Strange Attractors at the Hopscotch Reading Room

The term “strange attractor” derives from a scientific theory describing an inevitable occurrence that arises out of chaos. Edie Meidav’s introduction and the thirty-five pieces collected in this new anthology offer imaginative, arresting, and memorable replies to this query, including guidance from a yellow fish, a typewriter repairman, a cat, a moose, a bicycle, and a stranger on a train. Absorbing and provocative, this is nonfiction to be read in batches and bursts and returned to again and again.

Berliners! Come this Friday to the Hopscotch Reading Room at 7:30 pm:  Kurfürstenstrasse 14, 10785 Berlin

Authors Andrea Scrima and Heather Sheehan will meet with Edie Meidav, co-editor of “Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance” (University of Massachusetts Press), and moderator Madeleine LaRue for a reading and discussion at the Hopscotch Reading Room.  Followed by: musical guest Ben Richter on accordion.

“Each essay reckons with contradictions, consequences, and risks. The moving, muscular collection holds an unexpected sort of magic, a sparkling nudge to stay open to change.” —Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe

 

About the readers:

Edie Meidav, co-editor, is the author of Kingdom of the Young (Sarabande), short fiction with a nonfiction coda, and three award-winning novels, Lola, California (FSG), and Crawl Space (FSG) the most recent. She is on the permanent faculty of the MFA for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Andrea Scrima is the author of the novel A Lesser Day (Spuyten Duyvil), which has also been published in German (Wie viele Tage, Literaturverlag Droschl) to great acclaim. She received a writer’s fellowship from the Berlin Senate for Cultural Affairs and is currently completing a second novel. Scrima writes literary criticism for the Brooklyn Rail, Music & Literature, Schreibheft, Manuskripte, Quarterly Conversation, and other publications; she is contributing editor to the online literary magazine Statorec and writes a monthly column for 3QuarksDaily. The work in the anthology is excerpted from a piece that appeared on her blog Stories I tell myself when I can’t get to sleep at night.

Heather Sheehan, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, thrives on a visual arts practice that informs her written works. Together with sculpture, performance, and photography, Sheehan reaches audiences within and beyond the boundaries of her adopted homeland in Germany, where her works are to be seen in contemporary art museums. When not in her atelier manifesting experience into form, Heather Sheehan inspires others with her boundless curiosity and belief in the healing powers of human nature. Visit her at www.heathersheehan.com.

Moderator: Madeleine LaRue is a writer and translator, and senior editor and director of publicity for Music & Literature. She lives in Berlin.

The Writer’s Heart: A Conversation with Liesl Schillinger at 3 Quarks Daily

“I know of no love that exists with moderation, at least on my side. The older I get, the busier I am, and the more engrossing my social life becomes, the warier I grow of submitting to the powerlessness of being in a love affair in which the heart is truly engaged. There’s a Kenneth Koch poem posted on the wall behind my computer that explains why. It says, ‘You want a social life, with friends/ A passionate love life and as well/ To work hard every day. What’s true/ Is of these three you may have two.’ When love comes in the door, my work and social life seem to fly out the window. Yet every now and then… even though I know how disruptive it is, I succumb, and all balance is lost.”

I talked to Liesl Schillinger to celebrate the publication of the Strange Attractors anthology with UMass Press—you can read the full conversation here. 

And come to the reading at McNally Jackson in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: 

Announcing a new anthology: “Strange Attractors”

An excerpt from my piece “all about love, nearly” has been included in the anthology “Strange Attractors,” published by University of Massachusetts Press.

Has a stunning surprise or lucky encounter ever propelled you in an unanticipated direction? Are you doing what you always thought you would be doing with your life or has some unseen magnetism changed your course? And has that redirection come to seem inevitable? Edie Meidav and Emmalie Dropkin asked leading contemporary writers to consider these questions, which they characterize through the metaphor of “the strange attractor,” a scientific theory describing an inevitable occurrence that arises out of chaos. Meidav’s introduction and the thirty-five pieces collected here offer imaginative, arresting, and memorable replies to this query, including guidance from a yellow fish, a typewriter repairman, a cat, a moose, a bicycle, and a stranger on a train. Absorbing and provocative, this is nonfiction to be read in batches and bursts and returned to again and again.

