Memory versus imagination

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit my alma mater, Carleton College, for the first time since I graduated more than 15 years ago. As anybody who’s been to Carleton could easily guess, I borrowed heavily from my college’s geography and culture when I created Langdon University for my novel Mad Science Institute.

This tour of campus was, therefore, as much an inspirational outing as it was a stroll down nostalgia lane. As the saying goes: write what you know. I wanted to check how well my memory lined up with reality. It turns out, there were some staggering differences.

Burton Hall under Construction

Sure, the central buildings of campus looked absolutely untouched by the passage of years (Wish I could say the same for myself!), such that the minute I walked through the doors of Sayles-Hill (the campus center), I had an urge to rush over and check my mailbox.

Likewise, the dormitory where I lived for two of my four years was still as I remembered it: isolated at the far outskirts of campus. As it always had been, it was a hike to get there, but a hike with great scenery.

This was my view every time I walked to and from Goodhue dorm. It is, therefore, what I imagine Soap Lazarchek sees every day as well.

On my way back from my former dorm, I walked into an area I felt like I had never seen before. There were entire collections of buildings I didn’t remember—some of which were new, but a few had been there in my time yet sparked no memories for me. I simply hadn’t had a friend in this dorm or taken a class in that building, and therefore it had faded from my memory.

In the background is Skinner Memorial Chapel, where we used to go into the basement and play Sardines and Hide-and-Go-Seek

It was strange to think that so much could have slipped out of my head. I’d like to think that shuffling those memories off stage made room for new ones, but it doesn’t really work that way. What is true, though, is that the most important memories stick around. I know they do, because I could still point to a tree we always used as a goal in for Frisbee golf, and to the windows of each of my dorm rooms, and to the exact spot on the shoreline where my roommate fell into the lake. Good times.

Not too long ago, I finished the beta draft of the follow-up to Mad Science Institute, and this new novel goes even deeper into the fictional Langdon University’s quirks and culture. As far as writing goes, it’s a good thing that so much had changed at Carleton over the years and that my imagination had altered even more, because that Langdon University and Carleton College aren’t the same place, nor should they be. For one thing, using Carleton as an inspiration rather than a firm setting freed me to pick the best of the old and the new, as well as mix in more from the outside. Still, if you’ve ever been to Carleton, keep the campus layout and lore in mind and you might start to see where many of my ideas came from.

You can't make this stuff up. The ground floor of the library is actually the 4th floor, and you descend into the progressively quieter levels from there. (Blue Monday is a coffee shop in town)

Memory can play so many tricks on you. I’m curious to know if anyone else has had an experience of returning to a well-known place after many years. Did it seem smaller in person? Had it undergone new construction? Did you feel like you could just walk right into your old living room even though you hadn’t lived in that house for years?

What kinds of tricks has your memory played on you?

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

--Sechin

Catching Up

 By Dan Haring

Hey folks! I know it's been a while since my last post. The last month has been a pretty crazy one for me. My family had been living in Southern California for the last 5 1/2 years, and for the most part, we loved it. What we didn't love was the lack of job security. So when a really good job offer from Blue Sky Studios (They do the Ice Age movies) came in, we jumped at it. The only problem? It was literally on the other side of the country in Greenwich, CT, 2802 miles away. But it was a great opportunity, so we rented a truck, piled all our junk in it, and hit the road. (I'm purposefully glossing over the packing process, which was awful.)

I've driven cross-country a few times, and loved it. But I'd never done it with four kids under the age of seven. Thank goodness for dvd players and Disney. Speaking of which, on one of our last California days, we hit up Disneyland one last time and grabbed a plush Perry the Platypus, and decided he was going to be our traveling buddy.

I highly recommend driving across this amazing country. There are a million things to see, and even things like the open expanses of Kansas can be breathtaking. But again, maybe don't do it with little kids and a moving truck. (All said and done, the kids did great, though.)

After five long days on the road, we finally pulled into our new home in Connecticut. It was hot and humid, trees blocked the horizon in every direction, and there were spiders everywhere. I know I wasn't alone when I thought we should just turn around and head back.

But one word that kept coming up when we told our friends and family about the move, was "adventure." "This is going to be such a fun adventure" they'd tell us. And you know what? They were right. Getting lost and adjusting to new things and leaving our comfort zones and seeing my kids' faces when they saw fireflies for the first time. This is an adventure. And what's life for if not to have adventures?

A great American hero, Neil Armstrong, passed away this last weekend. As I was reading about his life, one quote of his really stuck out to me. He said, "I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine." Great words to live by, and ones I hope I can follow. I don't want to miss out on adventures because I've become complacent, even if it means leaving behind everything I know. The clock is ticking, and so are our hearts. Let the adventure begin!

Frozen Moments

by Jennifer Archer

Photographs have always fascinated me. Each day, moments of our lives pass by unnoticed – blink and they’re gone. However, a photograph captures a moment; pictures are a snippet of time frozen  on paper, or these days on a digital file. Whenever I look at images of people, I find myself wondering what they were thinking and feeling in the instant the photographer snapped the shot: What was going on in their lives? What was taking place outside the parameter of the frame?

When Tansy Piper, the main character in my young adult novel Through Her Eyes came to life in my mind, I was excited about the opportunity to write about a talented amateur photographer. My own photography skills are next to none – I’ve never used a “fancy” camera with different lenses or developed film in a darkroom as Tansy does, but I’ve always wanted to learn. Tansy gave me the chance to research those skills and find out more about them. I was able to live vicariously through her and get a sense of what it might be like to possess her abilities.

 

As I developed Tansy’s character and started asking myself questions about her life, her family, her motivations, and her interests, I found that I’m especially intrigued by old photographs that were taken long before I was born. They are a glimpse into a past I never experienced – a way to travel back in time. Sometimes I study pictures of my parents and grandparents when they were in their teens and twenties, and I’m always struck by how little I really know about that time in their lives. What were their hopes and dreams? Who were their closest confidantes? Who were they back then? Most teens ask similar questions about themselves at some point: Who am I? Where is my place in this world? What do I want out of life? Who can I trust to be a true friend?  

Thinking about those questions led to my creation of Papa Dan – Tansy’s grandfather. I thought it would be interesting if, while Tansy searched for her own identity, her grandfather began losing his. Papa Dan is dying and has dementia. The only way Tansy can keep him from completely slipping away and disappearing from her world is to try to keep his memories alive. However, that presents a problem because she only knew him as an old man. I thought it would be cool to allow her an opportunity that the rest of us never get – the chance to see her grandfather through different eyes, to spend time with him and his friends in their world when they were her age. 

The next challenge was how to accomplish that. I’ve read a lot of novels where a character actually time travels, but I wanted something different. A twist. That's where my love of photography came into play. Instead of truly going back in time, I decided that Tansy would actually step into Papa Dan’s memories through photographs -- those glimpses of moments in the past captured on paper.

Writing Through Her Eyes deepened my certainty that every generation goes through similar experiences and emotions. Your grandparents lived in a world quite different than yours, but I have a feeling they hoped for many of the same things that you do -- that we all do: Love and friendship, fulfilling work, adventure and security.   

What do you wonder about when you look at old photographs? Do you see clues of what life must have been like during the time the picture was taken?

Visit Jennifer's website: www.jenniferarcher.net