In Which I Buy a Stuffed Bunny at the Age of 26

Hello Everyone,

Last Thursday was Rabbit Day in my Anthropomorphism class here at Hollins. Anthropomorphism, as common in children’s literature as molecules are in chemistry, occurs when people assign human characteristics to non-human objects or characters. For this class, we read Peter Rabbit, The Velveteen Rabbit and several articles about these two iconic texts. We talked about the degree to which Peter acts like a human, and about what it means for a toy rabbit to become (really) real. (Incidentally, I think I was finally able to articulate why I loathed The Velveteen Rabbit as a child, a very welcome breakthrough. I’d be happy to pass on my rant about it if you’re interested.)

I don’t know if I somehow had our discussions in the back of my mind on Monday when I was in a gift shop in the middle of southern Virginia. For the Fourth of July, my friends and I had gone to a lake about an hour away from Hollins, but it started storming when we arrived. In search of something to do, we got directions to a small shopping center boasting an arcade, a mini-golf course, and a restaurant with a giant wooden moose welcoming patrons. As we pulled in, my friend Rachel announced that she was going to find us the fudge. “There are always fudge stores in places like this.” I told her that in that one simple observation, she had pierced the core of American culture. Five minutes later, we found a large sign directing us to the fudge.

I had no idea that there could be so many different kinds: German chocolate, watermelon, orange swirl . . . beautiful. As we were contemplating fudge purchases, we explored the rest of the store, which contained various gift items. My friend Lindsey and I found ourselves in a corner with stuffed animals. Before we knew it, we had each chosen a companion and were sitting on the floor trying to contemplate whether we could justify buying them. Mine was a beige rabbit with fur so soft it might actually have been made out of cloud. It was floppy enough that it was either a very young bunny or a very old one. Its head tilted slightly to the left, giving it an expression that was both quizzical and patient. It nestled in the crook of my arm perfectly, and I tried reading it a nearby picture book to test it out as a story time partner. It passed the test. Also, it turned out, I loved it.

What on earth was going on? Was I suddenly being struck by a wave of nostalgia? Had all the talk about rabbits on Thursday made me overly sensitive to the leporine cause? Was there some kind of consumerism-inducing drug in the fudge? I tried to think rationally: Mouse, you’re 26 years old -- snap out of it! You just love its soft ears. You’re just remembering fond times you had with your stuffed animals. You never should have watched Toy Story 3! Remember, you know what actual love is, and this is something entirely different . . . right?

Lindsey, at least, had a relatively grownup excuse: she teaches third grade and was planning on putting her new hippo friend in her classroom. The best I could come up with was that if I was studying children’s literature, a story buddy was an essential tool of the trade. Or I could argue that having a stuffed animal is an essential aspect of childhood which, as a writer for children, I need to understand firsthand. Both could be true, I suppose, but I don’t think I could write “stuffed rabbit” off as a school expenditure. Lindsey and I had spent too long with our new friends to abandon them now, so we didn’t. I also didn’t abandon some chocolate chip cookie dough fudge.

I could tell you which specific category of anthropomorphic story I was fitting into (the toy animal tale -- see Winnie the Pooh, and especially Corduroy for themes of toy adoption), but I couldn’t for the life of me explain why I was unsettled when my friends and I made my new rabbit dance to *NSYNC in the car on the ride back to the lake. It’s just not an *NSYNC bunny.

I now faced an interesting issue. Usually, when I’ve gotten stuffed animals, I’ve had no problem knowing their gender. It normally just seems obvious. Most of the time, they are male. I’ve tried to determine whether this is because the unspoken norm in society is that someone is male until proven otherwise. I think, though, that it has more to do with the fact that as a female, when I create an imagined identity, be it for a picture book character or a stuffed animal, I want it to be distinct from me. One of the simplest ways of doing so is to make it male. In my other class this summer, which is called Men, Women, and Dragons: Gender and Identity in Fantasy, we’ve been talking about the ways gender roles are portrayed in fantasy literature, particularly in non-human creatures. So the question of gender has been very much on my mind recently.

