Hi Stacey

Hi, Stacey–

I did something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I wrote a short story and distributed it anonymously in my neighborhood.

I have a particular relationship with anonymity and my writing. I think my generation (millennials) have straddled such a bizarre line of invisible and/or visible our whole lives. We came of age with the internet–a place to be ultra visible or ultra invisible. On one hand, my writing is sort of enshrined “forever” online. On the other hand, I’ve left so many comments, written so many blog posts, lurked lurked lurked…all in shadow. My friend Amna said she recently realized there are a lot of “where you there when…?” moments for our generation…but most of the time when we say “there” we mean “online.” For example, “Remember when the president got Covid?” Of course I do. Most of us do. But I wasn’t there (The White House). …Yet I was there (Twitter).

I considered Amna’s observation. I added, all the various online platforms, aggregating into our online “personas” (or doubles) always reminds me of the Harry Potter concept of horcruxes. I’m sure you’ve read Harry Potter by now. You know how Voldemort uses horcruxes to sliver himself to pieces? He can never die as long as at least one piece lives? Sometimes I imagine my horcruxes are my email, blog, instagram, reddit history, old Twitter page, website, THIS project etc….

My junior year in high school I went through a period urgently exploring this theme: would I be satisfied if I made incredibly moving art but never got credit for it? I don’t know where the question came from or why I cared so much about it. At the time I decided yes I’d still be satisfied. But I couldn’t really tell you how I landed on that answer. Today I think I feel about the same. Of course, as an artist, it always feels validating to be seen for my work. But I guess it feels more validating to know the work is seen itself, not that I am…hiding behind it and all.

Anyway. I’ve had the idea to write something just for strangers for a while (since my junior year of high school it seems?). The bee really got in my bonnet in December. A friend of mine had a story idea that I loved. I encouraged her to write it, but she said she never finishes anything. She said if anyone (we were at a big table) wanted to make it happen and toss her a credit, go ahead! I followed up with her a few weeks later, expressing I’d love to take a crack at it. She was jazzed. I spent a week on a draft and sent it to her. She read the piece and wrote back with only criticism, said now that she’d read my version, she wanted to write the idea on her own after all. Pretty gnarly behavior for one writer to inflict on another, but that’s collaboration. You gotta kiss some frogs, or whatever. But I won’t be reaching out to her…uh…literally ever again! Not sure why I wanted to tell you this petty drama, Stacey. Maybe because petty drama, for better or worse, seems to be part of the creative process. And if petty drama is part of the creative process, and if you and I might be collaborators…we should beware petty drama.

So it took me a few months, but I finally got an idea I liked more than my friend’s. A short story inspired by Ursula K Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Le Guin’s piece has been a sacred text since I was a teen, but lately it feels cosmically applicable to this exact moment in time.

I got the idea for the story a month or so ago, let it simmer in my brain for a while, then finally wrote a draft pretty quickly a couple weeks ago. I re-read several times, revising and tweaking–but I didn’t have to go TOO hard. The project was supposed to feed my soul and maybe the soul of at least one other person, so perfectionism need not apply.

As the story is about liberation, I decided to distribute the piece on May Day. I made sure the story was 2-pages, so it could be printed as a single sheet of paper. I sent in for 40 copies at my local printer shop, picked them up Tuesday. Thursday morning I was up at 6, pulled on a hoody, grabbed a roll of masking tape, and hit the pavement.

I taped the story on lampposts and pillars down the two main streets of my community. It took me about an hour. Almost no one saw me in action (hee hee), though right at the end, I looked up to see a man with a big white dog watching me from down the block. I kept it moving, though I smiled as I passed. A block away I snuck a peek behind me. The man was standing next to the pole, reading. Got one, I thought.

At night I had an errand to run. All the papers were gone from my two block radius. Could mean someone (or the wind) ripped them down. Could mean some people liked it so much they kept the piece for themselves. I’ll never know.

But I will share the story with you, in my next post.

Waiting for…more signs!

xoxo

Alice