Creative Writing

 © Joanna Falk 2024. All Rights Reserved.

When I graduated college in 2013, I became depressed.  It's not that I didn't have a job; I had a place to live.  And I wasn't like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate or anything.  Still, I couldn't believe that college was over and that it was suddenly my responsibility to keep my mind sharp.  I don't remember how but I stumbled upon a little blog called Brain Pickings, and in some ways - in ways relevant now - it changed my life.  I'm happy to report that the blog/literary newsletter is still doing well; it's now called The Marginalian.  Its creator, Maria Popova, is an inspiration.  The last time I saw Uncle George, the first words out of his mouth were, "Maria Popova!"  I knew what he was trying to say with that greeting.  Like all the other loved ones I've loved who are now dead (dead but not gone, never gone), he is someone I'm writing to now.  Someone I miss.


I think what I'm writing is called "Creative Nonfiction."  Such a strange phrase, though.  It's easy to forget that genres are socially constructed.  What writing isn't creative?  

What drives people to write anything at all?  How can there be truth in fiction?  Why do narratives mean so much to us?  (Why do narratives mean so much to me?)  (Can you tell I was a double major, English and psych?)  Why am I listing question after question, here, now?

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but tonight is the sixth night of Hanukkah.  Christmas Eve means nothing to me, but it also has meaning because of the culture I live in.  Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues that being queer is like being a Jew on Christmas.  I'm not gay, but I'm a Jew; so, I get it.  (Not that being queer and gay are the same things, but stick with me here.)

There's a reason why there are so many suicides around the holidays.  The pressure to enjoy "the most wonderful time of the year" can be overwhelming.  I used to think I had a *problem* with depression, but it was anxiety all along.  (Remember in Godfather 1 when Marlon Brando says, "It was Barzini all along?")  Anyway, my psychology classes taught me that depression and anxiety are comorbid, which basically means that they go hand-in-hand.  Why does anxiety feel more taboo than depression, though?  Or, is that just me?


Are blogs even really a thing anymore, or has social media replaced them?  Don't blogs count as "social media"?  Weren't letters the first form of "social media"?  I guess before letters, there was just talking.  Language is social, and it is a form of media, if you think about it.

I think I'm writing a blog.  I know blogs were bigger in the 90s.  Travel blogs were a thing.  My cousin, Dan, traveled around Europe when I was a child, and I remember anxiously awaiting his emails.  He'd send updates to the family, describing where he was and what he was doing.  I was a child, so I really didn't understand where he was or why he wanted to tell us about it.  I know now that Dan's emails were a newsletter.  And he took the time to record his thoughts and experiences, as well as the time to share them, because he loved us.  He showed us love.  And I love him, so that's why I cared.

Is writing self-indulgent?  It can be, or, it can be the most generous gift.  It actually can be both at the same time.  

Dan just wrote his first book.  It's about baseball.  I haven't read it yet, but I already love it.  See below.

4. "Parents are Teachers, but Paternalism is Bad" - Sun. Dec. 25, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

I do think parents are teachers, but I know the opposite shouldn't be true: teachers shouldn't be parents.  That is, teachers shouldn't act like their students are their children.  (It's perfectly alright for those in the teaching profession to procreate, despite some of the antiquated, patriarchal culture that still lingers in academia.)  What's the distinction between parents and teachers, if we acknowledge that blood relations matter at the same time that they don't?  I think it all boils down to love and responsibility.  (Not to mention, propriety.  Don't forget about boundaries; they're important!)    

My husband's grandmother - Bubbe - wrote a little note on a post-it.  I recently saw a photograph of the note, so god only knows what became of the post-it.  Was it stuck to something, a book maybe?  Was it a note to herself or to someone else?  It simply read: "A mother can never divorce her children."  Now that I'm a mother, I know how wise she was.

I had my first child in August, and since then, I have felt overwhelmed by the responsibility.  Sure, I need to keep him alive, but even more than that, I want to be a good mom.  The best mom.  A perfect mom.  I'm still trying to figure out what that means.  Here are a few working theses:

There's more, but that's all I feel like sharing today.  Sending "peace, love, and understanding."


5. "I'm telling you now / the greatest thing you ever can do now / is trade a smile with someone who's blue now / it's very easy just" - Mon. Dec. 26, 2022

Led Zeppelin was an early love of mine.  The first album of theirs that I really got into was Led Zeppelin III.  The song "Friends" really resonated with me.  