The problem was I couldn’t tell what my rabbit’s gender was. Gender (as opposed to biological sex) is socially constructed, I told myself. So you can choose the gender of this rabbit. I thought about the other stuffed animals I’d acquired in the last decade or so: Cookie (short for Cookie Monster) and Tob-Tob (long for Toby) -- both males. If I added a male rabbit, I would be creating quite the boys’ club. Alright, so my rabbit needed to be a female. I was still uncomfortable. This seemed so arbitrary and gave me a power I found a bit troubling. Good grief, Mouse, I interjected. Power over whom? This bundle of synthetic fur and stuffing? Ok, ok, fine. I choose girl rabbit.

The next problem was choosing a name. I tried out many different ones to see how they would fit: Kennedy, Alex, Rose, Jacqueline, Sophie, Josie, even -- in a nod to feminism -- Gloria Steinem. They were all close, but didn’t quite match. I believe that naming is vital. I wasn’t just giving this bunny a label, I was giving her an identity. I decided to wait and see if a name settled into place as we got to know each other.

Certainly these issues didn’t come up for me in such direct ways when I got a new stuffed animal as a child. But anthropomorphism, identity projection and gender construction are at work in childhood in such subtle and pervasive ways that it is crucial to understand how we are shaping our children’s views of the world and of themselves. As a creator of literature for young children, I have to be particularly aware.

I realize I’m projecting my own opinions, wishes, and narratives onto this bunny. I get that. And I get that this is what kids do when they interact with their toys, pets and invisible friends using that enviable creative prowess they tend to have. And I believe adamantly in the importance of these opportunities. To some, they may be merely the quaint trappings of childhood. I think, though, that they often provide some of our first chances to be mindful of and to care for something outside ourselves.

I will continue to think critically in my courses this summer, if only to convince my professors that I haven’t completely jumped off the deep end. There’s a lot more reading, writing and thinking to do.

Besides, my new friend Fudge is particularly looking forward to critiquing patriarchal social structures in Watership Down with me.


Have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse

ps: I’m realizing as I’m concluding that by using my nickname, I am engaging in a form of reverse anthropomorphism, but that’s a letter for another time.

More Amazing Things

Hello Everyone,

Since I last wrote, there’s been quite a lot going on. Here is the SparkNotes version: I’ve finished my sixth quarter at SCAD, in which I wrote my thesis and participated with my classmates in a portfolio show. I said goodbye to many of my SCAD friends because though I have one more quarter left, which I’ll finish in the fall, most of my peers graduated a few weeks ago. I then went to New Orleans with my good friend, Katy, where we celebrated my 26th birthday and her upcoming wedding, explored the city, and had a wonderful time catching up and being grateful for 23 years of friendship.

After a one-day stopover in Savannah, I flew to Washington, D.C., where I met two of my friends from Hollins (not to be confused with Holland!), the university where I do my summer program in Children’s Literature. We spent three days in D.C. visiting almost all of the Smithsonian museums and monuments. I hadn’t seen these girls since I was at Hollins in 2009, and it was a blast to catch up and remember exactly why we were friends. I don’t know when I’ve last laughed so hard and so consistently. We drove down to Roanoke on Saturday and have gotten to catch up with other Hollins friends. I am SO excited to be back here. Within the first 24 hours, I went on a gorgeous walk in the pouring rain with one of my friends, reacquainted myself with the Hollins library, a positively soul-building place, and rejoiced to see fireflies again. Hollins is definitely a surreal, bubble of a place, but what a bubble! I had my first class today and I’ll write more about it and about some of these other happenings in the next few weeks, but until then, I thought I’d leave you with more highlights from my Amazing Journal:

March 6, 2011:
Today, at lunch, ESPN 2 was showing some national dance team final. One team tried to do a stunt where two girls lifted another girl onto a fourth girl’s shoulders, but they didn’t lift her high enough. So the other girl just ended up head-butting the one girl in the bottom.

March 8, 2011:
Today I saw a box in the computer lab by the printer that said it was for organ transplants. It was styrofoam and had official-looking forms and signage on it.

