A Note on My Last Post

I want to take a moment to clarify a few things in light of my post “Dear Brockport, an Open Letter:”

I am not a journalist, I am a creative writer, and my post was not meant to break a news story, rather to call into question the recent issues in our community by filtering it through my own concern as a mother, a lecturer and alumna of SUNY Brockport, a lifetime resident, and a concerned community member. I turn to my blog in order to make sense of things that frighten, frustrate and confound me. These posts fall entirely in the genre of creative essay. It’s not an outlet I use to cast judgements on people, and hardly ever do I present journalistic hard facts. My concern was that a violent crime went unreported for whatever reason, by a slew of media outlets, and not just one in particular. As a creative writer, I respect and rely on the truth that reporters bring to our community, and perhaps my frustration grew because I had no report to turn to in order to discover the truth.

I am happy to belong to a community with many voices.

I appreciate those of you who did read this post, and hope you appreciate my genuine concern for our community.

“A Moon Story,” in Hippocampus Magazine

“A Moon Story,” in Hippocampus Magazine

Hippocampus Magazine has published my nonfiction piece, “A Moon Story,” a piece about losing life, giving birth, and surviving in nature.

A Moon Story by Sarah Cedeno

 

3.11.11 There is an earthquake in Japan, and I hold my hands on my belly that…

 

Click HERE to read more

 

HIPPOCAMPUSMAGAZINE.COM

 

Matters of Space

English: State University of New York at Brockport’s Hartwell Hall, east side (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In class last Wednesday, the heavy doors of 219 Hartwell Hall opened and closed without reason.   The windows were shut.   No students were passing.

Each time the door opened and closed forcefully, I looked to a different student to corroborate.  I knew what people would think, and I wasn’t crazy.  Hartwell has its own haunted history.  I’m not the first person to abandon skepticism.

This week I will move to a new house–an 1860s Victorian on a village street in the college town I grew up in.  As I write my novella amidst the packed boxes in my house,  I consider the matter of space.  It took me so long to get going on this piece.  It was so much larger in scope than anything I’ve written before.  The short stories I’ve written nearly all my life seem like mudrooms in size compared to the grand, living room-sized novella I write now.

The house we will move to is twice the size of the home I sit in as I type this.

On Friday, in class, I discussed with my students the Hartwell Takeover of 1970–a Vietnam protest that occurred in the very same building we sat in that minute.

The Hartwell Takeover: Brockport students smoking pot in the hallways, skinny-dipping in the (then) swimming pool (now, Strasser Dance Studio), a student on LSD climbing the bell tower, and a cultural center just around the corner from the building set afire in protest.

I asked what had changed in all this time?  I urged them to consider how everything around us had changed.  How can we not explore the space we live in?  Even its past?

It’s probably the reason I love old houses.  And thrift stores.  And museums.  It’s probably the reason I’ve never left my hometown.  I take the word “roots” literally.

I have always tried to imagine myself in a time-warp.  Who was standing in this same spot–in the quaint farmhouse where I now type this–40 years ago?  I happen to know that the house we’re about to move from was a college house in the 1970s.  Perhaps the students who had protested in the Hartwell Takeover were strumming guitars or drinking Gennys in this same space?

My parents’ house was built in the 1880s.  As soon as we got our hands on a copy of the deed, in the 1990s, my father and I scanned its history, and I placed each family in context, imagined them in the kitchen and on the front porch.  I longed to hug them, to hear their arguments, to rustle through their closets.

It’s part of what we do when we write, and probably part of the reason I had such a tough time with the novella at first.  I fought with the setting of a home for unwed mothers, when I’d never been there.  How could I go to where I’d never been?   I had to relocate my mind to some place foreign–something I’d never done.  I write the stories of the place I grew up as I imagine them, but more importantly, as they could have been experienced in human terms.

When that door in Hartwell opened and closed, who was there?  Was it the force of another door down the hall sucking the air from our space?  I don’t know.  Maybe I don’t want to believe that.  I like to believe it was some part of history, some student from another time taking a peek.

The house I will move to has its own history, and most of the facts have been researched and recorded by a village trustee, but I have a lot of wondering to do, still, a lot of supposing to do in that space.

 

 

 

To Brockport, From Goddard, With Love

Goddard College Clockhouse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I haven’t traveled much in my lifetime.  I can count the times I’ve been out of the country on one hand, and most of those trips were hour-long drives to Niagara Falls, when I’d squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath over the Rainbow Bridge.

