Alyssa C. Martino

New writing at Matador Change

Alyssa — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:19:43 +0000

In case you missed it, I’ve had a couple new pieces up at Matador Network’s Change site:

“American’s Homeless Population: Protected or Punished,” focuses on why cities like Boulder, Colorado are criminalizing homeless individuals.

“The Geography of Gender-based Violence in Brazil,” is about domestic violence in Brazil, and how “DDMs”–women’s police stations–are working to combat this issue despite their shortcomings.

From the vault: “Just Another Season”

Alyssa — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:31:30 +0000

I’ve decided to reintroduce “From the vault” posts. This one is something I wrote as a short memoir in 2006.

Just Another Season

At the cusp of fall, once-green trees transform to vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow. Eventually, this foliage turns to brown, and soon thereafter the leaves desert their branches. It is around this time when my dad solicits a huge blue tarp from our shed, raking the leaves onto the big blue mass, and then throwing the bundle over his shoulder to carry it to the woods behind our house. About a week later, our undressed lawn becomes a shade of untouched, unflawed white.

With the days getting shorter and shorter, the trees are aware of the chilly months to come and knowingly prepare. During winter, trees shut down and live off food they’ve stored for the season. Because of this, the green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves—and voila!—beautiful colors take their place. The leaves actually contain small amounts of these pigments all along, though masked by chlorophyll deposit green.

Unfortunately, this colorful foliage remains for a very short period. While a tree’s roots and trunk can endure the cold of winter, its thin and brittle leaves can not. Thus, trees must shed their leaves in order to survive the snow and ice. I’ve always attributed falling leaves to seasonal affective disorder, winter depression caused by lack of sunlight. Empty trunks always look so sad and desolate without color. I suppose I’d be bitter too if I were them: self-sacrifice is hardly an ideal course of action.

There is a saying that change is the only constant in life. Nonetheless, I’ve always wondered why we immediately expect change to be bad. Change can work wonders, move mountains, and cure us in glorious ways. New attitudes, friends, and locations can be refreshing and energizing. What’s more—changes in these aspects of life can reveal a new you—one that may have been searching to break free, much like the bright pigments overpowered by chlorophyll. In the end—these changes could in fact save you—despite the sacrifices you make for them.

Autumn leaves are vivid and colorful; as a result, the transition to winter is harsh. Snow is never ending as it encroaches upon every crevice of land. At Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, we hardly see the sun after October. Surrounded by a monotone landscape of whites and grays, we are consumed by itchy scarves and mornings of frost. During these weeks, students and professors each experience their own form of seasonal depression, hopelessly falling in line with the death and monotony that surrounds them. Clarity levels drop from satisfactory to well-below average. Trudging through snow to class drains every ounce of energy we managed to withhold in fall.

When spring finally arrives it’s like the entire campus has been revived, thrilled to have expelled the cold and drear, to regain sun and light and all that is good. Spring represents hope and happiness, renaissance and rebirth.

Every winter morning, my roommate and I check weather.com before heading out to class. This ritual, although very necessary for layering’s sake, has become a discouraging start to my days in Hamilton.

“It’s 17 degrees, but feels like 10 with 60% chance of snow. Accumulation less than an inch, but still, better bring gloves,” I yell to her as she brushes her teeth. What I’ve come to notice is that accumulation is never more than an inch in Hamilton. It flurries every single day, but the storms are nothing like New England winters. In Massachusetts, when it snows, it really snows. It’s not unusual to wake up to two or more feet of powder after a nor’easter. I imagine one could make a pretty decent living owning a plowing company in the suburbs of Boston. And to tell you the truth, the weather at Colgate makes this very venture an appealing ‘Plan B.’

Today was the season’s first snow at Colgate. While walking back to my dorm, I found myself bundled from head to toe, cursing the weather and wishing I’d worn thicker socks. After passing under a bridge, I threw off my hood, glad to open my squinty eyes in this safe haven. I heard laughing in the distance and noticed kids sledding on clear, plastic trash bags. I stopped, turning back to view the newly blanketed campus.

Weather and emotional well being only go hand-in-hand because we let them. What we often forget is that although the colors are bleak and the air seems to bite, winter is beautiful in its own way. I love the way evening shadows reflect in the white or how flakes slowly fall like virtual particles from some strange world. Winter is time and again confused for a state of mind; we let it consume us. Yet it is, after all, just another season—just nature’s way of showing us that beauty varies in its form.

(photo courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt)

Words Worth Sharing [Tim O'Brien]

Alyssa — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:31:14 +0000

Somebody tells you a story, let’s say, and afterward, you ask, “Is it true?” And if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer.

–Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried

Contributor’s Note, Circa Fall 2006

Alyssa — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 02:32:16 +0000

Read this, and you’ll be impressed at how put together I am. Oh yes, and “This,” was written in fall 2006, an exercise in my creative nonfiction workshop. I believe it went something like this: “Write one true contributor’s note, and one false.” I’ll let you guess which this is! (Apologies for it being in one huge block of text. But I thought I should keep it true to its original form.)

Alyssa Martino was born and raised in Massachusetts. She attended Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, where she often had a great deal of difficulty making up her mind. “Soon, you will have to make some very challenging choices,” her parents warned before orientation. However, Martino preferred to ignore the decisions at hand. For instance, she had always been told that she must eventually pick a major. Yet somehow, even by senior year, she remained concentration-less. Instead, she took courses from every department, whichever she felt necessary. She slyly told professors that she was a (fill in the blank) major in order to get into their upper-level seminars. Also, she brushed up on her knowledge of various subjects during her free time so that she could spout out endless random facts. No one else knew the exact longitude and latitude coordinates of Transylvania (she once took a geography class). Few others also had memorized every date and place associated with World War I (she weaseled her way into a few history courses, too). Additionally, Martino refused to pick her roommate and fill out a housing form. Instead, she lived in the Edge Café, sleeping on tables and storing her clothes in boxes carefully disguised by their labels. While her socks were hidden in cottage cheese containers, she reserved dressier attire for larger boxes that supposedly housed granola. The chefs soon came to realize her trickery, but felt quite sympathetic towards her, unanimously agreeing to turn their heads. Later, her habitation here turned out to be fairly beneficial, as Martino was soon able to prompt one custodian to pick out her outfit every morning. Martino also never decided whether or not to go abroad. Instead, she braved the cold winters of Hamilton for four straight years, which she soon found to be a major problem during junior and senior year when she moved into a study cell in Case Library, the only building on campus which lacks a proper heating system (despite its recent construction). Come senior year, Martino blatantly disregarded the non-stop inquiries about her plans for after graduation. As a matter of fact, she was still silently wondering whether or not they’d let her graduate in absence of a major! President Chopp miraculously agreed to let Martino leave, exclaiming, “If we don’t get rid of this young lady right now, we may never do so!” After graduation, Martino was still at a loss for what to do and where to go, and thus, she didn’t. Unbeknownst to anyone, she remained at Colgate, lingering in discreet corners and sometimes sneaking up on students in Cooley Science Library and offering to write their essays for Professor Brice’s workshop. Through strange circumstances and her spite for decisions, Martino ironically chose to remain at Colgate forever: still without major, still without room, and still indisputably indecisive.

I invite everyone to try this fun prompt, and submit the results in the comments section, if you’d like!

Flash fiction: American icon edition

Alyssa — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:39:32 +0000

Reading about James Dean on a Wiki

He was 24 when his forehead slammed into an opposing car’s front hood.

We are watching cash cab. My eyes are barely open. You open up Wikipedia.

Have I ever heard James Dean’s music? I think. Wait, no. Watched his films?Breathed his air?

I only remember that large cardboard cut-out in the office of our high school’s newspaper.

Not the Pepsi commercial. Not his interest in bullfighting. Not East of Eden’s setting in California’s Salinas Valley.

Do I know where that is?

Am I supposed to?

Is it hot there?

Do I ask too many questions?

Apparently, he was an American hero. I wonder if his memory was as sharp as mine.

I wonder how many heroes have ever questioned the meaning of life. The meaning of senseless death or young love or the entertainment industry or the car that James Dean’s head once collided with.

Put the key in the ignition and drive away, the whir of yellow lines buzzing by like the mind’s own attention deficit.

Pete Yorn and the story of today

Frozen pizza with a side of cheerios (in a coffee mug). Pinot for desert. My hair, wet, is dripping into the front of my v-neck.

“It’s a strange condition, A day in prison.” That song is on replay.

I think of Pete Yorn and his angsty side-swept bangs. His five-o-clock shadow. His blue jeans. I don’t know why his pants are significant. I don’t know why I find myself analyzing his choice of bottom. I’d really prefer not to know what’s underneath. Really.

I think of that story, “Bruce Springsteen and the Story of Us.” Reading it over and over and over again. Dissecting.

I think of guitar strings, scattered across a hard wood floor. I think of raspy voices, colliding with harshly strummed chords, a music note gliding across the reflecting pool. Chain smoking on the balcony. The morning after.

