I was thrilled when Curtis Smith submitted work to us for this issue. Long before I became the editor of r.kv.r.y., I read his short story collection The Species Crown and was blown away by Curt’s inventive style and command of scene. And I’m not alone in my admiration of his work–he’s published five books of fiction and his stories and essays have appeared in over seventy literary journals and have been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Spiritual Writing. The Physics of Memory and Death is the tile of his short story in this issue, and I’ve asked him to tell us a little bit about the process and inspiration for the piece. Here is his response:

“I’ve always had a thing for physics—its answers and equations; its unifying principles. In high school and college we learn about gravity, velocity, acceleration, and momentum. We learn about vectors and the parabolic paths of objects in flight. These concepts rule us in ways we can never dispute, yet we rarely consider them. They provide an underlying current of truth and immutability in an otherwise chaotic world.

When I’m writing, I often think about the shape of my story or essay. I try to visualize it—some stories are round, some circular. Some bulge at one end. Some are like a burst of light—here then gone. Others are laid out in sections like playing poker cards upon a table. I enjoy playing with shape, trying to see how I can use them to enhance a piece. In my collection The Species Crown I have a few stories written in the form of outlines and another that uses elements of geometry as its structuring element.

I wanted to do a similar story using physics. I considered many different laws and equations, all the while trying to come up with a narrative I could weave through it all. It took some time, but I hope this story ending up pulling it all together.”

Definitely, Curt. Thank you.

And for your further reading pleasure, here are a few links to more of Curtis’s fine work (appearing in some of my favorite online journals):

One Truth (Smokelong Quarterly)

The Fears of Children (Annalemma)

Witness (elimae)

How to Remember the Dead (Post Road)

And last but not-at-all least, you can pre-order a signed copy of his exciting new collection Beasts & Men, between now and Februrary 1st at the Press 53 website. If you like short stories, I highly recommend Curt’s work.

 

JH: I am fascinated that this poem takes us to so many places but seems to end where it begins. Can you discuss the construction of the poem?

CO: The palindrome is a form perfectly suited to expressing an addicted brain’s “thought” processes. It actually reverses in the middle and repeats itself backwards, making slight changes in syntax and meaning but regardless, ending up with the same “solution” to the problem: “Just one more hit.” The “Superman” or “Hercules” created by the addiction is elusive and damaging. And so the form is organic in how it takes the reader into that dead-end movement towards what has no real possibility of resolution.

JH:  Please share with our readers any links to your website and/or other publications.

CO: I have a website at www.catherineowen.org. I have published nine collections of poetry to date and one of essays/memoirs. My blog is: blackcrow2@wordpress.com.

One of mine & Chris’s metal bands, Inhuman, can be listened to at http://inhuman2.bandcamp.com/album/eden.

JH:  Thank you so much for taking the time to share these links and discuss your poetry and the more personal aspects of your writing with r.kv.r.y. Just one final question: What does recovery mean to you?

CO: I used to have deep hope for my partner’s recovery and spent much time doing research on addiction and healing. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of the ones who “made it.” Since his death in 2010, I have worked on my own recovery and that now means patience and the knowledge that whether it’s moving towards being clean or being free from constant grief, the path is not straightforward and sometimes it has to move through the darkness.

Carol O’Dell: I enjoyed reading your excellent, Pushcart Prize nominated essay Smoke Break. You are a practicing psychiatrist and you’re working on a creative nonfiction manuscript based on your experiences as a doctor. Do you find that you feel a responsibility to tell the stories of individuals who are so marginalized in our society—or is there another reason to feel compelled to write about them?

James Damiani: My mother suffered from depression, and I have always had a special spot in my heart for people who suffer from mental illness. People with mental illness often lack the ability to access the things they need to heal. For example it is often difficult for them to connect to others and to live in a supportive environment. So yes, I do feel a need to be a voice for them in that sense. But at another level, I also discovered telling their story was telling my story. Many of the problems they experience are mine magnified. Protecting them is protecting me, understanding them shows me how to understand myself, and ultimately helping them helps me. I would add one more thing, I believe we are all at least a little mentally ill and that’s okay.

 
CO’D: You write stories about elderly men who have lived their whole lives in the mental health system.  In one sense, there is no recovery for them. How do you offer the men—and the reader—a sense of hope, or do you?

JD: Recovery is a hot topic in mental health circles right now. Some people do fully recover from mental illness, some individuals might say they have even grown from the experience. When that happens, sharing hope is easy. But you are right, my patients are in a group who generally never return to their full functioning. In fact their story is most often a progressive decline in abilities and health. What I have learned is that there is still hope within that journey and also so much life. I have seen the men experience joy and perform spontaneous acts of kindness. When a person can give in some way, it is good for his soul, good for the soul of the world and cause for hope.