I love Vermont.  During this residency at Goddard College, my MacBook is on its last leg, and I had too much Sauvignon Blanc last night.  I’ve never been to France, and I can’t do that accent, so I practiced “Sauvignon Blanc” over and over, meaning to order it without sounding idiotic or pretentious.  Practice doesn’t make everything perfect.  I can hardly get the keys on my Mac to type words I’ve spelled since first grade.

Yesterday, I tried to get to the RocRoots page from my aging Mac to see a story I’d written for the Democrat & Chronicle about Edgar Coapman and his dog.  It took me an hour.  I managed, and the piece looked like it had when I sent it out, familiar in many ways–not just in the way that it was my work, but in the way that it was my place, as though I can peer into the depths of this village I call home, all the way from Goddard, the place I call home for this week.

I’ve been out of town for a few days, and since, life has gone on in startling ways–my brother gave birth to kidney stones, my sons have become still more articulate (and are getting along), my uncle has come to visit from Florida, bringing with him a larger sense of home than can fit between the boundaries of our village, our house has glimpsed, perhaps, its new owners, and I am here, on the outside, gathering reports like I do during research– only reporting from decades later–preparing to write some story, some thing that can hold tight to pulp of human life.

Boys at Home

Superman (comic book) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I tell my four-year-old on the way home, “Johnny, you have to calm down at Grandma’s: you can’t jump on her sleep-number bed or track mud on the floor, or look at the pork roast and then comment that the gravy smells like poop, or sit on the windshield of her car, and when we have to leave, you can’t cry behind the standing antique mirror you always almost break in your fervor, because she will stop inviting us over.”

I know she won’t.  She smiles baring all teeth, shaking her head, she says, “They’re boys.”  I smile, bearing anything at all.  How does my mother not mind?

Who doesn’t like gravy?

Sammy is two and threw my mother’s butter potatoes to the floor, swept them clear off her table before he began jamming out with his spoon on her new slate-tiled kitchen set.

Last week, a little girl ahead of us in line at Wegmans said, “My name’s Angelina.”

Johnny said, “My little brother’s name is Sam, and he’s not an angel.”  We all laughed, but he didn’t understand what was so funny.

My sons are not devils.  They are ragamuffins.  They are toughies, my mom says.  My mother-in-law says God only gives you what you need.  He forgot to give me muscles.  And many days, patience.

I did imagine that Angelina went home and combed her Monster High doll’s hair calmly and smoothly with attention to snarls and then smelled her doll’s hair and then cuddled her like a good Monster High doll’s mother would.  I imagine Angelina potty trained in two days.  She ate everything her parents put on her plate, with gravy.  She took ballet classes and tiptoed down the stairs after waking, never before 8 a.m.  I imagined.

I have to exert all my power to hold two boys down with force enough to put their shoes on while they spin like tornadoes, but not enough force to hurt them.  It is a hard practice, like yoga, this strict control of muscles.

And yet I see the same restraint in Johnny when he wants to wallop Sammy in return for the bite on his forearm.

They love as hard as they live.

We get home, and Johnny says, “I don’t like to come home.”

So I tell him that makes me sad, that I want him to love our home, to want to be here.  He starts crying and tells me he doesn’t want to leave this house, to move, that he wants to take the “for sale” sign down.

When I am almost in tears, Sammy says, “It’s okay, Mommy.”

At night, we are finally settled, the three of us on the couch, watching Chicken Little, and I’ve finally stopped holding my breath long enough to remind them how much I love them.  We share popsicles.  And if they fight by pushing hard and leaning against each other, growling, it’s over the space on my lap–which is my space, and I don’t mind if they each take it all.

 

“Sibling Revelry,” essay in Animal

a new essay, “Sibling Revelry,” up at animal: a beast of a literary magazine!

Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine

Sibling Revelry

by Sarah Cedeño

“It’s a dead bird!” I call to my sister, Micheil.

Its bones and feathers are flattened here, exactly how a bird looks, but like it’s been hidden between the pages of a dictionary for a week.

Micheil brings a neon, size-12 kid’s shoebox, mine.

My brothers, in aftershave, mullets, and pimples, come down the hill in our yard, one carrying a shovel.

I am six, and the youngest, kneeling by the bird—the first dead thing larger than a potato bug I’ve seen up close.  It’s the closest I’ve been to any bird.  Usually, seeing a bird’s wings flap hard against the air made it seem as though I was chasing them.

A dashed line of one-hundred-year old maples border the chain-link fence around us.

My brother Darrin digs the hole.  Our dog, Coty, drags her chain through the chalky dirt after a squirrel, but leashed to her doghouse, she…

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On Sipping the Whiskey

MFA Adventures

I have one workable day before I have to send my third packet off to my MFA Adviser.  This day is a heavy research day.

