Jessica Bell’s Memoir “Dear Reflection”: Self-Discovery Amidst a Dysfunctional Family

On the surface Jessica Bell’s life seems like an envious one, being born into a house of indie rockers and growing up to become a writer, publisher and artist. But a closer look at her life, at least the one that she offers readers in her memoir “Dear Reflection: I Never Meant to be a Rebel” (Vine Leaves Press, 2017), reveals it to be one big fucking mess (to put it lightly).

A Tale of Two Flâneuses: We want more history and less Lauren Elkin

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016) is an uneven read that delights and also disappoints.

The problem is, there are two books trying to exist here, but neither has been given enough time or attention. History-Flâneuse tackles the concept of a flâneur: a wanderer, city-walker, bohemian, and man of leisure. (In French, this word was created in the masculine form, thus the concept has exclusively described men who live a dharma-bum lifestyle. Flâneuse is the female form and Elkin is trying to make Flâneuse happen.) Memoir-Flâneuse retells a few uninspiring stories of romantic relationships gone awry set in various cities of the world.

Getting Lost

I’ve been getting lost lately. I’m forty now; getting mixed up and turned around isn’t a problem I recall having as a twenty-something. It began one day in my late thirties when I went for a walk by myself in the subdivision where my brother lives with his family. Only the day before, I’d gone for a run with my seven-year-old niece, who rode her bike. She suggested we head to the back side of the subdivision, where I’d never been before. She was confident we wouldn’t get lost. I followed her, and as she promised, we made it safely back without incident. I thought I’d paid attention to the path she took.

My Murderous Heart

Last year, I wrote a confessional essay in honor of the 2015 Lenten season about a time I nearly killed my ex-husband. It was recently published in The Cresset. Several of my friends read it, discovering that, at one time, I’d had a murderous heart. You never know, of course, if anyone will read your work or if it will go unnoticed. I had hoped for oblivion for this one mainly because it was difficult to know how friends and colleagues would react. I do a tolerable job of helping others think I’m homespun, normal—I think we all do this. It helps us gloss over the messiness of life and makes day-to-day interactions easier.

A Writer’s Confession

I don’t believe in writer’s block. If I can’t write, I go out and live. Then, if I’m a writer, I’ll find something to write.” –Peter Arpesella

Confession: as someone who writes memoir, I often get sick of myself. For several years I’ve been working on the same project—growing up in poverty with a closeted homosexual single mother—first as a graduate student in an MFA program and now as a writing professor at a small liberal arts college, where tenure in part depends on publication. I’m on the third and, hopefully, final draft.

This summer, I spent my break rearranging, rewriting, and recreating. By the end I was saturated once again with the sticky, cloying oil of my past. It coated everything. Every time I licked my lips, I tasted it. Every time I sat with my laptop to write, I smelled it, scorched and dark. My skin was thick with it, my vision blurred; sounds were distorted. Immersed in that world for months at a time, my sense of who I am now—writer, wife, teacher—begins to waver as though my adult self were only a mirage shimmering in the foreground of my past. That’s when the words get stopped up and I don’t want to write. Often, I take a vacation from myself, from writing.