My mother taught me that really good friends can become your family.  Brooke, my college roommate turned best friend, taught me to hold onto those kinds of friends.  Baz Luhrmann taught me that "the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young."  I've learned that's too true, tragically true.

Brooke is coming to town soon, and she'll meet my son for the first time.  I tell him about her often.  I also tell him about other friends of mine - dear friends - some of whom he'll never meet.

In the summer of 2021, I lost two very close friends.  Richard, another best friend from college, died one night, alone in his studio apartment.  I think he had a pulmonary embolism.  At 29.  In June.  His thirtieth birthday was in September, 2021.  At his funeral, Brooke and I held hands the entire time.

Almost exactly two months after Richard died, Ben died.  In August.  At the age of 30.  Ben and I have been friends since we were six years old.  He's the closest thing I ever had to a brother.  (Those two sentences are my go-to: a simple summary.  But they fail to encapsulate how much my life was/is intertwined with his.  I can't believe he's lost to me; I can't believe he is stuck in time.)  Ben was rock-climbing, and his heart exploded.  He had some undiagnosed heart condition.  He didn't know; I know he didn't know.  I hope he knows that I didn't know, because if I had, I would've saved him.  I try to tell him this, but it's hard talking to a dead person.

Time doesn't cure grief.  Grief is something you just have to learn to live with.  My mother taught me that.  I'm so lucky I still have her.


6. "Sorry, Mom" - Tues. Dec. 27, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

Ok, I guess it's time to write about my mother.  Mom, I know you're reading this and you're so private, but I can't not talk about you.  How can I know myself if I don't know you?  You get it, right?  I know you do, so you'll forgive me. 

My mother gives herself fully to her children, and her children are not just her biological ones.  She treats everyone she loves like they're her children.  Sometimes it exhausts her.  There's a line in a Josh Ritter song that makes me think of her: "Like every man who finds out he was drowning / I held onto her hard till I just wore her out."  My mother has stamina, though.  People are drawn to her strength.  Like Seth's Aunt Sandy - Uncle George's wife, partner, soulmate - she's a "tower of power."  And like Aunt Sandy, my mother has worked very hard and sacrificed so much to be that tower of power for her loved ones.

Sometimes my mom can be snarky, but I find it endearing.  She has a thick Brooklyn accent, which I also love.  (Sorry - not sorry - to that weird orthopedic doctor who asked my mom when I was 13 where she was from, and when she told him he said, "Oh god.  My daughter just had a son there.  I hope he doesn't sound like you."  Thanks, Herr Doktor, for teaching me about elitism and misogyny at such a young age.)  

I have leaned on my mother as much as she'd allow, for my entire life.  She taught me to lean on those I love and trust.  Like my incredible father, who I've always admired for being so principled.  And my sister, Sashki.  We're only 18 months apart, and people used to think we were twins.  I annoyed her, but she always held my hand when I needed her to.

A few days after Ben died, I called Sashki in the middle of the night.  She didn't answer the phone, but if she had, I would've begged her to crawl into my bed and hold me.  A ridiculous request, I know - she lives 25 minutes away, and it was the middle of the night - but she would've done it.  She's my mother's daughter.


7. "Tulips" - Wed. Dec. 28, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

When I gave birth in August, my sister brought me flowers, and I immediately thought of one of my favorite poems: "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath.  You can listen to her read it on YouTube.  

I have so many associations with Plath.  The first time I read her, I was 12 years old.  I got myself a copy of The Bell Jar, and I think it's safe to say it changed my life.  At the start of the novel, Esther briefly mentions that she has a baby at her present time of narration, and then she begins a recollection.  I have a baby now; that's not all we have in common.

I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on Plath's reception history, investigating what I called the "Plath reader stereotype."  (Aka me.  A professor in my PhD program once said that he had this theory that all English scholars do is write about themselves.  I'm starting to think he's right.)  I had perceived a little negativity whenever I had mentioned Plath; I noticed she's often the butt of the joke, and I wanted to figure out why she had such a *bad* reputation.  I came up with some really good answers, in my humble opinion.

That was almost 10 years ago, and I still can't shake that woman.  She's been dead over 50 years and I never met her (obviously), yet she haunts me.  In a good way.  In some ways, she's my best friend.  She's been there for me, for so long.  And she never changes, though my perception of her does.  