 
CO’D: In the midst of this rather bleak world, there are surprising and refreshing humorous stories, like Smoke Break (Your line, “Is that your urine?”). I also understand that in a story/scenario such as this it has to be handled with, let’s say, a certain amount of delicacy/diplomacy. I would think that humor becomes a shield to protect yourself. Do you grapple with cynicism or apathy (two of my favorite coping mechanisms)? Or do you grapple with that fine line of creating a story your readers will engage with and knowing how far to take it?

JD: Great questions.  I do use humor to help soften the stark painfulness reality hands us, and in that sense it shields me.  I believe humor can be used to reveal our pain in a tolerable way. Ironically I have found the more I am able to bear the pain of life the more I can laugh, and the more I laugh,  the more pain I am able to bear.  One thing I don’t want is for the humor to be gratuitous.  I want any funny thing I write to have a purpose, to soften the ugliness.  But I would not want my humor to come at the expense of another’s pain. One litmus test I use is to ask myself if I am laughing at or with.  When I am laughing with others it’s usually a good thing. When I am laughing at others I have to be careful. As far as crossing the line or going too far, my family would say I do that a lot. But my motivation is to help,  and it is done with a spirit of acceptance and joy. I count on that to cover me when I go too far.  I belong to a writer’s group and they also help let me know when things are too raw or off the mark.

CO’D: You seem to spend a good amount of your day with individuals who have various types of delusions, fits of rage, confusion, probably outright belligerence. Does that ever get to you? Do you have a way/a ritual that allows you to emotionally separate (in a good way) while still preserving a sense of balance ? What does—get to you—and how do you deal?

JD: In a way, because these people are so ill, it is easier to forgive them than say someone close to me who I see as having at least some control of their choices.  But I can’t deny that their words still hurt and they have frightened me at times. I believe the angry psychotic man is often actually frightened, either of me or themselves. On my better days I am able to let the patient know that I can handle their anger, and that he or she is safe and does not have to be afraid of me.  My ritual, if I have one, is to look on the person with affection and tell them I want them to be safe and peaceful.  At the state hospital it is a very controlled environment and though no place is 100% secure we have a lot of tools to keep individuals from causing or receiving harm. Still I have to admit there have been times where being taller, faster and younger than my older patients has been handy.  What does get to me, on some days more than others, is the unending parade of inane problems my work can produce.  Also, although there is hope there is also a large dose of futility when working with geriatric patients who do not get better. The frustration can add up, especially when there aren’t some tangible successes.

CO’D: I loved the line, “Taking care of the mentally ill seemed to be where I fit best,” but of all the jobs in the healthcare field for a practicing psychiatrist—many are far more glamorous than the one you’ve chosen—what drew you–and sustained you to do this work?

JD: Yes we at the state hospital are not at the top of the heap. In fact, we are more like the dungeon of psychiatry, maybe of society.  I never planned to come and stay at the state hospital. I ended up here because of my own spiritual and emotional crises.  But I am grateful I came. Was there a God directing me here, or was it sheer dumb luck?  Who really knows? I am sustained here because it is good work and gives me a way to connect with others. This job maximizes what I do well and minimizes my flaws and weaknesses. It also pays the bills.

CO’D: I loved that smoking is what bonded you with your patients and perhaps one of the few motivators you and the staff have, but I’m guessing that with the current changes in the law that smoking at a government building is no longer an option. I’ve noticed that it’s helpful to step down (if that’s the proper term), when it comes to addictions, (drinking, drugs, etc.) and that smoking has a calming effect and may be the lesser of evils, to use a cliché. Do you think we should have some medical considerations?

JD: I went from being completely anti smoking, to seeing the benefits of it in our setting, to surrendering to the realities of the situation.  For example we are now smoke free and it is logical that the state cannot be purchasing cigarettes, which cause cancer, for people whose health they are responsible for. As for how smoking fits in with stepping down and rehab for addictions I can’t really tease all that out in a paragraph.  And there is the broader question of mood altering agents for our patients.  Should our patients be given Caffeine? Sugar? Alcohol? Marijuana? For what reason and where do we draw the line on our restrictions?  This much I do know, my smoke breaks with the men were a place of sharing, a time for normal interaction, and often served as a way to affirm and support one another.  The patients and I needed those times of communion and having a mildly mood altering agent seemed to help, especially in appropriate amounts.

 
CO’D: There’s one line that seems to capture the essence of this story and that’s when you wrote, “It did me good to value him.” How did you come to this place, of knowing and honoring each soul that comes your way–however angry, delusional, or incontinent they may be?

