Joyce Carol Oates – Is Laughter Contagious?

 

What a feeling it is. Gently resting on my lap, the opening a book, the paper cover and inner pages under my dry fingers. I rub the pages feeling and listening to the noise they make. A sort of groaning. A swooshing sound as I flatten the pages with my hand to look closer at the ink on the pages. Real ink. Real paper. I move the sticky note that I’m using a bookmark to reveal the title of the story that I read so many months ago and that I’m finally getting around to writing about. I take comfort in reading that it’s by Oates – perhaps she can propel me back into this project as I’ve been corrupted by digital devices. Phones, laptops, tablets, TV. Giving my brain what it unconsciously calls out for—inflicting damage that will only surface over time. 

I’m sad that I have fallen so deeply into the pit of digital distraction – and isn’t it funny how I find myself typing out these characters to be posted on precisely the medium that I concern myself with. Perhaps I can find a happy point of coexistence. Discipline myself enough to exist in the real world and enter into this digital world to conduct this bit of record-keeping.

That’s what this exercise is about. It does serve a greater purpose. Someday, my children will find it…and in doing so, they’ll find a little bit more about me.

It’s now the second week of 2023, and I’ve found the mental space to begin writing here again.

How I love to encounter an Oates story in anthologies from the late 80s and early 90s. She does such an excellent job transporting the reader.

The world I encountered through this particular story was one that I found very familiar.

Back in my early 20s, I encountered middle-aged women, mothers, wives, that fit the description of Mrs. D, a wife and mother in the 90s - perfectly.

I saw them mid-day with their children at a country club pool – passing those last few hours of the day before their husbands came home. Swimsuit covers flowing, hats shade faces, and sunglasses shield puffy eyes. Gliding through the hot, hazy summer days of south Jersey. Bestseller in hand, flipping pages on the lounger, scolding kids between chapters.

I wondered if they were happy. I could sense that there was some effort to mask the strain of their lives.

I was only in my early 20s…what did I know of their lives?

I had it all figured out.

Not- really though.

Written in the 90s, read by me in the 2020s, I can easily see the strain (through their contagious laughter) burdening suburban homemakers today traveling across time from beside a pool in south Jersey.

The passage of time

 

This past weekend marks the passage of another year of this exercise. I named the blog (exercise) and made my first post on this platform on May 29^th, 2008. 

I remember holding the 1978 volume in my hands as I spoke to my father on the phone from a vehicle service shop in Norfolk, making plans for our trip to the island. Fourteen years have passed, and I have recorded some of the changes in our lives (M and I), having our lives transformed from us to them and us when children arrived. I have faced many challenges in this exercise. Writer's block, having my attention sucked away by distractions online, my inability to focus, my lack of sleep, and I can go on and on. 

I suppose that the passage of time also contributes to this exercise as it allows me to encounter the stories at points in my life where perhaps they would hit me differently if I had discovered them earlier. I suppose I wouldn't know unless I reread one or two that had the most impact. I do know that the anthology made me love the authors of the late 70s and early 80s. I would have never discovered them without this exercise – and perhaps I wouldn't have appreciated them now as I did then – wouldn't have come to love them. The foundation was laid, and now new loves are arriving on scene as I move into the early 90s and reflect on a significant developmental period. 

These stories will act as a match to ignite old memories, and fortunately, I still have many of those memories kicking around in my head. 

Let's put this little entry aside now and get back to our regularly scheduled lack of reading and writing as we move into the 15^th year of this exercise.