Megan Stielstra's Blog

• This Sunday, September 24th at 7:30, I’ll be reading for Sunday Salon at the Charleston with L.C. Fiore and David Treuer, which is so exciting because A. I'm reading Treuer's book right now! and B. L.C. Fiore was a finalist for WBEZ's Stories on Stage! and C. I'm a huge drooling fan of Chicago's Make Magazine, which hosts Sunday Salon and D. I love love love The Charleston (insert long soliloquy about Wicker Park/Bucktown hang-outs that have kept their integrity over the years which ends with, "And in conclusion, YAAAAAAY The Charleston!").

• After that, I’ll run over to Webster’s Wine Bar to read for 2nd Story around 9:30—

Hey, Megan? What exactly is this 2nd Story you’re always talking about?

I’m so glad you asked! You can check out a little video of the experience here or read about us on Center Stage Chicago here—

• On Wednesday, October 4th at 7:00 I’ll be reading for Reading Under the Influence at Sheffield’s. This series runs the first Wednesday of every month and y'all should absolutely check it out ... each event runs on a theme and this time around it's Love/Hate, which I've certainly got some two cents about, and they tell me I'll have to do some shots before and after I read, which makes me a little nervous insofar as my apparent lack of periods and commas and punctuation in general, thanks Selby/Virginia Woolf/Faulkner/Elizabeth Crane and all you pioneers who gave me permission to ramble, so, in a nutshell, we'll just see how this goes!

Posted by Megan at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I don’t really do romantic comedies.

That said, when Betsy called me up and said she had two free tickets to the new Zach Braff movie and did I want to go, I said Hell, yes! because there is nothing Betsy could invite me to that I would dream of passing up. I would see a back-to-back Meg Ryan FESTIVAL if Betsy asked me, because somehow, when the two of us get together, we can spin any old thing into Something Greatly Introspective which we’ll discuss as we wait in the car to get out of the parking garage, most of our sentences beginning with “Remember before Ben/Christopher when I ________________” and at this point I’ll just refer you over to her, as though we’re a team in that triathalon relay where I run around the track and then pass the little wand into her hand as she begins running and then back and forth ad infinitum.

Posted by Megan at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's an article that might be worth your time.

Posted by Megan at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I picked up a brunch shift last Sunday and a guy at table twenty-one said, “You STILL work here?” which, FYI, is never a good thing to say to your server because it implies that they’re only a server when, in fact, they’re probably using this whole serving gig to support something else—like kids or art or tuition or loans or an upcoming mortgage—and they’ll want to justify themselves like, “Yes, I’m still waiting tables here at this brunch restaurant but that’s not ALL I do, I also do this (insert resume),” but I didn’t say that to the guy at table twenty-one. I said, “Yes, I do,” because I don’t know him and he doesn’t need my whole life history, he needs a Bloody Mary and an Eggs Benedict, and I don’t need his approval, I need his twenty-five percent tip and his ass out of that seat so I can turn the table.

Posted by Megan at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I’ve been going through the file cabinet. It’s one of those four-drawer metal office jobs as tall as me and it’s been years since I’ve cleared through it: the check stubs, the forms, contracts, old letters, rejection letters, photographs, bank statements, evaluations, stationary, floppy disks (?), bills bills bills, random writing, reviews, photocopies of essays and short stories given to me in grad school and other scary, long-dead things. This, of course, means a lengthy trip to Target for file folders, plastic garbage bags and ... and ... AND! a paper shredder.

I’ve never owned a paper shredder before.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’d like to take this moment to talk about doilies. Years ago, when I was a full-time waitress, I was restocking doilies—the lacy circles of paper between your soup bowl and the plate the soup bowl comes on—and I started reading the side of the box the doilies came in. It must’ve been a slow day. I must’ve had some time on my hands. I remember thinking, How many times have I restocked these doilies and I’ve never read the box? I’m so locked into my day-to-day routine that I’m missing all the things right under my nose! What else am I missing out on?

SOME EXCITING WAYS YOU CAN USE DOILIES!!!! said the box, followed by a long list of possibilities:

• For serving underneath soup or salad bowls

(I wanted to include the list, but I couldn’t remember anything besides For Serving Underneath Soup or Salad Bowls. Since I’m trying to prove a point here, I knew I needed more examples, so I went to google and typed in How to Use a Doily. This is how I discovered the Duchess of Doily, who offers us not only an entire HISTORY of doilies, but also comprehensive lists of the why, how and when to USE them, and also she has a hat which MATCHES her doilies and ALSO a fantastic VIDEO about doilies narrated by Ezra Eidenburger [and no, I didn’t make up that name but Oh, I wish I had!] and I now will shamelessly rip off her list thus giving the illusion that I actually remembered all the things you could do with a doily)

• Line a bread basket
• Accent a centerpiece
• Challenge children's imaginations
• Prevent or mask china scratches
• Protect table linens
• Make winter snowflakes

And on and on, some thirty doily-related possibilities listed on the side of this box, and then—THEN!—it said, in smaller print: IF YOU NEED MORE IDEAS ON HOW TO USE OUR DOILIES, PLEASE CALL OUR 1-800 NUMBER!!!!!!

People. I was bored. I was sitting alone in an empty brunch restaurant at eight o’clock in the morning and I was bored—the same set of circumstances under which the kid sets fire to the cat, or draws on the wallpaper with colored chalk. Of COURSE I’m going to call!

