Elysium

Pamela Stewart is a self-described “literary proctologist” and her writing often looks into places that people generally don’t want to lok. The stories in “Elysium” are about the difficulties of life we all encounter as human beings, the fragility of life -- the physical, mental, and spiritual challenges we must try to overcome. They are about ordinary people, characters searching for meaning. People are rescued, but not always in the way they hoped for or expected.

PAMELA STEWART lives in downtown Toronto. Her stories have been published in Ars Medica, Descant, Other Voices, subTerrain, and Rosebud. She took second place in the Toronto Star’s short story contest, and was short-listed in the 3-Day Novel Contest. Stewart is alsp a photographer and has had her photos exhibited at various venues, and published in a variety of magazines. She’s been involved in social activism and causes for social justice, in particular as a peace activist. She makes jewellery, and has her own business, Pamela’s Planet, with a portion of proceeds going to charity. She attends Quaker meetings, and is a breast cancer survivor.

Q&A with Pamela Stewart

This is your first foray into fiction. How did you come up with the idea for this work?

I was a private investigator for many years. I watched people who did not know they were being watched. So many people live lives of such routine, going to work, picking up kids at school, grocery shopping. I cannot tell you how many times I have followed someone to Walmart. I often worked in poor neighbourhoods. It broke my heart seeing people, especially children, living in these apartment buildings. I marvel at the strength of people in tough circumstances.

My work has also been coloured by my own life as a mother, for some years a single mother of two boys, and my health problems, living with breast cancer, fibromyalgia, arthritis and IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). You have to have a sense of humour to be a private investigator on surveillance, with IBS. I use humour in my work because laughter brings people together, and because many of my stories could be considered depressing, “not the Hollywood ending” kind of stories.

What was the creative process like for you?

I never have an outline. I just write. Not in any kind of order, it is all over the place and then just comes together. Some really short stories almost come to me whole. I wrote the stories at different times and sometimes work on more than one thing at a time.

I like to write an opening line that is different and will make people want to read the rest of it. Endings are the most difficult for me to write, although sometimes the ending comes to me first.

I have a terrible memory and if I have an idea and don’t write it down right away, I’ll lose it. I don’t write a lot of drafts because I will edit as I go.

Who did you read as a kid, and how did these first forays into reading fiction affect your sensibilities as a writer?

As a young girl, I read all the Nancy Drew books, which probably had an effect on me becoming a PI later in life. Nancy Drew brought girls together; we would trade and discuss them. I also read the Cherry Ames nurse books. It was inspiring to read about girls who were strong and independent and had dreams.

We lived in an apartment building where pets were not allowed but I read horse books, such as My Friend Flicka. The bookmobile came every week, and I always took out the maximum allowed books. Since I was kind of a loner and a morbid sort, I connected with Edgar Allan Poe's work. As a teen and young adult I read a lot of poetry. Reading saved me spiritually and literally.

One time, I was around 19; I was locked in a room at a house party with a big mean biker. I was trying to talk my way out. I had a book of poetry by Yevgeny Yevteshenko with me. He then confessed that he didn’t know how to read. I read to him. It had an effect on him; he stopped harassing me and listened. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true.

What are you reading right now?

The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle. This is her first novel. It also happens to involve horses and a young girl and it’s a wonderful book.


How and where do you write?

I write at home, on my computer, I don’t have a lap top and can’t type on one, so have to sit at a desk. I sometimes write by hand in notebooks. Sometimes I like to write until 3 in the morning. I am a scattered person, I prefer to say that I am good at multitasking, but the truth is that I have a mind that is always all over the place, so reining it in is probably the most difficult thing I have to do to write.

Do you write with a certain audience in mind? Who is your “ideal reader”?

Someone with an open mind or who wants to have an open mind. I am not an intellectual or an academic, I dropped out of school in grade 11 (It was the 60’s). I would like it if someone read my work and learned something, such as being more accepting of people. I would like it if it saved a little bit of a person the way reading did and does for me.

