up and lots of nooks and crannies to put things in. Some people believed that’s all there was to Lower Cash, but they were mistaken. Lower Cash also had a mall entrance where customers could be greeted, an extensive magazine section that always needed straightening and which felt very sad when people didn’t take the time to find out what was in it. Lower Cash had octagons with new releases, a What’s New What’s Hot section, a place for biographies and, because of the computer and telephone, had access to every other part of Indigo Yorkdale.

Upper Cash was the lonely middle child whom people overlooked because he was off in a corner, quiet, unassuming. They sometimes resisted going to Upper Cash because they thought he was boring, even though, in his way, he was a terribly important cash desk. This was where the mysterious Indigo Circles were processed, where many carts of books were stickered and where customers could also be greeted through the upper mall entrance. But Upper Cash was more than all of these. Upper Cash was also the gateway to Indigo Kids where stories and parties and magic happened every day. And it was the portal to Indigo Music where Mozart could be found, and Motown and Bocelli and CDs of just about anyone you could imagine. Upper Cash had so much to offer, and he wondered why cashiers didn’t see him that way. He hoped that one day they would.

And finally, there was the youngest of the three little cash desks. Like most babies of the family, Front Cash quickly became a favourite. He was full of light, laughter and could always be found in the middle of everything. Front Cash was surrounded by Presents, a stone’s throw from Travel and was a popular spot for Home lovers and Business people alike. Front Cash said hello to everyone because it came easily to him, and most everyone said hello back. Front Cash didn’t know that his older brothers were misunderstood, that their talents were ignored, or that arguments sometimes broke out because of them. If he had known, Front Cash would have taken that silly person by the hand and shown him or her what delightful cash desks they were. And he would have told them that anyone would be lucky to have Upper Cash or Lower Cash as a friend.

Because that’s what all the cash desks really want to be. They want to be everybody’s friend. So next time you’re asked to go to Upper Cash or to Lower, or you’re lucky enough to be chosen for Front Cash, give the desk a tiny little pat. Let him know that you’re happy to be there and looking forward to sharing experiences. If you do this, you can be certain that when all the lights are dimmed, and all the customers and cashiers and managers and floor people have gone home for the night, the three little cash desks will be dancing in the aisles, hardly able to wait for a new day to begin at Indigo Yorkdale.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

Elaine Stirling is the author of The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader. She is a corporate communication consultant, novelist, short story writer, and poet.

Whiskey, Idealists, & Things Worn Close to the Heart

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#heartsmith, corporate storytelling, creativity, cross-functionality, Elaine Stirling, fiction, innovation, Johnny Walker, Law of Attraction, marketing narratives, motivation, poetry, product placement, promotion, Starbucks, The Corporate Storyteller, vibrational reality, Writers Tears Irish Whiskey

sterling silver locket from heartsmith.com

We met last week in a crowded Starbucks in the corporate soul of the city, the idealist and I. She doesn’t call herself an idealist unless you ask her directly, but I should have guessed from the two comfy chairs that are never unoccupied that were waiting empty for us. And by the way no one stayed longer than a few minutes at the table beside us, as if the heat, energy, and enthusiasm from our conversation was too intense, frying their gadgets and inner circuitry.

Our topic of conversation was corporate storytelling, the currentest hot phrase following on the heels of strategic planning, employee engagement, leadership, innovation; and if you want to push deeper into murky corporate mists: excellence, vision, transparency…

So in a place not too far from Starbucks, in a time not so long ago, there lived a manager who believed her workplace was a palace. She floated, skipped, and danced through her shifts basking in the smiles of happy staff and customers—until the day came when she noticed, probably because her feet hurt, that not everyone viewed their surroundings as palatial. And that when her back was turned, there lurked amidst the crevices disenchantment, boredom, and darker things we won’t bother to name.

For a while, the manager dealt with the nasty gnats one at a time, but the swatting grew tiresome; and the more she coached, scolded, performance-managed (could there possibly be a clunkier term?) the worse things became, until one Saturday long past midnight with the palace a shambles, her nerves frayed and jangling, she’d had enough! She spent twenty minutes alone at a keyboard, slapped the results into a communication binder, and drove home, not caring if she ever saw the stupid, ugly palace again.

Returning to work on Monday, the manager was greeted by broad, beaming, megawatt smiles. People she never spoke to came up and thanked her with tears in their eyes. They asked to be trained in the tasks she managed. They’d had no idea work could be so fun.