JD: I came from a place of woundedness and fragmentation where I could not value myself or others.  It has been a long journey leaving that place. Being able to do a good work and finding love were essential pieces to finding my way out.  Eventually there came a point in my life where I understood how precious life and people are.  It isn’t really an achievement as much as it was my being able to keep my eyes open without my own pains and fears blinding me. The more whole and healed I become, the more natural I have found it is to see the value of others. The chance to honor the life my patient’s have been given and the lives they have lead, is a gift.

CO’D: Are there some patients you simply cannot reach? I guess I’m asking, are some folks…unreachable? How do you reconcile yourself to that?

JD: If by unreachable we mean a situation when an interaction produces no effect on the other, especially no visible benefit, then there are plenty of those times. But I believe in the invisible.  I know something always happens in human interchanges, even with my patients.  I try to embody openness and acceptance. Usually the small exchanges accumulate and produce effects, in the other person and in me.  It is like water on rock.  But I have to admit, I have seen the light go out before anything healed or moved.  I have been rejected and felt quite impotent to help some people.  The folks with rampant psychosis and progressive dementia in particular come to mind, but still I believe even at those times nothing is ever wasted.  The attempt to connect at least moves me, and who knows maybe it even reaches across time and death sometimes.  So, no, I do not see anyone as unreachable, though some people are not reached in any way I can discern.

Carol O’Dell is the author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir. Carol is a professional blogger, contributing editor at Caring.com, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the founder of Chats Noir Writers Circles. Carol’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Deep South, Atlanta Magazine, and the International Short Story Collection. Visit her on the web at www.caroldodell.com.

Joan Hanna: We were so excited to have your story Lovin’ You’s a Man’s Man’s Job in our October (Men) issue. Can you give our readers a little background for the story?

Jon Pershing: Instead of background, I think your readers might be more interested in knowing what happened next. I wrote this essay back in 2009, not long after the events told in it took place. Soon lawyers got involved, and, with them, of course, the courts. It was one thing for this angry and confused guy to bully a woman and a child, but another thing entirely for him to try to do the same with attorneys, law enforcement, a judge, etc. Things have, thankfully, settled down tremendously. The woman became my wife last year; the child is now my stepson. His father still has his problems, but hopefully the measures we’ve taken over the past couple years will keep the impact of those problems on his son to a minimum.

JH: What I loved so much about this piece was your unique point of view. We rarely get to hear about this from a male perspective. Can you talk a little about this?

JP: Guys like my wife’s ex-husband give the rest of us men a bad name. I was appalled by his behavior and wanted to write something about what it was like to be a man watching another man treat a woman and child the way he was. If he was giving men a bad name, I wanted to write something that tried to counteract that a bit.

JH: Yes, that’s brilliant. You requested that we publish this story under a pseudonym, which is common for many reasons, can you explain why you chose to do this for this particular piece?

JP: As I’ve said, the five-year-old in the essay is now my nine-year-old stepson, and he’s quite good at googling. ome day he’ll be old enough to understand why his mother and father are no longer married and what kind of guy his father was/is and all the shit that guy put us through, but that day isn’t today or any day in the near future. I didn’t want him googling my name and finding this essay before he was ready to read it and know the truth.

 
JH. Ah, yes, that makes sense. That’s a very sensitive approach. I understand you recently received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Can you tell us about that nomination?

JP: I received a Pushcart nomination for a short story of mine that appeared in Artichoke Haircut.  It was my first published piece of fiction. I’d provide a link to it and other works of mine, but then my real name would be linked to my r.kv.r.y. essay and little googling eyes might find them and put the pieces together.

JH: And finally, would you care to share with our readers what recovery means to you?

JP: In an old notebook of mine, I have a quote written down of Alanis Morrisette’s from, I think, a 2002 Rolling Stone interview that goes: “I think I’m in recovery for everything.  We all are for the rest of our lives.” I didn’t write down the interviewer’s question, so I have no idea now of the context of her words, but I don’t think knowing why she said what she did is necessary in understanding what she was saying. And what she was saying, I believe, is essentially this: Every day has the potential to fuck you up in some way, but every day also has the potential to help you get over or through what happened to you on some other day. Maybe you don’t ever fully recover from anything, but, then again, you don’t ever fully get fucked up from anything either. In a word, recovery means life.

Mary Akers: Hey, David. Thanks for letting us have your wonderful Shorts On Survival piece, Gardening at Dusk. One of the first thing that strikes me about this piece is that it is told in second person. Could you give us a little insight into the decision to use a second-person voice to tell this story?

