Issue 21

Our view of the past is shaped by the questions we ask of it. As an historian I ferreted out details, pondered the evidence, deduced motivations from actions taken, and then presented my findings. I co-authored two books and wrote numerous articles, but always knew that the story was incomplete.

Lying face-down on the dock, I stared into a shallow pond edged with ice. It was February. The surface of the water reflected low winter light. Underneath, plants, leaves, sticks, stones, and bubbles created multiple layers of interest; there were even insects. I hung onto my camera—no dunking!—and tried to capture this complexity.

Since childhood, I have been enchanted by words and sounds. I studied foreign languages, played music throughout my years in college, and did field work in various parts of the world as a graduate student. I was sure that I would be among the anointed for a lifelong career in academia. But gradually, I began to face up to a reality – my love for verbal expression belonged in the arts.

‘The book is used as an effective objective correlative’ wrote my teacher on a copy of my story now titled ‘Where I Sit.’ Notes from a prior fiction workshop reminded me that an objective correlative defines a particular emotion out of an object, situation, or (chain of) events and then re-evokes the sentiment somewhere else in the story.

Recently, a photographer friend of mine said he’d quit chasing success; for him, it was all about fulfillment. This declaration hit me like a gut punch – not only because he was the most successful creative I knew. It was that, as straightforward as prioritizing fulfillment was, I’d never even considered measuring my life like that.

Can you form friendships with dead people? Can the poem you wrote when you were six influence your decision to help a stranger fifty years later? Can you be bigender and Buddhist—someone with two “selves” who believes in no permanent self?

An afternoon stroll down O’Connell Street, Dublin’s main thoroughfare, will take you on a tour of Irish history in a matter of blocks. You’ll follow in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom, protagonist of Ulysses, as you cross the River Liffey, that famed waterway from songs by bands as varied as The Chieftains and Radiohead. You’ll see the battle-scared post office, its pillars pock-marked by English bullets from the 1916 Easter Rising.

During the fall semester of my senior year of college, I was in the eye of a storm. Specifically, a perfect storm of intersecting liberal arts topics and a looming mania, through which my guiding light was storytelling. I finished my first full length play that semester, as well as a TV pilot in play’s clothing—but interestingly, the work that emerged from that period most intact was “Roses.”