Here’s the to-do list:

1. String a clothesline in my backyard, among the non-stop cricket chirps of early fall.

2. Hang a bin-ful of wet laundry from the line.

3. Repeat step 2, thinking about a loss I’ve suffered.  This part, I know, will bend my mind in places it hasn’t bent before.  Also, the crickets will haunt me long after I’ve come inside.

4.  Sip whiskey from a bottle I wouldn’t normally touch.  Blech.  I will take note of the burn that I can anticipate, but most importantly, make note of the what I don’t anticipate.

5.  Smoke a cigarette, alone, that I’ve bummed off my mother.  I will struggle to light it with a match, cupping it the way I’ve always seen people do, but I bet it will be harder than it looks.  It will take more than one try.  I will feel uncool, but I will probably feel many other things I wasn’t expecting.

I’m excited to see how these projects impact the piece I’m writing.  It’s not a thing I’ve thought to do before, but I think it will improve the “physicality,” the presence of my writing.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

My next field trip: to the abandoned cemetery in Brockport.  Just in time for Halloween.

While I’m Supposed to be Doing Packet Work…

Goddard College Clockhouse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What I learned at my first Goddard residency.

Right now, I should be reading The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck, as prescribed by my advisor, but after a week since residency, I need to describe my experience–even if it is in vain, but especially if it helps anyone decide whether or not to go for an MFA.

I knew this: when I came home, my living and dining rooms would be different colors. Life before the residency would have warm tones–my living room was a shade of beige that I would title “uncolor,” and my dining room was a mistake from the first year we bought our house–not pink, as my husband likes to call it, but “rosedust.”

I can’t say what I expected of the residency, specifically, only what I thought would happen as a result of it. I wondered if my youngest son would stare blankly at me upon my return, forgetting the crevice of my neck and shoulder where his little peach-y head sat just a year ago; forgetting the night I held him in my great-grandmother’s rocking chair as my tired eyes followed a single firefly around his bedroom; or forgetting my name that, when he said it this way, made me wonder if it was accidental: “mum-mum.”

I wondered if my oldest son would cry himself to sleep every night and both hate me and love me more for it.

I wondered if my mother’s worries were true: if I’d be abducted–by anyone–locals, college students, or aliens, then sold into a jam or potholder-making business, and with my cell phone stolen and memory erased, cease to exist as I once was. Or worse, I could have just ceased.

I thought maybe I would realize what a marvelous genius I was, that I would sit at my Formica desk in my building that smelled musty (as though Raymond Carver had really never left) and type away on my old Mac that I’d romanticize was an Underwood typewriter and emerge on the last day of residency with a manuscript that would exempt me from the next 3 residencies. And didn’t we all, really, wonder this? No, me neither.

Here’s what I realized.

There is a large population of people with dietary restrictions and a host of glorious food at the Goddard cafeteria to meet them. There was probably leftover bacon at the end of breakfast every day. Yes, there was bacon at breakfast. Every. Day. And there should never, ever, be bacon leftovers. Seriously, I ate more than I ever did at home, and I feel like I lost weight while I was there. Mystical.

Regardless of how long it’s been since I’ve been in school (6 years!), I could still find my inner “student.” I took up the director of the program when he advised us to break from workshops on occasion. Sometimes I “skipped school” and Skyped instead, feeling strange in my room while those who walked in and out of the building overheard me talking to my son about three-year-old matters like superheroes, potties, and bunk bed sleepovers. Sometimes I sat on a hill with the sun overhead, reading. Sometimes I ate slice after slice of homemade bread with fresh butter from the cafeteria between meals. Once, I took a nap. Being a student again was, in fact, easy.

Every college has a frat house. Goddard has the Music Building. Behind it is a seemingly perpetually lit bonfire. Behind that is a forest that friends tell me is reminiscent of the movie, The Village. There are also fireflies.

Every college has a ghost. I wasn’t the only Goddard student set on capturing evidence. I will say that I found what the cast of Ghost Adventures would consider solid evidence: my camera would not work in the Martin Manor (the haunted building), but would once I left. There were orbs in the upstairs hallway. There was an opaque film over photos I took and retook in the allegedly haunted room. This is just my evidence. And also, Ouija Boards work. (Disclaimer: these are views of the blogger and do not reflect the views of Goddard College.)

Every college has a student from Western New York. Or Appalachia. Or Central Iowa. Or [insert your little-known place here]. Really.

I realized this: writers are just fun to be around. I made friends like I was in Kindergarten–every person had no clue who I was–I could have been someone I’d never met.