For review copies, contact Courtney Andree at the University of Massachusetts Press at cjandree@umpress.umass.edu. For other queries, contact the editors at strangeattractors1@gmail.com.

Press and Reviews

“A wonderful book, unique in all ways, truly and deeply full of wonder.  What a stunning constellation of seekers, believers, wanderers, questioners.  A collective spiritual autobiography like nothing I’ve read before.”
— Elisa Albert, author of After Birth

“Strange Attractors reminds us that even chaos has a pattern, and now more than ever, we are grateful for it. Attraction is evidence of the sublime. The very idea sparks revelation.”
— Annie Liontas, editor of A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors

“Chance—the charm of chance—that permeates these stories is startling, often dazzling, and always life-affirming. You’ll wish most of these talented women writers were your friends.”
— Susan Fox Rogers, author of My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir

“Urgent and reflective, infused with a revelatory grace, Strange Attractors is a wondering wander of a book, a curiosity shop of stories filled with surprise and clarity, longing and transformation. Lyrical, experimental, or conversational, this collection’s voices explore encounters that change the course of our lives.” — Cathy Chung

Andrea Scrima reads from “all about love, nearly.”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpCJf6ft9d8&feature=youtu.be

 

“How to explain that the betrayal is of another sort altogether? I know the tidal pull of the blood; that a mere glance can send plumes of fire curling through the nerves. After J. arrived: the sudden, mind-controlling molecular saturation of pheromones in the air, a maddening inability to concentrate, to think of anything at all. Intoxication, situational insanity, delusion. An attraction so fierce it made me angry; the almost violent force required to resist it. Focus on what you don’t like—it’s all there, right in the very first moment. Just take a look back and you can see it clear as day: the sober assessment, the critical points like elephants weighing down the wrong side of the scale, and then the sticky-sweet goo of self-deception oozing all over it like an egg cracked atop a skull, the giddy, hypnotic, honeyed brilliance of it—ah, love! How blind does it have to be to erase that immediate recognition of disaster? Men have their siren song to lead them astray, but what about us?”
— from the blog “Stories I tell myself before I go to sleep at night,” April 2014.

Published in “Wreckage of Reason II: Back to the Drawing Board,” an anthology of experimental women’s fiction (eds. Nava Renek, Natalie Nuzzo, Spuyten Duyvil Press).

Wreckage of Reason II: Back to the Drawing Board

I am happy to have an excerpt from my blog, “all about love, nearly,” coming out soon in this excellent new anthology published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Come to KGB’s on April 22 to a reading celebrating the release of Wreckage of Reason II: Back to the Drawing Board — an anthology of experimental women’s fiction published by Spuyten Duyvil Press.

KGB Bar

85 East 4th Street

NYC 10003

7 — 9 p.m.

Readers include:  Andrea Scrima, Martha King, Lorraine Schiene, Geri Lipschultz, Alexandra Chasin, Kathe Burkhart, Holly Anderson, Carmen Firan, Joanna Sit

 

 

“The range of the stories in this volume of Wreckage of Reason II is vast and far-reaching. There are thirty-three selections, among which are playfully reconstituted myths and fairy tales, experimental flash fiction, and sexually pungent satires that are presented alongside powerful stories about violence and loss, mothers and daughters, lovers and spouses, political horrors and existential loneliness, erotic visions and happenings. Each of them seemed to come from a commitment to literary risk, exploration, and playfulness and a tacit disregard of marketability. For that, the selections are unusually wrought, evincing precisely articulated literary intentions. Space will not allow me to include each and every one of them, yet each was unusual and lively, a truth on its own twirling axis.”

