Bottle Trees by Daniela Edwards RC Creative Writing Winter 2012 1 For Paige, my oldest sister, most frequent rival, consistent critic, steadfast supporter, and oldest friend. And for Mona, in return for fast friendship and late-night sci-fi marathons. 2 Contents Introduction: A Conceit…………………...………………………………………………4 Gingerbread……………………………….……………………………………………….9 Lasting……………………………………………………………………………………13 Horseplay………………………………..……………………………………………….18 Mag……………………………………..………………………………………………..29 Compulsion……………………………..………………………………………………..37 Storm……………………………………..………………………………………………44 Clock……………………………………………………………………………………52 Doll……………………………………...……………………………………………….65 Bottle Tree……………………………….………………………………………………73 Cellar Wine………………………………………………………………………………82 Nan……………………………………….………………………………………………95 3 Introduction: A Conceit During my last semester as an undergraduate, I took a class called “Creative Musicianship.” Mark Kirschenmann, one of the two instructors for the course, focused particularly upon the “creative” part of the course description. Several sessions of the lab section consisted of him showing the class portions of online lectures about creativity (Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED video is certainly worth a look), talking to us about his own creative challenges – such as a course he took as a college student which required him to compose a new piece each week – and urging the class to discuss our own methods and difficulties. Though I entered the course hoping to get more of a grasp on musical creation methods, I ended up learning a lot about creativity in general instead. In the end, I think this was more valuable. Thank you, Mark. In listening to classmates discuss songs that sprang from the ether nearly fully- written, hearing one student explain that the night before our composition was due, he deleted all of his work from the week in order to begin anew, in having to twist and rewrite and rewrite my own pieces in order to get them into something resembling finished condition, I discovered that the process of making something new is rarely exactly the same from project to project, much less from person to person. Further, I discovered that making music is, for me, very similar to the process of making new stories. Sometimes new stories, ideas, or melodies flow from my head to my screen (or staff) with almost no effort. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or even years for an idea to 4 mature. And sometimes I will spend days furious at myself for apparently being unable to write more than a few sentences at a time. This process creates a story behind each story. Neil Gaiman often features stories- within-stories, a type of intertext that I have always found fascinating. I remember as a child watching a cartoon short about the storyteller who won the princess’s hand by telling her father a story with no ending (you know the one: “And then another ant came and took out another piece of wheat. .”). And as the inter-stories, the backstory of creation, have been such an integral part of my own experience, I will at this point shamelessly mimic Gaiman himself. Each story has a story, which in turn I hope will make each of my stories a little deeper. Or not. Honestly, you could skip this introduction entirely and I don’t believe the stories would suffer for it. My apologies if you choose to do so now, for making you first trudge through a page and half of my rambling. “Gingerbread” – this is one of those stories that I wrote very quickly. It is shorter than my pieces usually are, and written in a kind of distracted state of mind: earlier that day I had deleted most of another idea that I decided wouldn’t work. Is it about anything in particular? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is merely about the need to keep busy, to make something even if it isn’t what you really wanted to make at the time. “Lasting” – I based this story on another short story I wrote while in high school. I still have the original somewhere, and honestly it’s pretty terrible, but it was the most advanced piece of prose I’d created at that point. It took me this long to salvage the idea, and I almost didn’t include it at all, largely because I dislike remembering the experiences that inspired it. I keep it now because I have to admit that sometimes even horrible people and events can create good ideas. 5 “Horseplay” – This was a challenge to write, as I usually make my narrators a little bit more self-aware. The bits about horses are all true. “Mag” – This story is a something of an artefact. Initially I planned for this project to consist entirely of realistic fiction based on mythological concepts. This did not pan out, but the mythic trend in this story is visible to anyone who knows about Odin and his two ravens, Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory. In Grimnismol, Odin frets about sending these two creatures out as his scouts. “For Hugin I fear/ lest he come not home, But for Munin my care is more.” (stanza 20, Bellows translation). In Nordic stories, Thought is worthless without the context Memory provides. Though the raven is transformed into a crow in this story, I leave it to the readers to decide which one she is. “Compulsion” – a companion to “Mag,” though “Compulsion” was actually written first. I suppose it too reflects on the importance of memory and thought. “Storm” – Another story about a soldier, this one a veteran. “Soldier stories” make up a large portion of my portfolio, which I guess isn’t that surprising. Real life creates plot, and this country has been at war since I was ten years old. Growing up in a small town with very limited resources and even fewer opportunities, I saw several friends join the military as soon as they graduated high school. Too few went on to successful careers in the field. Most just seemed to get more lost than they’d been before. The change in themselves was difficult enough, but I had one friend in particular who discovered that his old friends and loved ones could not relate to him anymore. He’d lost a part of himself, and also his old support network. “Clock” – I couldn’t write this piece until I made the conscious decision to give the narrator difficulties with her attention span. It also was part of a self-imposed 6 challenge to write a piece that involved a polyamorous system – i.e., a sexually open relationship among multiple people – that did not provide the main source of conflict in the story itself. I think this is the closest thing to a happy, healthy relationship that I have included in this collection. Make of that what you will. “Doll” – a prequel story that necessitated a rewrite of the previously-written sequel. I did not realize that it was about a character mentioned in “Bottle Tree” until I finished it, and then I had to change both stories slightly to solidify the connection. “Bottle Tree” – Bottle trees do exist, though their origins and purpose will vary from person to person. Sometimes they may not even be trees. This is another piece of mythological fiction, as the narrator is herself well aware. “Cellar Wine” – Networks between friends often seem rather fragile. I have most of the friends I do today because someone I met while moving into my dorm freshman year thought I was physically attractive and decided I was interesting enough to meet his friends. Connections are intangible things, and perhaps can linger even when those who forged them are no longer present. “Nan” – My longest completed piece to date. This underwent a terrifying number of drafts before it came to its eventual conclusion, which isn’t even really a conclusion. It started after a chance encounter with a friend of a friend, a gentleman of East Asian descent who was adopted into a Jewish family, which honestly still sounds like the setup of a potentially-tasteless joke. He turned it into one, at least, which made the idea stick with me for some time. My own experiences with Japanese language and culture and my upbringing as a Jew in a mixed family living in an isolated area of rural Michigan eventually combined with the initial grain of an idea, and “Nan” was the final result. 7 These stories are not the sum of my experiences, nor a record of them. They are, however, born of ideas that stuck to me, or surrounded me, or grew on me like parasitic moss. Creativity is often portrayed as stemming from an “other,” such as a muse or a daemon (the term favored by Elizabeth Gilbert). Writing is at least somewhat different from story to story for me; however, it is always a way to shed myself of excess ideas and images. 8 Gingerbread I’d wonder how I got myself into this, but I know it’s the same as ever. We need another eight dozen cookies and some sauerkraut for the dinner – and it wasn’t even my church, it was Alice’s, and she’d come over to ask me because she’d already done a double-share of rolls for the Christmas dinner, and she even explained that the sauerkraut was just something the church always had, and here was the recipe, and thank you so much, and I was left agreeing to take care of it without ever having said anything. I ran my wrist under the tap, glaring at the searing red line the baking sheet (now on the floor with two dozen gingerbread men) had left on winter-white skin. Like that could somehow make it better. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And the whole apartment smells of burning sugar and boiling cabbage.