Extracts: Love and growth in Journal of a Solitude

Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form, than any relationship which can call out and requires of us our most secret and deepest selves? - from Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

Good Short Fiction: Two tales from 50 Great American Short Stories

Collection: 50 Great American Short Stories
Editor: Milton Crane

Title: The Girls in their Summer Dresses
Author: Irwin Shaw
This story is like a hard piece of candy. It seems bright and sweet at first but when you crack into it you find out it's brittle and hollow. The sweetness fades fast.

A husband and wife take a stroll down 5th Avenue. They've decided to spend the day together instead of meeting up with friends. It's meant to be an intimate time for them, but the husband keeps looking at other women with a gleam in his eye that his wife recognizes from when he first laid eyes on her over five years ago.

What follows is a conversation that exposes and widens the distance between them, the thinness of their intimacy. The husband (who at some points reminds me of a kid in a candy store) tries to be easygoing throughout, and says quietly devastating things in a reassuring voice, as if that will soften the blow.

And I can imagine what the wife is thinking. Not only the question that's voiced - whether looking and coveting will ever lead to adultery - but also the question of why he married her to begin with. If he looks at other women the same way, what makes her special? It's never clear why he married her specifically; she has a number of good qualities, but are they sufficient for him? And if he sees some of the same qualities in other women, or if those women are just as intriguing in their own way, where does that leave her? When he says, "I love you," on what level does he mean it? At one point she says, desperate, "I've made a good wife, a good housekeeper, a good friend. I'd do any damn thing for you." He tells her that he knows; he clasps her hand in his. But he can't tell her what she hopes to hear, not without lying.

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Title: A New England Nun
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Louisa Ellis and Joe Dagget are engaged but haven't seen each other for years. Joe has been working abroad; Louisa has lived alone. When he returns it's clear that they've grown apart; they behave like kindly acquaintances. What's more, Louisa has carved out a life for herself. Her house may be small, but it's hers. She has her own little garden, and a large dog that has a fearsome reputation in the village. Inside her home everything has its place, and she lives in peace.

Freeman writes about rooms, interiors, and personal space like no author I've come across yet. This is where her characters really come alive: in privacy, living quietly beyond the notice of other people. Her descriptions of 19th century New England village life and the countryside are also lovely.

Louisa could sew linen seams, and distil roses, and dust and polish and fold away in lavender, as long as she listed. That afternoon she sat with her needlework at the window, and felt fairly steeped in peace.

When Joe visits Louisa's house he feels out of place, a bull in a china shop. And by marrying him she knows she'll have to give up her home and move in with him and his mother. The fact that she has independent means of her own, however modest, gives her more of a choice of how to live her life. Both she and Joe are honorable enough to keep their promises to each other, even if their hearts aren't in it; they would still get along tolerably well. She also senses that this will be her last chance to get married, and that if she asked almost anyone they would say that she should. But who can understand, as she does, the pleasures and blessings of her calm solitary domain?

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Other stories from this collection include The Blue-Winged Teal (by Wallace Stegner) and The National Pastime (by John Cheever), along with Silent Snow, Secret Snow (by Conrad Aiken) and The Damned Thing (by Ambrose Bierce).

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A New England Nun also appears in Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway

Week in Seven Words #102

carpus
I'm pointed to Clockwords: Prelude, a game where the object is to quickly type words with certain designated letters, so that the letters can be shot at mechanical spiders who are out to steal secrets from your laboratory. As in Scrabble, the letters have different values, and can be further imbued with special powers, like the ability to explode and take out more spiders, who make a pulpy sound when hit. The game is amusing, and carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing. Mentally challenging, but a little depressing too (will I waste my words on spiders? Wear out my fingers and wrists for this?).

dreich
Stumping around outside on a cold soggy dreich day where the trees look like stale gray vegetables found in the bottom of a fridge drawer.

laryngitis
Feels like rock and gravel are getting scraped away from my throat so that my voice will eventually find its way out.

mouth-watering
A small lump of warm bread pudding with cinnamon and raisins, dissolving around my fork.

no
As a toddler he hears it all the time - no, don't dismantle the phone; no, don't put your sneakers on the cushions; no, don't wander off with strangers. No.

optimism
One of the first books I'm reading this year is a collection of dystopian short fiction.

rumination
I love how we take the stories apart, studying and discussing them. What's best is when we raise questions the author hadn't consciously asked but wove in while getting to know the characters and living through their struggles.