“Hi, this is Megan calling from the Bongo Room!” I said, my voice all sunshiny-happy as I tried to verbally replicate the multiple exclamation points on the doily box. “I was interested in different possible ways I can use your doilies!”

Silence.

“I just finished reading the list on the box, and I am SO! EXCITED!” I went on. “What other options can you suggest?!”

I recently turned thirty-one. Birthdays in your Thirties are times of great reflection, when you look back over past actions and realize how much of an asshole you’ve been: Missed opportunities. Lifetime regrets. Shameful treatment of people in the customer service industry.

“Well,” said a monotone voice on the other end of the line. “There are man-y ways you can use doil-ees. For serving underneath soup or sa-lad bowls. Or lining a bread basket. Or accenting a center.piece.” I tried to imagine the person on the other end of that voice: sitting in some cubicle, answering phones at a doily manufacturer, hating their life, one step away from the edge. Who knows what’ll send someone over the edge? A stupid, ridiculous twenty-year-old could CERTAINLY send someone over the edge!—and I gave up. Hung up. Went back to my coffee and crossword puzzle.

I’d forgotten this incident up until I got the paper shredder. Mine is one of those jobs that fits snugly over the trash basket, so you can just feed it the check stubs and old receipts, getting the oh-so satisfactory buzzing sound without the mess. MY friend Jeff told me a horror story of when he worked at a publishing house back in grad school: they would shred unsolicited, slush-pile manuscripts and use the shreds as PACKING MATERIAL. Novel and after novel sent through the shredder, thousands of pages of somebody's dreams. It's the saddest thing I've ever heard, but, as I send old letters and bank statements through the shredder, I am not sad, no, I am excited. I think, This is fun! What else can I shred!? Paper towels? Whole magazines? Dead leaves from our shedding plants? Mojo's dog treats? Washcloths? And I know someone will have to stop me, that I'm out of control, that this is another silly, wasteful way to kill time, time that needs me for a thousand different things and yet, powered by the same unseen force that dialed that doily's eight-hundred number, I am still shredding and shredding and shredding.

Posted by Megan at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Our friend Kat is living with us, which is awesome for many reasons, one of which is that she’s an artist and the house is full of projects. In the dining room there are huge papier mache puppets. Of books. Books that are alive and have teeth—props for an upcoming play. They’re spread out on the table, the wet, gluey newspaper drying under box fans. The back porch is strung with clotheslines hung with coffee-stained paper, dripping onto tarps spread over the floor. Her computer is set up in the kitchen, surrounded by CDs of her photographs. In the living room, in a corner of the couch, is a brick-colored Queen-sized afghan she’s three-quarters finished knitting. There’s an easel set up in the back bathroom, tubes of paint on the sink, paint and plaster on her clothes and her fingers, canvases stacked against the walls. Some of them we hang up—a black-and-white portrait of her Uncle as a child, her grandmother on a porch swing, two trees with the branches intertwined—and let me tell you, this girl is good. Lately, she’s been working on a self-portrait: her spiky red hair, her freckles, shocking ice-blue eyes. It’s a sad portrait, her mouth turned down, eyes empty and glassy. I didn’t recognize that painted girl with my laughing, grinning friend.

This morning, I woke up and looked at the canvas: it’s gone. She painted over it, a new, white, blank space waiting to be filled. “Why’d you do that?” I asked as we made breakfast, and she said, simply, “I didn’t want to see myself like that anymore.”

I thought that was the greatest thing in the Universe.

There’s this scene in my favorite movie, The Princess and the Warrior: Bodo and Sissi are in the car, and Bodo’s being his usual unhappy, negative, miserable self. They stop for gas, and while they’re at the station another Bodo (same character, played by the same guy) watches them interact. He stands right next to them, yet Sissi and the first Bodo don’t see him (and continue not seeing him as the scene continues). When it’s time to leave, all three of them get in the car—Sissi in the passenger seat, the mean Bodo driving and the new Bodo in the backseat. He watches the other two in the rearview mirror for a while, and by his facial expressions you can tell he doesn’t like how the mean Bodo is acting: how he treats Sissi, how he scowls. At one point she tries to take his hand but he throws it away. After a while, Bodo-in-the-backseat reaches his arms around either side of mean Bodo’s head and covers his eyes. The car screeches to a halt and mean Bodo sits there, trying to figure out what’s going on, while backseat Bodo gets out of the car and opens the driver’s side door. He reaches in and grabs mean Bodo, pulling him out into the street, and the two of them stare at each other—the same man, same clothes, same everything (like that moment in Terminator II where the chunky security guard is face-to-face with himself, except it’s really the TX liquid metal Terminator who stabs him in the head with his liquid metal spear arm). Then, the second Bodo gets into the driver’s seat, closes the car door and drives off with Sissi, leaving mean nasty Bodo at the side of the road. He reaches over and takes Sissi’s hand. He smiles at her. He smiles at himself in the rearview mirror, and I’m sitting there thinking, “Wow. It really CAN be that easy. You really can just see yourself acting unhappy, bringing yourself down or whatever, and you can make a conscious decision to leave that behind,” which was the same thing I thought this morning when Kat painted over her sad self, leaving the canvas blank and ready for the good stuff yet to come.

Posted by Megan at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)