Reflection

Nostalgia and whimsy and…. travel trailers?

/ Rachel / 5 Comments

Superman had Kryptonite; I have nostalgia and whimsy to bring me to my knees.  And it strikes in the oddest of ways.  I can’t predict when I’m going to be caught in the headwinds of fanciful dreaming – it just happens and sometimes it lasts for days on end.  I woke up this morning feeling moody and exhausted, but once I got to work, I settled into my new, much more private and quiet office (which I just moved into on Monday), popped in my earbuds, turned on my iPod, and called up the playlist of some old friends.  Okay, so I don’t actually know Jim and Marian Jordan, who played Fibber McGee and Molly on a radio show of the same name from the 30s-50s, but I feel like I know them.  Honestly, I’ve been listening to the 800+ episodes I have for so many years now that their voices are comforting to me.  When I can’t sleep at night, I listen to a few of their shows and they lull me to sleep.  When I’m stressed to my very limits, their voices help ease me into a quiet calmness.  They make me nostalgic for a time I never lived through and for things that I couldn’t possibly experience during my lifetime.

Today was one such day where, after listening to Fibber and Molly for most of the day (in between an endless stream of needy employees parading in and out of my office), that sentimental feeling stuck with me.  I came home, fixed supper, and then Tim and I got Roxie ready for her walk.  We went down my favorite little stretch of road in our neighborhood.  Lined with trees and horse pastures, it reminds me of the solitude that my country-girl soul misses since we live within the city limits.  I began telling Tim about my hopes to someday own and restore a vintage travel trailer to use as a writing office. I want to plop it right in the middle of a field, maybe near a big old oak tree. We actually owned one a few years ago but it was just too far damaged to be restored without costing us an arm and a leg, so we sold her (a 1971 New Paris Traveler that I named Gracie) to someone who could restore her.  Even though Gracie is gone, my dream for a travel trailer isn’t gone.  I can practically hear the plunking of the raindrops on the metal roof as I sit inside, sipping on tea and tapping away at my laptop.  This strong desire to get a travel trailer right this very nanosecond led me to tincantourists.com, where the classifieds, filled with pages and pages of adorable travel trailers for sale, invoke such strong stabs of whimsy and longing inside me that it almost hurts.  I mean, here are just a few samples from what is currently for sale on that site.

HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT ONE, TOO???

Anyway, as my Friday night wanes into a 3-day holiday weekend that’s supposed to be filled with rain and relaxation, I hope these gushy, dreamy-eyed notions continue.  They usually lead to creativity and a feeling of lightheartedness – both of which I need right now.

Somebody that I Used to Know

/ Rachel / Leave a comment

About two years ago, I lost touch with someone very near and dear to myself: me. Up until that fateful day, I could be found toiling away in my house, creating new recipes, cooking things from scratch, and sewing by hand. I collected aprons, Depression glass, and old time radio shows. Then, I turned a corner. In some ways, it was fantastic. In others, though, it was detrimental.

See, two and a half years ago, I published my first fanfiction story. It was the first time that anyone had read my writing (outside of blogging) and the absolute first time that anyone had ever read any work of fiction by me. I did it because I loved to write, believed that I had a skill for it, and wanted to try it out. As it turned out, the community for which I wrote the stories was very receptive, loved my stories, and wanted more. Because I have an addictive personality, I threw myself into fic writing. Now, I have over 800,000 words of fic archived on fanfiction.net and when I look in the mirror, I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. Don’t get me wrong – sharing my fiction was wonderful because I realized that maybe I really did have a talent for turning words into stories that both captivated and touched the reader. Had I never published that first story, I’d still be wondering. The problem is that when you write fanfiction, you normally get involved in the fandom of the show/movie/book you’re writing fic for. And getting involved in the fandom is the problem, at least for me. (If you’ve never been involved in a fandom – let me explain it simply. “Fandom” is when you get really worked up about the most trivial and pointless of things regarding the show/movie/book that you love.) I have opinions on everything and everyone and I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that I get irritated by people I’ve never spoken to, other than in a Tumblr ask box or on Twitter. I really don’t like the fact that I’ve literally become addicted to writing two characters. A novelist has to move on from her characters when it’s time to focus on the next story. I struggle with saying goodbye to this couple that I’ve spent so long writing, falling out of “love” with them in a way, and moving on. And the thing is, I want to move on. I have two gorgeous characters (okay, actually 8 total, but I’m only focusing on two) waiting in the wings and their story deserves to be told. And the best part of all of it is that they’re ALL mine! No Hollywood conglomerate owns these two characters; they are completely my creation. They are beautiful and flawed and they have a strong story to tell – I just have to tell it.

So all of that brings me back to my first thought – reconnecting with myself. I have to flush fandom and those characters that I don’t own out of my head. I have to get up from my desk, log off Twitter and Tumblr, and do the things I used to do. It’s only once I shut off those influences that I’ll be able to dim the voices that have lived in my head for so long and let two others begin to speak loud and clear. That might mean picking up my yo-yo quilt for the first time in two years, or focusing on that unfinished cross-stitch picture. I have to reconnect with the person I used to be in order to move forward. It feels like a bit of self-detox and it’s highly challenging, but it’s my reality and what I’m ready to tackle. This past weekend, my husband and I did a few things around the house that allowed me to feel like the old Rachel, the one not chained to her laptop. It was nice. I actually like that woman. I need to let her shine through more because she has a fantastic story to tell. She just needs a little push in the right direction.

