Solid Objects: Ursula Villarreal-Moura
Tayari Jones keeps a baby food jar of dirt on her desk from Toni Morrison’s hometown. CJ Hauser gifts her students a tiny plastic chicken to pull out whenever and wherever it’s time to write. Writing totems, talismans, amulets—we ascribe many names to the objects we keep close while we write. These objects inspire us, comfort us; they can prompt our productivity, make their way into our writing, or at the very least, serve as a dangling carrot to the world beyond our daily pages.
In Virginia Woolf’s short story, “Solid Objects” her main character grows enamored with a smooth piece of green glass he finds at the beach. “It pleased him; it puzzled him; it was so hard, so concentrated, so definite an object compared with the vague sea and the hazy shore.” The right object can be our own green glass; a raft when we’re treading the slippery shapes thoughts take.
In SOLID OBJECTS, we ask writers about the objects most essential to their creative practice, and what exactly these objects do for their brains.
This edition is written by Ursula Villarreal-Moura. Ursula’s latest book, Math for the Self-Crippling, is out now from Gold Line Press.
I like the smell of mystery. For me that means, white ginger and coconut milk, hinoki, or copal. Even though I grew up in a house that burned incense, I have always gravitated more to candles. As a teenager I had a fish-shaped candlestick holder made of azure glass.
In graduate school, I learned that a way to calm my psyche and tap into my creativity was to activate my olfactory receptors. Lighting candles throughout the day is how I punctuate time. I light them to aid in my sitting meditations, to ignite my writing imagination, and to signal the end of a workday. Each of these occasions warrants a different scent. The end of the day calls for black tea and cedar. Scents help organize my inner life.
For many years, I didn’t have a writing desk. Instead, I wrote on a coffee table in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment I shared with my husband. On a square wooden island, I lit candles and chipped away at essays, stories, and book-length manuscripts. It was a crowded space, but it housed my essentials.
Once I had a proper desk facing a window, establishing the right atmosphere was critical. I knew I needed the company of my grandparents and great-aunt, so tiny photos of them stand on my windowsill. In the first image, the red tube is my Fresh lip balm. Aside from candles, another part of my writing ritual involves applying color to my lips because it primes me to think I’m headed somewhere important. In a sense, writing is moving me closer to a destination, even if that place is metaphysical.
I prefer to write with two lit candles. In an attempt to fight symmetry, I often keep one candle in a bowl. This particular bowl was my welcome gift from Celadon Books, the publisher of my forthcoming novel Like Happiness. When I received it in the mail, it struck me as symbolic. The ceramic bowl felt like a proper invitation into a family, an initiation gift, one that would fit perfectly within my writing altar.
Another artifact on the windowsill is the tiny plastic brain given to me by the writer Katie Jean Shinkle. I’m obsessed with the human brain and more specifically with the mind, so it’s fitting that the item is part of my writing menagerie.
The last item is a stamp of my cat Selena. My best friend Miriam ordered me this item from China. The real-life Selena often spends time around me when I’m working at my desk. She’s become part of my psyche too, much like my great-aunt and grandparents. On a more superficial level, it’s fun to stamp her face on papers that come across my desk.
If you zoom out beyond my desk, you’ll glimpse my bookcases, which provides exterior inspiration. Roughly 400-500 books line the walls of my workspace. My private library contains hardcovers, paperbacks, out-of-print titles, first editions, childhood favorites, and books I’ve yet to read and fall in love with. The second image, snapped during golden hour, captures the holiness I feel in the presence of so many completed endeavors, so many masterpieces.
This arrangement of solid objects, both pocket-sized and large scale, serves as a visual meditation for me. It jumpstarts my ideas by evoking a mood. During rainy season, sitting at my desk often feels like a scene from a noir film. I can slip into any role, shift into any character. I become a detective and sleuth around my stories. The goal is always for the writing to surprise or delight me. Readers might never smell the white ginger encircling my desk, but if I align the cosmos just so on paper, they might glean a spark of mystery.
Ursula Villarreal-Moura was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of the story collection Math for the Self-Crippling (Gold Line Press, 2022) and the forthcoming novel Like Happiness (Celadon Books, 2024). Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Electric Literature, Story, Catapult, Tin House, and dozens of other venues.