Name one person in your life who profoundly influenced your work, and why did you choose this person?

Barbara Gowdy. I took a writing course with her at Ryerson some years ago and she made me feel like I could be a writer. I came to it later in life. I wanted to be a writer when I was young, but was very sensitive to criticism and had no sense of self at that time, so I suppressed my desires. Becoming a mother gave me the courage to try new things. I have done so much more with my life. It is as if my sons gave me life, so I guess they are my biggest influence.

Who is your favourite protagonist in a work of fiction or poetry, and why?

Scout, the narrator and protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. She loves to read, and she is very curious. I love all the characters in that book, Atticus Finch, Boo Radley. I would like to see more good female characters in my age range: 55. Barbara Gowdy and Tom Walmsley write characters that are lost and struggling but in a much different way than the ones I write about.

I also really like Razovsky, who is the protagonist in a number of poems by Stuart Ross. Ross has a brilliant, funny, and bizarre mind. He also gives the most fabulous readings.

In your own work, which character are you most attached to, and why?

A girl named Luna who is a teenager and lives with her older gay brother and his lover. Her mother is dead and she did not know her father. I like her because I made her question everything, especially God. She values the things in people that some other people might be afraid of.

Tell us a little about the overarching theme of your work, and why you felt compelled to explore it.

I guess the main theme of my work is questioning God about why things are the way they are. I am interested in how our souls become corrupted by society, materialism and violence. How we deal with loss and death is something I’m really interested in exploring in my work.

From Elysium

From: Elysium & Other Stories by Pamela Stewart
Anvil Press, Spring 2008
ISBN: 1-89563-691-4

The doctor comes. Everyone leaves the room and he can’t tell how much time has passed, but it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The doctor leaves.

It is night because it is dark and Rose is in the bed. She wanted to sleep on the cot next to the bed but he wants her there even if it causes pain.

“Let me rest my head on you,” he says. “Oh, that’s your breastless side.”

“Breathless?” she feigns. “Yes. You still leave me breathless.”

“No. I mean...”

“I know. It was supposed to be the other way around,” she says. “I was supposed to go first.”

He touches his hand to the scar and around her remaining breast. “Thank God it wasn’t.”

“I am space and time encased in skin. I am. Don’t tell me I’m not,” he says when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

“I know you are.”

“Take off our clothes.”

She fumbles under the covers. It takes a long time.

Everything falls away. The one-night-stand he had when he was forty-five with a younger woman. He was out of town at a conference. Rose had not been feeling sexual for a while. Drinks, a stranger, a hotel room and he slipped. One time. He felt as if he had lost a part of himself with that woman and could never get it back. A strange strangling dark thing held him for days but he did not tell Rose. He did not come home with flowers. He was cold to her for a while as if he blamed her, and then one night she fell asleep in front of the television and he woke up alone in bed and realized how much he loved her. He went out to the living room and sat on the floor and looked at her face illuminated by the glow of a television preacher and then lifted her and carried her into bed.

The policeman at the door telling them their son had been killed in a car accident. The decision to divide his body as gifts to others who were dying.

The time he lost his job and didn’t tell her for two weeks. Dressing for work everyday and spending the day looking for a job then sitting at the library.

The month after their youngest daughter left home, and Rose checked into a motel because she didn’t know how to be anything except a mother, and he was neglecting her as a wife. A cheap motel, because she didn’t want to spend the money. She left him a note and told him she was okay so he wouldn’t think something bad had happened to her.

He still believes she had an affair but chose to forgive her. She was alone for three days and in that time watched television, knit him a sweater, and filled two notebooks with her fears about growing old and not knowing what to do with her life. When she came home, he took her to the Royal York. They had room service and champagne, though they couldn’t really afford it.
She holds him and listens to his breathing.

Then he falls away from her. His father and mother lay naked on the bed. He sits between them, eight months old.

