On Process and Place: Letter Three (hometowns)

Substack Letters between Mark Dykeman (How About This) and Julie Falatko (Do the Work) about where we're from and how that influenced our work now

Welcome friends, to the third letter and final installment of On Process and Place, my letters project with

Mark Dykeman

of

How About This

. It’s been three weeks now of examining how the details of our childhood geographies laid the foundation for the creative pursuits of our adulthoods, from Mark’s upbringing in rural Atlantic Canada, to mine in northern New Jersey. We talked about television, we talked about food, and now we’re pulling back slightly to look at the places themselves.

On Process And Place - Letter #3 - The Finale (Mark to Julie)

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Mark, this was such a fun project, but I was not prepared for all the insights I’d gain by dredging up my childhood. I’m contemplative and journal a lot, so I didn’t think I’d unearth anything surprising, but I haven’t thought about Wonderama or knishes in years, and I’ve certainly never thought about them in terms of my current creativity, so thank you.

I loved reading about your relatively indoors childhood, even though you had access to a lot more nature than I did. We would have been friends as kids. When I went outside, it was generally like this: 

Circa 1974, I’m guessing

It sure looks like I was dragged outside in the middle of watching Saturday morning cartoons. You can see the look on my face that says, “This is what you do outside, right? Stand on picnic tables?” 

I tend to point to the circumstances of my childhood as laying the foundation for me as a writer. I grew up an only child with a lot of freedom to read, play, and type on a typewriter. So much of what I do today is a version of kid me typing in all caps about how much I like the alphabet.

Six-year-old Julie had opinions.

But what about the specifics of the place itself? Did growing up in Tenafly, New Jersey affect my current creative process? Maybe growing up so close to New York City gave me a feeling of possibility? That feels so hyperbolically grand, though. 

For sure, as an extrovert and a bit of a maximalist, it fed my soul to be able to experience all of the noise and people and things of New York City. I loved going to places like Canal Jean with its bins of clothes or flipping through the records at Bleecker Bob’s. There was a store called Think Big that was gigantic sculptural versions of everyday things like erasers and crayons. Mark, all I wanted was a giant pencil from Think Big. They were outrageously expensive. But I remember going there and goggling at the giant things. Maybe seeing a huge safety pin as a teenager led me to the picture books I write today? Maybe. 

My mom grew up in a very small town in New York State, about a three-hour drive from Tenafly, and we’d go there during school vacations and over the summer. I did like playing in the woods, mostly thanks to my love of Bridge to Terabithia. I’d walk to a little stream and play Terabithia, which, if you’ve read the book, you’ll know is a fraught playtime (it was the first book that made me cry!). I liked being in the woods (and still do), but I felt like there was nothing I could do there. Those times fed my imagination in other ways, but I never came up with ideas in the woods. It was more of a helpful pause. I don’t remember ever writing anything when we were there; all my writing was in New Jersey. (Even now, I bring notebooks with me when we go camping every summer, and I can never write anything in the woods.)

Kid Julie writing a story in suburban dirt.

Then I remembered: my ideas didn’t come to me in the woods or in my backyard. They came to me on public transportation.

Photo by Nic Y-C on Unsplash

I’d get to New York City by taking the bus that conveniently stopped across the street from my house. I’d take the bus to Port Authority and then take the subway to Greenwich Village or SoHo. And while I was remembering all of this I got a very clear picture of riding public transportation and seeing myself in the reflection in the window. There is something I’ve always found comforting about that. Like: there I am. Here are all these people and there I am, I am one of these people and I exist in this space with all of them. I’d see myself in the reflection and maybe see how other people saw me but also be aware that I look like this on the outside but no one can see what I’m thinking. And then I’d turn to see the other people on the train with me, and know that they were thinking things too. For me, that’s where stories start: taking ordinary people and looking inside. We are all these containers for thoughts, and those thoughts could be anything. There is that sense of “what if” that I’m still chasing today. 

My face in the window, the world and me. What if?

And now everyone is on their phones. Screens are everywhere. The buses from Portland, Maine to Boston or New York play movies the whole time. I want that experience of only being able to be in my own head. Is the only way to replicate it to go back in time? Because even if I’m not on my phone, everyone else is on theirs, and there was something of the shared experience that added to it – if something strange happened, we all saw it. In a lot of ways in my life right now, a walk is the best way to re-experience that, because I can leave my phone at home and I’ve got nothing to do but think.

But still, I keep thinking about my reflection in the window, about seeing myself existing in that space, knowing I am having thoughts no one else can see, and that everyone else is having thoughts too, and then I’d wonder what they’re thinking and that would light up my imagination. 

I wondered if I could recreate it by sitting in a park near where I live now, people watching. Maybe most people walking by wouldn’t be on their phones, and I could watch them exist in the same space as me and imagine the stories. So two days ago, I got a knish and a Cel-Ray¹ and went to a nearby park, where, honestly, I was freezing and, it being February in Maine, there were no people to watch. 

Note the layer of ice on the chess board.

I drove across the bridge to visit my favorite local independent bookstore, Print: A Bookstore, and bought a book called On Browsing by Jason Guriel (Mark, I think you’d like this book! And not just because the author is Canadian). Guriel perfectly describes the feeling of pre-internet wandering, of feeling bored but not being able to do anything about it, and the sort of thinking you’d do. He describes browsing malls, record stores, and bookstores, and bouncing a ball for hours because there wasn’t anything else to do. “I spent a lot of time in my head,” he writes. “To be ‘in your head’ is now understood to be a bad thing, but I had nowhere else to be.”² 

There’s a lot about the internet I’m grateful for, but On Browsing is making me remember the sort of long-form thinking I’d do on those buses and subways, when there was nothing to do but think, where I had nowhere else to be but in my own head. And I know that those experiences of riding buses and subways, looking at my own reflection while roads or tunnels sped by in a blur, taught me how to imagine stories.

So what do I do now? Do I ride the bus more? I don’t know if it would work, when everyone else is staring at their phones. I’ll keep walking, that’s for sure, and especially keep taking walks where I leave my phone at home. But – once it warms up – I’m going to find places where I can sit on a bench and watch people go by, and imagine what they’re thinking.³ I’m excited to see if people watching sparks anything creatively for me. 

Mark, thanks so much for suggesting these letters! It was super fun to hear about Switchback and Beep, and honestly helpful to remember my creative output and inspirations when I was little, and see the thread connecting to the way I write today.

Your friend, 

Julie

P.S. Here are the links to all the letters, everyone! Letter one, television: Mark, Julie. Letter two, food: Mark, Julie. Letter three, place: Mark.

1. I was skeptical of the nostalgia-inducing abilities of the knish because it was fancy (look at all those seeds!) and I had to ask for mustard as an off-menu accompaniment (the standard go-withs were things like salmon-mayonnaise or onion jam) but as soon as I bit into it, I was 15 again. Also I’m here to report that Cel-Ray is great and is my new favorite soda. Sorry, Moxie.

2. Guriel, Jason. On Browsing. Biblioasis, 2022, p. 26.

3. I’ll admit I’m just now shaking off the hermit feelings of the last few years. I think a lot about this December 2020 essay about kids who were toddlers during the pandemic, and the little girl seeing someone in the distance and saying, “Uh oh, people!” I know I’m going to have to be intentional about going toward people. It feels a little unnatural still.