Silence and the Word
Page 24
occasional drops falling into
my hair, onto the pages, and I
am purely happy, in a way
that is like riding your bike
down a very steep hill, or
wading in a stony brook—
it is a way that I knew
how to follow once, but
for a long time, I
have been too scared—
to read a book,
under a tree,
in light rain.
End Notes
Esthely Blue: Every story is at least a little bit autobiographical, but this one is as close as I’ve come to actual autobiography—disappearing toes and all.
And Can This Ever End?: I originally wrote this story for the web, my first (and so far only) foray into hypertext. I’m fascinated by the possibilities of truly non-linear narrative, but I find it so much more difficult to do well than traditional fiction (generally because it seems you must write ten stories in hypertext for every one in traditional narrative) that I have for the most part avoided the form.
Silence and the Word: The scariest piece I’ve ever written. (Scary for me, not necessarily you.) I was sitting in a coffeeshop with Kevin when I first drafted this, in a Salt Lake City winter, and even though I hate winter, I had to keep getting up from my computer and going outside to stomp around in the snowy park next door, just to catch my breath and get my courage up again. I am deeply indebted to Lee Damsky, the editor of Sex and Single Girls, who forced me through four drafts of this essay before it found its final form. Every revision, accompanied by her searching, pertinent questions, made it better.
Fringes: Sometimes I do feel lost. But mostly, not. This one’s for Jed, and David, and Karina, and Alex, with all my love. Thanks for exploring with me.
Johnny’s Story: It’s rare that I’ll take on such an unfamiliar milieu—and with an accent! But there’s something about Johnny that just makes me smile.
Still: Sometimes I try to tell the future. Thankfully, I’m never even close to correct.
At the Gates of the City: This is one of my very few spec fic stories, a piece written in the-year-of-the-breakup, when I was trying to find my way back to Kev. Perhaps my Mormon ghost girl helped. I grew to strongly dislike Salt Lake City culture in my three years there, but I do owe them for reminding me of the place of religion in many people’s lives. It’s been good for my fiction (and probably good for me, too).
Spinning Down: Kevin gave me a candle tree one Christmas, a silver tree with six blue glass candleholders. It takes up too much space on our end table, and both children and dogs tend to knock it over, putting us all in danger of fiery death, but I refuse to give it up. That’s a pretty good description of my attitude towards love affairs, come to think of it. Refusal to give up, despite risk of immolation.
the sock tray: Update, almost a year later: the socks do still get folded, but they don’t always make it into the tray.
Seven Cups of Water: I wrote the entire first draft of this in a brutal seven-hour stretch while sitting in the Borders cafe in Salt Lake City, overlooking Temple Square. The missionary women in their little white blouses and dark blue skirts walked peacefully from temple to tabernacle, handing out fliers. They always walk in pairs, have you noticed? I’m just saying.
Rice: Sometimes I think about doing a pillow book, full of little poems like these, the kind of book you could pull out and read to your lover late at night.
Minal in Winter: I wrote this story to follow “Season of Marriage” (which appears in my first collection, Torn Shapes of Desire), and I wrote it primarily so I’d have an excuse to visit her aunt, Raji, again. But I find myself desperately fond of Minal—somehow I managed to create someone more sardonic than I ever have the nerve to be. This story is the seed of my dissertation novel-in-stories, Bodies in Motion, a book which moves from American in the present day to Sri Lanka in 1947, through several generations and two intertwined families.
Listening to My Daughter: Daffydowndillies is an old word for daffodils, or at least I think it is. I have a vague memory of reading that in a book somewhere. I swear I didn’t make it up, though I wish I had.
A Gentle Man: Issues of the linkages between men and violence both trouble and fascinate me. I see many models for strong, healthy, happy women these days—I think it must be difficult right now to try to be a similarly strong, sane man.
Under the Skin: A Survey: When I brought this in to workshop in Utah, I was afraid that the class would have issues with all the racial material. But the strongest reaction was from a woman who just could not believe that I was still on such good terms with my exes that I could write them such a frank e-mail—she didn’t understand why I would want to keep in touch with them at all! She and I, different planets. Different galaxies.
The Light at Dawn: Now you really do know way too much about me. Thank god eighteen was long ago.
And the sea is shaking…: I know I would hate being a fisherman, if I really had to get up in the insanely early morning and go out into the cold. But I find the idea romantic. If I could, I’d live by the sea.
And Baby Makes Four: Yes, this is the same Shefali from The Light at Dawn, years later. I’m considering writing a novel about this threesome next. I don’t think I’ve ever read a good literary threesome novel, though there’s some decent work in the spec fic genre.
