To take a little break from the Columbia content, I figured I’d introduce you to the stories and words that have haunted me. I love reading and even though these days, I mainly read on the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan (or vice versa). I wish I could read more for pleasure, but I’ve been reading a ton of news (which is awesome).
So here it goes: the writing that haunts me.
The Ingenue
I talked about this story ages ago here on the blog. It’s by Marina Keegan (God rest her soul). It’s a story about a girl and her boyfriend who she suspects of cheating. The short story has this twist in which it is revealed that Danny definitely cheated and yet somehow by the end of the story, it ends with her married to Danny. This story has such a compelling ending despite such a pivotal scene, and the last few lines have haunted me for a long time.
“My mother always said how amazing it is that things seem so absolute when you’re young. But the sand slides down in chutes until the dune craters are full. Inevitable, the magazines write, and we shake our heads with somber nostalgia for the grass and its crickets. We always will.”
The nostalgia…is it a longing for the absolute to return? Or is it because you have settled into the reality that things will never be as absolute as we want them to be? The ending just gets me. I want to ask Marina why, but she’s been gone for a few years now. I’m only a year older than she got to be. It’s sad that we won’t ever get more of her talent.
The Empathy Exams
I love Leslie Jamison’s writing. I mean this intro is so darn clever. You should just read it! I’d rather not spoil it. The first time I read Leslie Jamison I read her in a college class. Her essay Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain is a worthy read alongside Eula Biss’ Pain Scale.
“We’re holding the fiction between us like a jump rope.”
“Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds.”
“I needed his empathy not just to comprehend the emotions I was describing, but to help me discover which emotions were actually there.”
“But motions can be more than just rote. They don’t just express feeling; they can give birth to it.”
Leslie’s writing is so precise at times. I love this kind of writing. The writing of something that happened and then studying it, reflecting on it. I hope that that’s the kind of writing you see on my blog. I want to capture a moment and then reveal to you what that moment means for me. However you feel about this piece, there’s something so human about the human desire to want someone else to feel your deep wounds with you.
Blood Work
I haven’t read this work in years. My high school history teacher gave this poetry book to me and it’s really good. It’s funny now thinking about it–I have nothing in common with Matthew Siegel, but I loved the way his poems were crafted. If you struggle with chronic illness, I think Matthew’s work will resonate with you.
“You try with pills and prayer but you are held back here
in this place. You walk the lake ringed with bulbs at night
feeling encircled even though you’re doing the circling.”
“You have seen me like this before, such a strange
version of the person you thought you knew.
Guess what, I’m strange to us both. It’s like
I’m not even me sometimes. Who am I? A question
for the Lord only to decide as She looks over
my résumé.”
On Newbury Street, July
There’s a poem in a random anthology I picked up at the library one time years ago when I was in high school. This one in particular haunts me. I’m not sure why, maybe because it reminds me of winter (despite the fact that it’s July). I’ve also mentioned this one before on the blog.
“I can’t walk away from the feeling you give me –
It’s like watching a plane
work across a white sky in winter
and pass behind a beige-brick building
— something like loneliness.”
It’s by Will Fesperman, and it just haunts me imagining Will watching and describing what who and what he’s seeing.
Day 2934
The backstory with A is that he’s transported into people’s bodies. On this particular day, it’s Valentine’s and it’s the sweetest story!!! It’s about a single mom and her son and David Levithan has always been the writer to say the words I’ve always wanted to say out loud. He just says it perfectly.
“Years later, I will remember her voice. I will remember the way she said it. With chime-like clarity, announcing that this indeed a special day, and that even though I have done nothing to deserve it but be myself, it all belongs to me.”
“When you get older, red becomes more complicated, just as hearts become more complicated.”
“I am reminded how households with only two people have a different kind of gravity than others. We need the background noise, because otherwise the burden is entirely on us.”
“Because the minute she sees me, gravity returns. The minute she sees me, gravity returns…I know then, without being able to articulate it, that love is the gravity.”
Words ground me and root me in reality while allowing me to escape it. Words are worthy, precious things that shape us. Words are what I use to guide my life and sometimes they haunt me.
Let me know the stories that haunt you. I can always use more recommendations!
Signing off,
Gigi
Studying Life with Gigi 
This is an interesting collection. You seem to have very diverse interests Gigi.
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