I met a vegan shoe-hound from Brooklyn who prides herself on being mistaken for a drag queen on the NYC streets. I met a blond-haired teacher who can sing Journey in front of strangers at the request of any playwright. I met a potato-bug of a guy, a beanie-wearing, screen-writing, skeptic-turned-believer. I met a woman who lost someone in her first few days of residency, but sucked it up and stuck it out, and was there when I left.

When I got home, both of my sons knew who I was. They hugged me and smiled and hugged me and smiled and then asked me for a snack. My oldest showed me the two rooms, now painted in cool tones. The very walls had changed–a muted turquoise called “Emperor,” and some kind of quiet charcoal color.

For the first few days, my oldest son asked me if I liked the new walls, and then he reminded me how much he missed me when I was gone.

Still, a week later, as I write this, the residency colors everything. I can still smell the fresh paint in the house.

Snow, late.

Image via Wikipedia

It was half-through January, and my promise to Johnny that he’d wade through snow or sweep angel shapes with his arms and legs against the cold-burning flakes had still not come true.  Our Christmas tree had gone up and come down.  Even before Christmas, the festive lights looked like they’d been strung up too long, that they’d already served their purpose.  There had been barely any measurable snow.

Finally, on January 13th, Johnny perched at the window, watching the tiny patches fall from the sky in a real-life snow globe.  The window opaqued with breath, and then he drew wet lines to see through to the outside.  At three, he wasn’t a weather veteran yet–he wasn’t nostalgic for the comfort of sweaters and mittens or the sting of wind strong enough to drive retirees to Florida.

Of course, neither was Sammy.  This was his first winter ever.  Belly against the couch and my arm, he watched the scene, pointing with his hand’s five fingers.  The salt trucks were at it, layering their crystals heavy on the road.  This would be the demise of my cognac-colored leather boots, I knew.  Sammy gazed at the blinking lights of the tow trucks, how they alerted themselves, shining false emergency into homes like ours.  Warning beeps I had never questioned in all my life suddenly made me wonder.  Sammy and I had much the same questions.

A large delivery Mack growled down the road so loud that Johnny jumped.

“It’s okay you little munchkin,” Johnny said to Sammy.  Sammy hadn’t been shaken, but Johnny ran his hand over Sammy’s hair to soothe himself.

Sammy’s eyes followed tires taking their time over the salt crust, then turned to the plow truck fanning dust down the opposite lane.

Then he saw them: a flock of birds, breaking from the trees in synchronized waves.  The birds had blended in before as part of the still-life, small black knots and bends on giant twigs.  Sammy drew air in deep through his nose and let out a breathy scream.  Of joy.  His arms flailed, and I imagined the tapping made the same sound as wings on air.

The birds flew, oblivious to the snow, as though they were just another line of traffic.

textbook covers, in memoriam

Doodle-a-Day sheet (Photo credit: CaZaTo Ma)

When I have my students complete a writing exercise, almost half of them have a caricature of themselves, or flowers, or deep pen scratches in the margins.  They’re telling stories in their own ways, unprompted by me.

I don’t doodle anymore.  This is sad.  I should doodle.  One class, everyone should tell a story in doodles.

The word is nostalgic for me, and fun to say.  Say it: “Doodle.”  You’re smiling, aren’t you?

For me, doodling passed with high school lunches, notes slid in the slots of lockers, or mix cds for birthdays.

It was considered a homework assignment during the first week of class to have your class textbook covered, as though the paper would protect the book from the threat of real damage.  I did it, though, because I followed institutional rules.

The smell of the paper bag itself was wonderful– a soft smell like crayons, a kindergarten classroom, the musk of a tree.

It only took a week or two for the wearing at the corners to begin, the fibers unraveling like the math problems inside or the pop quiz scores that made my mouth dry up and my teeth clench.

I doodled the initials of my crushes on the paper that folded over the textbook’s cover and tucked around the front.  Often, if someone was being nosy, I’d slam the book shut after I finished the second initial.  I still won’t tell it.

Then, I got a boyfriend.  I drew hearts around his name on the brown cover and wrote 4-ever just like everyone else, though I hated numbers.  The hearts never had arrows on my books.  Sometimes, when I would break up with my boyfriend for a few days, I would put a heavy X over the heart, or write a large N in front of the “ever” in “4-ever.”  By then, the cover was slit near the spine,  softening around the edges like a soggy cracker.

The annoying person next to me wrote obscene words on my book cover so I scribbled over it with cross-hatching.   I should really change the cover, I thought.

I folded the new paper bag over the book and taped around the corners this time and wrote my boyfriend’s initials in pencil.  When I erased it a week later, the eraser left permanent gray feathers on the cover.  Next time, I decided, I would turn his initials into pretty flowers or trees.  I would doodle them into oblivion.