I had a very traumatic labor.  It took 51 hours and ended in a C section, a C section my husband and I had to demand.  (At the time, I felt I had to beg for it.)  I had never felt so degraded, so stripped of my dignity and humanity.  I had wild thoughts.  Here are a few:

If you went through that, or something like it, wouldn't the sight of tulips in your hospital room piss you off?  At least initially?


8. "The Wonder Years" - Thurs. Dec. 29, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

In many ways, college was the best time of my life.  I fell in love with my friends and literature; I fell in love with Brooke.

What I remember most about college are the laughs.  We had so much fun.  And I felt invincible.  I know all of this sounds trite but it's true, and I hope that means something.

I remember I made a Facebook album my sophomore year and titled it, "I get by with a little help from my friends."  That was a reference to "The Wonder Years" theme song, which itself is a Beatles cover.  (I didn't know, growing up, that covers were a thing, so I assumed it was the original.)

"The Wonder Years" was a TV show made in the 80s and set in the 60s.  A VERY young Fred Savage plays the main character - Kevin - who grows up in some suburban town with his parents and his older brother, Wayne.  Kevin has a love interest - Winnie - who's also a neighbor.  Kevin also has a best friend, who's name is escaping me.  He's incredibly Jew-y.  Glasses, allergies, neurotic, etc.  Kevin is clearly not a Jew.  [INSERT 1:  It finally came to me.  Paul is his name.  Not that it matters, though, right?  "What's in a name?"  Actually, a lot, Juliette.] 

This show really resonated with me, growing up.  My parents grew up in the 50s/60s, so I felt somewhat familiar with the time.  And I had an older sister, who I loved but who teased me.  And I had long, light brown hair, with bangs - just like Winnie.

Ok, I'm getting side-tracked.  One last thing on "The Wonder Years," though: the pilot.  It's extraordinary.  In the very first episode, Winnie's older brother dies in Vietnam, and Kevin and she have their first kiss under this big tree in their neighborhood.  Judy Collins's "In My Life" plays as they lean in for their kiss.  (What was with this show and Beatles covers?!)  Anyway, it's gorgeous.  So simple and so sweet.

I want to write about Brooke, though.  She is understatedly brilliant and strong.  (She thinks I'm smarter than her, but she's wrong.)  She grew up in Paris, but she's American.  Her family is from Massachusetts, and that's where she lives now.  We lived together all 4 years of college.  We used to get drunk together and go dancing.  I used to tuck her into bed when she was too exhausted from clubbing.  She taught me how to live an urban life.  

She and I were members of the "core six," which also boasted Richard, Ryan (Brooke's boyfriend at the time), Josh, and Melissa.  It dawned on me many years later how strange it was that our little group of six contained three Jews, five New Englanders (does NY count?), one German and one Asian.  Pretty diverse, right?  We were all so close.  I would've died for all of them. [INSERT 2: The remaining members of the core six have informed me that NY does NOT count as New England.  It's still Mid-Atlantic.  Thank god I still have these fact checkers in my life.]

When we all showed up for Richard's funeral, I realized it was the first time since graduation that the six of us were in a room together.  (Richard was in his coffin, which I conveniently did not look at for the first 20 minutes.  Then, suddenly, I saw it and was so startled.  It had been the focal point of the room I was in for 20 minutes, and yet, my mind had hid it from me.  Seeing that coffin - suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere - was an affront.)  I love Richard.  There's a plaque now on GW's campus in his honor.  It's outside Amsterdam Hall, where we lived our Junior year.  I sit there and talk to him, as current undergraduates at GW look at me like I'm a crazy person.  I am, and I don't care.


9.  "New Years, Same Numbers" - Tues. Jan. 3, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

There's a line in the song "Woodstock;" Joni Mitchell's cover taught me the lyrics: "I don't know who I am / But life is for learning."  Ever since my friends died, I've been trying to remember who I am, and I know that in that act of remembering, I'm actually recreating.   Who am I now, now that I know the fragility of life?

I truly believe that I can't know myself without understanding my family and all the other teachers in my life.  (Teachers, broadly speaking.)  It's the year 2023, which feels like it should be *my* year because I was born on the 23rd of the month.  I've always really liked numbers, and my family taught me that my birthday was special for being a sequence: 1, 2, 3.  My family also told me that 36 was *our* lucky number.  It figured prominently in my father's childhood - in his address, phone number, etc.  It's also double chai (חַי) i.e., life.  I have a genuine, emotional reaction to numbers.  I never liked prime numbers - they made me uncomfortable.  They disrupted the system.  I used to be really good at math, but I allowed English to take over.  (Are math and English as antithetical as people say, though?  And shouldn't I give prime numbers another chance?)

