Spotlight On Writers
Stella Jay
- Where do you originate from?
I am California born and raised— the Fresno area, where we malign summer rather than winter. It is hot. We delight in telling you how hot it gets. Even in a state that practices annual self-immolation, the San Joaquin Valley is sometimes referred to as Satan’s armpit (or, as I prefer when I’m slogging through a herd of semi-trucks on the 99, ‘cow hell’).
California has everything: the lethal Sierra Nevada mountains, which dwarf their eastern cousins, temperate rainforests full of redwoods and banana slugs, beaches suited for bikinis, beaches suited for ogling otters and sea lions while your lips turn blue, desert so hostile it was christened Death Valley (where a hundred or so wonderful lunatics, of their own volition, run 135 miles each summer), cities encased in creeping fog, miles-long stretches of grapes and almonds and condemned cattle, roadside cherry and strawberry stands, theme parks and concert venues and billboards in both English and Spanish.
- What do you cherish most about the place you call home?
I think I’m supposed to say it’s the people, the culture (as if there is one ‘California culture’), or some secret you only learn if you’ve lived here for decades, but I’m not that enlightened. After 31 years, I cherish the interesting places to go, natural or manmade.
I am going to brag because I suspect it may be less obnoxious than flagellating myself with my own privilege. Because my family had means until the 2008 financial crisis—we were Disneyland vacation rich, not yacht rich, and certainly not “let’s go visit the Titanic!” rich—I had the great good fortune of visiting some of California’s wonders regularly. I grew up in the national parks, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Disneyland.
My mother insists that, at 10, I had photographed every cheese puff-stuffed ground squirrel in Yosemite. I spent two years working as a housekeeper there, running the near-perfect 5k out-and-back between employee housing and Swinging Bridge (where I would cross the bridge a few times both for the exhilarating sway and for the satisfying tap-tap-tap sound of sneakers on wood) and indulging in 10+-mile day hikes on days off. Yosemite has my heart. Nothing beats rushing up the Mist Trail, panting, calves burning, weaving around first-time hikers enjoying the journey, to get soaked through at the foot of Vernal Falls while your brain releases a torrent of exertion-induced happy chemicals. Eating peanut butter filled pretzels on a boulder in front of Ostrander Lake at 8:30 AM, just you and the marmots, is a close second.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is the only place I’ve ever been where you get to touch a giant isopod. Disneyland, that oft-disdained miracle of overstimulating artifice, rocks. The tourists are right to come here.
Even if we don’t have a distinct pizza.
- What ignites your creativity?
My brain is more of a gnawing creature than a wick awaiting a spark; it needs a creative task or else it’ll bite the fur off its paws and eat the couch. Among its favorite chew toys are visual art (I passed one of my favorite Thanksgivings writing a story about the ghost who haunted the pond in a relative’s wall-mounted Thomas Kinkade), interesting locations, religion, history and mythology, and rock music. Really, any time I discover something interesting, the mind beast starts worrying at it in search of a story.
- Do you have a favorite word, and could you incorporate it into a poetic phrase?
Right now, it’s courage. It fits beautifully in the mouth. You feel it in your shoulders and in your chest; ‘bravery’ and ‘boldness’ don’t manifest bodily the same way. Bravery and boldness feel like qualities of the mind, where courage lives in the viscera.
The word bends in evocative ways. You don’t ‘incourage’ someone—you ‘encourage’ them, the way a god ensouls a being. You don’t ‘uncourage’ a person—you ‘discourage’ them, the way you might disembowel them. One is not ‘courageful’ but ‘courageous,’ the way they are gaseous. In fact, it’s common to be both courageous and gaseous. When fear is cast out of the heart, it finds its voice in nervous flatulence.
A ‘poetic phrase’ was too much pressure, so I figured I would write an actual poem, something literally and inarguably poetic. I’ve produced a haiku. I hope that’s alright.
Courage stiffens the
spine, it’s true, but the butt quakes.
Fear flees in a fart.
- What is your pet peeve?
People walking slowly in front of me. Slow drivers do not bother me the way slow walkers do. To be clear, they are doing nothing wrong. I am aware that walking slowly is not a crime, a deadly sin, or even a transgression. This is a pet peeve– a dumb thing that fills me with fury. I am in the wrong here.
The walker may be elderly, disabled, or simply enjoying a stroll. Nevertheless, I am sorely tempted to either pick them up and fireman carry them along (which I do not have the upper body strength or the bail money to do), or to throw myself face-down on the floor and shriek like a toddler denied Fruity Pebbles at Wal-Mart.
- How would you describe the essence of Stella Jay?
Essence as in signature scent: hand sanitizer, ripe running shoe, and Italian salad dressing. Wake up your significant other! Repel strangers on the bus! Attract dogs and raccoons!
Essence as in the core/heart/soul of my work: if you can laugh at it, you can live with it. Coming from a long line of gallows gigglers, I have a glorified funny bone for a backbone, and anything of value that I have produced contains humor. Whether anyone else finds it funny is an open question.
I may be too close to accurately describe what Stella Jay is—it’s a bit like trying to sketch a car while you are driving it on the highway. I can tell you what I want to be: a chamberstick carried in gnarled hands on a January morning at witching hour. Despite my insistence on writing in dark places about characters with bloody hands (or jaws/paws/claws), I hope that my ‘essence’ is curious and empathetic, and that it more often than not renders despair an object to be carried rather than a ritual to be practiced.
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