— Leora Skolkin-Smith

In this follow-up to the 2008 bestselling Wreckage of Reason: An Anthology of Experimental Prose by Contemporary Women Writers, 29 contributors use different styles and language genres, their tools at hand, to illustrate moments of conflict, amusement, bafflement and joy that make up a day, a year, an individual life or a collective history. Held up to the light or inspected under a microscope, set in locales real, virtual, mythic, and imaginary, characters bump into and move through events, leaving readers with the humorous, sad, sexy and playful ambiguities of what it means to be alive. This anthology provides a much needed venue to spotlight women writers engaged in serious creative writing projects chronicling and responding to our current culture.

“Were this book published by St. Martin’s or Norton, they would have slapped its contents on wider margins and packaged it for the college market at twice the cost. Except Norton or St. Martin’s would never publish this book—it’s too dangerous, wild, and singular. Wreckage of Reason gives us three dozen women authors beyond any easily marketable definition; by any description, it’s an anthology worthy of an audience and acclaim.”

— Ted Pelton, from The Brooklyn Rail (writing about Wreckage of Reason I)

62. a hideous defect, an all-encompassing shortcoming

It’s as though each of us were born with a tender spot somewhere that we are completely unaware of until someone or something pokes around in it; suddenly, with a blinding pain we can barely remember afterwards, we are expelled from our innocence, from childhood, and then it can take us years to comprehend that a spot exists, to learn where it is and what it means, to find a way to protect oneself. Eventually, we learn that the spot is the locus of our greatest sensitivity, that some of our highest endeavors have come about in response to it; that the scar tissue that grows over the spot can be as beautiful as a spider web, or the texture of a leaf. But before that happens, it can seem as though the spot were gaping out from the middle of our forehead: a hideous defect, an all-encompassing shortcoming that invalidates the rest of our existence, that we do all we can to conceal from others. Sometimes we toughen up in response, sometimes this occurs at the cost of a larger receptivity, but sometimes the wound won’t heal and goes on oozing for a long time, emitting a strange odor that others instinctively pull back from.

61. this aphrodisiac bliss

Researching a quote from Nietzsche’s posthumous writings, only some of which have been translated into English, I call my friend Rainer, expert in all things Nietzsche. He points me to a “non-book” that I actually have at home, The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann. I retrieve it from a shelf high up in one of my bookcases and wipe off the dust. In it I find several passages marked in red by the person I was thirty years ago:

“On the genesis of art.— That making perfect, seeing as perfect, which characterizes the cerebral system bursting with sexual energy (evening with the beloved, the smallest chance occurrences transfigured, life a succession of sublime things, ‘the misfortune of the unfortunate lover worth more than anything else’): on the other hand, everything perfect and beautiful works as an unconscious reminder of that enamored condition and its way of seeing—every perfection, all the beauty of things, revives through contiguity this aphrodisiac bliss. (Physiologically: the creative instinct of the artist and the distribution of semen in his blood—)

The demand for art and beauty is an indirect demand for the ecstasies of sexuality communicated to the brain. The world become perfect, through ‘love’—”

60. a lexical assault

Sammeln Sie Herzen? the cashier at the local supermarket wants to know: Do you collect hearts? I smile and shake my head to indicate the negative. She is slightly unnerved; to her it’s a straightforward question, but to me it causes me to stop and pause—do I?—after which it feels like a lexical assault. Treueherzen, Loyalty Hearts: an appropriation of love, and loyalty, for the purposes of keeping anxious, coupon-clipping housewives busy.

59. the simplest, most self-evident things

The earliest memories of the self, and how the mind retains them: a fleeting moment, a vivid, invisible color in the mind, nothing more than the stark perception of oneself in the world, the immensity of time, the distant certainty of death. The child who looks around in wonder and thinks to itself that the grandmother and grandfather were also, at one time, children: but does the child really believe this? It is a kind of theoretical knowledge that it accepts; after all, the child is reasonable enough to understand that, for instance, things fall from up to down, and hence the concept of gravity is plausible, useful for explaining numerous phenomena. But when the child compares its own perceived superiority to the limited worlds of the adults it sees around it, the constraint of their understanding concerning the simplest, most self-evident things, does it really believe it will ever be anything but a child? It is like looking at an old photograph and focusing one’s attention on some fleeting detail—the crisp shadow of a branch on a wall, a reflection in a water glass—and thinking this really happened this way, this was exactly so in this moment, but there is no way to understand this or to comprehend a past consisting of infinite such moments that happened in such a way and no other. Better to remain in the present, in the certain understanding of what one is: a child, forever or almost, while everything else remains pure speculation.

