Megan Stielstra's Blog

I was recently asked in an email: “If you had a file folder (or box of some kind), that was labeled "Things to Keep Forever," what would be in it?”

This is a question I can really sink my teeth into, mostly because it involves lists, which is how my brain usually operates (probably because I think/speak/type so fast that I’m only halfway through my first point by the time I’m moving on to my third (which has resulted in all sorts of poorly thought-out decisions on my part over the years) and sub-texting helps me slow down because I can make the list of all my points and then go back to think them through more thoroughly, which is ALWAYS a good idea. See my thirty-year-old self yelling that back in time to my twenty-year-old self: “THINK ALL REASONING THROUGH BEFORE ACTING.” Another way of saying this is, quite simply, SLOW DOWN, which is great universal advice for everything. My teachers always told me to slow down insofar as my writing, but it’s really important for everything: speaking, thinking, relationships, planning, voting, driving, drinking, storytelling, friendship, arguments, discussions, going down the stairs, walking the dog, making decisions, etc.).

SO. Things to keep forever.

1. Journals
I could probably end it right here. I’ve kept journals sporadically since I was fifteen, and seriously (as in writing every day) since I was twenty-five. For a long time I used Watson-Guptill sketchbooks because I wasn’t just writing in them, I was also glue-sticking in letters or concert tickets or movie stubs, story ideas written on the backs of coasters or bar checks. Now, I’m more interested in getting down scenes than saving a ticket, so I use the smaller, more manageable Moleskin (graph-paper if possible, but I’ll use whatever) or, preferably, my laptop, since I’m far enough from grad school to no longer associate “writing in the computer” with “homework.” Also, since I do write every day, storage is just easier in the computer. I don’t have a lot of SPACE—all my old journals are stored in my mom’s attic in Michigan.

That said, nothing can beat a pen and a blank page and a cup of coffee and some uninterrupted time. I’d rather do it longhand, if possible.

2. The first ultrasound photo of our kid.

3. About a million photos from the year Christopher and I lived in Prague. It was the beginning of our relationship, and we traveled and wrote and got to know each other (sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason why we work as well as we do: when we were just staring out, we had no one to talk to except each other. I couldn’t go drink with margaritas with my girlfriends and say, “He said blah blah what does that MEAN?” Instead I had to ask him: “You said blah blah what does that MEAN?” We were talking to each other from the get-go, instead of about each other). This one (July 2004, Rome, Trevi Fountain) is my favorite:

4. A pink telephone message slip, left in my faculty mailbox at Columbia: a student of mine from eight years ago called school to talk with me the week before he shipped out to Iraq. I called him back that night and had one of those conversations that just rocks you back to reality … that reminds you how all these things you spend so much time worrying about?—just. not. important.

As a side note: I’ve always been a worrier (we could also call this an overactive imagination) (we could also call this paranoia); HOWEVER, as soon as I found out I was pregnant, it stopped. Maybe that was because I knew that whatever emotional insanity I put myself through would also be experienced by my kid, but also, moreover, because I realized that nothing was as big of a deal anymore. He was the biggest of deals. There was no point in getting all crazy about a broken traffic light, or a late paper, or a misunderstood conversation when this little human being would be hanging out with me for the rest of my life. It was really freeing, actually, a huge relief because I’ve read that women often start worrying MORE during pregnancy and I felt really lucky to have such an overwhelming sense of calm, of “Nothing else matters, it’s just me and Christopher and our kid, we live in a bubble.”

But the thing is, we don’t live in a bubble. I felt that in a big way last week, with both the tragic loss of a much-loved grad student in my department and Jeanette Sliwinski finally going to trial (more info here).

There is no bubble. There is only living the Hell out of this life, which makes the arrival of this kid all the more amazing and I am lucky, lucky, lucky.

5. A 2003 literary journal from Oakton Community College, also left in my faculty mailbox by a former student. I wrote a story about that journal here.

6. So I’ve read all of Anais Nin’s journals. They fascinate me—the woman wrote every day, multiple times a day, for FIFTY YEARS, and then she REWROTE everything she wrote to put scene on top of the reflection, and also she did things (many of them stupid, but whatever) so she’d have something interesting to write about. The writer’s journal is a major interest of mine: how they’re used, how true they are, etc. PLUS, when I’m reading journals consistently I tend to journal pretty consistently (your reading always influences your writing). PLUS she was really bitchy and catty and had sex with everybody including all her shrinks and her father and all sorts of famous people, et all, and sometimes you just have to laugh, to say, “Anais, are you SERIOUS?”

So anyhow, on our second Christmas together, Christopher gave me a first-edition hand-printed numbered copy of one of Nin’s journals. So that would for sure go into the Things I’d Keep Forever box. So long as the Things I’d Keep Forever Box was housed in a fire-proof bank vault with all the other items whose financial value may someday put my kid through college.

7. Kafka’s journals with all my notes over the years.

8. A copy of Tom Twyker’s The Princess and the Warrior, my favorite movie.

9. A copy of Walden. From my dad.

10. A flier from my show at the Neo-Futurarium a few years ago.

11. This photo of my dog:

12. A glass jar of sand, scooped up from the beach where we got married.

13. A list of all my different account numbers. So I don’t, like, eat cat food when I’m old.

14. The letters R. sent me when I lived In Prague, reminding me to live life like crazy, and including this poem by Hafiz which I've since read about a thousand times:

A Suspended Blue Ocean

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish
That swim.
The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves
Into my heart and upon
My skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful
Game."

15. When I was twenty-one, Jeff made this list of everything I said I wanted someday at my wedding (note: I was unable, at the time, to make my own list, because I was drunk. People: DRINKING AND WRITING IS BAD. You miss all the good stuff!). There were sixteen items on this list, including a beach, and being given away by Jeff, and an empty wine glass with an amplification system for me to pound on whenever I wanted to kiss my husband.

Jeff gave me this list, torn from his ten-years-ago journal, at my bachelorette party in August, 2006. I didn’t even remember its existence, but was happy to see that out of the sixteen things I'd drunkenly wanted back then, my grown-up self had unconsciously planned for twelve of them. It was this great feeling—that I WAS having the wedding I’d always dreamed of (even if it didn’t consist of fancy dresses and giant cakes and expected traditions) and I was blown way that Jeff would keep this thing for an entire decade. Sort of a testament to the awesomeness that is our friendship.

ANYHOW: the day after my bachelorette party, Jeff and I had lunch and I made a list for what he wants HIS wedding to be. That will, for sure, go into my box of Things To Keep Forever, so I can give it to him at his bachelor party.

Or, more appropriately, he can find it lodged between the stripper’s muscled butt cheeks Oh My Gosh did I just say that aloud?

16. A mini-flask of Maker’s Mark. In case of emergency.

Note: I reserve the right to add to this list.