The boy reaches for his father’s penis with his tiny hand. They laugh and his father picks the boy up and puts him in his crib. He watches them make love. He is inside his mother’s womb and his father holds her tight.

He is in God’s eye.

God looks down and he drops out like a tear. The tear lands on Rose’s face as she kisses him goodbye.

Stewart Blogs - #1

Writing is the easy part for me, compared to reading my work in public. I have long had a fear of public speaking. When I was a private investigator, I often had to testify in court. I would be a nervous wreck for weeks before, even though I knew that 99% of the time it was settled out of court and I would not have to testify.

I joined Toastmasters a few months ago to get help with this and it has really made a difference. I still get nervous, but it is getting better. Having to give a speech in front of the people in Toastmasters gave me confidence. A speech is even more difficult than reading from a book. So I am happy that the readings in Montreal and Toronto went so well for me.

Not that writing is easy. I used to write when I was on surveillance. I had hours of time alone and loved it. I would listen to the radio or write. Of course if you are going through something difficult in your life being alone all the time isn’t good because you end up just making yourself crazy. I didn’t like it as much when I left the road and went into management. I wasn’t used to spending 8 hours with people and no time to write during the day. I like people, I’m social, but I have always needed lots of alone time, even as a child. I grew up in an apartment. We had three bedrooms and I can’t believe how selfish I was, but I demanded that my younger two sisters and brother share a room, while I had my own bedroom. And I can’t believe my parents gave in to me. Maybe because no one wanted to share a room with me. I always wanted pets but we weren’t allowed to have a cat or dog in the building so I had hamsters or mice and they would run on their wheel at night. I also decorated my room in a manner that would deter others from wanting to share, for instance I had doll heads hanging from the ceiling and many stuffed animals which I would line up around the edges of the bed at night so that the thing under the bed couldn’t reach me. I still don’t feel comfortable with my legs or arms hanging over the bed even though I know that there could not be anything under there, for one thing, I use that space for storage so there is no way anyone or anything could fit.

I’ve always lived in my head, daydreaming, and at night I have many dreams and nightmares. Writing is good for me in that way: to connect with others and to get outside myself.

People are always saying to me that I should write about my life and all the things that have happened to me, but maybe I just don’t want to yet, I don’t know. I was always a private person, although that is changing now.

For instance, when Kulsum introduced me at the Toronto reading she mentioned something I had written about how you have to have a sense of humour to be a Private Investigator with IBS. For years I was embarrassed about having irritable bowel syndrome and didn’t want anyone to know, but obviously I had to let the people at work know I had it.

Imodium is my drug of choice, what can I say, it was the only way to get through the day stuck in a car on surveillance. Clients don’t want to hear that you lost the subject of the investigation because you had to leave to go to the washroom.

People at work would often make jokes about it but since I can be very self deprecating they thought it was okay and I realized that talking about it is better than the stress of hiding it because stress just makes it worse.

I have written about it, one of the stories in my book is about a woman with diarrhea. I don’t remember saying that thing in my bio about being a literary proctologist. That sounds so strange, maybe I did, I don’t know, I have a bad memory.

At the Toronto reading, Claudia Dey, who is incredibly sweet, when I told her how nervous I was giving readings said that she gets nervous, but we are all human. And all humans have to go to the bathroom, so why not write about it.

Stewart Blogs - #2

Here is what good writing should do: About a month ago I was reading the God of Animals by Aryn Kyle. I was on a crowded subway and nearing the end of the book. There was a heartbreaking scene (I won’t ruin the book for anyone by telling what it was). I wanted to burst out crying and had to really control myself. As it was, tears started to fall from my eyes and I thought maybe I should just stop reading and wait until I get home, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t care what people thought because I was in the story.

Another occasion where I was reading a book didn’t turn out so well. Years ago, when I was on surveillance, I had to watch someone who was working in a bar/restaurant. It was a tiny, really run down kind of place in Parkdale where only locals went. The kind of place where people really go for the cheap beer.