David Mohan: Hi Mary, thanks for including my piece in r.kv.r.y. It’s an honour.
I chose second-person for this piece because I wanted to emphasise the character’s distance from themself. The story is about grief and the second-person seemed the right choice to convey the peculiar numbness that goes with that experience. That was the main reason, but I think the second-person also allows the reader into a story in an unique way. It allows a sort of identification to occur.

MA: I know a lot of people who say they don’t like second-person, but I’m a big fan of it when it’s done well. I’ve always thought that it’s a nice way to blur the lines between first and third person narratives. Just the right mix of closeness and distance. You also tell the majority of this story in present tense. I’m curious: why present tense?

DM: I think you’re right. The second-person has to be handled carefully. It can be incredibly striking or, at its worst, mannered. I don’t use it that much, but I appreciate its value—particularly in flash pieces.

As for the present tense—I use it rarely. But I wanted a blend of immediacy and empathy in this piece—I think the second-person and the present tense can produce that.

MA: This piece strikes me as somewhat non-traditional (present tense, second person, flash fiction) and I mean that as a compliment. Do you enjoy taking stylistic risks as a writer?

DM: I don’t know about stylistic risks, but I do enjoy writing about characters and situations that are very far from my own experience. That is endlessly interesting. I don’t tend to play with tense or point-of-view that much to be honest, but I enjoy taking on the challenge of new voices.

MA: Who are some of your favorite authors? Do they take stylistic risks in their published work?

DM: A list of my favourite authors would include Angela Carter, Michael Ondaatje, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Salman Rushdie and Anton Chekhov. I think they are all risk-takers in various ways. I suppose I like writers who have a maverick quality. Carter and Ondaatje are definitely stylistic risk-takers. Carter is particularly fearless.

MA: I like those writers, too. I’m a fan of writing that doesn’t play it safe. I work hard to push myself in that direction in my own work, even though it’s sometimes scary in an unmooring, exhilarating sort of way. How does that sort of writing make you feel?

DM: I’ve been writing flash pieces recently. I’ve discovered that I’m a fan of flash fiction, hybrid forms, prose poetry and poetic prose. Writing flash—for me at least—tends to lead towards experimentation, so I’m enjoying that aspect of it. I think most bad writing also happens to be conventional in some way. I know when I produce something that I’m unhappy with it’s usually because I feel it’s too safe, ‘nice’, simplistic or clichéd.

MA: And finally, what does “recovery” mean to you?

DM: For me, recovery means learning to trust the world again. I’ve experienced grief this year and as far as I can see recovery can only happen when you’re willing to surrender yourself to life despite the knowledge that it can hurt you.

Carol Roan: What inspired your short story “Yield?” I’ve heard you say that an image will come to mind, and that you then write to incorporate that image. Was there an image for this story?

Steve Mitchell: “Yield” began from a story someone told me of having to jump from a high place and finding they could not will themselves to do it. The best they could do was lean into the open space until they fell. I liked that image and the idea of “leaning in” in various ways. The story formed around that, but went in other directions, too.

CR: I’ve had a strange reaction to your work, one that I’ve only experienced with Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing, which I threw against a wall after reading a few pages. When I was a child the only book in our house was a Bible – I think my mother distrusted books – so since then I’ve always handled them with the care due precious commodities. Although I love secondhand books in which earlier readers have underlined meaningful passages, added notes, turned down corners, I’ve never been able to take pen or pencil to a book myself. So why my anger at that book? And at yours? I didn’t throw The Naming of Ghosts, but we do joke about the level of anger I experience at your readings – a ten? or a piddling nine? It’s not merely envy of your skillful writing. Maybe it’s partly because I can usually figure out the theme that runs through an author’s work, and I don’t have a clue what your theme is. The life puzzle you’re trying to solve.

SM: Intimacy – the search for, or lack of. The ways people connect with each other and what it means.

CR: What I had found fascinating was how you work with time and memory. “Yield,” for example, contains three discrete events, but you gradually dispel the time between their occurrences until the three become folded into one.

SM: I’m trying to replicate my actual experience of time in the present. I think most ideas of “stories” are incredibly artificial. My experience of the world doesn’t match the “A leads to B, which leads to C” formula. I work with what I call faith. Not in a religious sense, but the ways people order their experience and the kind of overarching belief systems they develop in that ordering. Everyone develops an idiosyncratic belief system that doesn’t necessarily fit within the regular systems.

CR: I’ve seen a video you made about your writing method. The image I remember has Post-Its everywhere.

