Gail Folkins: Shoes

In the snapshot, I wear purple Converse tennis shoes with reinforced toes, faint bell bottom jeans spilling over their sides. Our yellow lab ignores the lanky arms I wrap around her. It’s the shoes that stick out, too purple despite my pride in them. Teachers note their strangeness; grade school friends grin and point at their unlikelihood. Mom thinks they’re unique.

An art instructor finds the same magic in these shoes that I do, has me draw a new picture in gentle charcoal lines. I sit in my socks and sketch, think of trees scaled on a brother’s dare, icy creeks forged. As if they’re still walking, the shoes appear on starched paper, shoelaces draping free of my feet. Eyelets gape open, shoe tongues voice their remembrance, purple shoes roam eternal through childhood forest journeys.

*

A luggage carousel in Dublin snakes around the terminal. I watch bags tumble when the handlers let out too many at once, then laugh once I spot my own broken bag, its sides and zipper burst at last from age. Only airport duct tape keeps the contents intact; one black suede shoe tries to escape. From the carousel’s edge, I claim the mangled bag and shoe while others stare. Mom would’ve laughed.

The left black shoe stays behind in Dublin. Dissatisfied with adulthood and agendas, it roams, most likely to the corner pub where I drank velvet Guinness or to rest in St. Stephen’s lime-bright grass. It might venture another look at Yeats’ scribbled manuscripts in a hidden museum, or relive the tang of fish and chips on greasy paper. Choosing a random door in the afternoon, each knocker a different bronze animal, it joins whoever answers for tea. At night, it finds a bed and breakfast and keeps my travels endless.

*

I place Mom’s brown boots, fresh moss in their tread, outside the door. She died in the house where I grew up, surprising us with sudden departure and no goodbyes. Who knew if she might need the boots for a forest, maybe one with our usual clouds and rain. Trilliums would open for her, white petals like stars, or fiery vine maple blazing if it were fall. Dad sees her boots waiting outside and asks me if that’s realistic, the right thing to do. I consider his words, but leave the boots there just in case, while summer’s warmth lives on.                 

Gail Folkins' essays have appeared in Lifewriting Annual, The Fourth River, and other journals. Her creative nonfiction book Texas Dance Halls:  A Two-Step Circuit (Texas Tech University Press) was a finalist in the popular culture category of ForeWordMelusine's Magazine's 2007 Book of the Year Awards.  This piece first appeared in Summer 2009 issue.

Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar: What Happens at Ladies' Night

Note: From time to time, we will post articles in this blog series that first appeared in Melusine's nonfiction section. This piece appeared in our Spring 2009 issue.

“What goes on at ladies' night?” This seems like an ordinary question; men are often mystified about those nights the trustworthy and stable women in their lives run out with girlfriends, dressed to the nines, with a shouted “Don’t wait up,” over the shoulder as the door shuts in their face.

In certain states in the Middle East, it is perpetually ladies' night since socialization between non-related women and men are gender segregated. For Muslim women, ladies' night means complete freedom, as they discard hijab, the veils that cover their hair in observance of Islamic dictates for female modesty.

The subject of this particular ladies' night inquiry, however, was the ladies only, invite only, evening of a fashion show hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University’s branch campus in Doha. The male faculty and staff were barred from this occasion for the entirety of the show’s annual run. They are all required to leave the building mid-afternoon the day of the show. As of spring 2007 there are no male students at VCUQ, though the first male students are allowed to enroll in fall 2007. They will likely also be left out of the ladies only evening, made even more precious by their inclusion into the school. The questioner, a male faculty member who had taught at VCUQ for three years, looked up at me and I was mystified.

“Well, not that much, really,” I said. This was true; as in any religiously conservative environment, Hindu, Christian, or Muslim, ladies' night takes on a much more sedated atmosphere.

“We just watch the show.… It’s the same show the next night too, right?”

My friend nods. He seems as frustrated by my inability to supply information, as though I’m holding out some secret, refusing to share it with him because of his maleness.

“Well, no one has their hair covered.”