March 17, 2011:
Today, Jude, a British girl at the conference, told me that one of her friends was from Florida and that her family lived on a swamp somewhere. One Christmas, the family saw a cougar by their house. So the men all got their guns and followed it. It was in a tree and they fired and all missed. The cougar ran away, but a few seconds later, a dozen squirrels dropped dead to the ground, probably from heart failure. They became the main dish.

March 22, 2011:
Today, at Bonaventure [Cemetery], we learned that they have a package you can buy if you’d like to bury an amputated limb. Naturally, it’s the least expensive option.

March 30, 2011:
Today Qian and Becky Google-mapped walking directions from China to Savannah. It included, “kayak across the Pacific Ocean. Turn left.”

April 10, 2011:
Today I heard on Wait, Wait [Don’t Tell Me, a Public Radio show] that a woman in Georgia (the country) was digging in the ground and she struck a cord. In doing so, she cut off the internet for the entire country of Armenia.

April 28, 2011:
Today Becky opened her bag of grapes and there was one that had a sticker on it that said “Control 4.” Does that mean all the other grapes hadn’t passed an inspection or were out of control?

May 2, 2011:
Today when I went outside to spray fix my monarch butterfly image drawing, a monarch butterfly floated by.

May 13, 2011:
Today Becky and I each encountered the word “heuristic” in separate readings so we had to look it up. Sadly, the American Oxford English Dictionary on my computer had a singular/plural pronoun error, although I suppose it’s just an indication of how the language is changing. Alas.

May 15, 2011:
Today I saw a pirate ship on a boat trailer in someone’s driveway.

May 22, 2011:
Today, I got a voicemail from a lady and it said in a very melancholy voice, “Hey Sarah... I’m trying to get a hold of Ryan and I think I’m dialing the wrong number, but I thought this was Ryan’s phone, but I’m sorry to bother you so have a nice day and don’t think I’m stalking you or anything. See you later. Bye!” 1.) Why leave a message when you know you have the wrong number? 2.) It’s way creepier when strangers tell you they’re not stalking you. 3.) “See you later”??

May 24, 2011:
Today, at Zunzi’s, a lady sat down outside at one of the tables and she’d brought a large cushion which she set on a ledge next to her (at table height), then put her small dog on the cushion. I wonder if he got the falafel.

May 27, 2011:
Today, I went to get our keys duplicated at this ancient lock place. There were a million old keys hanging on the wall and a bunch of old machines. About three young black guys were working there, and in the middle was an older white woman with huge hair sitting behind a circular counter with the till. She was looking down and not moving and I thought she might be a mannequin. When the guy told me the price, she sprang to life like a coin-operated machine, sold me the keys, and then went back to her stupor.

May 28, 2011:
Today one of the houses on Gaston had a gigantic U.S. flag draped over the whole front of the house. It took up 2.5 stories. I eventually realized it was for Memorial Day. I guess those people really want to remember.

June 8, 2011:
Today I saw a guy biking with a (presumably) styrofoam statue of a beardy man painted entirely in silver. The statue was life-size and was riding on the handlebars. This would have been odd enough, but the best part was that yesterday, we’d seen him (the statue) in the square with the other actors pretending to be statues, asking the tourists for money.

June 15, 2011:
Today, we walked into the library and in the foyer area, a man was drumming on a wooden box. He told us (completely unsolicited) that it was cherry wood, and he opened it up to reveal a bunch of Bigelow tea bags which he offered to us. He said that this company knew he wanted to make a drum, and so they sent him this tea chest. He was very fond of the acoustics in that particular spot.

Have an amazing week,
Sarah/Mouse

Roll On

Hi Everyone,

Last Wednesday, I got done with my evening class and was all set to bike home. I reached the rack outside the Illustration building and realized that my bike wasn’t there. I scoured my brain, trying to recall if I’d left it somewhere else. Nope. I distinctly remembered attaching it to the rack with my coil lock and securing the back wheel to the frame of the bike with my U-bolt lock.

So my friends Erin and Krishna kindly waited with me while I reported the theft to SCAD security and then to the police. I wasn’t as upset as I would have thought. For one thing, bike theft in Savannah is so prevalent that I was expecting this to happen at some point or another. For another, it could have been much worse. If it had been stolen out of our backyard, that would have felt much more invasive. If I’d been mugged or if something more irreplaceable had been taken, like my computer, I would have been more upset. On the whole, this wasn’t too bad.