I knew I would have to sit in there for a number of hours, so I brought a book with me so I could pretend to read and no one would bother me. I could read and look up when the person I was watching came into view. I had a pinhole video camera and this person was working in the kitchen but would come out everyone once in a while.

I didn’t want to eat the food, that’s the kind of place it was, so I sat there with a beer and my book. This was in the afternoon and it was not dark, therefore reading would not be that unusual. I don’t even remember now what book it was. After about half an hour, someone pointed out to their friend, loudly, “Look, she’s reading a book,”

Everyone, about 12 or 15 people, looked over at me.

“Reading a book?”

It was unbelievable, like they had never seen a book before. Someone came over and asked me why I was reading and what it was. I knew it would be futile to try to explain it to them but I tried anyway. I finally had to leave because I didn’t want the person I was watching to become involved in this.

I felt sad. I mean the kind of people that were in there were mostly poor and alcoholic but still, to have that reaction. When I think about it now, I should have gone home and got a bunch of books and brought them back and left them there. Maybe someone would have read one.

Embarrassing things are always happening to me.

Just now I went out to get a coffee and a man standing on the street, very polite, said “Hello Madam.” I said hello. “You have a dog,” he said. I figured he had seen me before walking my dog, but then he pointed to my tee shirt which was covered in pet hair. One of my cats likes to sit on me when I am at the computer. My sisters always get on my case for looking like a bum. When I am at home I just wear tee shirts and old jeans. I live in a condo downtown and there are men coming and going all day in their suits and the women are all dressed fashionably, so it is true that I probably don’t fit in but I’m not working at a job right now and I like to be comfortable.

I haven’t worked (except for writing of course) in over 6 months because I had to have an operation on my feet and the pi agency I was with was not doing well, but I don’t want to go back to that occupation, even though I was good at it. I worked hard and was the first woman in Canada to receive the PCI, the Professional Certified Investigator certification. I’m just tired and fed up with the industry, but I don’t know what to do now to make money. I am collecting so- called employment insurance. They prodded me to apply for this course and said I could get EI for a year and keep all the money I made on top of that, but after many hours of putting together proposals and attending meetings where they said I would be an excellent candidate, another department of the government, the one that funds the course said I was too overqualified to be accepted and that I was doing way better than others in the program. And the fact that I had a book coming out meant I would not need their money.

I tried to explain to him that this is Canada and I am not Margaret Atwood and a first book of short stories published by a small press is not going to make me rich, but he didn’t believe me.

I’m pretty good at landing on my feet though, so I’m sure something will happen. When you are an investigator you don’t make a regular salary, but you do make very good money.

I’ve had some even stranger jobs in my life. One time, in my twenties, I was an elevator operator for an exclusive women’s store that used to be on Yonge St. It was one of those old fashioned manually operated elevators. There were only three floors. At each floor, I would announce: women’s evening wear, accessories, etc., but I didn’t always stop level with the floor and some of the women would trip and yell at me. They also said I was driving too fast. The woman who I replaced had been doing this job for over 10 years and finally got promoted to floor sales. I quit after 3 days.

I worked two summers as a tour guide taking people around the city in a horse and buggy. I lied when I told them I had horse experience; the closest I had come was reading horse books as a young girl. Still, it was easy, the horses were one step from the glue factory and pretty much knew the routes on their own. However occasionally they would get spooked by something and take off at a full gallop, whether there were tourists onboard or not. We also had to scoop their poop and it’s not like picking up after your dog.

Next, I had a job as the only waitress at a small restaurant. The boss was a very nice man who put up with my spilling coffee on the customers and forgetting orders and tried to show his faith in me by telling me he had to go out one day on an emergency and I was in charge of the kitchen. I told him I didn’t know how to cook, but he said just take simple orders, like hamburgers.

He came back to find me standing in the middle of the restaurant crying while a few regular customers consoled me and one was behind the counter cooking.

So, I am not afraid to try new things and it is always great for a writer to gain experience and meet people in areas they may not usually get involved in.