58. two parts of a severed whole

Destiny: a word that transmits little waves in all directions, some of them rapid and shrill, and some of them deeper, pulsing at the very edge of perception. A range of associations from bright and tinsel-like, like costume jewelry, to solemn and ancient. I once fell in love with a man who was mildly oblivious to my existence, who smiled to himself, as though he found me amusing. I was alone at the time, and in my solitude I became carried away by a fantasy that eventually escalated in my imagination. It would be easy to dismiss this love as infatuation, but what is it, really, to believe that one was meant to be together with another? What is it that makes the soul burn with longing, that induces one to inhale, to absorb another person into one’s perception to the point that one sounds like that person, resembles that person? I recall him smiling differently at times, too, coming up from behind me on a bicycle, for instance, pedaling amiably, having clearly enjoyed observing the movement of my gluteus maximus, my gluteus medius on the seat; having allowed that to suggest other activities to his imagination. I also recall his eyes on me at unexpected moments, when there was sometimes a pained expression in them. The Androgyne, two parts of a severed whole longing for each other, longing for completion. When I was very young, a sense of my own destiny would arrive at unexpected moments: walking down Seaview Avenue at the age of thirteen or fourteen, after nightfall, in awe at the terrible infinitude of the pitch-black sky above me, the terrible distances between the stars, listening to my shoes hit the pavement one after the next in a regular rhythm, connected to this Earth by the mere force of gravity and understanding myself to be entirely, irrevocably alone, and that I would always be walking in this way, listening to my own footsteps, with the beautiful, terrible nighttime sky above me twinkling with the ghosts of long-dead stars. An early encounter of the self with the self: a kind of knowledge that was impossible to describe, or convey, or articulate in any way; that had to do with me in the most intimate way.

57. subtle play of light

If not mistaken, then deluded? Ask around, and people will give you their reasons for loving this or that person: he or she is kind, smart, funny, caring. Good in bed; good-looking. Good at things they themselves enjoy, in other words, good companions. Many of them things that can be said about other people as well, people they do not necessarily love. Press them further, and you will get different, more fervent answers. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, however, the delusion involved in believing a person is one’s other half or destiny lies not in the belief as such, but in thinking that this circumstance arrives on its own, without our willful complicity. Something ignites and catches fire, and then we stoke it, heap anything we can find onto it to keep it burning; we hold our hands out to the blaze as we watch the deep orange glow on each other’s skin flicker with the flames. Now that you have my undivided attention, you tell me your story, and I listen closely as the subtle play of light leaps lithely across your face. But perhaps my attention isn’t entirely undivided; perhaps I am listening to your words and silently criticizing the way you tell your story: perhaps I don’t find it imaginative, or brilliant, or humble enough. Or before I have even listened properly I am comparing it to my own, and point out the notable similarities. Or perhaps, just as you tell me something particularly important, particularly painful, my head jerks away in a kind of reflex, or I ask an inappropriate question, or suggest we change location, go to a movie perhaps. I fail to register the shift in expression on your face, brush away your flummoxed protest; I am thinking about something that concerns me now: I am hungry. Or turn it around: we are sitting somewhere outside when you suddenly feel chilly; the gravity and import of what I’ve just told you do not hold precedent over your need for me to stand up and collect my plate and glass so that we can move to the indoor section of the restaurant. Or something I’d like to buy has suddenly come to mind, and I recall that the store closes at a certain hour and that I will have just enough time to go there and be able to browse comfortably, but only if we leave now or very soon. It’s my choice, really; in the end, it is what I do with your story that determines my degree of delusion. I only dimly realize that the occasion may never repeat itself, but fool myself over this easily enough. There are a thousand things to distract me from the momentous event of your vulnerability, and you from mine; a thousand ways not to rise to the occasion and to betray each other’s trust.