He looks up again.

“Actually, no one wears abayas.”

He is suddenly really interested.

This is probably because every mall, restaurant, and classroom in Qatar is filled with abaya-clad females and this all you see of Qatari women unless you are related to them. (The designer abaya industry boasts top names including even Christian Dior.) Or unless you are invited to a ladies only gathering.

In Islam, a woman covers her hair only when around male non-relatives. For the student or working Muslim woman who chooses to, this can mean every moment that she is outside her house; or even inside her house if someone other than her father or brother is in the room. Women who “cover” (which usually means covering their hair, but can also extend to their whole face) adopt a variety of styles in how they carry out this practice. The Qatari approach to female “covering” is an abaya, a black robe with long sleeves, long enough to cover feet also and a shayla, scarf, about two to three yards in length, that warps around hair, ears, and neck, hiding any space down to the collar of the abaya. This is how ninety-eight percent of Qatari women dress.

I drove home that night and shook my head at my friend’s slightly dilated pupils. There are no cameras, not even cell phones with cameras, allowed at this or any other gathering where women will be “uncovered.” This ensures everyone can have a good time without worrying that photos of her hair, body, or face, will show up on the internet, or just as worrisome, blue-toothed around the country. After all, there are only about 150,000 Qatari nationals. It is a really small country and we all know how we feel about photos of ourselves … so a prohibition on photography might not be such a bad idea.

I thought back to my first ladies' night fashion show, the previous year, when I had only been in Qatar for about six months. I was shocked at what was underneath those abayas and shaylas. Behind the black of the robes and headscarves were designer labels I’d seen only in magazines or on the red carpet. This was the first night I saw my female students and almost didn’t recognize them because suddenly, instead of looking at a face, I was looking at an entire head, with hair, ears, neck, in short, everything “uncovered.” That night I was electrified and a little embarrassed at my own shock, given all my feminist sensibilities.

The women were … stunning. And I was staring at everyone and everything like a blind mouse given a promised few hours to see.

“Mohana, hi.”

I turned and smiled politely at a beautiful young woman. I had no idea who she was.

“It’s me. Hissa.”

“Hissa! Oh, wow. Look at you. Your hair is beautiful!”

Was there a more idiotic thing I could have said? Other than blurting, so that’s what you really look like, probably not. Clearly she wasn’t hiding her hair because she needed daily Rogaine treatments. She was observant of Islamic tradition; she was “covered” in public like a respectful Qatari female. And she was drop dead gorgeous.

It went on over the course of the night as student after student approached me to say hello and I was bedazzled by the mascara, bold shades of blue eyeliner, perfectly blow-dried manes, curled, straightened, artfully arranged, and satin evening wear. The actual models on the runway were only mildly interesting in comparison to the menagerie of women I knew, students, faculty, staff, who I literally saw in a different light that evening. They were chatty and friendly, eager to know what I was up to with summer only a few weeks away, boisterous. After the show, the murmur of voices rose to a dull roar as everyone piled into the reception area to eat, gossip, and compare jewelry.

The next day, back at work and in the daily grind, the previous evening seemed like a secret we shared, like I was having a dalliance with many women, all at once, because I had seen beauty behind closed doors.

This was all before I learned about the other variations of ladies' nights; weddings, as most wedding receptions in Gulf countries are single-sex, henna parties, where artists apply the dye in all designs and styles in a festive gathering, and of course, dancing lessons.

Of course, my friend can’t get into any of these.

And I, like a good friend, rub it in.


Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a writer and educator who currently works and lives with her husband in Doha, Qatar. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Florida with a focus on gender and postcolonial theory. She has published short stories, academic articles, and travel essays in a variety of journals and literary magazines. Her website is www.mohanalakshmi.com.

Announcing Our Finalists for the Vivienne Haigh-Wood Prize

Yes, it seems we have 11 finalists rather than 10. What can I say? I was an English, not a math major. OK, that's not quite an excuse, since distinguishing between the numbers 10 and 11 came a bit earlier in my education (say, kindergarten at the latest.) Well, they are 11 great poems, I think, so no regrets on the counting error.