I recently learned that this obsession with numbers can be a symptom of anxiety: trying to find meaning in a fundamentally random and meaningless world.  I was taught, though, that it was just a part of my culture, and so, it was something I became proud of.  My ability to see patterns, to make connections - what's so wrong with that?  Isn't that one way art is made?


10.  "The body cannot hold / formations of your soul / The only truth to know / is in the letting go." - Tues. Jan. 10, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

My 10th entry on the 10th?  There are those numbers again.  

Today is a day of birthdays.  My friend, Ann, was born today, as was a girl I once knew in middle school.  Let's call this girl "Candy."  Candy and I never met in person.  She got my screenname on AIM, because we liked the same boy, a boy who went to my school.  She went to another school.  After he dumped us both, she reached out to me for intel on the new girl he was "dating," which I provided because I enjoyed her (virtual) company.  She was hurting and so was I, for the same reason it seemed.

Now that I'm writing this, I think I'm misremembering.  I think Candy's birthday wasn't today; I think today is the anniversary of her death.  She killed herself.  Over that boy.  We were 12 or 13 years old.  Can you believe that?  I remember feeling like I understood - this boy did a number on us both.  Now I look back and think, "She had her whole life ahead of her, and that boy was just a boy."  I felt guilty about it for a long time.  I can't imagine how her family ever recovered from losing her like that.  If they ever did.

These days, I can't help but associate life and death.  One bleeds so easily into the other.  Another birthday today, though: Valerie June's.  I just learned that her birthday is January 10th when I saw her at the Kennedy Center this past Saturday night.  Uncle George introduced her music to me in the summer of 2017.  (Of course it was Uncle George.  To say that man loved music is an understatement.)  I remember first hearing The Order of Time and thinking, "If I have a soul, she's speaking to it right now, and this is the first time it's ever been reached."  I'd been pierced.  Her voice is an instrument, and I'd never heard a voice used before like it's used on that record, like in the song "Man Done Wrong."  "If And" is a trance with lyrics that I repeat to myself often, like after I gave birth and had to rely on my husband more than I could've ever anticipated.  When I first heard "The Hour," off her record Pushin' Against a Stone, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing.  I didn't know anything about her biography at that time, and I wondered when this woman was living.  The song sounded like something out of the 50s.  Imagine my delight when I learned she was a contemporary singer-songwriter, still very much alive.  (The "order of time" can be very disorderly indeed!)  

When I briefly met Valerie June on Saturday, I chose my words carefully.  "I can't tell you how important your songs are to me."  What else is there to say?


11. "Where the Wild Things Are.  Inside Me, Apparently." - Sat. Jan. 14, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

At the beginning of August, my labor with my first child ended in a C section.  I was lying on a slab, with my arms forcibly outstretched like Jesus on the cross, my husband sitting on a stool to my left, and a big sheet hanging perpendicular from me, blocking our view of my abdomen.  (Actually, I could see my abdomen reflected in the big, bright light bulb directly above me, and it took much mental energy not to watch them slice into me.  I found out later that my husband also had a view, of blood dripping from the slab onto the doctor's carefully covered shoes.)

I couldn't feel the slicing but I could feel the moving - organs being shoved out of the way, my son kicking emphatically.  I could feel but I couldn't see, so when the doctor made her first comment about my son, I was all ears.  (I already hated this doctor and was jealous that hers was the first face he'd see - the first hands he'd feel - not mine.)  She ripped him out of me, and I felt him kicking my ribs violently, in protest.  She almost dropped him, and she said - not to me or my husband but just to herself, in exclamation - "he's so wild!"  The first adjective ever used to describe him: wild.  I looked at my husband, because I couldn't look at my son; they had hung a largely ineffective sheet between us, blocking me from him.  Now I know she wasn't wrong, but at the time, I sensed a tinge of judgment in her voice.  His was not a graceful entrance into this world.  He came thrashing, WILDLY.

My husband and I call him "Mr. Wiggles" - a euphemism to be sure.  He has so much life in him, so much drive.  I see him frustrated that he can only wiggle and not crawl; I hear his whines as he tries but fails to hold his own bottle.  He seems to want independence, and I see myself in him.  I feel that struggle.