I think that maybe I am in a weird place.

“I don’t know what I came for.”

But I didn’t want it all. I didn’t.

(photo courtesy of udatxo)

The nostalgia of place

Alyssa — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:27:42 +0000

One of my first memories is of trying to climb that damn rock–searching for the best indents or curves to place my bare, kid-sized 7 feet. My cousin and I would grip our toes into the rough texture, curling them to try and create some momentum to raise our bodies upwards. My hands would burn from the tiny cavities of debris I had scraped them against.

The goal was always this: find a new “path,” a not predetermined or predicted route. On days when we succeeded, crouching low on the rock’s plateau was freeing. On other afternoons, we were just as satisfied with the amusement that resulted from the failed efforts, which was usually falling to the grass or hopping in the lake to cool off. After all, no matter what, there was a flat rock just across the way, where we could lay on our towels and relax, swatting at hornetts and batting at the red ants who’d come to encroach upon our pale little limbs.

Here’s the other thing: the rock was hardly 6 feet tall (at least that’s how I remember it). Today, my eyes might even fall even with its once-daunting peak. It wasn’t so much that we were climbing a mountain; we were taking baby steps–literally. We were starting small, knowing our limits, challenging ourselves just enough.

Writing about a place you’ve been going for 20 years is like trying to write about your best friend: you want to show and critique it fairly, but ultimately, you so badly want others to understand the impact it’s had on you. How much you grew and learned from that one specific location.

I went back there for July 4th, and it was everything and nothing I expected all at once. It’s only been a year and a half since my last hoorah at Lake Winnipesaukee, but, in that year and a half, and particularly the past 4 months, so much has changed.

It’s weird to be somewhere dictated by family memories, when a family is something ever-evolving too. For years, this place was “Nana and Papa’s.” Now, it hardly feels like that same childhood memory.

Places aren’t stationary like a rock. They change just like the people who inhabit them. And we’re left to find a new way route forward, a new way up.

For the other Alyssa, a voice

Alyssa — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:04:23 +0000

Something quite terrible has happened.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been e-mailed nearly 10 obituaries, stories of candle light vigils, and prayer groups.

Somewhere, Alyssa Martino has died. Google alerts has certainly made me aware of this. And the other Alyssa–she was 19-years-old.

For days, I’m too frightened to read the news. I stare into space, wondering about her life, her loved ones. Does her soccer team miss her strong, purposeful penalty kicks? Does her chemistry class miss her straight A’s that throw off the curve? Do her parents eat dinner alone? Has her brother been absent from school?

For the past 3 months, I’ve been, for lack of better word, spooked. In April, I watched my grandmother purse her lips and take a last breath.

I panic on planes. I can’t sit still. I fidget at work. At home. In the car. On the phone.

And yet, I can’t write it. I can’t say it aloud.

I sign into Wordpress to check google analytics. My bounce rate is up to 97%. I’m confused. Then I see it:

Assisi Overlooked: Solace in a Sunrise

Alyssa — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:15:00 +0000

My roommate hits the snooze button for the third time. Finally, a revelation acts as a wake-up call: it’s now or never.

We pull the blankets off our adjacent twin beds, throw on our warmest sweatshirts and coats, several pairs of socks, and our sneakers–still soaked through from trudging through last night’s puddles.

I look out the window where darkness is still settled in over the commune. It’s 4:30 am and the sun is about to show its face.

We meet up with some friends in the lobby of our hotel, which feels more like a cross between a monastery and a castle. The air outside is smoky and thick; it makes me want to cough. A chill flickers up my spine, and I pull my hands back into the sleeves of my jacket. I feel like an oompa loompa as I stand there, huddling in my fleecy blue.

The ground is slippery against our shoes. The pathways seem untouched except for dew, though I know they have evolved over the course of centuries, not to mention two devastating earthquakes. I suddenly become conscious of each step I take–that is, what it is I’m stepping on. Who else might have walked these trails? Left their footprints in these malleable bricks?

I can make out St. Clare’s Basilica in the distance, a checkerboard of dark and light bricks enforcing a pattern of routine despite this particular morning’s abstractions: thinking about St. Francis and charity and the juxtaposition of Assisi and the surrounding tourists, flocking to Rome and Venice and Pompeii–all spectacular, but missing a certain simplicity. Maybe it’s the obsession with food, culture, people, place. Here, more was less. Even the cracks in the roads knew it as they embraced the rain as a cleanse of history’s debris.