We wish everyone luck with the final selection, which will be announced in the Spring issue, out late in May. The winner and runner-ups will be notified before the issue appears and the prize will be awarded in May.

The finalists are listed in alphabetical order (since I'm fairly confident I've mastered the alphabet, at least ;)

Marcia Arrieta: "Days"

Jessica Cuello: "Donkeyskin" and "In the Spired House"

Deborah DeNicola: "Eve of my Evolution"

Katharyn Howd Machan: "When I Return to Sardinia"

Jane Olmsted: "Imperative"

Lorraine Schein: "The Crystal Fairy Book"

T. Stores: "If My Father Were a New England Poet"

Jari Thymian: "Radish Mother"

Whitney Vaughan: "O Joy, Mouths the Muse to Her Suitor"

Andrea L. Watson: "Reckless Light Ordains Each Leaving"

Elayne Clift: Shadows and Stars

It seems to me that the shadows are of supreme importance in perspective.     
-- Leonardo da Vinci

Key Largo is in a word, retro – a throwback to the 1950s. You might not realize it on a drive-through to Key West, but you get it if you stop overnight. You feel it staring at the African Queen, the actual boat in which Bogie and Hepburn made cinematic history. (The boat is unmistakable with its canopy and the boiler Bogey kept banging to keep her moving.) You sense it stopping in the late afternoon at the Caribbean Club where bearded guys with tattoos play pool and drink Coors surrounded by Bogie and Bacall pictures from the movie Key Largo. If this doesn't do it, try sun-downers at the Sheraton, a flamingo-pink pseudo-tropical getaway that shouts for pedal pushers and ruffled off-the-shoulder halter tops. Key Largo is definitely a 1950s kind of place.

We were in the mood for it when we pulled in for the night at The Blue Lagoon, post-war cottages nestled between the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Route 1. The guidebook billed it as a resort run by caring hosts who make mom-and-pop lodges worthy of your patronage. It was no resort, but it was pleasantly tropical. Driving into lush, overgrown gardens randomly surrounding the grounds with colorful bougainvillea and assorted orchid-like flowers was promising.

The woman on duty, Mary Beth, was friendly. But Lazlo, the proprietor, was hardly my idea of “Pop.” Deeply tanned, his Hawaiian shirt seductively open half-way down his chest, his square face chiseled as romance novels boast, he was remarkably handsome. His blue-gray eyes and equine nose were offset by a perfectly shaped mouth and straight, square teeth. Salt-and-pepper hair added to his good looks.

“Is this your daughter?” he asked my husband, as I approached Lazlo's pick up truck after we'd registered.

For a nanosecond I thought he was serious. Then I got angry: Lazlo had played with my ego and made me feel stupid. People named Lazlo, guys who had escaped Hungary in 1956, were supposed to be like Victor Lazlo in Casablanca, suave and chivalrous, not ridiculous or insulting.

Suddenly Mary Beth appeared. “I'm wearing your shirt,” she said, taunting Lazlo, cigarette in hand. “You put it in the give-away bag, but I got it out.” Then she said, “He was going to toss it and it's a perfectly good shirt.”

She drew on her cigarette, fingering Lazlo's blue denim shirt. “You wouldn't think he's my boss, the way I talk to him.”

Lazlo was telling my husband about his German neighbors. I don't know what triggered the conversation. Then, looking at me, he said, “You're Jewish, aren't you? You know what they did last April? They celebrated Hitler's birthday! Can you imagine!” He smiled conspiratorially. “Remarkable,” I said.

Mary Beth smiled at Lazlo as she drifted toward the office. She was clearly in love with him; her compulsions were such that she was incapable of hiding it.