SM: I make lots of notes before I ever begin a piece. Often my notes end up being longer than the piece itself. I have large whiteboards in my office where I draw diagrams or write notes. Once I begin to write, I write in public places. Bookstores, coffee shops. I need activity and things going on around me. I have to print the draft out, and edit and rewrite on the physical paper. Often eight, ten, twelve different times. One of the final stages is to read the piece aloud, and to continue to read it aloud until I’m happy with it. Then I put it away for a week or two and come back later to decide if I’m still happy with it.

CR: The style of your video – or the grammar, as you put it – is very much akin to your writing style. Not necessarily the bouncing around in time, but the almost abstract visualness, if there is such a word. Is there anything else that you want readers to know about you?

SM: I’m not all that interesting, and my work doesn’t arise directly from deep personal experiences. I don’t think my own history is very relevant to my work. My personal experience is in there, of course, but it’s in with everything else. I think work is best approached when the reader knows nothing about the person who wrote it.

CR: You’ve written in many different forms – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays. In which are you most comfortable?

SM: For a while I was writing a bit of everything all at once, but now I’m concentrating on fiction. Plays, however, are good training because they force you into dialogue and movement. And working in theatre is one of the most satisfying things in the world.

CR: How so?

SM: Writing is so solitary. Working with actors is dynamic and communal. Things are up for grabs, and you make discoveries about your own text. I had a scene in one of my plays that wasn’t working. I didn’t know why and couldn’t seem to fix it. I was considering cutting it entirely, but at the next rehearsal something happened. The actors had found their way into the scene. They hadn’t changed a word, but they’d made it real. It’s one of those magical things that can happen when you’re working with others.

CR: You’ve also been a performer in multi-voice poetry programs. That’s not a format I’m familiar with. Were they like the choral reading we used to do in school?

SM: No. I had stumbled on Einstein on the Beach, in which Glass had two or more voices talking or singing different words, different music at the same time. I was intrigued with what could be done in that form, and started to write poetry for different voices, sometimes speaking simultaneously. The longest was with six people speaking for twenty minutes. But mostly I wrote for two to three voices. Then I had a residency in Vermont where I met a sculptor who asked me to do multi-voice poetry with his installations. I’d like to pursue making a film of one of those performances, where words are used as sound, rather than being dramatic or emotive. Robert Altman does this in films like Nashville. He used 8-track recording so you’re hearing more than one conversation at a time as he moves from scene to scene. He forces the audience to make choices. Theater can do that, too, when the action is not framed.

CR: Would you say that you’re always experimenting with form?

SM: Why do anything, if it’s the same old thing? I want to find something that’s interesting, or something that’s beautiful. Or something I can’t quite imagine.

CR: Have you also been experimenting with your day jobs? From cowboy to chef is not a common career path.

SM: I bore easily. Some people can work the same job for twenty-five years. Those people impress me. I can’t do that. I’m always looking for something – music, books – I’ve never read or heard, and that carries over to the jobs. I’m interested in what’s going to catch my eye tomorrow, and in what other people will do and how they articulate what they do. Fiction was important when I was growing up. It was how I met people, and my first connection to the outside.

CR: Where are you going next?

SM: One project at a time. I have no sense of a goal, only a direction. I always want to write better. I’m always aware that I never quite accomplish what I want to. It’s always about exploration, always taking on things I don’t think I can do. The next project is always one I don’t think I can pull off. There’s always a sense of uncertainty, which becomes one of the most wonderful things about writing.

CR: Who are your literary heroes and what are you currently reading?

SM: My heroes are Joan Didion, Marguerite Duras, and Nabokov. Raymond Chandler, Michael Herr. Herman Melville. Melville is God. I’m gradually working through classic literature. Anna Karenina is next on the list. I also look at contemporary novels and short stories, and I’m interested in work from other countries. Currently, I’m on Roberto Bolano’s Antwerp, Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, and Errol Morris, whose written a great book about photography, Believing is Seeing. I’m about to start W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.

CR: What are you currently watching and what do you listen to?

SM: I don’t watch much television. I tend to watch movies. Those of my favorite directors, like Kubrick, Lynch, von Trier. Foreign films like those of Godard, Reygdas, Haneke, Noe. And I like really bad horror films. I listen to Meredith Monk, Beethoven, Johnny Cash, heavy metal. I like international pop – the Sufi Qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Currently, I’m all caught up in David Lang and Bruce Peninsula.

CR: How have these influences affected your writing?

SM: It’s all this sea of impressions we swim in, that we’re all trying to make some sense of. Everything is an influence. I know that any writing in the twentieth century is heavily influenced by the different language of film. Without the grammar of film, would I have bounced around in time as I do in my fiction? The first thing I wanted to do was to be a filmmaker. Kids of my generation wanted to do this because certain kinds of films were being made in the 60s when the studio system had broken down. It seemed like anything could happen. But the making of a film is so complex, involving so many people and so many variables. Of course, as a writer, you get to control everything.