As we arrive at the spot, I think about dinner the night before: greens with balsamic, warm rolls from the oven, and pasta with olio. I am full of carbohydrates and vino. Thinking about it, I feel satisfied in another rather simple way–there are no beggars on the streets, no noticeable mouths to be fed. I am guilty for believing that in this moment, ignorance is bliss. Back in Rome, the hungry and homeless await.

We gather with friends in the huge lookout square, trees dancing down into the horizon like flimsy monkey limbs. Just as a platform of light reaches its arms out into the sky, skimming the grass below, a sound becomes audible: a deep, ominous chanting from far away. It’s both sweet and harsh, like the first time I heard my piano teacher play a minor chord–ivory keys demonstrating that even some sadness can be beautiful.

It was the monks, humming soft but coherent prayers for peace. In the nearby hills, the sun rose higher.

‘Writers on Writing’: Reeti Roy on the ultimate goal–communication!

Alyssa — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:21:59 +0000

Reeti Roy is one of my favorite people I’ve met through writing & the web, and I am fascinated by her background and experiences living in India. She has been an incredibly engaged and active part of this “component” of my life; I once tweeted that I was struggling to edit a piece, and she immediately responded, asking if she could help or weigh in. It’s this kind of selflessness that makes her such a great writer, as someone who truly cares about her subjects and the world around her–not to mention the people who inhabit it. Here, Reeti reveals a haunting story that fueled her desire to write and the impossibility of total objectiveness.

Why did you begin writing and in what form?

I started writing when I was seven. I was reading “Anne Frank : The Diary of A Young Girl” at the time and I decided to write a journal like hers. I was always interested in biographical information and the fact that a girl only five years older than I was had died–and for no fault of hers–began to haunt me. My elder brother, who has always been interested in history and biographies, was the first person to tell me about the holocaust and its implications. I remember asking him why Jews were singled out and discriminated against (not the exact words of course, but using a seven year old’s vocabulary!) because it was unfathomable, even then, to realise why human beings would want to kill each other.

The other very significant incident that took place was the death of a boy called Ranjan. I didn’t know him very well, but I’d met him twice over the summer vacations. My grandparents and I had gone to Hetampur, where my grandmother grew up, so she could meet all her friends and relatives. I’d gotten bored playing ludo and carom all by myself indoors. To top it off, I was an anglicized city kid with little or no similarity to my village counterparts. Ranjan laughed at me when I said that I couldn’t climb trees. I remember not relating to him at all when we first met, but that summer we gradually grew to be friends. Later, when I was down with flu, he brought twenty four of his friends and played cricket in the garden so that I could watch from my window.Cricket was, and has always been, one of my foremost passions, and that’s when I realised that supercial boundaries created by socialisation need to be challenged.

A few years later when Hetampur was a distant memory, my grandmother told me how Ranjan had passed away. He had had leukaemia that had gone undetected. His sudden death came as a shock to me and I remember writing extensively about it in my journal. So journal-writing has always been my way of communicating with myself, and writing, by extension, has been one of the ways in which I communicate with the world.

Being an avid reader helped as well. I was reading writers like Roald Dahl, who was funny and caustic, and Noel Streatfield who said the simplest things in a very beautiful way. My current favourite authors have to be Salman Rushdie and Kazuo Ishiguro. Both writers are stylistically very different and yet both convey a sense of place, and of time. I’m still a novice when it comes to narrative technique, but I think both Rushdie and Ishiguro are fantastic writers to learn from because both are strikingly original and yet both writers are very conscious of what they write. Sylvia Plath and W.H. Auden are my favourite poets and while I don’t write very much poetry myself, I have often found myself being able to engage in confessional writing and I attribute it to my reading of and response to Plath. Auden is the shrine I pray to everyday.

How do you support yourself financially?

I’ve mostly supported myself through writing (which I’ve been doing professionally from the age of 18) and I’ve done a couple of youth leadership projects that have paid me well. I’ve done all kinds of writing–copywriting, internet writing, writing for small publications and big brand names in India (I’ve written for The Statesman, The Telegraph, The Times of India and a women’s glossy magazine called Femina as well as alternative weeklies. I also apply for as many grants as I can (and keep my fingers crossed so that I can win them).It also helps when I write for international publications because the currency rate is to my advantage ( I live in India).

What’s the strangest or most surprising thing you’ve ever written?

The weirdest thing I’ve ever written is a short story about an evil frog that controls the universe. I had a bizarre dream about it one night and jotted it all down on paper.

What’s the one resource or inspiration piece you couldn’t write without?

It would have to be a specific type of notebook with single spaced lines and margins. I cannot write in blank books! I cannot get a word out.