In the weeks that followed, store sales spiked. Managers on duty reported unprecedented enthusiasm from staff and glowing reports from customers. The climb in sales was noticed by Head Office who wanted to know what was going on. The GM shared the contents of the binder. Head Office had never seen anything like it. The manager was asked to expand on what she’d begun and to take her campaign company-wide. She said yes…

That was thirteen years ago, and the manager was me. If the phrase “corporate storytelling” existed in 2000, I hadn’t heard it, but I had read plenty of stories, and the pages I slapped into the binder that night began with, “Once upon a time…”

I hold that event, which seemed so tiny at the time, close to my heart. The adventures continued, stories built, and more and more, I am meeting people who float, skip, and dance through life.

sterling silver locket from heartsmith.com

One of them, the owner and chief executive of heartsmith, has launched a series of lockets featuring my poetry. “Live in the Momentum”, the Navarrosa Collection, sources from my novel-in-progress, Daughters of Babylon, which, in turn, is excerpted in Gavriel Navarro’s second volume of poetry, Fire and Earth: Poems and Reflections on the Nature of Desire. The best stories wind in and out, through and around, not caring a fig for distinctions like fiction and nonfiction, never been done, who do you think…?

Who do I think I am? Yes. There is no other answer to that shortest, most perfect story, should anyone ask it of you with a Snidely Whiplash curl of the lip.

So what does all of this have to do with whiskey? (Hafiz, lover of wine, frequenter of taverns, I’m sure you would have fun with this!) Perhaps it is because spirits, both liquid and disembodied, are disinhibitors by nature, their agility entwined with earth, rain, sun, love, tears, pride, joy. For reasons that are sure to unfold, as all things do, the idealist and I each brought as our best examples of corporate storytelling last week a whiskey tale. I share Johnny Walker and Writers Tears Irish Whiskey with you here. Sláinte!

 ~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Pain Glyphs

Tags

Elaine Stirling, imagination, laments, pain, perception, prose poetry, sad poetry, snow shoveling, storm sewers, transitions

The husk around the heart hurts like hell when the freshness within breaks through. Gibran said it better. So did Harry Nilsson who called it belly achin’.

Pain while it gurgles away loves to have its say, but the flow of slush into a storm sewer doesn’t interest me much, even when, especially when, it’s set to verse. You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I ignore laments, including my own, in favour of the advent of crocuses.

Shoveling wet, heavy snow, I mourn the friend I can’t get near because of the one who’s deemed herself the myelin sheath that coats his neurons. Two intelligences halved, coconut closed, which, I suppose, is where that unfortunate phrase, “my better half”, comes from.

Well, the melt is under way, so I shall ignore the plow that delivered a fresh rampart of snow cement between me and the world’s roadways. The freshness that broke through kindly allows me to sift through the fragments of erstwhile heart-throbs and desiccated grudge, one of which appears vaguely boat-shaped and may be float-worthy long enough to sail me past and over the gurgles.

Sure enough, I spy an island up ahead, not far at all, with a swaying coconut, lime trees, and a boombox with a sonnet.

See you there!

Essay © Elaine Stirling, 2013
Image from mindbodygreen.com

The Seamless Magic Carpet Ride of Brave New Leadership

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business ethics, business leadership, corporate communication, Elaine Stirling, executive summary, General Motors, I/you/we, integrity, Mr. Transmission, paradigm shift, Saturn division, The Corporate Storyteller, Three Steps to Everywhere

You can buy or read reviews of the book here.

My poetic friends and readers, I beg your indulgence. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, you’ll need to hum to yourself in hexameter or free verse for the time being, while the gnomes and I (see previous post) tend to matters prosaic and incredulating.

As I write this piece, which may be rightly construed as a sales pitch for The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader, ten thousand fine people are suing an iconic corporation, known since my childhood for baby shampoo and other familial comforts, for creating an artificial hip that falls apart in five years. An automotive company, associated for decades with luxury and impeccable workmanship, is recalling 500,000 vehicles for a potentially lethal flaw, the second recall of similar magnitude in three years. I could go on about cruise lines that continue to publish flashy ads while their passengers flounder at sea on a disabled ship, but you know what, corporations? You entities that came into being like golems for purposes both nefarious and noble? This isn’t about you.

Who I’d like to honour in this piece are the brave new business leaders I’ve had the privilege to meet in groups of five to fifty since 2001. Technically, they are my students—corporate clients, adult learners, commerce undergrads—men and women who are ready to use language for the purpose that language was created: to communicate, to connect, to share, to improve, to heighten, to adore, to energize, to enrich. We gather in Canada, but we come from every culture. No matter the cradle tongue, religion, or political slant.

Since The Corporate Storyteller came out in 2009, I’ve watched its basic principles take shape in the minds and actions of people from healthcare, finance, mining, education, construction, and not-for-profit, to name a few, at all levels. The principles themselves evolved from the thousand learners who preceded the book’s publication, as I stumbled week after week in the early years, building bridges of duct tape and hope between the creative, the critical, and the non-thinking (read here: stuck to my handheld, I haven’t looked up in seventeen months) worlds. Sure, I had enough writing and managerial background to avoid mutiny, but really, it was the endless “show me, prove it, what do you mean by; yeah but, what if…?” that built the backbone of the instructor who now witnesses genius creators of wisdom, humour, and workable solutions who take what they learn, what they teach themselves out into the world. I float home in states of ecstasy that require no pharmaceuticals and for which there is no coming down.