The beauty of fire escapes

Week in Seven Words #101

anamnesis
This past fall I visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York City; where each tower stood, water spills for thirty feet into a pool and then descends into a dark square hole that looks like the mouth of an abyss. I think of the memorial as I walk in Times Square, where the city doesn't seem to have a past, but exists only in the colorful flashy present.

bird's-eye
High Line Park in NYC was built on a long section of elevated train tracks, now half-buried in long yellow grasses and shrubs. There are many interesting perspectives from the park: streets flowing across the city, the Hudson River bearing its freight, a view of slanting roofs, balconies and elevated patios, the Empire State Building peeking over a swarm of apartment buildings.

coasting
New Year's Eve: a fun movie, some intense video games, and a couple of hours of noise music made more bearable by the vodka cranberry I've been nursing since half past eight.

daredevils
Balloons tumble down East Houston Street between the wheels of buses and cars.

glaciate
A cold unyielding wind that numbs my jaw.

shifting
The street is full of bright signs with Chinese characters and tiny restaurants accessed via basement stairs, a center for Buddhism and red banners everywhere, and then suddenly you find an old splendid synagogue rising into a blue sky.

splashy
It's a day for walking and peeking into shop windows along the way. Mannequins in glittering dresses are on display, flowers entwined around reflections of the street outside, earrings and brooches in neat rows, stacked cups in different rainbow colors.

Week in Seven Words #100

chocolatier
Tempting chocolate truffles in a golden box.

coordination
Group photo: fitting thirteen people on and in front of a sofa, then programming the camera's self-timer. The first couple of times nothing happens, and we sit there smiling at the camera as it stares back at us with its glossy black eye. On the third try the person adjusting the camera gets it to work but doesn't arrive back at the sofa on time, so the photo shows her from behind as she tries to dive back in next to her husband. Finally it works. After a moment's hush we cheer, and the sudden noise makes the baby startle and burst into tears.

glee
He's beaming as he rocks back and forth on the large green plastic rocking horse; it's a hand-me-down from older siblings who now sit beside him clapping and singing "Yankee Doodle Went to Town" to make him go more quickly.

invitation
Settled on a cluster of rocks by the lake, an elderly woman scatters crumbs around her and calmly greets the wheeling gulls.

perpetuity
A display at the train station shows an old-fashioned village where lights glow from little homes, happy figurines have snowball fights or glide among the evergreens on sleds, and a train travels round and round it all on a looping track. The display draws people who smile and pause to lean over it. They tip themselves for a moment into the village where everything is repeating, moving without going anywhere; no progress and no end, and for a few seconds, peace.

unplanned
There are joys planned out for them: food brought from the outside and musicians who do their best to sing beloved old songs. There are also moments of spontaneous joy that feel more real and lasting even though they're over quickly - as the party winds down they bat a balloon around; it glances off their fingers and stays airborne for a few happy minutes.

unseasonal
It's winter but feels like autumn. Turtle Pond looks like a sheet soaked in deep blue ink, and beyond it the Great Lawn is green and gold. The shadows of trees stretch out on the grass as if they're taking a leisurely nap.

Coughing Through Shostakovich

One of my short stories, "Coughing Through Shostakovich," has been published in Subtle Fiction and can be found here.

Several pieces of music crop up in the piece, including this one by Tchaikovsky (here it's performed by Eugene Ugorski on violin and Konstantin Lifschitz on piano; in the short story it's the main character playing it solo on violin):