56. a sudden drop in air pressure

I begin with mistaken love, then hesitate. Is love ever mistaken? You love a person, and then circumstances change or your perception of circumstances changes, or the person changes or seems to change or, more likely, your perception of that person changes and then suddenly you find yourself either unwilling or unable to love any longer. But does that mean you were mistaken? And if you discovered that you were mistaken, would you, if you could choose, go back in time to unlove that person? Or would you seek to alter the circumstances responsible for the inauspicious change, rearrange them in such a way that the outcome would be different, that is, conducive to the continuance of love as opposed to inconducive? If, that is, a change in circumstances has been responsible for your unwillingness or inability to love any longer. Perhaps it was merely your perception of circumstances that changed, or your perception of the person. Or perhaps it was that person’s perception of circumstances that changed, or perception of you. In any case, like a drop in air pressure, or the silence in a room after something has been said that can no longer be unsaid, it immediately becomes clear that something has changed, something love-snuffing, love-obliterating, and that it is no longer possible to go back to the time before the change, and there is no way to prevent it from occurring, because in some way you understand that everything has been leading up to this, every marker along the way has reliably announced its eventual arrival. But this is still not to say that the love you felt was mistaken. The attributes you loved may or may not have existed, you may or may not have loved a phantom partially of your own making, but love is seldom a mistaken emotion and in any case preferable to indifference. 

55. the soft sound of rain

Different kinds of love: mismatched, reciprocal, asymmetric, seasoned, unrequited, deluded, eternal. Love of a particular person’s minor flaws. Love of blondes or brunettes. Puppy love, blind love, true love, parental love. Infatuation. Starry-eyed, sober, tear-blinded, short-lived. Mistaken love. Pre-ordained love. Love of humanity. The love one feels for a pet. Love of life, of good wine and fine clothing. Love of God. Love of travel. The love one can have for a particular image of oneself. A love for risk-taking, for collecting, for change, for challenge. Love of money. Love of one’s country. Love of the French language, of a particular season, of spinach and feta cheese, of the ocean. A love of one’s destiny. Love of suffering, of sacrifice. The love in forgiveness. Love of war and violence. Love of power. Love of plaid tartan, of tweed, of silk. Love of spiders. Love of ancestral heritage. Love of the unknown, of temptation, of subterfuge. A love for a particular color. Love of words, love of rain, love of the soft sound of rain trickling through autumn leaves onto a cobblestoned street. 

54. Glyph

Each time the same awkward gesture, like the tail end of a flourish fueled by a sudden impulse gone askew. A burst of resolve tightens the muscles, focuses the will: a move to begin that falters halfway. We hesitate, the cipher the mind writes wavers, a wobble in the curve. Once again, the momentum trips and we are forced to begin again. The jump rope slapping the pavement of our childhood, the mesmerizing regularity of its beat: we observe, but we already know that we mustn’t linger: swaying with the rhythm, the ropes’ sharp loop too quick to follow, we relinquish control to our limbs, execute a neat leap, and we’re home free.

53. Smudge

Again and again, the empty page. The empty page with the number 53 at the top left, and the words Again and again. But the mind is not empty; the mind is never empty. At most, it becomes numb, or perhaps alarmed at the emptiness of the empty page, like a deer frozen in the headlights of a car. Best to smudge something over this empty page, something to mitigate the alarm its emptiness induces. Anything will do: a fragment of a dream from the night before; a list of worries lurking at the very edge of consciousness at all times; a to-do list for the day. Or further concerns: the dentist’s appointment that is continuously postponed; the veterinarian’s appointment; the unfinished second novel. We could try that: the unfinished second novel. We smudge the empty page with the words “Unfinished Second Novel” and see what happens. As in painting, where we smudge the empty canvas with something to mitigate the alarm its emptiness induces, the smudge is merely designed to help us begin. Does smudging the empty page with the words “Unfinished Second Novel” help us begin? We’ll see. (to be continued)