The security guards and the police officers were terribly sympathetic, and were assiduous in taking down every detail I could remember about my bike in case they came across it. My favorite part of the evening was explaining three separate times to three separate authorities that one of the distinguishing features of my bike was a pink shower cap on the seat. (An important aside here: I think the shower cap bike seat cover is my single most brilliant moment in life and I’m completely fine with peaking at age 25. I was told a few weeks ago that some Chinese people use them as well, but I don’t think that information detracts from my invention. I suspect that everything was originally invented by the Chinese anyway, so if anything, this news only confirms that it’s a good idea.)

I was told that since I’d registered my bike with SCAD security when I first arrived here, there was a 90% chance of it being recovered. Apparently, the police stop people who they think “shouldn’t be on a bike,” check to see if there is a registration sticker on it, and if so, hand it over to SCAD security. Uh... hang on a tic. Back up. What does that mean, “shouldn’t be on a bike”? It seems to me that bikes, out of all methods of transportation, are the most likely to be ridden by a wide variety of people. Was this a euphemism for racial or other kinds of profiling? If that was the case, I didn’t want my bike back through this kind of policing.

After a week full of discussions with friends prompted by the ludicrous request for President Obama to release his official birth certificate, and by the capture and death of bin Laden, my mind was already steeped in thoughts about racism and about justice. On the one hand, I believe very strongly that seeking justice is essential, not just to maintain order in society, but morally. One of the most beautiful and hopeful verses in the Bible, which has particular racial overtones due to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous speech, is Amos 5:24: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

However, when seeking justice the question becomes, “At what cost, not just to a particular society but to justice itself?” Do we label groups of people more dangerous or criminal than others in an attempt to isolate danger and defeat crime? Ironically, so often when we try to uphold justice, we end up stripping it from an individual or a group of people, either directly or more subtly.

Today, I woke up to phone call. I think I had been dreaming about some kind of sporting event because as I was waking up, in my head, I heard an announcer say, “Well, this is an unusual turn of events.” The conversation began the way many of my phone calls do:

“Hi, this is Sarah.”
“Hello. Is Sarah there?”
“This is she.” (I was too sleepy to think of a non-poncey way of saying that.)

I was then informed that SCAD security had found most of my bike (minus the front wheel) right outside the Illustration building and I could go and pick it up. I hurried off to reunite with my bike. It was exactly as I’d left it, except, of course, for the front wheel. The basket was still there, the U-bolt lock still attached to the back wheel and frame. Even the pink shower cap had made it through the ordeal, zealously protecting my seat from the elements.

I tried to take my bike home wheelbarrow-style, but it was not as easy as I’d predicted, so in the end, I carried it the five blocks. As I walked, I found myself being relieved that the bike had been found on its own and had not been taken from someone, even if that someone were guilty. If the ways we catch criminals aren’t fair, the justice we claim to be upholding -- even when we catch the guilty person -- is incomplete at best. And it’s a lot harder for justice to roll on when one of the wheels is missing.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Good Friday in Savannah

Some folks call them palmetto bugs
since they occupy the palms
wedged decoratively between the live oaks.
The size of first grade fists,
they lurk under leaves
until once a week,
they are evicted briefly by the street sweepers,
only to scurry back to the darkness.
At times, though, they stray
into the light.

And if you stray east,
past Broad,
past Savannah Marble and Granite
(celebrating 100 years),
with its sample tombstones out front,
where the sunburned houses
keep a sleepy watch over scattered Kroger carts,
and the sidewalks are as dependable
as disciples,
to the east,
they’re just called roaches.

It’s the same thing,
almost.

My roommate and I discovered one
on the entryway stair,
upturned and waving feebly.
She took the roach phone book
and did the deed,
as I stood in the kitchen plugging my ears
and squeezing my eyes shut.
I wasn’t against the killing so much,
just the crunching.

This is sort of a routine,
she’ll crunch, and I’ll clean up;
equally complicit, a partnership.