CR: The theme of this journal is recovery. What does recovery mean to you?

SM: It’s funny, I hadn’t really thought of that. I don’t know that I have a good answer. I think I’m always in a state of change. For better or worse.

Carol Roan fell in love with the sound of words as a child and began singing them professionally at seventeen. Thirty years later she had begun to write her own words and was elected to Poets & Writers of New Jersey. Her two nonfiction books are Clues to American Dance and Speak Up: The Public Speaking Primer, and she has recently won a few awards and publication for her short stories. She now teaches voice and stage presence in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she is president of Winston- Salem Writers. She also edits writing and leads writing workshops.

We’re thrilled to announce that our upcoming “Friends & Family” issue will be illustrated by the talented (and generous!) watermedia artist Marilyn Sears Bourbon.

Marilyn describes her style as both geometric expressionism (an exploration of self through shape, color and design) and subjective historicism (an exploration of self through the past). She expresses emotions through her work by weaving pattern and design into a descriptive mood, which explore the ways human beings construct their world.

Many years of experience as a professional interior designer have developed her innate ability to see the negative space surrounding shapes and forms. She sees her painting as an exploration of women’s voices through color and design.

She has won many awards for watercolor and watermedia in juried shows, and has had her work exhibited numerous times in national, gallery and museum shows. She has also served as a juror in artistic competitions.  Risk-taking through experimentation is an inherent part of her artistic approach, so continued evolution of her style should be expected. She believes understanding ourselves and the world in which we live comes through experimentation, change, and expression of honest emotion.

Jennifer: Okay. So. Your short piece “Mirrors Like Silence” is a beautiful lyric-narrative of what is basically a pretty horrific and sad – but all too common – scenario. The “how” it is accomplished isn’t something I think either of us should explore, what I’m more interested in is why you think it’s so essential to tell it and in this particular way. This flash essay, to me has at its heart a ‘there but for sheer, dumb luck go I’ feel to it. The way you write this essay it reads as being without judgment and includes a great deal of love for the character of Carlos. I guess what I’m asking here is what have you gained from telling this story in this way?

Sindu: This story—I never meant to write it. For a long time, I held it in because I felt as if I would be betraying my friend by writing it. This wasn’t my story to tell. If I didn’t think about it, I could push it to the back of my mind. But it was always there, this realization that my friend was hurting, suffering, and that I was doing nothing about it. Indeed that there was nothing I could do about it. I finally wrote the story in this way as an apology, for everything that I couldn’t do for him, for all the ways in which I’d failed him, failed to save him, to catch him when he fell.

Jennifer: That’s interesting. Was there ever a moment when you thought, even as you were writing, there’s a moment when I could have done something. Or is that helpless feeling part of why you kept it to yourself for so long?

Sindu: That helplessness was part of why I kept it to myself. But I did feel as I was writing it that yes, there were things I could’ve done. Many things. In the end, I don’t know if anything would’ve made a difference. But I was young, confused, and wrapped up in my own world. Writing this story was also a way of laying my failings out in front of me, reminding myself that I have to learn from this, and be a better friend in the future.

Jennifer: Do you think that that’s why, as writers, we are so drawn to our own pasts? Also, do you feel as though you were successful?

Sindu: Speaking for myself, I’m drawn to my past because I want to make sense of it. I want to know the why behind all the chaos, all the wild and crazy decisions I’ve made, the ways in which I had no control. Most of my nonfiction is written for or about others. I think writing about my past is also a way to think through my relationships. With “Mirrors Like Silence,” I think on some level, I was successful in making some sense of this time in my life, my friendship with Carlos, and to try and make up for some of my failings.

Jennifer: You sound like you’re speaking for an audience. Real talk, though. Do you think we actually get anything out of that practice, for ourselves, I mean? I think what really happens when we try to “learn from our past” is that we see each new situation as some sort of re-do of an old scenario where we screwed the pooch. Puts a lot of pressure on us as people, don’t you think? What do readers get out of something like that? What do you get from reading about an experience you’ve never witnessed first-hand? Does it prepare you in any way – other than making you kinder, perhaps.

Sindu: I think we’re under a lot of pressure anyway, us writers. We expect ourselves to shit out gold in terms of our work. And yes, I think some of us expect way too much of ourselves as people, too. I know I do. Whenever I mess up, I think, next time, I’ll do it better. Two things wrong with that. One, it makes me eager to move onto the next time, instead of fixing this time. Two, I have very high expectations of myself going forward, and of course I usually fail.