Kali: This is for Heather Shaw, with all love, and lust.
catch me if you can: Frank Wu kindly invited me to participate in an Exquisite Corpse, a game of fragments and partial responses. I was lucky enough to get to respond to a lovely story by Benjamin Rosenbaum, one of my favorite new writers. I was also the seventh and last in that particular chain, so I feel a bit guilty still, for ending on a down note. Sorry, guys!
Wild Roses: I wrote this the summer after Kevin and I broke up (we were broken up for much of a year before we admitted that wasn’t working). I almost fell apart, trying to read it at the department opening reading that fall. People were very kind.
the bones want to fly: A wish, a prayer.
Exposure: Karina and Kevin and I dated for three years, and for much of that time, she was in Australia. Almost a decade later, I am still trying to understand all the complex aspects of that relationship.
how should I protest? Very rarely do I venture into the political arena. This was written in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Mint in Your Throat: This story almost caused a knock-down drag-out fight in my Clarion class, the summer of 1997, and I think it was only another student backing me up with her own experiences with sexual violence (and the body’s involuntary responses) that brought us back to a rational discussion.
Invocation: What can I say? LDR’s suck. Though you do get a lot of work done.
The Survey: In my imagination, this takes place in Hyde Park, and it’s a University of Chicago student handing out the survey. After college, I spent a summer working for NORC, the National Opinion Research Center, and while they never had me hand out a survey like this, I wouldn’t put it past them to run this kind of thing.
Would You Live For Me? Vampires and sex and AIDS, impossibly overdone. But Cecilia Tan asked me for a vampire story for an anthology, and I started thinking about the topic, and in the end, realized that I had something I wanted to say about vampires and love and AIDS after all.
Amanda Means Love: I admit, I was hesitant about including this story—no one has wanted to publish it, and it may push taboos too far. My poor Clarion class had to deal with this story, and it wasn’t much fun for them. What makes me more nervous than the people who’ll be outraged, though, are the people who’ll go to the opposite extreme and support this as a moralistic indictment of teenage sexuality. But sometimes, you have to just send your stories out and try not to think about how other people will read them.
Poem for a University: Jedediah asked me for a poem about place, so I wrote about a place I love beyond all reason. Thanks for the poem, sweetie.
How It Started: The orange afghan is my favorite part.
A Jewel of a Woman: This story grew out of a discussion on the EROS workshop, sparked, I believe, by the talented Jordan Shelbourne asking for more terms for female masturbation. We came up with an outrageously long list, and out of that, this story. Try reading it out loud. Try not to laugh.
The Poet’s Journey: I would love to see a little illustrated book of this some day. Included for Karen.
Flowers and Branches: Karen also gets the credit for rescuing this prose poem / essay from obscurity—I had mostly forgotten about it until she told me how much she liked it. I looked at it again, and realized I liked it too.
one of the ways: I enjoy having long titles, but it does feel a bit unbalanced. Why we don’t have end-titles too, with the text sandwiched between them? Someone should start a new poetic form.
Letter to Kevin: The perils of exposing a young woman to critical theory at a tender and vulnerable age.
Sitting Under a Tree, in the Rain: This one’s for my much-abused, infinitely-patient journal readers, who asked for it, and for this book. Thanks, guys. Thanks for everything. I would be lost without you.
About the Author
Mary Anne Mohanraj is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, specializing in post-colonial literature and creative writing. She is the author of several books, including Torn Shapes of Desire (a collection), Kathryn in the City and The Classics Professor (choose-your-own-adventure-style books for adults), and A Taste of Serendib (a Sri Lankan cookbook). She is also the editor of Aqua Erotica and Wet (waterproof erotica anthologies), and The Best of Strange Horizons (an anthology of speculative fiction). Her most recent publications include “Lakshmi’s Diary” (Oasis), "A Gentle Man" (Harpur Palate), "Wild Roses" (The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, vol. 3) and "How It Started" (Best Lesbian Erotica 2003).
Mohanraj founded and served as editor-in-chief from 2000-2003 for Strange Horizons, a Hugo-nominated speculative fiction magazine. She currently serves as director of the Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speculativeliterature.org). Mohanraj has recently received a Neff fellowship in English, a Steffenson-Canon fellowship in the Humanities, and the Scowcroft Prize for Fiction. She lives in Chicago and is currently finishing her dissertation, Bodies in Motion, an exploration of sexuality, marriage, and Sri Lankan/American immigrant concerns.
1 Which brings up the question of whether sign language would be a less pure system of signs for Saussure, since so much of it is not arbitrary at all—unlike the word ‘mother’, which varies from language to language, the sign for mother is a hand combing hair. Not necessarily obviously my concept of mother, but clearly not entirely arbitrary either. (You’re not used to seeing footnotes in my letters, are you? We’ll come back to this later.)
2 Did you think I’d changed the subject? Aren’t all my letters to you about love, in the end?