Today was different, though.
I’d never seen such violence.
Outside so ordinary,
inside, a kaleidoscope of color;
a roach exterior
a palmetto interior,
dashed
smashed
splayed
laid
visible for anyone to see,
dead as a doornail on the threshold
of in and out.

We try to keep our surfaces clean,
so I grimly did my deed,
and tidied the remains away
in the garbage,
no room for resurrection.

In the second before it died,
did it think of another world,
of better times, of palm fronds?
It probably had no time to decide:
roach or palmetto.
The label was up to us.

INRI
Word made flesh
and blood
and color

It’s the same thing,
almost.

Well, duh!

Hello Everyone,

Everyone has an inner voice that affects the way they do anything. The way you do your taxes and shop for clothes and participate in committee meetings all have something in common: You. And it is often only when you place activities next to each other that you realize a shared thread between them. That thread is your voice, and people who know you well can see it in you the way you can recognize a friend from far away because of the way he walks.

This is particularly true of your voice when you’re an artist of any sort, and even more so when you’re a commercial artist. You’re hirable partly because you have a consistency to your work that allows art directors, editors or companies to know what they’re getting. If I were hired for a project and the final art I gave the art director looked entirely different from what was in my portfolio, she would probably be less than enthusiastic about my spontaneous new artistic direction. When you buy a Beatles album, you want it to sound like the Beatles. When you buy an Eric Carle book, you want the pictures to look like Eric Carle made them.

For some people, the terms “voice” and “style” are interchangeable. Others think that your voice is relatively stable, whereas you can adopt different artistic styles as though you were changing outfits. My opinion is that it depends on the person. Some people really just draw one way and it reflects how they see and interact with the world. Others tend to draw in different ways, depending on the circumstances and on what they think that particular image needs. I think I fit more into the second category, which can be difficult when it comes to putting together a body of work that has a consistent style.

The fact that I have written about style several times since coming to SCAD reflects the amount of time I have spent thinking about it. Our program is designed to allow a fair amount of experimentation in the first year or so, and my work reflects a variety of techniques and approaches to drawing. I’ve been trying to narrow my focus this past year so that my work would begin to look more consistent. I’ve ended the last three quarters thinking that I have a good idea of where I’m going with my portfolio. I’ve then begun the last three subsequent quarters convinced that my work is all over the place and I feel like I must start completely from scratch.

This artistic oscillation comes in part from the many voices we have in the department. We often begin our courses by showing our work to the professors. “I like this one,” he or she will say. “Make your portfolio like that.” Then the next professor will choose a different one: “This one is great. Make your portfolio like that.” The variety of opinions among the professors is definitely a strength to the program, but sometimes I feel like drawing one of their names out of a hat and just going with whatever that one advises. This, of course, is the easy and inauthentic way out, but sometimes it sounds lovely.

The truth is, I’m somewhere between the two extremes: I certainly haven’t yet arrived at a style that is completely consistent, but I also am not completely lost. One thing that all my professors have told me is that I have good basic shapes in my images. My reaction is usually, “Well, duh! Isn’t that what the world is made up of?” But then I remember that not everyone sees the world as I do. Some people may draw a tree with intricate line work. Some may draw a tree by emphasizing a range of values. Some may draw a tree as a pattern of different textures. I apparently draw trees by plopping a short rectangles under triangles on the paper.

This sounds so elementary, so obvious. My inner cynic is saying, “You’re in graduate school, Mouse. You’re still getting excited that pictures are made up of shapes? What were the first 17 years of education for -- learning how to sharpen your pencil?” But for now, it’s helpful for me to think of my style in “Well, duh!” terms. It’s the very thing that I think is most blatant that best shows how I think and see.

At a teaching workshop last week, we talked about the personality types described in the well-known Myers-Briggs test. As I read the description of my personality type, I found myself thinking, “Well, of course. This isn’t saying anything about me. It’s just saying what the world is like.” And then I read that only 1% of the population falls in this category and thinks in this way. Oh.

Though it can be helpful to think through these issues (us INTJs like to do that, you know), they won’t ever be completely resolved. Plus, at the end of the day, there’s something to be said about just having fun with paint and trusting that your “You” will show up in the final result.

Here are a few examples of recent work I’ve done.