Jennifer: God. This is good shit. Please, continue.

Sindu: As readers, I think it gives us a sort of perverse pleasure to know that we’re not the only ones who ever screwed up. I do think it makes us kinder, able to forgive people easier for their failings because we’re eager to have them forgive us, too. But it messes with our internal moral compasses, and I find that writers are often not as rigid in their moral structures. That can be good or bad, depending on whether you need to hide the body or investigate the murder.

Jennifer: While I had a huge, out-loud chuckle at that last part (hide the body or investigate the murder! Hilarious!) I want to quibble with it, too. I suppose that’s because I want forgiveness for myself, too. I also kinda want to burn down the world because I have to ask for forgiveness for “letting the soft animal of my body love what it loves.” It seems criminal, in some ways, to tell someone ‘no, you didn’t follow the rules, so you can’t have what you love or want.’ It seems to me sometimes ,in my darkest moments, that morals aren’t about anything but possessiveness. Then again, if I had stuff to lose, I’d have a different stance on the issue. Maybe. Probably.

Sindu: I think you’re onto something with the possessiveness. I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about control. This idea of morality is about control. We are in control of our actions, but not in control of our desires. As writers, I think control is something we have to learn to give up. We have to be willing to give up control and imagine someone else’s consciousness, their desires and actions, and that kind of mental intimacy (let’s call it that) leaves a mark on our own personalities. We get darker, moodier, angrier as we realize that everyone’s reality is valid, that self-discipline is a myth sold with a side of hope.

Jennifer: Control. I’m circling back to that. Mostly, what I’m curious about is how you think that applies in fiction or / and non-fiction. Isn’t the appeal (or part of it, anyway) of fiction-writing the fictive imagining of a real(ish) scenario, the idea that we can make the events go the way we want them to?

Sindu: As someone who primarily writes fiction, I feel more in control when I’m writing nonfiction. I can take an angle, slant the right details, and tell it all with the lens that I want. I can turn a real scenario into whatever I want using my pithy word-smithing. But when I’m writing fiction, I feel as if I’m just barely keeping up, as if things have to happen in a certain way, and even my authorial decisions aren’t in my control–that’s just how they have to be to write the good story. It does sound all New Age mambo-jumbo but when writing fiction I often feel like a journalist stumbling along in the dark, trying to get it all down.

Jennifer: Interesting. So in non-fiction you’re examining a stationary object, and in
fiction you feel like you’re chasing a rabbit?

Sindu: Yes! I love that. That’s exactly what it’s like. Because nonfiction has already happened, it’s like playing with Play-Doh. It’s a certain color, and there’s only so much of it. I can shape it how I want. But fiction’s like pinning down water.

Jennifer: That’s a good one, too. You’re just shaping the elements that already exist to show yourself and the reader something about that situation or person or moment, right? It sounds to me like that’s kind of how it goes. Most of the time. Poetry feels more like the stationary object thing.

So, here’s an interesting thought. Maybe a chicken and egg question, but here goes: Do you think we seek out diverse experiences to give us more “Play-Doh” to work with (in non-fiction, poetry, fiction) or do we turn to writing because that’s the tool we best know how to use to make sense of those experiences? Or maybe I should ask which was the case for you?

Sindu: I think it depends heavily on the person. There are the writers that backpack through Africa and stay in European hostels, traverse red light districts in Thailand. Then there are writers that camp in their own backyards. For me, I seek out diverse experiences because that’s part of my personality. I rarely mean to write about them, and often never do. But at the same time, those experiences get added to the big pot of my life, and are there for me to draw on when I need that one brick-wall-smashing detail. There’s something to be said of the depth to which you know your own life though, and I find that depth is what is really beautiful about writing. So I tend to stick to the experiences that I’ve marinated in for a while, because I’m able to dig deeper, get at harder truths.

Jennifer: You sound a little bit like Ted Kooser. He tells the poets that we need to read and experience as many kinds of poetry as we can, and after a while we become such a rich stew of our experiences and readings that no one element is distinguishable from the others.

Sindu: I agree, but when extrapolating that idea to the experiences we have in life, I think we must also be careful to distinguish between our experiences first-hand, and the experiences of those close to us. That’s an easy line to blur and cross.

Jennifer: Yeah, I agree. I always break out in a rash when I read persona poetry about actual people written by someone who never knew them. I’m not sure why, except that it feels like a kind of wanton appropriation of another person’s experiences.

Sindu: It is. One the one hand, I do think as writers we can step into other people’s shoes, but it’s a fine line. It has to be done with care, and a whole lot of love. And, when the writer has power and privilege that the subject doesn’t, the writer is also responsible for having a working knowledge of the historical context of that power.