What’s one thing about writing you absolutely hate?

The one thing about writing that I absolutely hate is probably the cause of one of my biggest shortcomings when it comes to writing. I like to leave things open-ended when I am writing and I often find my friends and family asking me to clarify. In my attempt to leave things open-ended, I often fail to substantiate my claims thereby leaving room for misinterpretation and not consolidating my arguments or the point that I am trying to make.

What life lessons has writing taught you?

I wish I could say that writing has taught me to be patient, but it hasn’t. In fact, I am possibly the most impatient person I know. Writing has taught me to think critically, argue coherently, and present my version of the truth in the most transparent way possible.

As a journalist and someone who writes avidly about social justice, how do you provide balanced perspectives? What ethics do you use to ensure this occurs?

I don’t believe that there is such a thing as objectivity. You can try your best to be objective, but your race, your gender, your background, and your community will always play a part in your writing. I think subjectivity is inevitable, but I still think that “limited objectivity” ( if there can be limited objectivity) might be helpful as a journalist. When I say limited objectivity, I mean trying to weigh the pros and cons of both sides of the argument.

Reeti's precious pup!

What most propels your writing and why? (ex: travel, experience, thought, human interaction, politics, news, the environment)

There is no single propeller of my writing as such. I write almost everyday, and sometimes the writing stays shut in my diary. At other times, I send out pitches with abandon, feel elated for a couple of days, start panicking afterwards, and then force myself to produce articles on deadline. I like both kinds of writing–spontaneous writing as well as writing with a deadline. I disagree with people who say that you can’t be creative if you have a deadline.

Why do you think it’s important to share your writing with individuals from other countries? How are you able to fulfill this goal, and why are you committed to it?

I’ve always thought of writing to be an extension of myself. You will often hear professors and editors saying that it is your writing they are criticizing and not you. I’ve never dissociated myself from my writing and yet, I’m very detached from the decision making process as far as the editor or professor is concerned. If writing is an extension of me as a person, and I can deal with some people loving and admiring me and others loathing me, why can I not deal with a couple of rejections? That helps me to be completely detached from the decision making process.

I have very strong opinions when it comes to my writing but I will always listen to the editor when s/he decides to change bits of the story . I’m not saying that it’s 100 percent foolproof, but in my experience, eight times out of ten, the editor knows his/her publication better than I do.

Working with people from different countries helps me tap a new demographic and not the usual demographic I am used to writing for. It pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to come up with new and creative ways of communicating. And my goal has always been to communicate. It’s a long-term goal–and one I will strive towards and hopefully achieve it before my time is up!

Check out Reeti’s interview with me, posted here.

A list about twitter (a twist?)

Alyssa — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:42:30 +0000

I started writing a list–a list of the ways in which social media (and specifically twitter) can be helpful to professionals and job-hunters. Not to my surprise, I didn’t stop writing…for…a…very…long…time…

Check it out:

1.) Knowing social media makes you more marketable to employers; it did for my current job.

1a.) Because something such as twitter is so new to the scene, knowledge also shows you are willing to adjust with the times, take initiative, and learn new skills.

2.) Helps you meet contacts; You can get an “in” with a company you like by tweeting at them with thoughtful Q’s or feedback.

3.) Personal branding; people will know your interests and remember you – i.e. form of self-promotion. Writing that twitter bio forces you to condense who you are and how you will be percieved personally and professionally. Not a bad exercise in niche-development.

4.) Find out about job openings through word of mouth, marketing & promotion.

5.) Way to demonstrate professionalism, but also creativity, in a concrete venue that exists for the public.

6.) Digital is where the world is going – need to be tech saavy to get almost ANY job today.

7.) Freelance work – every industry is heading there… so even if you aren’t job searching, it’s a way to cultivate some more money or create an outlet to do what you enjoy.

8.) Conversation starter – bloggers love bloggers, tweeps love tweeps. Human relationships are what matters in the end, not paper or a computer screen, and this will help you find them.

9.) Open to any age - 2% of people over age 100 tweet. So why can’t you?

10.) Being directed towards innovative articles and advice – a classroom for learning that’s open 24/7.

11.) Forced to write concisely, and cutting away what’s unecessary in life is always gratifying.

12.) It can even be fun.

If you’re interested in social media and marketing, check out my cousin Toby Bloomberg’s new eBook “Social Media Marketing GPS.” It’s written based on interviews that occurred via twitter. Super cool and useful!

I’m sure you all have additions; write them in the comments sections, or share your anecdotes about how twitter has helped you in these ways!