"The World's Largest Russian Doll (Or the World's Smallest Kremlin)"
gouache resist


"Savannah Bold," coffee bag design
mud, gouache resist and digital


"Whale Fountain"
gouache resist

"The Big Day"
mud and gouache resist

I’ve updated my website with more images from last quarter, if you’re interested. For the moment at least, I have been rather indiscriminate in my choice of what to include, so the variety of images I mentioned is reflected there. Eventually I’ll go through and prune it back to the essentials, but I’m going to make some more essentials first. It’s at www.clearasmudillustration.com.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

The Savannah Cyclist's Manifesto

Hello Everyone,

On Thursday night, I got in a minor bike accident. My friend Erin and I were independently biking to the Green Truck Pub for dinner and I saw her up ahead at a traffic light. I tried to get on the sidewalk so I could pull up next to her and we could bike the rest of the way together. The pavement was taller than I’d anticipated, so though my body was heading to the right, my front wheel kept going straight. I landed on my face, knee, hand and hip and the visor on my helmet popped off. “Oh no!” I said, and then attempted to fix my bike chain, which had been knocked loose, without getting too much grease in my scrapes. I called Erin and she kindly came and brought me napkins from the restaurant. Once there, I was able to clean up a bit and the server kindly provided some bandaids. Erin and I enjoyed a delicious dinner followed by a fascinating lecture on how the internet changes our brains.

Thankfully, I’m healing quickly and no longer look like I have an unfortunate case of oral herpes. For a while, I’ve been wanting to write a piece on cycling in Savannah and I figured now would be an especially appropriate time to do so. Plus, it’s been quite a while since I wrote a manifesto. Here it is:

The Savannah Cyclist’s Manifesto

Fellow bicyclists, join me as I petition Savannah and her guests for a moment of her time. We who love both economy and efficiency, who swim through the vehicular currents and torrents pulsing through downtown, who curse the cobbles and praise the pavement, we are the Savannah Cyclists.

One: Savannah Cyclists are equal members of the traffic conversation echoing through this loquacious city and are to be treated as such.

Two: Savannah Cyclists are pro-Lincoln, pro-Habersham, and anti-Broughton (and we are not talking Civil War politics).

Three: Savannah Cyclists arrive perspiring but find a parking space within seconds.
Four: Savannah Cyclists are particularly adept at biking one- or no-handedly due to their need to simultaneously tote mat board, Kroger bags, or yoga mats.
Five: Savannah Cyclists delight in coasting down the slight declines, locally known as “hills,” that are sprinkled throughout the city.
Six: Savannah Cyclists are pleasantly surprised every time they return to their bikes and both wheels and the seat are still attached.

We cyclists declare to our vehicular companions a message of peace, of dignity, and of efficiency:

-To the SCAD busses: We have done nothing to you but help to pay for your upkeep. Kindly desist from running us off the road.
-To the tourists (either walking or on Segways): Yes, Savannah is a gem. She’s stunning, gorgeous, charming, and many other adjectives your book hasn’t even conceived of. She is also best appreciated from the side of the street.
-To the myriad tour guides driving fascinatingly slow-moving busses: You will get more tips if you don’t hit bikers during your tour.
-To the drivers entering the traffic circles around the squares who assume you have the right of way: It’s not you, it’s me.
-To the geriatric drivers who pause in the middle of a busy intersection to contemplate the meaning of life, the universe and everything: It’s 42. Let’s keep moving.
-To drivers who have recently parallel-parked: LOOK! I’m a bike this time, and car door beats bike, but next time I could be a U-Haul, and U-Haul definitely beats car door.
-To the horse-drawn carriages: We’re sure it’s awfully quaint up there in your turn-of-the-century buggy, but it’s awfully horse-urine-ish down here.
- To the cars that drive cautiously just behind you for three blocks at your exact speed: We could fit one of the smaller European countries in the space between me and the center of the street. I promise there is enough room for you to pass.
-To our fellow cyclists: Wear your helmets. Use bike lights at night. Don’t ride in the middle of the lanes; you’re giving us a bad reputation.

Finally, Cyclists and Non-Cyclists alike, remember the two things that unite us all:

1.) None of us can see around the parked cars when we’re trying to turn onto a road.