So what’s going on here?

We’ve all heard the clichés of paradigm shift; the Maya may have charted our transformation five suns ago. As usual, we misinterpret and stock up on canned goods, and when the world doesn’t end, we make snorty noises. A musician/songwriter friend has been proclaiming since I first met him on Facebook: “Love is on the rise.” In fact, it’s the title and lyric of one of John Rasmussen’s songs. (You can enjoy the full song on video, performed by John and his beautiful life partner, Sarah, in the Comments section.)

If believing is seeing, John is right. Love is on the rise. I’m seeing it.

This morning, I reviewed four executive summaries, assignments from my writing class. Reviewed, read, graded. In every way—let me be clear—they were professional documents designed for the audience they’re written for: executives, decision makers, the people of influence. Only, these had the added, deliberate unmeasurable of human voice and the I/you/we structure that I call in The Corporate Storyteller “Three Steps to Everywhere”. All four, every one, made me laugh out loud, cry, gasp, and/or stop to catch my breath. If I’d been the recipient of those documents in real business time/space, I’d be reaching for my phone—where is this person? I need to talk to him/her. Now!

When is the last time you heard such a critique on the ho-hum, God let this be over soon, executive summary?

The thing is, every one of my groups is astonishing me this way. A few months ago, a young professional named Theresa created a five-minute slide show presentation for her organization based on The Corporate Storyteller and our classes. She delivered it TED talk-style without a written script to her colleagues, up and across the org chart, and generously invited me to share her presentation with anyone who expresses an interest. If you’d like a copy of the pdf, you can private message me at Twitter or on Facebook or through my website here. Thank you, Theresa!

Although I’ve heard such things happen, I could not have foreseen how it feels at the cellular level when the teacher becomes the student. It’s an honest-to-gosh reversal of polarities. Heaven comes to Earth; the greater Will that includes us all steps into the driver’s seat and we all relax.

I know there are cynics out there. I know there are people in places of power doing insidious and terrible things because for the time being, they can. But in their mindless, fear-based power grasping, they are not privy—and I mean this literally, they are shut out from what untold numbers of us are seeing within ourselves for the first time, since I don’t know when. That I’m a leader, you’re a leader, he’s a leader, she’s a leader.

The masks are coming down. The communicators and storytellers of the corporate world are showing their true faces, and they are beautiful.

A final note, on the subject of brave new business leadership, I would like to thank Frank Ragno and his soft-spoken, equally talented colleague Tom at my local Mr. Transmission, who replaced the clutch on my trusty red Saturn. GM corporate strategists, you really have no idea what you threw away when you shut down the Saturn division, but I’ll talk to you later. I am now driving what feels like a V-8 engine in a brand new car, warmed by the integrity and kindness of the best service I have encountered in the automotive industry, ever.

We shall keep singing it loudly, John. Love is, indeed, on the rise!

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

Desiderata 2013

Tags

brave new business leader, desiderata, desired, Elaine Stirling, metaphor, prose poem, The Corporate Storyteller

image of pearl buttons from http://www.percyandbloom.com

Be to the world as an arm to a sleeve, well-fitted yet loose, independent of and grateful to the warmth, colour and texture of a temporary pairing.

Extend beyond the limits of a cuff, offer shape to shoulders, flexibility midway. An arm can pull out of a sleeve at any time—there will be other jackets, but the sleeve without a wearer is collapsed and hollow. There is nothing in that emptiness worth emulating.

Be present. Stay with the joy of another for at least the count of three before diving back into your own agonies like a soldier to his trench. Acknowledging the pain of others is compassion, but this too limit to the count of three before seeing them as well and whole. Anything longer, you’ll be tempted to start a club.

Sleeves make poor democracies.

As to the business of happiness, it’s best to mind your own. Untended joy bolts, and the cycle from seed gone wild to domesticated flax you can beat into linen takes way too long. You won’t recognize the sleeve as your own, and there’ll be those little itchy bits you’ll blame on the weaver.

If there’s one set of pearl buttons you can take from this fabricated world, it is this:

Style knows its own.
Style is you.
You are eternal.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2013

The Sweet Anarchic World of Association

Tags

belief, characterization, Elaine Stirling, free association, imagination, James Wood, probable realities, self-censoring, shame, vertical thought, writer's craft

“Allow me to relieve you of that budding enthusiasm. Here, do let me nip those tender dicotyledons [editor’s note: the first two leaves of a plant] unfolding left and

wood engraving, 1865, by Dalziel from http://www.victorianweb.com

right, boop, boop, before the stem pushes up further , encouraging more, perhaps unmanageable foliage, and thence—forbid, forbid—a tree, a fore—”

Okay, that’s enough. I’ve hung the orator who opened this blog by the armpits like the letter T on two hand-turned oak pegs a couple feet above floor level, where he can sputter and dangle and go bullish in the face until his top hat falls off and I’ve finished writing what I choose to say here.

