Staff Spotlight: Julie Guerra

What do you write?

I write mostly non­fic­tion, usually short essays. 

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

I read Marc Hamer’s memoir How to Catch a Mole at the right time and the right place. The book felt like a reminder of how pow­er­ful the quiet, small things are, which I now try to find in my own writing.

Why did you choose Stonecoast for your MFA?

I only started con­sid­er­ing the Stonecoast MFA program while apply­ing to jobs, not grad schools. I had heard about it Stonecoast while study­ing cre­ative writing at UMF but being employed at USM in the Career & Employ­ment Hub made it pos­si­ble for me to pursue it.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

Return­ing for the second res­i­den­cy and seeing all of my peers and feeling like no time had passed since the last one. 

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I’m not sure yet. I guess that’s one of the things I love about writing: there are so many possibilities. 

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you

choose?

Amy Leach’s book, Things That Are, is full of the kind of essays I would love to be able to write someday. 

Excerpt from “Here Along the Way”

by Julie Guerra

“This is Francisco.”

The train lumbers forward, about to cross the Chicago River. Other pas­sen­gers sit nearby, although the train becomes emptier with each stop. Heads are down, hoods up against the cold, phones alight just like mine. My music plays through my head­phones over the dim roar of the train, estab­lish­ing an insub­stan­tial dis­tance between myself and the people whose reflec­tions I some­times catch the eyes of in the dark windows. We mirror each other.

And then sud­den­ly the lights go out and the train stops. Pale emer­gency lights illu­mi­nate our sil­hou­ettes as a voice comes over the inter­com: We’ve tem­porar­i­ly lost elec­tric­i­ty, should be moving again soon. Do not try to exit the train.

Outside the windows, there’s only dark­ness — nothing to exit into. For right now, this train car and the people within it are all there is. 

I turn off my music and let my head­phones dangle around my neck. I have ridden the trains count­less times since moving to Chicago, from my apart­ment to the the­atres and stores down­town, to the bak­eries a few blocks away. I know the way they rumble and jolt and lean a little too far to the side on a turn. This is new. 

I glance around, won­der­ing how many other people had expe­ri­enced this before and how many, like me, are blink­ing in the semi-dark­ness, sud­den­ly wide awake. A small, unde­fined part of me fills with the cer­tain­ty that I could turn to someone sitting close by and know who they were. I could say hello to them, like they were an old friend I haven’t seen in a while, and they would reply in kind.

“This is Tinley Park.”

Barely-there morning light drifts into the train com­part­ment. The con­duc­tor, the same one on this Metra line every morning, says hello to me as he shuf­fles down the aisle. I smile despite the early hour, say hello, raise my phone for him to check the ticket. He nods and moves to the next seat. 

It doesn’t take long for me to rec­og­nize him from this daily for­mal­i­ty, from a few seconds of eye contact and a smile. I start to expect him each morning, his round face and curly hair and gray uniform.

I don’t know if he rec­og­nizes me in return. There are so many people here on this train, in this city, it seems selfish to assume we expe­ri­ence this inter­ac­tion the same way — Well, I  know you, don’t you know me too? 

But the still-tired smiles make it easier to get through the day, through the week, through the months of this job I have taken on despite a commute that requires three trains and a bus. I look forward to it: this script that formed in tandem which we follow dili­gent­ly. And then, one morning, it changes. 

“Hello,” he says, as I stand by the doors, waiting for the train to stop. 

He says hello and then keeps talking, as if picking up the con­ver­sa­tion from before and I had simply for­got­ten that we had been speak­ing. The train con­tin­ues to move, grass and trees flash­ing by the windows, but there’s a certain still­ness to this space. A tran­si­to­ry room where I have to be still and wait to get anywhere.

I talk with the con­duc­tor that morning and learn that he does, in fact, rec­og­nize me. That I have become a cus­tom­ary face in his routine. I wonder at the version of myself that exists in his mind, the ver­sions of other people that I have built and taken along me. 

I don’t tell him that I won’t be taking the Metra again, exchang­ing it to carpool with a cowork­er. The con­ver­sa­tion doesn’t go on for that long.

“Do you go to school around here?” he asks me.

“No, I work in one of the office buildings.”

“Oh. I was think­ing of the vet­eri­nar­i­an school, a lot of people come this way for it.” 