The photo album

/ Rachel / 3 Comments

For years now, I’ve wondered what happened to a particular little blue photo album that I once had.  It was filled with pictures that I took from sixth grade through ninth grade, which (in my memory) were my happiest years of school.  Pictures of school trips to Camp Livingston and to Chicago.  Pictures of my friends as we goofed off around school.  Pictures from our last family trip (ever) to St. Louis and Hannibal, Missouri.  That photo album was filled with such wonderful memories but I figured it was lost in the piles and stacks and stuffed closets of my parents’ messy house.

So imagine my surprise today when my mom hands me a box of stuff she found in my old bedroom closet that included that photo album.  As I opened it up and flipped through the pictures, I wasn’t filled with the warm recollection of childhood like I had anticipated after years of wishing that I could find that album.  Instead, I was hit with unexpected pain as memories came rushing back.  I saw picture after picture of the boy who led me on in high school but would never date me because I wasn’t good enough.  There were so many pictures of the girls who were my best friends through age 16 but then started to pull away because I was too odd, my interests didn’t mesh with theirs, and I didn’t have the money like they did to go to the mall and to the movies every weekend.  I saw pictures of a girl who started horrible rumors about me and made my high school life hell for a while.  I saw friends who walked away, the boy who always said no, and people who aren’t part of my life anymore and haven’t been for a very long time.

I’m envious of people who are still friends with the people they grew up with.  Part of this is my fault, I know.  I didn’t reach out and try to maintain those friendships after we graduated.  But by senior year, I felt so isolated, so different, that I didn’t think any of them would miss me.  None of them did.  Now I’m stuck with this photo album that I so desperately wanted to find, never thinking about what emotions it would evoke in me once it was in my hands again.

I know that those events were years ago and that I should just let all of it go.  My brain knows this.  The thing is, those were my formative years – the years that helped shaped me into who I am today.  And they aren’t good memories.  I know why I have no self-esteem, why I always expect to never matter as much to my friends as they do to me, and why there isn’t enough money in the world to bribe me to move back to my hometown.

I don’t know what to do with this album now.  I can’t throw it away, regardless of the way it makes me feel.  Perhaps I’ll just bury it in the back of my own closet for 20 years and then maybe, once 40 years have passed since those pictures were taken, I’ll finally be able to tune into the happy emotions I once associated with that time of my life.

The history that surrounds you

/ Rachel / 2 Comments

The thing I love about history is that it’s everywhere.  Growing up, I was convinced that I lived in the single most boring spot in America: southern Indiana.  My parents were quick to correct me of this gross inaccuracy and then proceeded to haul me all over the state over the next few years, pointing out that I was, in fact, from a very interesting area.  There was the house just down the road, built of Indiana limestone and with nicks in the rocks from an American Indian raid in the early 1800s.  As a child in Madison, I was regaled with stories of Civil War hospitals, escaped slaves, and clandestine stops on the Underground Railroad.  I saw the site of the Battle of Corydon,where General Morgan attacked during Morgan’s Raid in 1863.  I’ve stood at the first state capital building in Corydon, before Indianapolis snatched up the title in 1825. We visited (and eventually became volunteers) at the site where Abraham Lincoln and his family lived from 1816 to 1830 in what is now Lincoln City, Indiana.  I’ve stood at the grave of his mother in Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial and at his sister’s grave just across the road in Lincoln State Park.

As I grew older, I became fascinated with World War II history and as it turns out, there was plenty of that around, too.  The most visible site was the old Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, which stretched for miles along Highway 62 between Charlestown and Jeffersonville.  The place looked abandoned, forgotten, like everybody just packed up one day and never came back. The old buildings, with their cracked windows and crumbling glass, used to send chills down my spine.   Even still, I was wide-eyed at the history of the place.  Opened in 1940, it was a major producer of munitions during World War II and employed over 27k people.

Once I became a college student majoring in history, I learned even more.  The great Falls of the Ohio (in Clarksville) was a captivating place because it was where Lewis and Clark, with their Corps of Discovery, set off to explore the west in 1803.  Then there were places such as Rose Island, which was on a piece of land where Fourteen Mile Creek empties into the Ohio River.  An amusement park reminiscent of Coney Island, it was a great attraction for residents on both sides of the Ohio River in the 1920s and 1930s.  Steamboats from Louisville and Madison would drop patrons off daily for a ride on the Ferris wheel, a trip around the wooden coaster, a swim in the pool, or a spin around the roller rink.  The Great Flood of 1937 destroyed this park and it was never rebuilt.

Now that I’m writing a war-era novel and I’ve decided to set it in my old stomping grounds, I’m indebted to my parents and professors for making the rolling hills of southern Indiana come alive with history.  What seems like nothing more than abandoned buildings, decrepit homes, and forgotten railroad tracks are, in fact, fascinating places.  There’s a story to be told behind every door and I hope, through my novel, to bring some of those stories to life again.