The Woman and The Witch

For the last several months I’ve been writing a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in rural Minnesota, running west to the Kerouac School, and back south to Houston. In particular, there’s a focus on the personalities who’ve crossed my path, but it’s also a meditation on the hometown. To quote the poet Bill Holm, it’s true that “We travel to get a better look at home,” but what I see from afar is the woman-witch illusion. The pictures flip back-and-forth, and though I’m grateful for much it’s hard going home – because what am I going back to?

There’s nothing I can say now that wouldn’t be a cliché.

This afternoon I’ve been editing a chapter that focuses on my middle school years and I hit a curious wall. It takes place when I’m fourteen years old (Spring 2005?) and as I’m discussing how I met “Kirsten Larson,” it dawns on me that some of the “natural” references I’m making will be entirely foreign to younger readership. I wrote, “We must have met through a mutual friend or on MSN Messenger …” and, pausing, I realized no one born after 1995 will know what that means. Now in order for what follows to make sense I need to flex my narration muscle and add, “Hey, kids, back in the distant, dark days of the Internet and cell phones – before social networks – we used this funny device ….”

It’s odd. As a generation with a foot in both worlds, our writers will have this moment where, at some point in the story, they must make the leap from the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The only alternative is a conspicuous silence about our teenage years – and where’s the fun in that?