The train comes to a stop at the plat­form. The doors grind open, and we’re both busy with the prospect of the long day ahead but I think I smile and say thank you as I hop down onto the brick.

The next day comes, and the train pulls out of the station without me. I wonder if he notices –– if he some­times thinks about where I’ve gone, if I’m doing alright; if maybe, occa­sion­al­ly, he looks for my face among the other faces passing through until, one day, he forgets.

“This is Belmont.”

Someone stands at the edge of the con­crete plat­form and smiles at someone stand­ing on the other side, going in the oppo­site direc­tion. Shouts some­thing at her and she tosses her head back, the sound of her laugh swept away.

The air above the tracks, the neg­a­tive space left by absent trains, doesn’t seem so empty; criss­crossed with con­nec­tions that will stretch between stops until they meet again. Or maybe they don’t. 

Shuf­fling my feet, I stare at the space where a train will appear in approx­i­mate­ly four minutes. Through that space I can see the people across from me, also waiting, and the bright lights of cars below and the pedes­tri­ans walking by. Maybe I’ve seen them before. Maybe some­where in the recess­es of my mind a part of me is smiling, and a part of someone else is smiling back. 

I take a step forward and lean over the edge to see if the train is perhaps just around the corner. At the oppo­site end of the plat­form, another not-yet pas­sen­ger does the same.

“This is Chicago and State.”

The train arrives with a gust of stale warm air. I pack myself in with my two com­pan­ions –– my room­mate and our cowork­er –– but they get shuf­fled down the car in the crush of people. Another train will be there is a few minutes but there’s a shared deter­mi­na­tion to make this train. 

We had spent an after­noon careen­ing from shop to shop and now we are return­ing to our apart­ments, bags full of new things to fill up the empty spaces that are becom­ing less and less empty. I bought a record of an artist I have never lis­tened to. I hold the stiff, vinyl circle in its square paper pack­ag­ing close to my chest. It cannot fit among all the people without being broken; I bend myself and hold my breath to accom­mo­date, con­form­ing to my surroundings. 

I stand a little too close to backs and faces as the train lurches forward. There’s no wall or pole to brace myself on so I rely on the col­lec­tive insta­bil­i­ty of the people around me. A stranger and I both look up at the same time, the con­stant jostling and read­just­ing of eye­lines making it dif­fi­cult not to make eye contact with anyone. Each trying so hard to avoid, one effort ends up negat­ing another.

“This is Grand and State.”

I get a new job, and a new commute wraps around my routine. It requires a trans­fer, a train ride down through neigh­bor­hoods and sky­scrap­ers. Even­tu­al­ly, we peel away from the other trains and descend. 

My stop is under­ground. Pas­sen­gers dis­em­bark with me, dis­pers­ing like water in river deltas through turn­stiles and stairs and others stay seated on the train or hold onto the poles and con­tin­ue trav­el­ing until they arrive some­where further along the line, each stop a start­ing point for some­thing else. 

We orbit the city, taking on new com­pan­ions for stretch­es of time before drift­ing away again, becom­ing smaller in the growing distance. 

I emerge from the crowded train and out onto a crowded street and the unin­ten­tion­al company is reas­sur­ing. Every­one is heading some­where else, but we’re here for now and it doesn’t feel lonely.

“This is Mer­chan­dise Mart.”

I forget I am in a city until the down­town skyline twists into view. Sitting on the hard plastic seats of the Brown Line, I main­tain a careful dis­tance from the smudged windows and watch the city form. Sky­scrap­ers and office build­ing seem to move with us, around us. The city exists in levels and move­ments and these glit­ter­ing things don’t look the same from the ground. 

Then sud­den­ly there’s this view, that one, right there, with the curving river and the red bridges and the razor-sharp line of ice-blue sky­scrap­ers. I stare at it like it’s the first time. It lies some­where between stops, know­able solely on the train, expe­ri­enced in motion and always swiftly dis­ap­pear­ing around a bend.

“This is —”

Some­times the announce­ment cuts off. It’s too early, we aren’t here yet. This is — still some­where, just in between, just not where I thought I would be. Not where I was, not where I’m going.

I am — 

I don’t know if I want to keep moving but I fall forward anyway, pulled along by the cur­rents and the train tracks, leaving pieces of myself in the eyes of strangers, picking up small things along the way.