The sun cast long shadows across the gardens. A chill permeated the air. I entered the cottage we had rented for the night. It was reminiscent of places my parents had rented on vacations before there were Holiday Inns. The kitchen had a porcelain table and two chairs in front of a window with Venetian blinds. Plastic flowers adorned the table. A tea towel hung from the refrigerator door. A coffeemaker and toaster sat on the Formica counter. In the bathroom, a paper mat with a map of Florida lay in front of a shower covered by a mildewing plastic curtain. Two skimpy towels hung from a towel bar above the toilet. Miniature Ponds soaps lay next to plastic cups covered in Saran Wrap. Yellowing wallpaper peeled away from the sink. In the main room, a television mounted on a shelf presided over a double bed made with overly laundered sheets. An open closet hosted naked wire hangers above a luggage rack. Two rattan chairs stared vacantly at each other across the room. Through screened jalousie windows, a breeze moved faded print curtains. I wondered if Bogie and Bacall had digs like this when they were filming.

I went to the office. Mary Beth was eating spaghetti from a Styrofoam container, watching TV. I fingered the brochures in a rack looking for a seafood restaurant.

“What can I do for ya?” she asked. She recommended Alabama Jack's, a vintage barge restaurant specializing in crab cakes, country-western music and clog dancing.

“Can you imagine Lazlo wanting to throw this shirt out?” she asked, smoothing it down over her breasts. I thought she must have been pretty once, even though her teeth were crowded and her face was sun-lined now.

“Don't forget about the comet!” Mary Beth said, jumping up. “Should be real clear soon. A friend of mine is comin' over with a telescope.”

The Hale-Bopp Comet had been making nightly appearances and was spectacular, even to the naked eye. So we fixed gin-and-tonics, grabbed sweaters and binoculars, and headed for the waterfront with other guests who were drifting toward the boat dock. Two French guys and a couple from South Africa had staked out the deck chairs. An elderly man and woman sat on a swing hanging precariously from beneath a thatch-roofed sunshade. We stood on the concrete jetty huddling against the chill. Waves rippled into the jetty and seagulls swooped into them like kamikazes. The sky turned pink, then purple. Mary Beth's friend arrived with his telescope. Mary Beth wandered onto the scene. Lazlo had disappeared.

Just before pastel hues faded into darkness, Hale-Bopp appeared. Its hazy glow looked like a star covered by thin cotton, a tail trailing at the end. It was amazing through binoculars, which we shared because Mary Beth's friend never invited anyone to look through his telescope. Then everyone talked about where they were from and what they had seen in Florida. Afterwards we dispersed into the night.

After dinner, when we lay in the too-soft bed with the faded sheets, my husband whispered, “This place gives me the creeps.”

The next morning when we drove out Lazlo was talking to some people. He waved. We didn't see Mary Beth.

Driving north, we passed the Caribbean Club. It looked like any other shack by the road. I hardly noticed the sign for the African Queen. The Sheraton stood, imperious, like any other over-priced hotel. The malls along U.S. 1 could have been on any strip in America. There was nothing distinctive about Key Largo.

Except maybe Bogie and Bacall, or Lazlo and Mary Beth.


Elayne Clift, a Vermont Humanities Scholar, is a writer, journalist, and adjunct professor. Her latest book is Achan: A Year of Teaching in Thailand (Bangkok Books, 2007). She is currently at work on her first novel, "Hester’s Daughters," a contemporary, feminist retelling of The Scarlet Letter. She lives in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Ellen Steinbaum: Boredom, I Hardly Knew Ye

Sometimes you just have to admit you’ve been wrong. So, here I am, boredom, ready to apologize for the disrespect I’ve shown you all these years.

There were so many times I put you down. “Only boring people are bored,” I would tell my children. “Surely you can find something to do.” And I really believed it. I thought that anyone with a lively willingness to be engaged would find ready candidates for attention. Enough with the whining, that petulant kvetch.

Not so much any more. Boredom, I’m willing to acknowledge you have qualities I never recognized – let alone appreciated – until recently. Now that I have 482 e-mails in my inbox, a desk pocked with Post-it notes of well-intentioned intentions, and something I didn’t write down and can’t quite remember that I think I’m supposed to be doing this afternoon. Now that I have a constant level of tension, tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, shoulders up around my ears, shallow breath.

Now, boredom, now I lay myself at your feet. Now I am ready to admit that you are exactly what I need. Who else could give me the time for poking through the bookshelves for an overlooked good read? Or time to take a walk on what may turn out to be the last warm afternoon for months? Or time to just think ... maybe about the poem I wanted to write....

I used to think that creativity and boredom were mutually exclusive. Now I wonder if they’re not inextricably entwined.

I may be wrong – heaven knows it’s possible – but I’d guess that boredom began looking less reprobate around the time Google became a verb. No excuses any more. No need to wait a minute more wondering who was the original Beth in the movie of “Little Women” (don’t bother looking – it was Jean Parker in the 1933 version , but there were silent versions in 1917 and – oh, never mind) or what year Congress first considered health care legislation (1943). All of a sudden we needed every piece of information that could possibly occur to us and we needed it now. We also needed to send send immediate answers to crucial questions like, “you free for lunch a week from Tuesday?” or “do you know a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies (ok, that one is important!) Suddenly we didn’t have time to get bored – we were busy – BU-SY!

But busy isn’t always the same thing as productive. It certainly isn’t the same thing as creative. In fact, if creativity is what you want, it could be that a little boredom is what you need. A chance to distance yourself from the million little pieces floating through your head. Read, Think. Kick back and ponder. Do we even use that word anymore, with its connotation of time stretching out in some way without a specified limit? That’s what creativity takes, that time to clear your head. Drift a little, aimlessly, through an hour. Or more. Dare to waste time. I know, I know – time is all we have and it’s too precious to waste. Yada yada: I’ve said it, too, and it’s true. But maybe time is also too important to fill with minutiae of the nanosecond. It’s this realization that’s brought me to my new and improved attitude toward boredom.

My aunt Alice, who was a very wise woman, often told me, “whatever you’re doing is more important than whatever you’re not doing.” Not that she knew at any given moment that I was actually making the best use of my time. But her lesson was that because whatever I was doing had seemed important enough to do, it deserved attention undiluted by thoughts of something else.

Sometimes what seems important to do is nothing. Ideas come when we invite them, leave space for them. Not when we crowd them out with the white noise of constant distraction. We need some silence to find our way into our own thoughts. We need to find the ideas that only we can have, that simmer just below the surface waiting for us to notice them. We need to respect our ideas enough to give them time to grow, respect our time enough to occasionally waste” it.

If we want to be creative people, we’re going to have to spend some unstructured time. Time staring out the window. Breathing. Unwinding. Unplugging. Just being. We may get bored. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Ellen Steinbaum is a poet and journalist, the author of two books and a one-person play. Her poems have appeared in journals including Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review, Saint Ann's Review, and Fulcrum, and on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac." She is a former literary columnist for The Boston Globe and writes a blog, "Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe," which can be seen at www.ellensteinbaum.com/blog.

Launch of Winter 2010 Issue

Melusine 2.1 is live at last! Check it out, if you like.

Denise Falcone: My Haunted Heart

When my heart began to race on a regular basis, I decided to see a cardiologist. It was confirmed that it had an irregular rhythm, so the technician went to work. She gave me an EKG. She gave me an echocardiogram. I left the office with a black box strapped around my waist, its wires attached to my chest in significant places to record my heart’s activity, and with instructions to return it after 24 hours for the doctor’s evaluation.

“I don’t see anything. Take it easy and see me in six months,” he said.

Not long after that the racing turned to pounding. A different technician injected my vein with a dye and monitored my blood pressure as I walked fast on a treadmill. I lay on a table, freezing in a cold room while a great moaning machine’s invisible eye moved around me slowly in a circle. “Don’t move,” another technician told me.

I waited for the doctor to give me the results. “I am thrilled to tell you that it is very good!” And again he said, “See me in six months.”

On the night before Christmas, terror from the strongest episode yet drove me to a hospital emergency room. Finally, after the tests and waiting for hours, a perplexed and tired young resident emerged through the thick blue curtain with my chart.

“There is nothing wrong with your heart that I can see. I’ll give you something to take for anxiety.”

