• 2012 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow
  • Writing & editing in Brooklyn
  • INVENTORY is an attempt to catalog everything I own
  • More information: chelseahodson.com
  • chelseahodson@gmail.com
Inventory #127: Green beret ——-  REGARDING INTERROGATING A VILLAIN CH aims interrogation lamp in V’s face. V: I can read your mind, you know.CH: Oh yeah? What’s my name then?V: Chelsea Hodson.CH: How’d you know that?V: I already told you.CH: Is that why you did what you did?V: My soul is evil, and so was his when I was done with him.CH: Why did you put that man in danger?V: Because I couldn’t stop reading his mind.CH: What did his mind say?V: That he was going to be the star of the movie. CH turns off interrogation lamp and leaves V alone in the dark room.

Inventory #127: Green beret

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REGARDING INTERROGATING A VILLAIN

CH aims interrogation lamp in V’s face.

V: I can read your mind, you know.
CH: Oh yeah? What’s my name then?
V: Chelsea Hodson.
CH: How’d you know that?
V: I already told you.
CH: Is that why you did what you did?
V: My soul is evil, and so was his when I was done with him.
CH: Why did you put that man in danger?
V: Because I couldn’t stop reading his mind.
CH: What did his mind say?
V: That he was going to be the star of the movie.

CH turns off interrogation lamp and leaves V alone in the dark room.

Inventory #126: Cape ——- REGARDING BEING THE VILLAIN I wrote a screenplay, do you want to read it? I’m the star and writer and director. It’s based on a true story—my life. Here’s my elevator pitch: I put a man in danger and I will never change. Good, right? I hate when characters go on some complicated moral journey. That’s just not my life, you know? So my movie is one long climactic scene in which I am the villain, I am always the villain, and the man just keeps not getting saved.

Inventory #126: Cape

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REGARDING BEING THE VILLAIN

I wrote a screenplay, do you want to read it? I’m the star and writer and director. It’s based on a true story—my life. Here’s my elevator pitch: I put a man in danger and I will never change. Good, right? I hate when characters go on some complicated moral journey. That’s just not my life, you know? So my movie is one long climactic scene in which I am the villain, I am always the villain, and the man just keeps not getting saved.

Inventory #125: Razor ——- REGARDING BEING THE HERO I am the one with the super powers. I am the tallest man in the room. I am the man in the room. I remembered myself as a male hero, though I may have that wrong. I do not have fantastic recall, but I tell people I do so that they believe my stories, believe my moral judgment, believe me when I say I’m sorry, I must go save that man, he’s in danger.

Inventory #125: Razor

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REGARDING BEING THE HERO

I am the one with the super powers. I am the tallest man in the room. I am the man in the room. I remembered myself as a male hero, though I may have that wrong. I do not have fantastic recall, but I tell people I do so that they believe my stories, believe my moral judgment, believe me when I say I’m sorry, I must go save that man, he’s in danger.

Inventory #123: The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr ——- REGARDING OMISSION AS LIE “When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness.”

Inventory #123: The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr

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REGARDING OMISSION AS LIE

“When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness.”

Inventory #122: Forever stamps ——-  REGARDING LONG DISTANCE DIALOGUE When I was young, I had a pen pal on the other side of the country who sent me photos of her huge house. I wish you could come here, it’s sooo big. I dreamt of visiting her and running through her house that felt like a hotel. I imagined she had a canopy bed in the middle of a large room. But in the next letter she wrote, I’m sorry. That’s not my house. My house is small. I remember crying. We wrote letters for two years.

Inventory #122: Forever stamps

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REGARDING LONG DISTANCE DIALOGUE

When I was young, I had a pen pal on the other side of the country who sent me photos of her huge house. I wish you could come here, it’s sooo big. I dreamt of visiting her and running through her house that felt like a hotel. I imagined she had a canopy bed in the middle of a large room. But in the next letter she wrote, I’m sorry. That’s not my house. My house is small. I remember crying. We wrote letters for two years.

Inventory #121: Voice recorder ——- REGARDING TAKING NOTES “All my old friends. Gone to rest. It’s just that I couldn’t bear to lose them. Completely.” —Capote

Inventory #121: Voice recorder

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REGARDING TAKING NOTES

“All my old friends. Gone to rest. It’s just that I couldn’t bear to lose them. Completely.” —Capote

Inventory #120: Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote ——- REGARDING 95 PERCENT RECALL  I remember everything, a man said as he invented dialogue. 

Inventory #120: Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote

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REGARDING 95 PERCENT RECALL 

I remember everything, a man said as he invented dialogue. 

Inventory #119: Hair scissors ——- REGARDING BLACKNESS AS A BACKUP PLAN I have no use for you anymore, a girl said to the memory she’d written down.

Inventory #119: Hair scissors

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REGARDING BLACKNESS AS A BACKUP PLAN

I have no use for you anymore, a girl said to the memory she’d written down.

Inventory #117: Black scarf ——- REGARDING MEMORY AS BLACKNESS Memory is a cloak. Or there is a cloak over my memory. Or I have to wear the cloak to get to my memory. Or there the cloak melted into a moat guarding my memory. Or I swam through the black water and arrived at something that belonged to me.

Inventory #117: Black scarf

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REGARDING MEMORY AS BLACKNESS

Memory is a cloak. Or there is a cloak over my memory. Or I have to wear the cloak to get to my memory. Or there the cloak melted into a moat guarding my memory. Or I swam through the black water and arrived at something that belonged to me.

Inventory #116: Siste Viator by Sarah Manguso ——- REGARDING MEMORY AS PUBLIC RECORD  “Thanks to time Mastery of a form means something new each moment.”

Inventory #116: Siste Viator by Sarah Manguso

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REGARDING MEMORY AS PUBLIC RECORD 

“Thanks to time
Mastery of a form means something new each moment.”

Inventory #115: Record player ——-  REGARDING PUBLIC RECORD The first time I went to the courthouse for journalism class, I watched part of a murder trial in which a border patrol officer was claiming self-defense. His attorney presented a poster board with arrows cut and pasted to show all the different directions the bullets had gone into the desert. The border patrol officer said He was clenching a rock in his fists. The victim’s mother kept saying something in Spanish that I later found out from the court documents was But he was on his knees.

Inventory #115: Record player

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REGARDING PUBLIC RECORD

The first time I went to the courthouse for journalism class, I watched part of a murder trial in which a border patrol officer was claiming self-defense. His attorney presented a poster board with arrows cut and pasted to show all the different directions the bullets had gone into the desert. The border patrol officer said He was clenching a rock in his fists. The victim’s mother kept saying something in Spanish that I later found out from the court documents was But he was on his knees.

Inventory #113: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn ——- REGARDING TERRORISM AS HISTORY My algebra teacher was the only one without the television on after the towers fell. When prodded for a reason, he said What happened has nothing to do with math and began that day’s lesson. 

Inventory #113: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

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REGARDING TERRORISM AS HISTORY

My algebra teacher was the only one without the television on after the towers fell. When prodded for a reason, he said What happened has nothing to do with math and began that day’s lesson.