I never thought of myself as particularly "wild," though my husband has his moments.  On the whole, I'm pretty risk-averse.  Sometimes, though, I find the worrying too exhausting, and I give up.  I surrender to a kind of reckless abandon.  These moments are generally when I have the most fun, and I wonder, what's so bad with being wild, every now and then?  Life is for living, after all... right?    


12. "Well, it's an imperfect diamond, but it presents well.  Just like you!" - Thurs. Jan. 26, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

I haven't written much about my husband, which is probably - subconsciously - intentional.  In some ways, he's still the biggest mystery to me.  And that's why I married him.

When I started dating him at 16 years old and when I decided to marry him at 27, I was convinced that the kiss of death for a relationship is boredom.  Inertia was to be avoided.  Inertia leads to complacency, and you must remain critical of the world around you, including your own self.  My husband never stops challenging me.  He is consistent that way.  These days, though, I find it exhausting.  I have enough challenges at the moment.

To say I love this man is obvious for anyone who knows me.  It's also dull in its simplicity.  True: even the times we broke up, I never stopped loving him.  Even when we lived on different continents, I never stopped loving him.  We have much in common, and there is much common-ground we lack.  It's convenient to say we complement each other, but I want to resist that; complementing sounds too complimentary, too seamless, like there's no conflict.  There is conflict - tension - and I chose it; I chose to "lean into the trouble."  Still, after all these years together, after we began this new chapter of parenthood together, I'm still trying to navigate a balance between want and need.  I should want him; I shouldn't need him, should I?  I'm really asking you.  Should I need him?  On the one hand, you're born alone and you die alone, so you better know how to be alone.  On the other, is dependency such a bad thing, in cases like these?  

I depend on my husband for laughter.  In one of Toni Morrison's novels - I think it's Jazz - she writes, "Laughter is more serious than tears."  One of the best "jokes" my husband ever made is the title of this post.  We had just decided to get married, and I wanted to use an engagement ring that my grandma had given me.  Sashki, the oldest granddaughter, got my grandma's actual engagement ring and wedding band; I, the youngest, got a ring she found in a parking lot.  This is a true story.  I love this parking-lot ring: I love its design, its shape.  I love that my grandma gave it to me at my bat mitzvah, because my grandpa had just died and she realized she didn't want to wait to be dead for me to get it; she wanted to see my reaction.  Do I love the thought that some poor woman lost it one day while doing her shopping in Florida?  Not particularly.

Anyway, when we told my parents we were going to get this particular ring resized for me, they said I better ask if it's real.  "Grandma told me it was," I said.  "Yeah, well, still check."  What would I do, I thought, if it wasn't real?  Would I not use it simply because it was a fake parking-lot diamond ring?  Does that mean it's not worthy?  Don't we assign value to objects anyway, so it doesn't matter if it's a real diamond?  Plus, aren't diamonds ethically problematic, anyway?  (Remember Blood Diamond.  God, I love Leonardo DiCaprio.)  I was hoping I wouldn't have to truly answer these questions for myself, because they could topple my entire Western capitalist identity.  Luckily for me, such self-examination was avoided; the jeweler stared at the center stone of the ring through a microscope and said, "Yes, it's real.  It's an imperfect diamond, but it presents well."  When I told my husband this, without skipping a beat he said, "Just like you!"  Funny, but seriously true.  And just like him, I might add.  


13. "At 25 I was dumbfounded afresh / by my ignorance of the simplest things." - Sat. Feb. 11, 2023 in Washington, D.C.

Today marks the 60-year anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death.  Ten years ago, I was in Cambridge with my then-boyfriend, celebrating his birthday and Valentine's Day; I also happened to be in the middle of writing my senior thesis on Plath's reception.  I remember thinking, "Wow, it's been 50 years to the day, and here I am in England."  I didn't plan it, nor did I plan to complete my Plath piece the year of the 50th anniversary.  It was just "a lucky thing," to quote The Bell Jar.  

This morning I woke up thinking I wanted to write a blog post but didn't know on what.  I looked at the date and thought, "Ok, fine."  

It makes me nervous and insecure to think that I come off as some kind of Plath super-fan.  It makes me very self-conscious.  I tend to feel automatic disdain for anyone who latches onto something and aggressively molds it into their identity.  It feels too easy - kind of lazy - and definitely unoriginal.  I think Plath would also feel that way.  With her, though, and for me, I just can't deny her resonance.  She's this secret part of me, something I don't wear proudly - not that I'm ashamed of her.  I just find it somehow crass when people decide to wear someone else's persona and claim it as their own personality.  It feels reductive and unfair to that original person, who, by the way, you don't ever really know and you can never really know.

