There had been an ice-storm so all the bushes and branches were crystal-covered and from our room we could see and hear the Falls. The rumbling was soft and constant like the earth purring. En suite we had a faux fireplace, a Jacuzzi, a king size bed with too many pillows and a thick down comforter. We drove across to the New York side and did the deed in the judge’s chambers with the clerks’ witnessing, and then we crossed back giddy, hoping the guards would let us back into Canada and not judge us deranged. Back in the room we shed our clothes in record time like teenagers though we were in our forties. Later we realized that we hadn’t even taken pictures and only had a piece of paper to prove it had happened.
Tag Archives: memoir
Lifeline
I’m turning 50 and still an aspiring writer which is like running around in a string bikini with a belly ring. At 50 even if you’re Madonna, it’s kinda sad.
Last summer, I enter the 3 Day Novel Contest – it’s Canadian. You start and complete a novel over the labor day weekend. On the honor system. Oh Canada.
The winner gets published. The rest of us shmucks are out 50 bucks.
Now it’s late January and I’m awaiting the results as though it were a biopsy, obsessively monitoring contest updates for hints about when they’ll announce, and meanwhile the brain won’t stop thinking about how my life will change if I win, how I’m destined never to win anything, how the producers of Who Wants to Be Millionaire sense my loserliness and I’ll never sit in the hot seat across from Meredith, how I showed early promise once, but let it slip away and ti-i-i-ime is not on my side, and maybe HRT would be worth it, even with the cancer risk…
And so I turn to the internets for distraction. It’s not surfing. It’s driving. It’s aimless driving with free gas on a highway with infinite exits, attractive rest stops and no reason to hurry home. I type my name, I type Pogo (the name of a story I’d written over 20 years ago – my entire published oeuvre) and I type The Quarterly (the name of the literary journal in which it appeared).
I get the usual: find Marion Stein, irrelevant links. Somewhere on the second or third screen there’s something in a language that’s not English. I click. It’s a course description in Danish with enough English words – titles and names of units for me to get the gist. The authors include Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and William Shakespeare. And there in a unit called Man vs Nature: Marion Stein, Pogo, The Quarterly. There’s my story. All grown up and living in Europe.
It’s a secondary school.
I find my way to the school’s website. There’s a thumbnail of the teacher – graying curly hair, forties at least. I close my eyes and see her young, maybe during her gap year. In Chiang Mai, she stays at a backpackers hotel run by a German – don’t talk about the war – and his unstereotypicaly assertive Thai wife. Her friends are out hiking, but she’s getting over the effects of some bad Ecstasy. There’s a rooftop patio with comfy chairs and an astounding mountain view. Books left by fellow travelers mostly English but she majored in English. She picks up a weather beaten copy of The Quarterly, Issue 9. There are a couple of pieces she likes, so she holds onto it. Years later she’s working on the curriculum, has an idea and remembers reading something that would fit. Where was it again? She goes to her shelf and picks through several Grantas, a couple of Paris Reviews and oh there it is! Oh yes, that will do.
I email the teacher. A week later, I hear back. She first read Pogo in a class she took at the Southern Danish University and has been using it for years as an example of a “postmodern” text.
Okay, this isn’t exactly lunch at Balthazar with Scorcese discussing my screenplay. It’s not winning the 3 Day – which I found out today I’m not even shortlisted for . It’s not getting my shot on Millionaire, but somewhere out there, this story was floating like a note in a bottle and it was found, and miraculously, I found out that it was found, and in a moment of everyday despair, of hopelessness, Denmark sent me a lifeline.
God bless the internets.
God save Queen Margarette..
Jewtown, Fort Cochin
Earlier today I came across a site — a blog, where you can submit your story in six sentences. Here’s the link: Six Sentences and below my submission.
Jewtown, Fort Cochin
We found our way to Jewtown in Fort Cochin, Kerala, India where the street is lined with old shops that have names like Sarah Jacob’s Taylor Shop, but the Jews are long gone. There’s a synagogue built in the 1500’s — the oldest in India, now a tourist attraction – outside, white stone with a large window shaped like a star of David, inside not so different from any old shul with a pulpit, a rich blue curtain with gold lettering covering the ark and hiding the torah, a plaque with the shma, another shaped like the tablets with the ten commandments, a chandelier, an upstairs women’s section. The tourists come everyday except Saturday, but no one is left who knows anything about the Jews. It’s a Sunday at the end of Diwali, and a lot of Indians are traveling and enjoying the holiday, so that day many of our fellow tourists are Indians. My partner and I are trying to remember our Hebrew, pointing and reading the shma when a young woman in a yellow sari asks me about the words. I say them aloud first in Hebrew and then I translate, explain the context, and find myself giving an impromptu tour pointing out where the women sat and why, discussing the mystery behind the curtain, that the rabbi was not a priest just a teacher, and how the torah would be carried around and the men would have a chance to kiss it.
Famous in Denmark
So last week (1/10) I wrote about discovering that a story I wrote a lifetime ago was being read in a high school class in Denmark.
Now I’ve heard back from the teacher:
“Dear Marion!
How strange that I should receive an email from you. Yes, I can understand that you must have been surprised to see your story as part of a Danish final year in advanced English curriculum Way back I attended a university course at South Danish University about
short stories. Your text was there among many others. I got hold of The Quarterly where it was printed and I have used it many times in various contexts. Both when the theme was “Man and Nature” and as an example of a postmodern text. It must have touched a special nerve in me, the description of the good dog that gradually turns brutal, wild, and repulsive. Also the beginning with the allusion to the retarded, not-so-charming looking sibling in the smiling family photo, I have always found full of teaching possibilities.
So the fact that I have not grown tired of it is a sign that it is a very good story, indeed. I will keep your letter and read it to my English class. They will enjoy imagining their 60- year-old teacher as a backpacker, picking up a weatherbeaten short story somewhere far away from Odense.
Best wishes
Karen Dickmeiss
Odense Katedralskole”
I’m going to work on a story about this. Next week’s topic at The Moth (www.themoth.com) is going to be HOPE. So I’m going to tell a story for everyone out there who’s waiting to hear back about that manuscript, hoping that the boss will say a kind word, waiting for some sign that the lover appreciates you or that your familly “gets” you, or that the work you do every day actually has some meaning. Because all this time I’m thinking I’m obscure, I’m being read in Denmark. How fucking cool is that!