A character of mine from long ago has become a best-selling fiction author. For the purpose of this post, I shall call her Joy Berry-Hansen. It is not her real fictitious name. I see her nomenclature spelled out, JOY BERRY-HANSEN, in bold white caps on the cover of a whopping trade paperback—600 pages, easily—on the lap of a notably calm man sitting across from me at my usual coffee haunt.

Joy starred in the bestselling book of my first writing career in 1988. In her 85,000 word arc, she helped to overthrow a dictator, fell in love with and married the rebel leader who’d escaped, bravely, of course, from political imprisonment and who threw himself at her mercy in the book’s inciting incident with a fake passport and a refugee claim. You can understand, I’m sure, why I’m excited to see where life has taken Joy.

What, wait a minute…you’re not excited? You’re not sharing my unbridled, happily galloping certainty that a figment of my imagination found a way to continue her existence apart from mine, to thrive and make her successes known to me in a most elegant and charming manner? That’s okay. Certain fringe particle physicists and New Age feel-gooders might agree that such things are possible, if not probable, but for the most part, they don’t associate (with each other) either. The size of the airplane hanger I’d have to rent to allot each specialized belief system and its entourage of non-beliefs enough space to feel comfortable would be so gargantuan, I might as well wash my hands clean of it and pass the whole concept to that being-state we call Infinite.

To think, perchance believe, is beautiful. The process of thought enjoys giving us the impression that what we think/believe/know resides on a flat plane, concrete and highly polished with a clear sightline to whatever appears at its perimeter, or pops up from the center, or creeps into the neatly planted rows between. If life happens to feel messy at the moment, you might view this plane as more of a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wilderness, in which case, of course, you’ll be armed and ready. With a dictionary, with a pack of memories, a sawed-off something you can use to shoot holes.

In the front inside cover of How Fiction Works by James Wood, I wrote in pencil, dated precisely, Dec. 21, 2008:  “To write in a free, indirect style allows me to say whatever I want about a character, through the multiple vertical layers of his thought process.” I also wrote the words, “I’m about to launch.”

I have no recollection of what was going on that solstice to make me jot something so definitive, and I don’t know whether my comment on style is original or lifted from Wood’s book. And I don’t care. I’m not going to listen to my little friend, the Diminisher, who’s expounding from the wall with, “Citation, mutter. . . lawsuit, mutter, mutter . . . cover your tracks. . . mutter, mutter, mutter.”

He’s quite red-faced by now. Seventy-seven degrees hotter than embarrassed, he’s boiling at shame level, poor dear. He’ll implode any minute for lack of attention, achieving whatever it is black holes achieve in the service of Creation. Meanwhile, I am so proud of Joy!

I went to the grocery story right after the coffee shop where a handsome little guy about three, riding in the toddler seat of the shopping cart, dropped an entire package of blueberries that he’d wanted to hold to help his Mom. Their fall created a spectacular constellation of cobalt across alabaster tile; a sea of blueberries they were, a Jackson Pollock masterpiece of antioxidants.

We, who are mothers, who witnessed the incident, reacted or associated in two distinct steps. There was a moment of empathy for the mother—been there, erk!—but it lasted mere nano-seconds. Our hearts reached far more enthusiastically to the boy who stared bemused at “what he’d done” while his poor Mom bounced from wanting to mother well in front of everyone and the floor to open up and swallow her.

When I left with my groceries, she was still pushing the cart from store employee to employee, her face a burning scarlet, saying, “It was my son who dropped these blueberries, I’m sorry, it was my son.” Meanwhile, two clerks, a generation older than her, squatted, deadly serious, picking up the berries one by one like gaunt, 16th century penitents. You’d think the Blessed Pietá had shattered!

Back in the days of the Inquisition, there was an instrument of torture called the Iron Maiden. It was a cage with spikes pointing inward, designed to perforate the heretic, to poke holes into his or her audacity of belief. Sometimes, as in the case of today’s berries, we’ll take on torment to spare an innocent, but really, where was the harm? And where is the harm in letting people think what they think and experience their doing? Would our Earth have spun off into an asteroid belt if someone at the store had laughed and we’d shared spillage stories for a few minutes?

Ah well, that little fellow is going to do just fine. He’s made his story debut here, and meanwhile, I’m going to take Joy whom I recognized on the cover of that big fat novel to heart. I’m going to bring her to my sweet paradoxical center of anarchy where all manner of beasts and free wild things associate.

© Elaine Stirling, 2013