I know I sound snobbish, but maybe I can convince you through an example.  Ten years ago, I remember talking about other people's obsession with Plath to my thesis advisor, and she had a brilliant comment.  Agreeing with me, she said, "Can't you imagine a Plath poster that women would hang in their dorm rooms, and it would say, 'Every woman adores a Fascist'?"  Yes!  Can't you picture that?  Think of all those Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn posters - Marilyn over the grate and Audrey looking through the Tiffany's window - proudly signifying female sexuality and materialism.  I can easily envision a Plath version - that black and white photo of her leaning back against a wall in her black cardigan, looking at something underneath the camera lens - so disengaged - and a line from one of her poems plucked completely out of context, for dramatic effect, appearing below her.  The more shocking the line the better.  "Every woman adores a Fascist" is great, but how about "I eat men like air," or, "Dying is an art, like everything else"?  

I know certain Plath fans consider it sacrilege to imply anything positive about Ted Hughes, but I am not ashamed to say that several of his lines echo in my brain all the time.  Two are the title of this post.  They're the end of "Fulbright Scholars," one of my favorite poems of all time.  It opens his stunning collection, Birthday Letters, and it's full of questions.  He's trying to remember the beginning - Plath's entrance into his life - and how he must have perceived her, before he really knew her (if he ever really knew her.)  Most of the details are foggy, and he does some guess work.  But then, at the end, a clear memory erupts.  He was walking "sore-footed" in the heat, in London, near Charing Cross Station.  He eats his "first fresh peach" ever and can "hardly believe how delicious."  He's 25, which is obviously young, but when you're 25 you don't think so; you think you've experienced everything there is to experience.  And that peach humbles him.  He's "dumbfounded afresh" - what a beautiful phrase.  He's struck, in a way that refreshes him, by how little he knows "of the simplest things": the taste of a fresh peach, the love of and for the woman who would be his wife.  Now that's some wisdom worthy of a poster.


14. "Passing" - Sat. April 1, 2023 in Arlington, VA

In November, 2019, I was in Prague on a school trip.  I was taking an undergraduate film class for graduate credit, and as part of the class, we all flew to Prague to attend Mezipatra, a queer film festival.  Most of the students in the class identified as queer or gay; no one ever asked me, but I think they knew I was cishetero.  At the festival, though, standing in line at the bar mentally practicing how to say "thank you" in Czech, I wondered if the other attendees knew by looking at me that I was an outsider.  I felt uneasy, not only because I was a foreigner but also because I knew that the majority of the films we were seeing were not made for me.  In many ways, I didn't belong, and while I could appreciate the abstract ideas of the narratives - love, sex, discrimination, stigma, violence, beauty - I knew the particulars were resonating for others in a different way.  I wondered then - and I still wonder - if the way I felt was akin to how queer people feel seeing mainstream Hollywood films that assume a cishetero audience.  

The last day of our visit to Prague was a free day, and my mother suggested I find a way to make it to Terezin, formerly known as Theresienstadt.  I know my Holocaust history but had never been to a site like that before.  Something about my mother suggesting it made it feel compulsory; I have always been obedient, perhaps to a fault.  Anyway, I remember mapping out my travel online the night before but having much difficulty the morning of.  I was at the train station and found the local buses but couldn't find the bus terminal for buses leaving Prague.  The folks working at the station on that Saturday morning didn't speak much English, nor did they seem that interested in helping me find my bus.  I thought about giving up and going home - no one would know.  But then I thought about how disappointed in myself I'd feel, and I wondered what I'd tell my mother.  So, I kept wandering and finally, I found it.  Upon arrival, my plan was to walk around the old ghetto and visit the museum, but when I got there I discovered that my ticket to the museum included admission to the concentration camp.  I had seen online that there was an English tour of the camp at 2 pm or something like that, and the timing worked out.  I didn't know how I'd handle being in a concentration camp, but I felt compelled to go.  When else would I be in Terezin?

So I went.  I remember walking from the museum to the camp in what felt like a ghost town; no one else was on the street, even though, life had clearly gone on in Terezin.  I got to the camp at the right time and found a group of people gathered waiting for a tour, so I joined them.  The tour began, and it was in Czech.  I remember thinking that maybe I should just pretend to understand and continue on, but then I thought about my mother again.  How could I explain that impulse?  I had traveled all that way, only to hide?  So I peeled off and asked the ticket counter about the English tour: "Anglicky?"  A young man appeared and introduced himself as the English-speaking tour guide.  No one else was there for the English tour, so I wound up having a private tour.  It seemed that there really was no hiding at that point.

It turned out my tour guide was from Italy, and we were about the same age.  We got on well, and I felt like he really enjoyed showing me around.  Early in the tour, something about the way he described the showers led me to think he assumed I wasn't Jewish.  His tour had an implied audience, and the way he approached the topic of Jewish prisoners was from a place of exoticism.  At this point in the tour, we were still getting to know each other, and I thought about mentioning that I was Jewish but I didn't.  I wanted him to like me, and I felt like to do that, I had to mirror him.  Maybe not quite "mirror," but I felt like I had to be the person he was already seeing.  Later in the tour, it was quite clear that he assumed I was like him - a non-Jew - when he showed me the crematorium and explained that Jewish people don't believe in cremation.  I nodded along and pretended he was teaching me something I didn't know; at that point, it was far too late to admit my Jewishness, and I was afraid he'd change the rest of the tour, knowing it.  So we continued on, and I quietly observed how history was being told to the public, a public to which I didn't seem to belong.

The tour ended at the Nazi canteen, where, he told me, all the furniture was original and I could sit in the same seats as the Nazis and enjoy a meal.  I was starving, but I couldn't do that.  I wandered back to the town, found a bag of chips to buy, and waited for my bus "home."


15. "Tampons and Bandaids" - Thurs. June 1, 2023 in Arlington, VA

In the poem that Vladimir Nabokov writes but attributes to his fictional poet, John Shade, in Pale Fire, there's a line that always arrests me.  The stanza begins, "It did not matter who they were.  No sound, / No furtive light came from their involute / Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute, / Playing a game of worlds [...]" (816-819).  The speaker then goes on to describe the game - there's some chess imagery - and then the speaker ends the stanza with the words that stop me in my tracks: these "aloof and mute" people, whose identities don't matter, are just "Making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities" (828-829).  I remember the first time I read that and immediately recognized myself.  How much time do I spend making ornaments of accidents and possibilities?  I'm not a fiction writer "playing a game of worlds," but couldn't someone argue that my perception of the world is its own little fiction?  That all of ours are, and so all of us are playing our own little "game of worlds"?  Is that all I'm doing in my work as an English literature graduate student?  Is that all I'm doing, all the time?  Am I creating "meaning" - sparkling kernels of interpretation with which to decorate my life - out of stuff that are just accidents and possibilities?  

Here's one for you.  My husband, baby, and I moved a few months ago, and as part of my unpacking process, I sorted through my belongings.  I was going through my collection of purses, deciding which ones to keep and which to donate, checking to make sure each was empty.  I kept shoving my hand inside and unzipping that same discrete little pocket that's in every purse ever - the secret pocket to hide secret things - and finding the same things: tampons and bandaids.  "Oh wow, these are the tampons I bought in 2011 in Amsterdam, which I remember because I was shocked to find that they came without an applicator."  "Ah, yes, these bandaids are from Boots, which means they are also from 2011, when I studied abroad in London."  "Ok, well, these bandaids are the CVS brand, so they must predate or postdate my trip to London."  Different purses, different chapters of my life, different brands, but the same every time: tampons and bandaids.  I so badly want to interpret this and extract some piece of self-knowledge from it.  Do I have some subconscious fear of blood?  (Prone to nosebleeds, I always have tissues on me now, just in case.)  Maybe I'm afraid of mess?  Or of the embarrassment that comes with being a noticeable mess?  Maybe the tampons and bandaids have to do with always being able to control that mess, my bodily mess?  Maybe, deep down (or not so deep down), I have some shame about being a woman and how messy it can be (not just materially but also psychologically.)  I remember finding those Dutch tampons so disgusting; I couldn't believe I was expected to take my bare finger and manually insert a tampon into my vagina, when I had my period no less!  

Isn't there something about bandaids and accidents?  You usually need a bandaid when you've had some bodily accident.  And couldn't I argue that tampons are connected to the idea of possibilities, since they soak up the liquid that makes possible a new human life?  Would they make nice ornaments?