I left the hospital with a prescription for Xanax.

My dentist said that it happened to his wife whenever she drank white wine. Someone told me that fluctuating hormone levels caused it. Was I a diabetic? No. Everyone kept asking me about my thyroid.

I was hoping the impressive-looking tome on women’s health dominating the shelves in the Wellness section at my friendly neighborhood bookstore could touch on my predicament – after all, with its 778 pages it could have spared some room for me. But it disappointingly read something like this:

HEART PALPITATIONS – SEE A CARDIOLOGIST TO MAKE SURE THAT NOTHING IS WRONG. IF YOU CONTINUE TO HAVE HEART PALPITATIONS AFTER THAT, IT IS BEST TO CONFRONT THE CAUSE OF YOUR UNHAPPINESS.

The cause of my unhappiness. Then I remembered what the assistant in the cardiologist’s office asked me while I was bending over, tying my sneakers back on.

“What do you think about all the time, my dear?”

I suppose our thoughts can affect our bodies. In theory it makes perfect sense. But in practice it still feels far away, sort of like talking to plants.

If I think back to that time when one could imagine oneself a butterfly, I remember emerging from the cocoon of my childhood to turn on to persuasions such as All You Need Is Love, Let the Love Shine In, The Look of Love, and Make Love Not War. I spritzed Love cologne on my wings before flying off to the music of Love, one of the most influential rock bands of that era. I put my trust in a piano-playing angel who called herself Laura Nyro, as she sang me permission to ride a dove and build a dream with love.

After having to leave the garden, I followed the examples of Christ and Buddha. For God’s love, the ultimate love, Mother Teresa would have French kissed every leper in Calcutta. We know now after her death that she at least wanted to very badly. I had it figured that my infatuation with love and my propensity for loving regardless would someday make me wise, my multiple chins held high with the pride of broken-hearted nobility. The self-sacrifice of love was better than no love at all they said. So I held on tenaciously and kept my factory open long after closing time, long after everyone else punched out their time cards and went home.

Of course there were the unfulfilled promises and irrational expectations of ridiculous love affairs caused by, as Cosmo magazine said, a glitch in my relationship with my father at a very sensitive time in my life. Whatever. Ciao Baby! But there was the sudden death of a lover before our time was up. And there was the soul-wrenching pain of a divorce. When people turn their sorrow into something mean, they shut down in hatred and that can’t be good for anybody’s heart. There was a strong secret love. I think that when someone like this enters in, no matter how long their visit, the evidence of their presence lingers in spite of what is true, and even harshly proven. The heart can only recognize. It knows no reason. There was the eventual estrangement from siblings just when you think that you know someone, and there were the so-called friends, who in time fell short as their phone numbers and email addresses gradually faded away.

I tried not to care anymore and took a vow to don the armor of forced indifference, cold rationality, and doubt, but none of it fit or even looked good on me. Instead I pined for the chance to yield into that marvelous lift again, however brief its rapture. Or sing in the rain of a possibility, just one mo’ time! Was I to quit cold turkey my addiction to the strongest force in the universe that makes me weep but it also makes me human? Had the abundant banquet where some of us revel in our celebration anyway no matter what because Socrates says we do, evolved into a disappointing high caloric artery-clogging cold heart breaking junk food mistake?

“I want you to see a heart rhythm specialist,” said my new internist. “Go now,” he said like the Wizard of Oz. He’s someone you obey. So I took a cab to a strange new office, figuring they would tell me the same old thing, the same old thing, the same old thing... But the brilliant electro-physiologist turned out to be a kindred soul and gifted in the art of understanding over-worked, wound-up rainbow-colored candy box hearts such as mine. It took two procedures with his catheter wand for things to quiet down.

Now, the sequences that come out of the EKG machines every three months or so fail to catch evidence of the ghosts who rattled about in my chambers. But I know that they are there.

Denise Falcone is a writer who lives in New York City. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blood Orange Review, Fresh!, Foundling Review, South Jersey Underground, Why Vandalism?, J Journal, and others.