Jennifer: I agree. But even when those things aren’t an issue, often the practice of
putting yourself in someone else’s shoes (in non-fiction or poetry especially) feels as though you’re using someone, reducing them to a vehicle for your own desires and expressions.

Sindu: You are. That’s what we do as writers, use everything and everyone around us to
tell our truths. I think it’s just something we have to make peace with.

Jennifer: I have to think about that. It might be why I am so much more attracted to
poetry and (distantly) non-fiction.

Sindu: As opposed to fiction?

Jennifer: Yes, as opposed to fiction. I have had some experience with being used and didn’t like it much. Don’t want to do it to anyone else. Although it is very, very easy to do.

Sindu: It is easy.

Jennifer: It is also a thing we have to handle responsibly. Alrighty, I think you should get the last word in here. We’ve been talking a lot about control and use and all those things. Now, do you have any thoughts for your reader? Was there something you wanted to ask me about the story?

Sindu: I’m curious about one thing. Does the story function as an apology?

Jennifer: Yes, it functions as an apology in the sense of a “defense” and it also reads as something of a mea culpa. You are saying “this was me, being stupid and young and having no idea how to listen, how – if at all – I could help you” and it is clear that you love your friend very much.

Sindu: Carlos hasn’t yet read the story. I’m scared to give it to him. I’m scared that he won’t understand it as a mea culpa. I hope I’m not scared soon.

Jennifer M. Dean currently writes, lives, and works in Lincoln, Nebraska where she received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is the Associate Editor of Split Rock Review, and has work published or forthcoming in The Battered Suitcase, Torrid Literature, and Red River Review.

Mary Akers: Thank you for sharing your wonderful short story On the Verge of Frog-Hood with us. Can you tell our readers a little bit about what inspired this fascinating story?

Richard Bader: One day a couple of years ago a woman came to my door trying to sell a novel that she self-published. I was very busy and I blew her off. Not rudely, but still. And I’ve always felt really bad about that. Though maybe it was a good thing, because it gave me the opportunity to try to figure out who she was. And yes, there once was a woman who collected tadpoles from the cover of a neighbor’s pool. No one ever talked to her, and she didn’t look like she wanted to be talked to. She seemed very sad. So I got to invent her, too.

MA: How do you generally write? (On a computer? Pen to paper? Mornings? Anytime?)

RB: The lion’s share of my writing happens on an aging Mac laptop in my basement office. The space is sort of sensory-deprivation chic, though it may be a little lacking in the chic department. The absence of stimuli helps keep me from getting too distracted. Plus it’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I have an office assistant named Zoe who’s a 3-year-old German Shepherd mix and an awesome listener. Outside the office I try to keep a pen and small notebook handy in case an idea strikes, or I’ll use a note-taking app on my iPhone. I have mixed success keeping to a fixed writing schedule. I envy write-first-thing-in-the-morning writers, but I’m generally more productive in the afternoon.

MA: What inspires you?

RB: A jacket blurb I saw recently on a book by a writer I like said she puts ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to see what they’re made of. I needed somebody else to put it that way, but I think most of the time when I write that’s what I’m trying to do. That said, I also feel an itch to write a good story about a superhero. Of course, like all good superheroes, he (or she) would have to be a flawed superhero, with those humanizing ordinary-person traits.

MA: Who are your favorite writers?

RB: Most of what I read is contemporary fiction, and I tend to hop around a lot. The last book that made me feel like I was in the presence of greatness was Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. The last book I didn’t want to see end was The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. I’m a big Jennifer Egan fan,and I like the way she’s always experimenting — a recent story she wrote with Twitter feeds was a lot of fun.  A volume of Amy Hempel short stories is a fixture on my bedside table. I pick it up and read every now and then and shake my head and wonder at how in the world she does it. An Alice Munro collection is there, too. Not long ago I stumbled on Doug Dorst’s excellent story collection The Surf Guru, and wish he’d produce another. I tend to value story over incredibly gorgeous language to tell story, and this drives who I like to read.

MA: Good choices! Those are some of my favorites, too.
And finally, because we are a recovery-themed journal, what does “recovery” mean to you?

RB: I grew up in a household where alcoholism was a dominant theme. Probably the dominant theme. But recovery never really happened. So maybe recovery is something I’m still looking for. What does it take to do it? What are the obstacles? Why do some people succeed and others fail? What keeps others on a perpetual succeed/fail cycle? My guess is that if I really looked at it, I’d find a recovery theme in just about everything I write. This brings us back to what I said before about putting ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and seeing what they’re made of. Some make it. Others don’t.

MA: Thanks so much for talking with me, Richard. I really enjoyed it.