2.) The Savannah Transportation Annoyance Equations:

myself = in the right
everyone else = in the way

Remember that “everyone else” believes this too.

Have a good and safe week!

Sarah/Mouse

Conference

Hello Everyone,

This probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to you, but I am a total conference nerd. I love them. It doesn’t really matter what they’re about, as long as there is a bunch of people wearing name tags and carrying matching folders and going to sessions about a very specific topic that they all are passionate about.

Last week was my Spring Break, a much needed time after the most demanding term I’ve had at SCAD. But immediately after finishing up with classes, and before my parents came to Savannah for a great week-long visit, I raced down to Orlando, where I attended the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. This was both much cooler and much nerdier than it sounds. It was nerdy because it was a giant collection of people from around the world who think writing, music, art and film are better when they contain elves and wizards and aliens. It was also nerdy because there were occasional werewolf howls that arose during the sessions or at particularly convivial meals.

On the other hand, it was cool because everyone took each other seriously. There were well-known writers and editors, as well as professors and graduate students from a wide range of institutions and backgrounds. There was a high level of scholarship, and it was such a treat to be around so many people who are so intelligent in an English-major-ish kind of way. In one of my favorite British comedy shows, one particularly pedantic character gets excited about an exhibition in a neighboring town on the “train timetables of the 1920s.” When I first heard this, I thought, “Well, that could be interesting, provided it was presented in the right way.” In other words, I am pathetically easily interested. However, if you throw children’s literature in the mix, I’m yours for life. At the conference, I was in the Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Art division, and I was able to attend sessions on topics ranging from food and commensalism in the Harry Potter series, menstruation (or the lack thereof) in the Twilight series and the resulting feminist implications, and the ethics of anthropomorphism in children’s books. SO COOL!

Even more exciting for me was the opportunity to present my own paper. During this last term, as I was worrying about when I was going to find time to write it, one of my SCAD friends tried to reassure me. She told me that her boyfriend presented at a conference a while ago, and that he wrote his paper in the hotel bathroom the night before (so as not to wake anyone up, I assume, or else perhaps he just thought it had better lighting). I swore I wouldn’t do this. I was taking this opportunity extra seriously and unlike with most of my college papers, I determined to leave time to at least proof read! No way was I going to write my paper in the bathroom the night before. And I’m happy to report that I didn’t! I wrote it in the lobby.

While I had done all of my research, I just didn’t have the time to put it all together until after I’d arrived in Orlando. I finished it at 4:00 am and presented it at 8:30 am. After I was done, anytime I wasn’t doing anything crucial like eating, showering or attending sessions, I fell asleep. I’m pretty sure that my two roommates were convinced that I was narcoleptic.

Assuming I remember correctly, I presented a paper on Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.



I’ve mentioned this book on several occasions before, and it holds a special place in my literary heart. I first discovered it in my ninth grade English class around the same time I discovered how thrilling literary analysis can be. In retrospect, I’m not sure which led to which. Later, I chose to represent the book in my final self-portrait project for my painting class in college, just at the time when I was becoming excited about creativity.




In Haroun, one question haunts the title character throughout the book: “What’s the point of stories that aren’t even true?” his neighbor asks. This is a good question, and one that Rushdie himself was struggling with when he wrote it in exile from his family, friends and country. What’s the point of fiction? Does it actually affect its readers? Furthermore, what’s the point of fantasy, which in some sense is even less “true” than more realistic fiction? Why would several hundred people gather in a hotel near the Orlando airport for five days to discuss the fantastic in the arts?

Haroun eventually realizes that he too has no time for stories that aren’t true, but the truth he discovers is not merely factual. Its source is much deeper, and can be learned only through venturing so far outside of his normal existence that he can finally see his life for what it is. The only story worth telling is one that isn’t “only a story.”

I came away from the conference a little bit nerdier and a lot happier. I was quietly gathering ideas for my thesis, which I am beginning now that the Spring Quarter has officially started. I’ll share more about that once I’ve gotten a more clear idea of what I’ll be saying. So look for an email at about 4:00 am the night before it’s due.


Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse