Storis of East - November 2010 Version REVISED

stories of east nasrin khosrowshahi
So I am sitting here again like so many days before and am typing away, I feel
tired or something, the window glass is dirty and dull, the sun is shining outside, but not
for me. Aha, this is a really sad sentence. I think it is funny how part of my keyboard is lit
by the sun from outside, and every time I type something it is as if I watch a symphony of
ever so subtle shades and light, it is as if I am watching a movie while I type my
thoughts, so on one hand I watch my fingers move and on the other hand I try to
rationalize. In the room beside this room is a class going on and they are very loud and
vocal, it is as if they are all talking at once, like twenty individuals at once, it is a
computer class and very interactive, not one lecture and everyone is silent, but they are
all groupworking. The noise of the air conditioner is muffled and continuous, it is still
January, 2008, I want to come here to the computer lab in the north building as much as I
can. For some weird reason my card was not deactivated, so I can use this lab, which
might not be immensely legit. Who cares, I will burn in hell, I guess, somewhere in the
future. I don’t really like that idea. I hate heat.
The door opens, someone entered the room next door. I am very bad at describing
the physical layout of something, even when I have to give directions, I start gesticulating
like wild. I wonder if I should look for a more important subject matter, tackling the big
issues of the day. No, i’d rather write about the one red rod on the other side of the street,
the one red line in a grey building. When I look up, everything is grey, everything except
for that one short red line. It is fascinating. Perception of vision, field of vision. This is
what fascinates me, until the day I die. The sights of this world. So much to see, so little
time. I walk through this world and everything around me changes constantly. I tilt my
head and the sights change, the forms and shapes around me are rearranged in a
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totally different way. The shapes contradict each other, there is one visual reality, you get
used to it and one second later it is erased and you have to face a completely different
reality. I used to be an animator, in a different lifetime, meticulously drawing motion,
capturing changing forms and shapes on paper. I used to hold a stack of 5 and a half
seconds in my hands and run with it to the south building and go up the elevator and put
it in my locker and then I used to take the bus home knowing that somewhere on
Granville Island there were five and a half seconds of time arranged on paper, a physical
form that one could touch. Image after image, stacked on each other, a three dimensional
object. Time captured on flats stacked into a bundle. Time made into space. Like magic.
Like a dream at night. Visual reality. I feel like crying. Am kind of pissed off that I never
held a real job. My friend the vet is a functioning part of society, I on the other hand
never made a dime in my life. Guess, that makes me a lower life form, like the worms on
the ground. Like an amoeba. Ok, I guess. Now it is time to go to the market and have
lunch. Wonder what the specials are today.
---
She walks by the lockers, uses her studentcard to get into the computerroom and
starts typing away. Someone is banging on the wall, every now and then, she feels tired
and dislocated. She would like to write a meaningful essay. About something. Something
artrelated. Maybe. She detests the word artist. She might have been an artist before
artschool, but she is not anymore. More a generalist, knowing little bits and parts about a
lot of different things. She knows stuff, she makes stuff, she goes to the market, looks out
at false creek, to the other side of false creek. She does that a lot, looking out at the other
side of false creek. Staring at false creek. That should be her major. Daydreaming while
looking out at the water, at the bridge, at the buildings that have a weird green bluish,
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turquoise, but not that turquoise tint. No red buildings. A city without red buildings.
Maybe the local building material is only blue stuffy-muffy, then again the library is red-
brown.
These are the things she analyzes, while listening to the overpowering air
conditioner in this computerlab. This is the more run-down computerlab, where people
write their essays. The nice computers are for making pictures and films, visual stuffi-
muffi. She ponders how many more times she can use the term stuffi-muffi, a kind of
suburban/ very white term. Very female term, maybe. Not necessarily very scholastic.
Shmeh. Why is the computerlab where people produce insightful renditions of analytical
discourse, old and filthy? People talk away and she cannot concentrate. They pierce her
thoughts and fragment her wording, her thoughtprocesses. She is not happy, but more in a
suspended, bored way. Tomorrow she will fly to Kingston. Which is no fun. Jetlag,
jetfear, fear of the jittering inside the plane, what if the cockpit bursts into fire. What if
the jet will dive down onto the prairies. Then all that will be left of her is this writing.
Someone talks on the phone, she does not understand the language. A drill is drilling
outside somewhere, reminiscent of a dentist office, her teeth start hurting. Her teeth hurt
and the airplane will fall out of the sky and she feels a cold coming up in her body, and it
is dark here, not really dark, but in a stale windowless depressingly fluorescent darkiness.
She makes up words to get away from her inarticulateness. Words that try to paint her
surroundings, document the moments here in the computerlab on the second floor of the
north building somewhere on Granville island. She sees herself years from now,
clutching some kind of prize for her prose, thanking some people, spitting on a
microphone. She puts her name on a book, that has a little “one” near her “Granville
island”, someone meticulously footnoted her text. She ponders if that would be fun. No.
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She’d rather kill herself, she’d rather run by the waters of false creek, she’d rather look
out at the blue turquoise buildings on the other side of the water. She used the word water
one too many times. She ends her writing. She scrambles for a coherent end to this. She
fails. If this was a film, it would end once the lights go on, when the credits have rolled.
With a text, you might try to put a dot on the page, but there is so much more to say.
About stuff. About water, dreams and houses on the other side. The words take her away
and kind of feed on each other. Scribbles on paper with dots in between. She’d rather
make a sculpture in the sculpture place, ceramics, pots and pans. Functional stuff. Not
necessary thoughts on paper. Maybe she’ll stand near the water and feed her essay to the
water, while seagulls screech over her head. Somewhere on Granville island. She will
submit this paper to the woo and see where it goes. If there is enough money in her
printing card. If, when, or something like that.
---
Sitting here in front of the monitor, my eyes are glazing over, there is hardly any
sun coming through the window, feel alienated and confused. And after this amount of
negativity poured down on the keyboard and gushed on paper, I feel suspended in time
while searching feverishly for colourful language, for something to say, for images put
into words, for visuals smushed into sentence after sentence after sentence, mindblowing,
minddeafening, numbing the existence of the reader to the core. Today is my day of
utilizing pathos and grand gestures, in order to cut into my very boring, very prosaic
existence. In order to give the staccato of banality a hiccup.
Vancouver is what it is, a city that crushes my aspirations. A city I love and long
for whenever I am away, I like the song of each and every street here, but I know that the
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city holds me mesmerized in its fangs. Everyday I find myself at the keyboard trying to
make sense of my surroundings.
The author ponders whether she likes the melodramatic tinge of her words, she
opts for going back to filmmaking, to building stuff with her bare hands. She listens to
the airconditioner like so many days before. Her main subject matter these days seems to
be the airconditioner, or better yet, all the different airconditioners in all the different
computerlabs all over town:vcc, ubc, the central library, the north building at the Emily
Carr institute. She scratches her life on paper in fast food joints around town, tries to
forge a coherent concept for some odd little animation, tries to jot down a plot for a play
that has not yet been imagined before. Futile endeavours.
Printing this out will be her next step, submitting stuff is how she fills her days. It
is all utterly depressing, very sisyphean. Each and every day she works in limbo, on
something, trying to capture some kind of moments. On paper. So very far from reality.
From life.
---
It is cold outside, rainy, a typical Yongestreet februarish day, toronto, at its best at
its worst, and she sits in the little cornerinternetcafe and types her ideas feverishly into
the computer. Spicegirls are singing a song from another era, something postziggyzag-ah,
she feels strangely at home here, though she is miles and miles away from home, she
feels strangely at peace, strangely contended, utter calm. She knows that she needs to
hammer on the tastature of a keyboard or put line after line on paper in order to say that
she has been on this planet, something has to stay long, long after she is gone. Ideas
partially sketched, partially conceived, strongly convoluted, but none the less ideas. She
glances outside at the neon sign that says Open 24 hours Internet Lounge, she looks out at
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the busy street, the lights, people rushing by, the urban, the city, she relishes the
hecticness, the primal fear of people, who are out now and afraid to go to sleep, because
they know they might miss something. She is old and she knows that her days are
numbered, but she tries to pack as much life as she can into the days she has left on this
earth. She would rather paint rather make films rather build buildings but there is no time
left. So she writes, gushes her thoughts onto paper, trying to get better with words one
day at a time. Like a basketballplayer shooting hoop after hoop after hoop until the body
itself takes over and throws the ball into the right curve and hurls it into the basket. Like
magic. She ponders how many people before her have described the same phenomenon
and how many will after her. Where does appropriation start, where does it end. She
misses art school, her funny, weird little raison d’etre. Her dreams of lines and shapes
that keep her up at night, her long, long walks that make her put motion on paper after
paper only to shoot a teeny tiny animation that will be mercilessly scrunched into pieces
by whoever has the power to grade her.
The wind outside blows, but it is toasty and warm inside here. The lady beside her
not only shares her music loudly, she sings with it. Utter entertainment, whereas the
person on her right is quiet, quiet, quiet, studious and researching. Someone walks behind
her, shuffeling to the back of the café. She ponders how to put the accents on the different
letters, but cannot find it, dreams, dreams. Today is Monday February 2008, somewhere
in Ontario, somewhere in Toronto. Vancouver is so very vary far away.
---
So she walked through the mushy, kind of icy, slightly slushy, snow and ice-
mixture on yonge street to her internetcafe and got all wet feet while crossing the street at
wellesley. It is a Wednesday morning, tomorrow she will be heading home, via viarail.
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She kept coming to this little place for the last week, diligently typing in her
observations, which was always just a mere minislice of her days. The grey keyboard
seems to be a constant in her otherwise hectic schedule, an oasis slicing into confusion,
into dislocation. Even the woman sitting next to her is the same as yesterday evening,
except for she now sits near the window. She seems to have by now planned out her
travel schedule, she is talking on the phone with a hotel near Washington square, any
Washington square. Cars rush by on yonge street, each and every car making a swishy
noise because of the slush on the street. She knows that she has to rush back to the hotel
in order to still do the laundry, in order to pack her belongings, then again, what is the
rush? She might use the subway again, head out to don mills, subwayseeing is so much
more fun than sightseeing and much less expensive, merely 2 bucks and 75 cents. I think
one can stay underground from six in the morning until twelve thirty at night. If one does
not leave the underground one can just drive around. Buildings are interesting too, but
living like a mole has its perks, too. A different world, not necessarily depressing.
Daylight, shmaylight.
She tries to figure out what to write about, she looks at the flower bouquet of the
person on her right. People talking loudly in Korean or at least that is what she assumes
they are speaking. It never even crossed her mind that they are not talking Korean.
This is a funny time, the news is awash with hillary versus obama, technically it
should be hillary versus barack, but the media seems to like to word it more melody-like,
more melodiously. She ponders if she should go home to vancouver and stash all her
musings of this year, the strong ones and the weak ones, and go out and hunt down a
publisher or whether she should blog it all or whether she should just let it rot in her
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nightstand, a book that never was and never will be, rotting like leaves and apples in fall,
changing color and becoming ultimately dust.
Cars rush by, making swishy sounds, the woman beside her answers her cell, she
is much more happy today, new york, here I come. I, on the other hand, will go back to
normal, back to vancouver, leaving behind adventure, novelty, the rush and excitement of
this city that was my home for less than a week, this internetcafe with the icy window,
the brickstone house on the other side of the street, people rushing by, funny
parkingstatues. I will miss it. I will.
---
So I am sitting here and the train is moving side to side, which makes it difficult
to write down my thoughts, because the writing surface is constantly moving, as I said,
from side to side. It is February 10, 2008, no, wait February 10 will be Sunday, when we
will reach Vancouver. At this time it is still Thursday. We left Union Station and are now
on our way to Sudbury. It is so beautiful outside, white, white, white. Breathtaking. Come
See Us- Venez Nous Voir says the poster that I can see from here. People around me go
either to Winnipeg or Edmonton, but there are 2 youngsters who also go to Vancouver. I
had an oatmeal raisin cookie for lunch. My life seems to stand still, I reminisce, ponder,
think, daydream.
Outside of the window, there are firs, thin, barren, like toys-soldiers. lots of trees
without leaves, the names of which I do not know, they’re all trees to me. The woman
beside me is embroidering, brown lines on beige surface, linebased drawings, and I
feverishly put black letters on white paper. I ponder, why there is such an urge for us to
inscribe surfaces, what will come of it. Someone will read this, it is as if I leave a
message for another creature to decipher. I feel utterly alone and it is a feeling I relish.
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Listening to my thoughts, putting them down on paper. There is a painting on the wall in
front of me, of trees. It is the image of what is going on outside, white winterland with
trees, stylized, barren.
I try to avoid human contact as much as I can, while I am on this train, not
because I do not like people but because I want to immerse myself in the experience of
floating through space, through time on this train. It is so utterly weird to sit in this box
made out of steel and basically shoot through nature. Outside, there is nothing human-
made, it is pure nature, the big outdoors. But I am sitting here in this totally man-made
environment, totally industrial cubicle, using a pen made somewhere in a plant,
scribbling away on a piece of paper that is made out of exactly the forest outside. Well,
you know what I mean, paper is made out of trees. Human ingenuity, not ingenuity that I
am responsible for. But the accumulation of human ideas, human cooperation and i am
merely using it, consuming it, observing it. Writing and drawing is all, that I am capable
of, but I kind of am ever so forcefully careening towards doing this day in and day out for
the rest of my life. When we will stop in Winnipeg I will send a postcard to kingston.
It is later in the afternoon and we passed a place called Parry Sound. Outside it is
still utterly white, with black sticks in it. We passed something which was the longest of
something, the longest in the world. Once home, I will google it to find out what longest
is there in Parry Sound. It has something to do with railroads. I feel hot and frustrated.
Sardinelike. I could walk around, but I’d rather finish writing this. It is hot in here and the
wall beside me is heated. Everything here is green. My suitcase, the coat in front of me,
the table I write on, the upholstery, the floor. Inside a green train I am going to
Vancouver. Time is standing still, I am not used to marathonsitting. Outside trees whoosh
by, while I am writing I can see them whoosh by Out of the corner of my eye. I have no
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watch but I know it is still Thursday. 2 more days to go. Sunday morning I will get into
Vancouver, take the bus up main, then along 49th and then down Arbutus. I will eat
something at McDonald’s and be home by noon. And then finally: Shower - Walking -
that kind of stuff. Internet - Checking up on who missed me, while I was away from
civilization, while I was careening thru the Canadian wilderness. While I was taking note
after note after note. Feverishly. Once again I try to put my writing into larger context,
vie for bigger issues, complex phenomena there to be discussed, messages to be shared
with the world, introspection that will advance the common good. But that is not my call!
I just observe, I merely put down what comes to my mind. No narrative – no story. A
house whooshes by, grey and yellow. Who lives in this wilderness, so very far away from
civilization. If I had to live like that, I’d die. My ears are burning, I put too many layers
on. I – I – I.
She looks at what she has written and knows that using the first person singular
again and again and again does not make for good writing.
Writing usually comes so very easy. Not today! Physical atrophy stifles the mind.
She feels sick. Trainsick. Too much hobbeling around. Luckily there are barfbags in
sight. They look like brown bags. Definitely not waterproof. I can take them like this, Fill
them up, so that they get all watered in and mushed down. Kind of gross.
---
It is later in the evening and we stopped 4 a while in a place named Capreole.
Seemed like in the middle of nowhere but it sure was not, because it is part of Greater
Sudbury and she said that it has so and so much inhabitants. I ran to send a postcard, but
it did not have a card that said Capreole and besides, I was supposed to have stamps. I
hope I can send a card from Winnipeg or from Edmonton or Kamloops. It is getting kind
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of dark I kind of prefer muffins and chips to a real sit down meal and maybe that is a
weird choice. I had cake though, a big English Bay cookie and a Donut in the morning. I
should have Tea now and a muffin. And after discussing all these very important issues I
think we start writing something a little bit more on the plausible side.
---
So she sits in the train bound for Vancouver, it is about six o’clock in the
afternoon, she feels kind of dizzy and elated at the same time. The train stopped for a
while in a place called Capreole or Capriol. Somewhere in the Greater Sudbury area. She
wonders how much longer she will be able to sit like this, reading, writing, drawing.
Daydreaming and putting her daydreams on paper. Preferably slightly on the coherent
side. Preferably with proper syntax. Preferably full of imaginative insights. And other
good things along those lines. She feels like vomiting, nausea creeping up her esophagus.
A really nice and friendly metaphor, this.
Outside, it is getting more boring by the minute. One tree, two tree, green tree,
blue tree. Somehow this car smells funny, like some perfume, some slightly disgusting
scent. The reflection of the lights of the interior of the car can be seen on the outside,
when she looks out the window. Her writing is ugly and very dilettante. Not good
enough. She cannot write without physical exertion beforehand. Without moving
beforehand the mind does not get enough blood and thus great literature is stifled, not
made, not existent at the end of the day. Her neck starts hurting. She will go and have a
hot tea, go to the lookout wagon and think about whether she wants to become an
animator or a writer. She knows, she is not good at any of those, but she does it anyways.
---
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It is kind of dark in the train that is heading towards Winnipeg and all the other
cities that will precede Vancouver, some individuals try to sleep, the person behind her is
chatting on the phone, she feels kind of alone and kind of at peace, a certain calmness, a
feeling of not being needed anywhere, a certain self-contendedness, a Globe and Mail
that is half -read and half -waiting to be read, she tries to decipher whether she should
write more and more down in order to finally find something new, something at the brink
of innovation to say, whether she should just plug away at writing, at editing, maybe, in
order to achieve something, anything. These are the days of Obama vs. Clinton, again and
again, on TV, this is a cold february in a country so far removed from her origins, in a
reality that is so much surreal and at the time so within the scope of a reality and realities
she is used to. She writes feverishly to address a sense of accomplishment, to conquer an
ever so slight feeling of alienation, of unbalance, of fear, fear of the dark and unknown
that is outside, the vast, white Canadian winter, the slight uneasiness of being at the
mercy of the elements. All of this is underscored by the constant noise of the train, the
constant motion to and fro, from left to right, by slight hunger pangs because today she
chose to sustain on cookies, donuts and chips and she does not want to change this now,
the lightreflections in the window are dizzying, as she watches her hand put word after
word on the page, blue line fragment after blue line fragment. She wonders, whether she
should change gears and write in Farsi to make it more interesting? She scribbles away,
while she has lost all sense of time. She scrambles for words, for sentences, hoping for
the best, trying to find how to say something meaningful. She wonders how much longer
she might be able to sing a song that is not concrete, at the border of poetry and narrative,
and she wonders if she will ever, ever be able to convey to any other living soul what she
set out to communicate. While hovering through Canada on a train that is made possible
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by the synchronization, the communication, hey, the abuse and exploitation of persons,
she ponders how to describe what she thinks, what she feels, at this moment, in this time.
She is exhausted by just looking at the pen moving over the paper. She finally
suddenly, abruptly stops. The train has come to a screeching halt. For now.
---
The staccato, the neverending, always present, though slightly muffled, slightly
static, ondulating staccato of the train engine, the motion, sickness inducing moving
forward towards a physical goal that seems to move further away, the more I know that I
am going nearer, Vancouver seems to grow further and further away, the more I
rationally know that I am getting nearer. Because we are somewhere on our way to
Winnipeg, somewhere far away from Union station - still the stagnation in space, in time
is very real. I am here in this Metalbox cooped up with total strangers, outside of the
window it is nothing but tree after tree after tree, snow and trees, white and black, hardly
any change, same image again and again, boredom that can be cut with a knife, boredom
to the ‘nth. degree, imprisoned in this eternal moving forward, trying to submerge the
restlessness inside. I feel utterly disempowered, having no way out, feel incarcerated,
imprisoned like an animal in a cage, trying to find some kind of diversion, where there is
none, only desperate waiting, suspended in time, outside I saw a railwayworker, who
seems to be the utter symbol of freedom, he can breathe fresh air, walk where he feels
like, so this is how claustrophobia feels like. I am so utterly bored. So very, very utterly
bored. On the train from Tdot to vancouver. February 2008.
---
Logging in minute after minute in trying to draw a perfect title page meets poster
for a short animation about a cat but each and every sketch basically does not go
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anywhere. She is weary about how to approach the subject or maybe just not approach it
at all and let go because the results of her forays into illustration are just plain
disappointing. Drawing is like playing an instrument. One has to do it over and over
again. She looks out the window: same old, same old. trees and winter – somewhere
between sioux falls and winnipeg – the train hobbles along – Oh look some yellow
houses in the distance and once again white and a red house, she tries to write on a
moving train which is quite an undertaking. She is hungry – sleepy and utterly, utterly
bored.
---
Somewhere in Saskatchewan or maybe already in Alberta, the white field that
stretches to the horizon opens itself up to a new morning, a new day. The train tuckers
along towards Vancouver, it is not bright yet, still part night, not yet day. Somewhere in
between. A trainride in this age of superfast moving, a more expensive way of getting
around, a much much slower way. And yet, a hundred years ago or so this was the
epitome of fastness, the scary superelegant speedy trek through a country so very new or
so very old, depending of who you are, first nation or someone from the other side of the
pond. She feels compelled to write down whatever comes to her mind trying to capture
the moment in words as if that is possible. Photo, Film, recording sounds might be more
accurate than using word after word to document the feel of this long journey from East
to West. The players of this trip change constantly, but what remains is the feverish,
bullish tugging forward towards the physical endgoal. She looks out the window, thin
trees, this is what she imagines the prairies to look like. flat, utter flatness until the land
meets the horizon. Nothing to obstruct the view, endless, endless possibilities. A blank
canvass, Put cities in it, take it away. A sanddesert, a snowdesert. a refinery, different
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from the refineries in the old country. Or maybe the same. smouldering within a flat
surface. It is so very poetic, and now a slight snowstorm started, only to be left behind
while moving forward. Silence, no one speaks. People merely stare out the window,
mesmerized. This is so very surreal, so very far away from our daily lives. A Subway
sign, a motel, a ghostly town. Who lives here? Golden Arches – U – Haul familiarity. She
longs for something. Not love. Not lust. More like pragmatic answers to dreams,
resolution of answers, miraculous dissolve of unanswerable questions, quiet going away
of multifaceted problems, the dissolve of questions that blow away like sand, that melt
into the distance, that miraculously vanish into the distance. Like sleep, like letter after
letter scrambled down on paper. It is february 9th, 2008. She slightly remembers that.
Everything gets slightly lighter, brighter. The day begins. Another day on the train. Inside
looking outside. moving relentlessly forward. She is lost in her thoughts, dreams and
follows her writing. She tries to inject meaning into her words, narrative, but still she
knows that there is no narrative, only endless, endless scribbles on paper, the song of the
train, that sings to her, talks to her, the white landscape, the sand blowing, the steam
rushing by, the barren treestumps, the brown black fences someone put up here in this
land of loneliness and destitute, a nature impermeable, that just is, does not talk back.
Someone said that buildings have a mystery that cannot be dissolved, same here: what is
going on outside the trainwindow is so very, very closeknit. She is in awe and tries to not
lose her mind. But it is a close call. She thinks of Carlos Castaneda, mescaline, stuff she
would never touch, never in a million years. Her sanity is much too precious to her, much
too fragile to be tinkered with. Feverishly she puts down word after word to make sense
of what is going on around her. She always uses the English language, not necessarily by
choice, but out of necessity. This is where she lives and/or quasi functions. She ponders
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how much longer she might be able to write like this, when will the day come that she
will not be able to hold a pen and write. And draw. There are still so many, many
animations to be drawn, so many theories to be plucked apart, so much to learn. So very
much to see. So very, very much to deduce. The snow will melt away but this train will
go to and fro through the seasons. She starts dreaming while looking out the window,
longing for more concrete info, more palpable “stuff” to engage with. Thursday
morning’s Globe is tucked away in front of her, in the bin near her suitcase, Thursday’s
news on Saturday morning. Obama versus Clinton and things like that. Autoworkers laid
off. News of the world, things that she maybe should know. Current events that have
nothing to do with her.
So she approaches Edmonton now. In the middle of the night she woke up and
saw that they were in Saskatoon. But now the train will reach Edmonton in half an hour.
Somewhere in Alberta. In Canada. On February 9 th. In 2008. She lives in Canada now
for so many, many years but she never ever took the train cross-country. It is exciting, I
guess. People near me are talking but it is totally irrelevant to me. The engineer just
talked on the loudspeaker and said that because outside it is minus 40 degrees, the train
has to go slowly, 35 – 40 km per hour. There are numerous indicators along the way that
show the temperature which makes me wonder what he exactly means. I think it are those
colourful thingies that change color according to the temperature. I am very very toasty
warm here inside and write away. However, I will now proceed to write more frugally,
not double-spaced and in small letters, because I am running out of paper, which will be a
problem later on. It is so very beautiful outside, white, very very white. Bordering on
kitschy. I could do this until the rest of my life, like a hobo. Trainspotting, traindriving.
How romantic, utterly romantic. So very Jack Londonish. White plains, sticks in the air.
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Weird western movies that glorify white guys. How very exotic. For me. I am everything
but a white guy. So that is what they are: exotic creatures from a faraway place. female
gaze, that kind of stuff. Whatever. Who cares. We are all in this together sharing our
common inhumanity. A pun. Funny, huh? The train numbs my perception, my
willingness to explore different avenues of thought. I rehash what I thought before in 52
years.
---
What goes on outside of this window, reminds her of Dr. Zhivago, travelling through
Siberia or some other kind of white cold Tundra. Not that she knows the difference
between Tundra and Taiga. Turku that sounds cold, somewhere in Finland. Everything
outside is so very, very white. Like paper waiting to be inscribed. With plans for
buildings and bridges. Poetry suspended in midair. In the end, the only thing left for her
is this pen, this paper. Her dilettante thoughts put down on paper. Thoughts that pass by
like the wind, teeter for a second only to be taken away and been substituted by the next
thought. Like image after image after image passing her by, while she shoots through the
wilderness. On the train. She ponders, whether shooting thru nature on a train is even
accurate nowadays. And a hundred years from now. Will a jetplane be the ultimate
nostalgic trope. She ponders, about the stagnation of this train place, no motion
whatsoever, people sitting still while the world flies by. Observing, waiting. Waiting for
the next city to arrive. Edmonton, Jaspers, Banff, Kamloops, Vancouver. Maybe not
exactly in this order. Green houses fly by, a red pick-up truck A yellow box. Some place
I’ve never heard of. Small and white. Wainwright. in native land. Little houses in front of
a big house. Bisons, stampede, Alberta. Non-defying the stereotype. It is warm here, hot
and my dreams fly away. Or maybe, stagnate. Once in Edmonton, I have to buy another
17
binder, another notebook. To chart my thoughts, to jot down observations to listen to
what goes on in my brain and put it down on paper. And edit it. Trying not to see what is
going on around me. The little girl thinking where she should go, break with tradition and
forge a new life or should she stagnate and do what her foremothers have done. She will
not, no one does. We all will forge our own identities in any way we like, anyway, we see
suitable. Any way that our existence dictates. The road goes to Edmonton - and so much
further. What does that exactly mean? Insightful thoughts might eventually dictate
actions by the writer and to the writer that will be irreversible. She is hungry. Her watch
is standing still while she tries to make sense of what is going on around her.
---
So our train is really going slow although it is fair to say that it is going a little bit
faster now. I am not quite sure why the outside temperature forces the train to go slower,
after all planes whoosh through ice-cold temperatures. Must be because of the friction
with the ground. Or something else. I can google it and maybe I will. At this time I feel I
am totally outgoogled. I’d rather make some money. The perogylady on Granville Island
said: Come 9 dollars per hour. Which means being on your feet for @ least 4 hours. We
can do that. All the other persons in that stand are seniorcitizens. Seniorcitizens rock.
Yeah for old people. Says the 52-yr old woman. Maybe I should try small talk. I think
that is not my style. No-talk- neither small nor large. Outside everything is white as I
mentioned beforehand. Edmonton, here I come. Edmonton, home to the West-Edmonton-
Mall. Maybe I should stay here and look around. What about the ticket? It will expire.
Sorry, Mall, you have to do without me. I should write a well-researched paper. About
Upholstery on trains. Ask the ID-students about their input. Industrial design just one of
the many wonders offered @ the emily carr institute. Where I turned into a fossil of an art
18
student. Willingly. Loving any minute of it. Doing time. A Four-year program in eight
years. Why not? No tangible result whatsoever. Well, except for a messy basementroom
filled to the brink with, well, stuff. One day I will take inventory and curate my own
show(s). There are @ least a hundred exhibitions down there, waiting to be submitted.
But why? What for? How much money will there be generated? Will it make me break
even with the cost of this art school (ad) venture. 12 000 bucks to be retrieved. I’ll pick
up a sandwich once we have reached Edmonton. And speed to buy a postcard and send it.
Where is the address?
---
So now we are waiting the day away @ the edmonton railstation all ready to go
but we have to wait. It is all chatter, chatter around here, the quiet people left and the
vocal ones came. It is not that I care. The station here is outside of the city. I can see the
cityscape from here, a generic North American city or so my British Photomodel said. I
try to write as much as I can but I am running out of paper. and I used up all the pens I
had and my drawings could be slightly more on the aesthetically pleasing side. So
everyone is talking, which is really nice, it gives the illusion of community which is
always nice. I lost my favourite pen, somewhere in my purse and have to push this one
down extra hard. I like this station and we are still waiting, waiting, waiting. And I try to
write something good but, hey, it does not seem to be my day. The brain has turned to
mush which is ok. quantity over quality until quality kicks in automatically. I have to go
home and start typing this in and it will automatically turn out into something reasonable.
Out of the corner of my eyes I can see car after car move, flags fly in the wind and the
weather seems to get colder by the minute. People are opening, maybe, chewing gum,
chocolate chips, something of that kind. Some car is splashing salt on the snow. It is still
19
february 9/08. and I am trying to write as much as I can. The car is full of loud people
who do not think much of shyness. As I said before, the shy ones left, the loud ones
came. And we are going to Jaspers. I have nothing more to say, which is not exactly very
good. My career as a writer will never take off, neither will the one as an animator. No
discrimination here. I will go for illustration at Risd. Or something. My pen should be
somewhere, this pen doesn’t do it. Observations, observations. I am bored to death by my
own observations, which are trivial at best. cars are rushing by, and my hands seem to
have age spots right now. They look so very, very old, wrinkled and agespotted. Maybe
they can pass as freckles, but no they are very old and very worked through, which is
funny, because I am a master at avoiding manual labour. But I have really spotted hands,
and I kind of like that. It shows that I have lived. And I have lived for a long time, seen it
all, heard it all and, well, something along those lines of acquired wisdom, intelligence in
flux, certain entitlement to being seated with the grown-ups, maybe even allowed to stay
up after midnight. My oh so favourite prof. accused me of arrested development and then
gave me an F. Nice guy and I mean that sarcastically. You know who you are. But, hey, I
still learned an immense amount of stuff and, if push comes to shove, that is what we are
vying here for. Grades might not be that important after all even my twenty year old
fellow student said that, very wisely, very convincingly.
Trees outside are so fascinating, no leaves whatsoever. I am feeling kind of
hungry and I should go and have chips. I forgot to get money from the bankmachine.
Today we will go to Jaspers and Kamloops.
---
and @ this point she is bored out of her wits, bored senselessly, her teeth ache,
stagnation is taking its toll, She will try to keep busy somewhere here in the Canadian
20
tundra on board with individuals she has nothing in common with, Exasperated by the
cold outside, by the train that is inching forward, for days and weeks and months to
come. Outside it is minus 40 degrees, the train is not halting and she ponders how much
longer she can take this incarceration. She tries to keep busy by taking note after note, she
kills time by sketching four different versions of a sketch for an animation poster, One
worse than the next, none good enough, but in the end the lines should be able to fashion
a good enough design. Maybe that will be her gradproject a lot of good enough sketches
– good enough being just that: good enough, nothing great, nothing mindboggling,
nothing that makes your breath stop, just good ol’ mediocre work, done before a thousand
times. drawings, writings, stuff like that, nothing phenomenal as of yet, mediocracy at its
best, dreams carved in ballpen, whatever that means.
---
it is a balmy february morning in Kamloops – fresh- new she feels happy that they
made it thru the night – talked too much – sat too much – laughed much too much. The
halting of the train scared the living shit out of her. She felt dislocated, was at one time
grabbing her chest - Vied for better eating habits, better exercise habits - this is when
people get massive heart attacks – coronaries – 52 is quite an age – stuff happens – She
panics easily on a train – on a plane – in a car - Easily mortified – easily amused –
Outside Kamloops is like batter lights stretching upon a hill, love the okanagan - I was
here 13 years ago – Did not get much further yet- Or did I – wrote too much , but still not
enough, drew the day away, but wished for more, left year after year behind me, grew old
and grey, but am still hoping to achieve so much, being lost half of the time and found
most of the time, try to build things and draw things, put lines on paper with a vengeance
– the train takes me to vancity where i belong a little bit - where i live in a gorgeous
21
house on a gorgeous street, where all my memories lie in boxes – where every room talks
to me - where outside of the house the streets, - oh, what crappy bullshit can one person
write – sentence after sentence after sentence. i ran out to north kamloops railway station
to find a postcard to send to ontario, but there was none. Opened the light – switched the
light on – started writing only to be baffled by the propensity of not being able to
articulate all the thoughts that spring to mind. Feelings of loss – of instant camaraderie –
of social awkwardness – of bonding and fear of strangers – This notebook was my
companion for all these days on the train, and what a dense experience it was – all by
myself in a snowy desert between Toronto and Vancouver – it was quite an adventure
with people who talked too much and others who talked too little, With the constant noise
of the train, her own reflection in the glass of the window writing up a storm – the
woman I guess asked me for pen and paper but this is the last page I have left. So i guess
I was rude like always – the train forges its way through the night. I miss everyone and i
feel lonesome or something trying to figure out how to do this and anything I will catch
the bus on main and go up to 49 th. then take 49 th. and go to arbutus and finally reach
my own piece of heaven – the adventure will be finished but I can unpack – wash up –
bathe and check e-mails – my life – go to ubc, have pizza –try to make sense of all all this
and try to edit this journal in a cohesive manner.
---
So now I got all my food @ once and it should be enough until tomorrow, chips,
muffins and a lot of water, because that is what one needs. Though I think I got a little bit
too much. I got a supply, because I used my visa card and he did not have a printout, so I
basically got a supply of junkfood, though I had cookies etc. already, chips, cookies, and
a muffin, so the sandwich is really a tad too much, but I cannot really leave it here. So I
22
let it warm up here and later on, I will eat it. I met a lady from Upstate New York, who
was born in HH, and she is 15 years older than me, which makes her 68 years old but she
is very, very well preserved. Would be nice, if I would be like that once I am 68 years
old. I should eat my sandwich but it is still icy. Outside the firs fly by and it is really fun
here.
---
so basically we are getting closer and closer to jaspers which is so very nice and
nice and nice, it is nice here on the train and nice is not exactly how each sentence should
start and end. I am sitting here and writing feverishly putting word after word after word
on paper. I wrote much too much, i drew much too much, sat too much and moved too
little, ate too much and am utterly exhausted, I need fresh air and some sanity, that is hard
to get by these days when you are cooped up on a train and heading west. The train
wobbles through this boring Winterwonderland and I miss everyone I ever knew, loved
ones, hated ones, sweet innocent creatures that I met in this life here on this planet, I feel
utterly alone, as if I am the only one on this planet – a stranger laughs hysterically - hey –
there she goes again – this is a serious world, lady, stop laughing. I am so very much in
love, I miss you, what a crappy sentence but I still miss you. a train goes by followed by
others. These are serious and important sentences jotted down by an important person:
Moi. When will this journey ever end? This takes too long, I need a shower. Hygiene is
overrated. Tomorrow @ this time I will be washed and bathed. Better then sitting here
and write stupidity on paper. My shoes are black. My socks are red. This looks like a
poem. Or does it? I used to write brilliantly. In another lifetime. How can you write
brilliantly, when u are on a train heading towards vancouver? You can’t. Eloquence is
far, far away from the girl sitting on a cold train, sorry, toasty train headed towards
23
vancity on a cold and icy february night, far away from family + friends, surrounded by
strangers from all over the world, an instant community of total strangers, because that is
what we are. I should have flown, or is it flewn. Why is this stupid train halting again.
Go, Mr. Viarail or Ms. Viarail. Do not stop. Go, go, go.
---
so she is sitting on the train for four days in a row, outside the majestic nature
view is breathtaking, mountains overtowering us mere mortals, the mountain, and the
valley and the canyon, the river below is so utterly smushing me in size. I can’t help but
gasp, not only trying to inhale every inch with my eyes, but trying to kind of swallow it,
penetrate the mystery, the beauty I am travelling through. The mountains made me
speechless, making me halt in utter admiration, gust and wind and fog coming up and
breezing through the top of the mountain, I wonder if I like to go to the Lookout car or if
I’d rather see it here by myself, where it is not trivialized by idle chatter. It is still
february 10, 2008 here looking at the thompson river in British Columbia, Canada. It is in
the morning, maybe tenish, though I have no watch, slight overcast. Maybe taking
pictures or slides would render a more accurate depiction. of what I see, but I tend to jot
down what I see more so than take pictures that represent the exact view of what I see.
Spectacular, monumental, all words that are overused, clichés that are garnered, and me
trying to find my own voice to depict my perception, to show what I perceive, what I can
see, what I can feel, while my body is ever so slightly thrown from side to side, on this
train. The siren is tooted, once or twice. The humming of the air conditioner is not seizing
to muffle my senses, The landscape is very dark green, tree after tree after tree on the
mountains, color of earth, slight traces of snow, but not overwhelming, Compared to
24
Ontario it is fir after fir, standing proudly, not barren in a non-tree like manner. I can still
write choosing the words that make you see what I am seeing here.
---
From here, I can see the fog lurking through the treetops, and now my eyes are
not able to see further, the reflection in the water is too harsh, too blinding, but then the
train moves forward and the clouds are mushy over the boreal forest, hovering over the
edges of the trees, permeating the sharpness of the needles and softening the image, the
river glistens and she wonders what other words she can use to describe this. People walk
by her to use the bathroom, the wheels collide with the traintracks, the train jaunts
slightly and then continues in its steady pace. She longs for sleep, food, shelter, she
knows she could add the description of a face into the mix, describing eros, but she’d
rather describe the grey box she just passed, something industrial, architectural, useful
thus so more fascinating . A bridge passes by, a line on stilts. and once again a myriad of
trees. She has not taken a shower for the last 4 days, but neither has anyone else. She
forged her way through Canada, cross-country, her mind getting numb, her writing
getting dumb, she perceives her motionless sitting down a stifling, the ultimate epitome
of passivity, too much signs of CP Rail, too much Via Rail, the life of a Hobo, for 600
bucks – what a steal. Romanticized clichés, graffiti on train cars. She waved @ the
conductor of the other train, he waved back – so very primal, like 2 year olds, postal gare
–hell’s gate is coming up. ahh.
---
she has to write so many more passages about stories catapulting other stories
upon each other, like the pile of scrapped cars that she saw on the way, she hovers here in
her private seat and avoids the communality of the common room, stifled by the advent
25
of total strangers and interacting with them. She prefers to sit here in peace, not in the
lookout where she will be forced to talk to other persons. These voyages have rendered
her antisocial, she vies for her own little piece of land, peaceful retreat, looking out at
nature, not the complexity of talking to people, whom she fears, whom she might have to
put into place, which is always a tad too difficult, a tad too trying, she prefers om-ness
right now, meditation, listening to the visual sounds of her environment, taking in
spectacular views, trying to figure out, what other words to use instead of spectacular,
looking out @ the oversized pebbles on the banks of the fraser river.
she still has paper to fill diligently with words, but the more she writes, the worse
her writing gets, lacking punch, lacking freshness, being tired and used-up, the words
elude her and she ponders how to regain the ability to paint with words.
---
Finally, so back home, so very much surrounded by familiarity, so pemberton, bc,
whistler, this is where my roots are now, where the grass says home, the baseball field
says B.C. this is so extremely non-strange, so very much a sight of being accustomed to,
the fences, paint on the houses, so utterly lovely, so utterly my place on this planet, where
i will, should, will never leave, I am not from here, but this place has so utterly infused
my every part, to my bones, my skin crawls and i feel like crying, i so very much missed
you! Hey, why not, if you’d sit this long, you’d be sentimental, too. I am elated to be
back, what happened, while I was away in exotic shores? Tell me, city of vancouver. And
could I be anymore of a supercrappy writer? No, most possibly not! Oh, and still
counting february 10, 2008. And Cupe in the Valley welcomes You. Nice to hear the
word Cupe, to see and smell it again. Not homeless and dislocated anymore, Homeful,
26
Located, Very much at calm. Belonging makes me hold my head higher. At ease. At last.
Boy, do I resent travelling!
---
She is now sitting in the vcc library and starts her stare @ the “Computers are for
VCC STUDENTS & EMPLOYEES ONLY.” sticker. Not that she cares. Not that she
should care. Should she? In a litigious society maybe she is ever so slightly pushing the
boundaries of acceptable behaviour? She starts averting her stare from the sticker and
starts staring @ the person staring @ the computer screen. Person leaves. This is not
good. Not a good start 4 her book. She tries to figure out how to put her words into order,
slouching sentences that override her crisp and eloquent lingo. She ponders if she should
write en Anglais, given that it is not her first language, as if it matters. As if anything
matters. The pastry place upstairs should be open. It is icy here, it is always icy here. She
has to send a letter to siat and ask about whether they have a place to accommodate her
research interest. They should. She feels much too shy, but she knows she will do it
anyways. The Vancouver Sun behind her says TRANSIT PLAN UNVEILED. That is
nice. It is really cold here. People walk around this place, getting ready 4 class. It is 8:54
or 8:59. it is a January day in Vancouver, bc, Canada. 2007, no, 2008. a morning. She
could not take a course in art school. She got an F and is on academic probation. She took
a semester off. She prefers to write anyways. Who wants to be an animator?
Her storyline is incoherent, which is fine. It is really, really icy here, the air-
conditioning is blowing on her back and crawls down her spine. She laughs to herself,
how can an air conditioner crawl down a spine. This is funny. Or not. What if her writing
will be as merciless hacked into pieces as her visual stuff. You never take a stand. That
was what her prof said. You are a coward. So? She ponders if he will read this and be
27
offended once again. He is much too easily offended. Spiks and spans, no sticks and
stones. And all things nice. She remembers the time when she and kuniko were laughing
about how they were mastering the English language by mingling their differing
expertises in scholarly English and monkey bar English.
It is cold, icy, and she is falling asleep. She slept maybe 2 hours. That is nice. She
is feeling sick. She should check her email. She wants to write a long, long book. Like
war and peace. Like the brothers karamazoff. Like a cookbook. A pastry person is
walking around in this place. It is so utterly cold here. Her little purse is pink. She
smushes one random sentence onto the next. Maybe she should vie for artfully
constructing a plot. A love story. Love stories are always good. She smiles. Love stories
rock. They are the best. The world will always welcome lovers. That is so wrong.
Entrance to the world has a big sign nailed on it that goes like this: “LOVERS MAY
NOT APPLY”. No serree bob, lovers will not make it in this world.
So, love stories are out. Political stuff? Boring.who wins who loses who cares.
Stories about writers dilemma. Good. Autobiographical? But will it be read, will it be
understood? She wants to write a book about architecture and animation. Eventually. Not
today. Not now. She thinks that all of January she will come here every morning and
write about her inability to pen a good story. A longwinded whining story. 1000 pages of
whining. Or 1001.
Info desk-infodesk- infodesk. That is what the sign says. The sign is turquoise
blue and very aesthetically unpleasing. It blows in the wind, the wind of the air
conditioner. The air conditioner is pretty loud, too. A very muffled loud sound, just like it
is very muffled icy. Muffled and dull. Someone is playing solitaire. She can see the
screen from here.
28
Green on blue, blue computer screen, green virtual tabletop and cards, cards.
Computer solitaire. She should learn indesign. This place is really really cold. Chilly.
Another pastry person walks by. She can see the pastry chef hat out of the corner
of her eye. Fascinating. It is now 9:31, she is really cold. Life is so predictable. Nothing is
happening. Time stands still, is standing still. There is no narrative available in this her
book. No people shoot each other, no lovers look at each other, smilingly lovingly
starcrossedly, no beautiful people, no ugly people, just chilly cold muffledness. She
should take a computer class. Why? She was advised to do so. By someone. Maybe she
should go around in the streets and advise people on the street, total strangers, you should
take a computer course. She is still reeling from the F, she got. Why F, why?
F, shmeff.
It is now 9:41, time to print this time to fish the nickels and the dimes out of her
pink purse. She feels like crying. She reads this text aloud. She is cold, chilly, she listens
to all the conversations around each and every computer in this library. Suddenly each
and every computer here became a water cooler. It is so interesting to listen to yesterday's
dinner party rehached combined with the staccato of “which format, which format” and
then “your brother-in-law, Daniel, denial, printer, that's the waitress, that's the waitress,
she's pretty”, now silence.
She is feeling chilly and cold.
She has to proofread this.
She likes writing. In the library at vcc. Oh, and vcc stands for Vancouver Community
College. She ponders if she should smush something insightful onto her text. There is still
time. But she lacks insight. No insight in sight. And that is a pretty funny statement, even
slightly insightful. And it is still utterly chilly. In the library in the vcc, on a chilly
29
January morning in Vancouver, British Columbia. In front of computer clib15 with a
yellow sticker, that reads “Computers are for VCC STUDENTS & EMPLOYEES
ONLY”.
And tomorrow she will come here again and write something new. Along the
same lines. Because nothing new ever happens. But she said that already. It is 10:04.
---
Her hands are still sticky from the pizza, but she starts hammering on the
typewriter, because her ideas might run away never to come back. She feels a hint of
urgency that makes her sit here and type away. She now left the college and found the
public library, which is an utterly nice place. Utterly nice, that is not exactly a
compliment. Dashing, maybe. Breathtaking. Something along those lines. She ponders
what to write about. Seems not really a problem, because there is much too much
distraction what with all the noise, the constant interruptions, people asking for spellings,
so, who really needs a theme when the library is so full of themes, the building, the
people, the books, eskandaria revisited. This is what life is all about, a place stacked full
with books, the accumulated knowledge of ages, pressed into one place, like flowers
between pink thick bleeding throttle paper in a big fat book. She is not happy with her
metaphors, she has no clue if there even is a word named throttle, she just inserts it
because it seems to inhale the meaning that she wants to get across, like an image, like a
sculpture.
This place is pretty loud, too, there is this rotating noise, it sounds as if wheels are
turning, as if water is running, it is a very weird sound, constant noise that seems to
embody lots and lots of meanings, it seems to have the propensity to drive you and
everybody else utterly crazy. Okee, back to sanity. Why not, we can do that, too.
30
Somewhere to her right she can see a funny poster that says “July 2006”, it is
outside of a window, on another building, maybe the Q.E. theater or the Ford Center for
the Performing Arts or it might have some other name and the poster is about a show
there with something that looks like a lion or a tree. She cannot really decipher what it is,
looks like a lion, it is beige. She felt bad because the person near her on the other
computer seemed to have a lot of problems with writing, the more he stumbled, the more
she got fuelled to type and type and type. She knew she was showing off and feeding off
his utter confusion and incompetence, but there was nothing she could do to help him.
She looks at the red flowers on the desk in the distance, someone laughs out loudly in
pressed staccato, another person walks by with the nylon of his parka swooshing and
scratchingly noising up his every step. Another person makes noises like a bell, she looks
up; it is the noise of the wheels of a suitcase. Someone else sat down at the computer next
to her, she is typing in her pinnumber.
The computer makes funny noises, the monitor quivers ever so slightly. She is
wondering if the computer will shut down and wipe out her musings. There is no
spellcheck here, so how will this work. What if the computer shuts down.
She has seven minutes left, thus, she will print this out. People are waiting to use
the computer, somewhere a phone says hello moto, she is tired and tries to write as fast as
she can, while the little clock on the monitor gallops down to zero. She will stop now and
print this. She has nothing more to say. For now. That is.
---
She is back in town, feels kind of dislocated in her own town, her own city, her
own turf. She went away for so many, many days but nothing here has changed and
nobody missed her. She relishes that, this kind of incognito life, but she ponders if this is
31
only an excuse. Maybe she really is kind of disappointed that no one noticed her absence,
anyways, she has so much to tell, so much happened in the last fourteen days, adventure
upon adventure and a typewriter listening anxiously.
Ontario was sheer fun, threatening at times, bewildering and annoying. Coming
back with via rail and being stuck in a close environment for four days was interesting to
say the least. Being stuck in snow between Kamloops and Edmonton, now there is
something for the grandkids. She looks around, trying to find herself again, and more so
trying to phantom what to write about. There are stories to be told. But she does not feel
like it. She would rather walk through this place without talking to anyone. Let the
building itself make you write. I am merely a vessel that listens to the sounds of the air
conditioner, looks at the computer screen, gazes down at the keyboard and types away.
Endless passages about the dilemmas, the problems of writing.
She ponders what happened while she was away, people are running for office,
there are political posters everywhere all over Vancouver, someone is running for
something at every street corner. Green, liberal, who cares.
Yesterday on the bus there were new transit posters up. Be part of the solution,
take transit. Whatever.
She is utterly annoyed at everything. Her writing happens to be substandard, and
it is on this total downward decline now for days, the more she writes the less she has to
say. Maybe she should shoot for nonfiction, but she does not feel like it. She would like
to describe this very keyboard, which is weird and silver and grey and metallic, the letters
do not make enough noise when pushed down, so she has to listen to the muffled air
conditioner instead of her own typing which usually propels her writing anyways, the
sheer sound of typing makes her write, forms her ideas, wherever they will go, whichever
32
world they will take her. It is raining outside, a typical Vancouver day. No snow here like
in Winnipeg. In Jaspers. In Sioux Falls. Very BC, very much home and kind of boring
and unexciting. She knows every nook and cranny in this city and it is weird because she
is not from here. She grapples with her own identity. That is actually not true. She just
throws that in to have something to say. Catering to the target audience. Screw the target
audience. Nelly Furtado says:” Say what you want”. These are the heroes that shape my
writing, and then there is always Seinfeld. Scholastic quotes from Cosmo Kramer and Al
Bundy.
She starts to daydream about other times other days, more interesting lifetimes,
she is so very old and she contemplates that a lot these days. She started out in a family of
four and she is the only one left. Weird. On the train there was a Mennonite family: father
bear, mother bear, two female cubs. It was eerie how much that was like her little family
fifty years ago, speaking their own language. in a foreign country. Now there is only her
left. She was looking at the girls and envisioned the youngest one left, fifty years from
now. This is life. I guess.
The air conditioner is still muffling around, screeching weirdly, changing its
staccato, the computer screen has an apple on it that was bitten into, which she never
noticed before until someone pointed it out to her some days ago, she had never noticed
that the logo has a bite taken out of it. Maybe that is why she is in the wrong line of work,
supposedly artists should be more perceptive. She is not. She just listens to the voices in
her own head. That is more entertaining. and she tries to figure out how to end this piece
of, ah, writing and if she should go down to the woo and put it into their mailbox, stick it
through the slot, they never publish her stuff anyways, so she will rather not sign it
because: who needs that kind of aggravation and rejection anyways. Her writing goes into
33
too many directions, which, I have been told, at this school, is not good for a strong piece,
as if that really matters. There are strong and not so strong pieces and what are those
criteria anyways; they are utterly debatable and very random. Crits are only popularity
contests anyways.
The air conditioner still muffles and rattles away, she has no class today and she
has to print this out. It is chilly in here. And, yes, this story does not go anywhere. It still
rattles on like the air conditioner. And, yes, kids, this is a metaphor. Or an allegory. Or
whatever some nomen clature writer feels like classifying it under. Or as they say:
tomayto, tomahto. At this point, I am pretty sure, I will not sign this, just push it into the
woo slot, and run for my life. and I might title this, ah, writing something like
“submission to woo”, submission to “who?” and if I could figure out how to put the title
at the beginning with this software, it could help. Then again, the title at the end is more
on the artsy fartsy side, who knows?
I ponder if this is too long and if I should edit some of it. But I have to pay ten
cents per page anyways, so I might as well fill up the page with other useless insights and
then go to the market. She is back in town, feels kind of dislocated in her own town, her
own city. Her own turf. She was advised not to bookend her stories. So, obviously, that is
what she does. Before going to the market.
---
She sits down in front of her steaming papercup of tea. In this generic strip mall.
Looking out at Ikea, Staples, Future Shop. Looking out at cars, cars, cars. North America
essential, the songs of suburbia smashing the day away. A “Province” in front of her.
Hockey Players, Football Players on the front page. White men looking with grit and
determance out at some place in the distance. It is February 2008, somewhere in Canada.
34
She runs after her dreams of making money, of fabricating something, anything that was
not here before. Every day is filled with putting lines on paper, feverishly. Ink on White,
a trace of being here. She marks her territory, tries to spin a yarn, draw an image, looking
down flabbergasted at where the journey will take her this time. She lets her mind go
numb and lets the physicality of putting lines on paper take over and dictate subject
matter and content.
A tow truck is driving by, a woman jabbers on in the back. “OK. That’s fine.
Okay.” The author cannot see her but instantly hates that voice. The music in this joint is
just plain crappy, too. Complaining is the author’s favourite pastime these days, and she
wonders, ponders how to leave this kind of abyss of negativity, how to be more
appreciative of this beautiful sunny day. While she still has her health, her youth, her
ability to write. Her love for putting down her dreams in little black lines on white paper.
Mapping blueprints for her life, images for animations, stylized caricatures of the world
she encounters, the books she has read, websites she searched all boiled down into the
illusion of coherence, far away from fragmentation, orderly arranged in notebook after
notebook, waiting patiently to be typed, sent away to be published and bound into books
to be translated into Dutch or Chinese, to be read by strangers somewhere far away.
She ponders if she wants the kind of excruciating criticism that comes with that,
analyses of her words and sentences, understanding, misunderstanding.
She wonders if it matters what she writes down, if she has something, anything to
say.
Then again, she does not really care. Teachers have told her she could write. So,
this is what she does. As if someone has cast a spell on her. Eight, nine years ago,
someone said “Write, don’t draw!” And ever since she blindly follows that “order”.
35
Without questioning. She’d rather make films, she’d rather build buildings. But no one
predicted a great future in architecture or animation and after 8, 9 years of art school she
garnered an F in Experimental Animation. So, back to the drawing board it is, or better,
back to the writing table, the key board. Back to sitting in Mc Donald’s and putting down
word after word after word.
A woman comes in with her two kids. That would have been the author some ten,
fifteen years ago. But her children have left long ago. So, she scribbles down her
observations, trying to make sense of her surroundings, trying to recreate the world
around her. On paper. In words. In a foreign language. In a foreign country. She ponders
if she should shoot for describing alienation. In Richmond, British Columbia. She seems
to live here since the beginning of time. Prince sings the song about “crying doves” and
“maybe you are more like my mother”, a never-satisfied mom, really, what an anti-
mother sentiment. Fathers are not necessarily more accommodating. And what name is
Prince anyways?
A dove flies by, coincidence? The author is slightly amused. All her observations
are like suspended sketches, suspended short, fragmented scenes of a long, subtitled
foreign film. People talking in strange languages, that she does not understand. Like
Latin.
Outside there are puddles on the ground, a yellow jeep. She tries to figure out,
where to go next. What to say next. She likes this fast-food joint here. There is so much
to see, so many people outside, cars rushing by, people waiting for the bus, each with
their own stories. Not necessarily very interesting stories, more banal, supposedly every-
day stories. Regular lives. Which is another way of saying: affluent lives. Happy lives.
Nice cars. Polished. Clean. Slightly on the antiseptic side. Predictable. With stories of
36
despair, dislocation and disillusionment put down on tabloidlike newspapers, smushed
into paragraphs of shrill language and caricature like imagery. snapshots like the image of
the determined football warriors on the frontpage of the newspaper in front of her.
It started raining outside. She has to go home before it gets too bad. Before the
water pouring down will make it too difficult to find her way home. Where she has to
type out her musings. Words that stick in her brain but do seize to sketch out what she
feels. Words that cluster into sentences that hardly describe the feel of this chilly corner
in this chilly fast-food joint in this strip mall looking out at puddles, cars and dark birds in
the overcast sky, while annoying music is coming out of the loudspeaker and the audio
toxicizes the interior of this establishment. It is after school, people are playing cards, are
talking after work. She vies for waiting a tad until the sun sets in and the wetness
subsides.
The parking lot in front of her is so uneventful, she sees an airplane, in the sky.
Someone walks behind her clapping her shoes on the linoleum, the staccato of her shoes
mimic the rhythm of the song, the music from the loudspeaker.
Two postmen are sitting at the table next to her, silently looking out at the parking
lot.
She does not have anything to say anymore, she will nonetheless type it all out.
And maybe arrange and rearrange the pages on a large table in order to physically garner
an interesting read and a coherent piece of writing. She ponders whether a plot-less story
can grip the reader, a story without blood, conflict, violence and, last-not-least, sex.
Always sex. A van with the words fastrade drives by. The music is more erratic now. She
longs for someone. The FedEx- van on the other side of the parking lot is waiting
patiently. All the cars outside are grey, muddy, grey-ish. Everything outside is grey.
37
Nothing happens. A green bus is waiting at the traffic-light. The rain stopped. The music
is now about all the days of the week. Tuesday this. Wednesday that.
The “Province” has a picture of Gordon Campbell on it. Something about the
Olympics. two more years to go till 2010. The FedEx van is still waiting. She feels very
chilly, chilled out. Her paper mug has an Olympic sign on it, the five rings. Funny, how
there is something reminiscent of Olympia everywhere. Around her. Everywhere she
looks, is something written. She enjoys that. Visual stimulation. Not necessary a very
sophisticated one. Only lots of ads. Somebody trying to sell something. Consumer
culture. That kind of stuff. Her day silently comes to an end. She will pack up her
notebook and head for her car. Maybe she should really come writing here each and
every day. For a month. And see where it goes. Where it takes her. Ten thousand Miles
under the Sea. Jules Verne she is not. Not yet. Writing seems so trite a profession. Not
even a profession. A person sitting and taking notes. Documenting the obvious. And
spitting it out again. At the world. This is not a nine-to-five job. But it will need a nine-
to-five diligence. To get anywhere. She ponders what time it is. She doesn’t have a
watch. She feels kind of sick.
Somewhere in the distance there is steam smushing itself against the white clouds
of the sky. She’d rather use a more convoluted language that tackles complex issues of
the times. But she doesn’t. She likes banal observations more. Insignificant sketches.
Doodles on paper. Fragments. 24 frames per second will do. She usually uses 30 frames
per second, a hectic pace, a fast, more rhythmic, more amusing pace. Non-stillness-non-
quietness, loudness, a state of anti-stagnation. Where motion is king, action precedes
another action. Like ping-pong. Birds fly by to mingle with other ones and fill the sky.
Over the Big Box Store. Nature in suburbia. Clouds over a stripmall, music in the air.
38
Chilliness from an air conditioner. The scratchy-voiced crooner on the loudspeaker. She
feels a cold crawling up her spine. She tries to find her shawl and her jacket. Maybe she
should order a hot tea. Maybe she should draw. Maybe she should head home. She is
stifled, sitting here not able to move. Undecided. Kind of sad, kind of tired. She sees
herself, still writing, years from now. Like a brick layer laying brick after brick after
brick to build a house. Putting down word after word. So very Sisyphean. Depicting time
and space. On paper. Depicting motion in a static medium. Making time stand still and
trying to jot it down with letters. From left to right. She ponders, why she does this? What
will she achieve? Or better, what can she achieve? One voice. One very lonely, very
lowly voice. That is confused and still searching. Searching until the rest of her days.
With mortality lingering around the corner. But not yet. She still has a lot to do. So much
to write. To draw. To film. To listen to. To love. She feels like walking. Enough words
on paper. More words in her head. Enough music already. She will finally head home.
---
5 pages of my life - March 17 and March 18 - 2008
She sits down in the empty coffee shop and starts writing away, overwriting the
wobbly coffee shop table, listening to the Kingston-specific discussion of the coffee shop
lady and the other woman, she tries to figure out what they are saying, but cannot figure
it out, something is “huge”, the music blends their easy conversation out, elevator-music,
elevator-talking, banter, small-talk. She feels dislocated and like crying. Her pen-
womanship stinks. And the table wobbles with every scribble she puts down, her tea is
about to splash all over the paper. Outside of the window the snow is slowly melting
away, the sun shines and time is standing still. Then again, people are rushing by. But
time is standing still for her, she enjoys the small-town atmosphere here. She ponders
39
what to write about. Like always. Struggling with writer’s block. It is March now, but
still 2008. Unimportant observations. Scribbled down. She loves Kingston. It is so very,
very far removed from her life. So utterly exotic. So very tragically hip, so very Michael
Ondaatje. Exactly that: Exotic. Outside the street signs say “Princess” and “Snydenham”.
Very European and that is definitely exotic for her. Red cars drive by, or more: one red
car and other ones. But the red one sets the stage. The music is really annoying. Weirdly
exotic while being very conservative. Not challenging the status quo. Any status quo.
Anywhere. She is annoyed. Really annoyed. The sun is much too bright and the coffee
shop much too empty. Much too generic. Much too filled with weird music. And the
snow melts.
She misses the brown-eyed boy. Not in an abstract way. More in a very visceral
way that makes her stop breathing. That makes her feel like gasping for air, that clutches
her chest. She knows he doesn’t even know she exists. Unrequited. Which is good. There
is always relentless piercing hope. Like in “Dumb and Dumber”. One in a million chance.
Equals hope. She starts giggling. People look. She becomes serious. A One-800-Got Junk
truck passes by. On the other side of the street is a tea-store. Outside of the window is a
man-hole. The snow melts. Observations, observations. “Nasrin, you conquered the
banal”, what a nice critique. She does not feel like editing this, cutting up sentences and
smushing them together in a new context. She writes away. all of winter 2008. No
painting, no animations, just words. In English. Which might not be the best choice in
language. For writing. Who the f. writes in a language that she can hardly speak? She is
very distracted. Trying to hang onto one thought, one observation. Which is impossible.
Too many stimuli. The coffee machine makes noise, the music sings. People talk at other
tables. There are more eloquent ways to describe that. Eloquence, Shmeloquence. The
40
coffee shop on Princess Street. In Kingston. On a slow boring day in march 2008. Far
away from reality, far away from her usual surroundings. Everything is surreal. Very
dreamlike. Very not how it should be. Exotic. She will go home eventually, maybe in a
month from now. She has come full-circle. She is in a very foreign country and misses
another part of the foreign country. Where suddenly home resides. Or brown eyes. And
brown eyes. This is all very kitschy. She tries to infuse her writing with more insightful,
more intelligent observations. Which is impossible. No word today marches in place. All
the letters do their own thing. The coffee shop man looks at her in disbelief. She is not
acting strange. Not yet. Eccentricism can wait. When she is older, when she is expected
to talk to herself. Until then she will just put her thoughts on paper. In a foreign, very
exotic country. While using an exotic language. She overuses the word exotic. Green
shamrock leaves are pinned on the window of the teashop on the other side of the street.
One day she will pick up a camera and shoot photos, make films. But that has to wait. At
this time of her life words take her into a different world. Random observations. Random
associations of words. Time is standing still, while the world around her moves forward.
She tries to grasp the passage of time, nail it down, pin it down on paper. But every car
she describes is long gone by, every person has passed her by. There is always a delay,
she sketches a person in words, in lines, as a drawing, as a description, but the moment
has passed. She thinks about stuff. Looks at stuff. Writes stuff. Coherence, eloquence,
insights run away, have long left. She’d rather drink her tea. She’d better look at the
moment. Before insanity sets in. Here in Kingston. In March 2008.
---
She finished her tea, gave the teacup back to the counter, puts away her writing
tablet, only to retrieve it and to start feverishly putting down sentence after sentence. She
41
tries to erase the observations she put down before, tries to talk about more important
matters. Politics, love, hate, war, not trivial observations. She does not even know what
the genre of her writing is. She cannot forever run after where word after word takes her.
This is a serious world. Where people die on the streets. Where lives are wasted. Where
injustice runs rampant. Where you have to be part of the solution. Where money has to be
made, has to be spent. Where time should not be spent by putting down line after line on
paper. Where dreams are dreamt in the night. And forgotten, once day starts. Where
stories have meaning. Beginning and end. Where music is superfluous. Where writers
should be shot, where poets have to die. Where tradesmen rule the world. Where words
are just that. Not needed. But she will still write. She has not learned a trade. When she
was young. Now that she is so very old, her days are wasted in coffee shops and she puts
words down on paper. Making sure that nothing is too offensive. She does not need to be
offensive. The mere process of writing is unheard of. Is provocative enough. She will
write until the day she dies. Her voice has to be heard. Why not? Everyone else’s is.
---
Kingston, Kingston. It is still the same sugary sunny day somewhere in spring 08,
some time in the time shortly before the equinox, so not yet spring, and snowy outside,
but sun and slush and pure bliss. She is sitting in Tim Hortons looking out @ the lake,
seeing the “Holid” part of the Holiday Inn sign near the waterfront. She had Poutine in
the hospital café, which is turning her stomach, which was too much and gruelling gravy
makes her feel slightly nauseous, just on the brink of vomiting. She tries to kill time by
writing, which she has endless time for, endless hours these days. The words come
together like gravy, which is not exactly the most poetic metaphor. Maybe she should
take a creative writing class, but she knows that writing is not teachable. The words
42
come, randomly, sometimes blissfully, easily, sometimes like thick gravy on paper. with
lumps. This is fiction in the time of facebook, when everyone can be a writer. She
peppers her prose with platitudes and wonders, if that will further her thought processes.
The radio here is so much better than the one in the coffee shop, nothing but news.
Serious stuff. Kingston news, the weather, stuff that matters. She still has to write her
allotted daily requirement, she will then smush it together, tweak it in the same way a
gardener cuts plants and tries to arrange nature in ways that are supposedly full of merit.
She is not quite sure if she is able to illustrate her thoughts accurately, but the music on
the radio makes her mind wander. Bono has still not found what he’s looking for. Her
coffee is getting cold, her donut is getting stale. She had much too much sugar, grease
and caffeine these days. Fast food en masse. She tries to make sense of her surroundings
so she opts for generic places, deliberately, decidedly. A honeycruller is the same here as
it is in Vancouver.
It is the next day and she makes her way to the Tim Hortons and she knows that
this is the second, no wait, the 3rd. time today. Her knee hurts again, so she prefers not to
walk too much and so she frequents the same coffeeshop again and again. The people
around her change, the only constant is the paper in front of her, the pen writing word
after word, demarking her being here, documenting thoughts, hers and others’, putting
down meticulously every moment, every nuance.
The soldiers left, this being kingston, there are uniforms everywhere. everywhere.
She ponders how many uniforms there are. She has lived in a city under siege, under war,
while bombs were falling. She never saw this many uniforms. Never.
Her mind wanders off. It is so much warmer now, slightly becoming nicer. The
clock on the wall says One-five and she ponders what to write about. How to interrupt the
43
boredom inside her and put it into words. These days she travels, travels, travels.
Observes this strange town. Strange to her. Her tea is much, much too dark. Really
blackish. She ponders, how her intestines will react to that, with that. The smoke from the
teacup is steeping into her field of vision, motioning in front of her, changing shape after
shape, motioning and curling around, becoming vertical and moving up. Has something
to do with physics, she sees, smells her physics highschool class, her total incompetence
and the fun she had. Even her teacher was totally incompetent. Out of a class of 15 only
one person knew everything about physics, the rest were clueless, but still fascinated by
the possibility to quantify and categorize and explain natural phenomena. Her class was
in the language stream, so physics and math and the like was pure fun. Nobody tried to
outdo the other, nobody could outdo the other. They were all bonding in incompetence,
the common goal being to hardly, make the grade, to merely pass. They all loved physics,
more so than the brainiacs. Solving a simple problem was such a delight, a sheer
overcoming of the impossible, a piercing through space of confusion, space of darkness.
Like a comet shooting through the milky way, a star whooshing through. Somehow she
ended up in art school, obviously not because there were other options, obviously
because it was the only option. She had the ability to hold a pen and draw a smiley face,
so she had to go to art school. The only thing she ever earned money with, was art.
Gooey stuff on canvas. People would fork over their hard-earned money for that. A
square with some paint on it. She would never pay for a painting. But others would. So
she uses that: She produces paintings, others consume paintings. Obviously, the going
price for living painters is minimal, at least for painters of her caliber. She usually paints
3 vases with flowers, 2 curtains, one table, one floor, one wall. Not exactly very creative.
The subjectmatter is constant and goes with any décor. Is uplifting. Fit with any culture.
44
Usually men slightly navigate to the blue vases and women to the pink vases. Then there
are the stereotype defying types who do the opposite. And of course, the creatures who
do not want to engage in post-feminism discourse, they prefer yellow, red and green. We
have persons who like roundish forms and others that go for straight lines. Some like
lines, the bookish types who like shapes that remind them of writing of words,
hieroglyphs, hidden messages. Then there are the ones who want me to sign everything.
In English and Farsi. Then you have the ones, who tell me that they, too, are artists. The
competition. Me and the two SFU women opted for collusion, we turned our tables, so
that they were like a half-diamond, so that people would feel like walking into a grotto
and out. Our own little shopping mall, shopping enclave. Flirting with the customers
helped, not too overtly though. We were one brunette, one blonde, one in-between. 20,
40, 30. One read a newspaper, so she was the intellectual, one smiled, so there was Ms.
Congeniality, I tried to win over the suburban crowd, soccermoms, soccerdads, people
who are non-artistic and decidedly so, because art stands for drugs, fringes of society,
revolution, war and thus losing money, losing stability. It is getting rainy outside,
overcasty, white sky. She ponders, why she writes word after word after word. Having a
conversation with herself. Shooting back into the past only to emerge herself back into
the present. Her tea is bitter now and cold. This fast food joint is full of people. The lunch
crowd. Lots of people are breaking bread together. She feels so very alone. Which she
cherishes. She would hate it, if people would interrupt her chain of thought. words have
to be put down on paper, as many as possible, as fast as possible. There are stories to be
told, worlds to be explored. Columbus went off to different shores, this is her new world.
She gets up and gets an egg-sandwich.
45
And that was quite a torture. the egg-sandwichlady, sheila, was pure hate, pure
disgust. She detested moi and i rush back to my paper here to write about her.
She forgot to use the third person singular, because she became utterly
disoriented. Confused. She did not even get what she ordered. She did not even get what
she ordered. This is not her day, the words are definitely not marching in place on the
paper, are frazzled, fragmented. The sandwich might have salmonella, ah, good times,
good times. Wordsmithing is pretty tough, on the body. She smiles at her own pun. Or
maybe semipun. The donut glistens in the sun, in the light. The hobo at the other table
looks at her puzzled.
---
She is called ma’am by the busboy, the busman. She has heard it all, ma’am, miss,
ms., even mister. Mister, huh? Not exactly the highlight of her existence. Now other
persons, other people frequent this joint. She is still writing away, trying to fill up this
notebook with her thoughts splashed over page after page. Insanity is not very far away,
it is good, that she is dressed so very respectable, so very elegant, so very far removed
from art, literature, music. A homemaker taking some trivial notes. Not a world-changing
manifesto. Depends on the mindset of the reader. Someone burps, someone wants a
scone. She tries to hold on to her thoughts, tries to define revolution, avant-garde. Stuff
like that. She looks at her paper. Should it contain monosyllabic words or polysyllabics.
Is it even called polysyllabic. Run-on sentences? Colloquial, slangy words. Scholastic
terms? Ph-D prone lingo. What does Ph-D prone even mean. She looks out the window
and listens to the pounding music. Gets emerged in writing, listening, she feels kind of
dizzy. Her tea is icy. She still has half of a salmonella-inducing egg-sandwich left. Her
life, her life.
46
---
she counts the words. Is happy, that she produced 5 pages in 2 days. Maybe, this
is time well wasted. Maybe not. Who knows. Who cares.
---
She comes to her room and has to face the stillness, the quietness. She fiddles
around in her purse until she finds her glasses, that are torn and feathered. She chuckles
because she knows that glasses are not torn, feathered like tattered fabric, like mob-
lynched individuals. She cannot penetrate the silence of this generic hotelroom, she tries
not to listen to the silence. She dislikes the creepiness of being all by herself and she
dislikes sitting downstairs in the bar and write. Her knee is acting up and kingston is
quiet, is very white. Outside is stillness, snow, ice, lake ontario. She sees the furniture on
the balcony through the white curtains, she feels so very out of place. This funny little
hotelroom is her home now for five very long days and it will be for five more days. She
listens to someone crackingly walking outside, on the muffling carpets. She ponders, if
listening to the television would mask as human interaction, she knows it will only
worsen her feelings of abandonment, alienation. She is not comfortable with silence, with
quietness. She is no Roald Amundsen. She likes laughter around her, voices spitting at
each other, humanity at its best and at its worst. She hunches over to jot down these her
ideas, her thoughts; her documentation of what she feels. The nightstand is very clean,
very polished, very sanitary. The black watch has round eyes, so does the bottom of the
lampstand. Her hands are very wrinkled and she likes that. All the women in her family
have superwrinkled hands. At a very young age. There is continuity in that. She looks at
her hands which look like hands that work all day. They do not. She writes, she draws, a
lot that is, but only with her right hand. Sometimes she types, but not these days.
47
An ambulance is screaming by, somewhere on its way to KGH or Hotel Dieu Hospital.
She sometimes goes to Hotel Dieu, has a tea, some crackers, some cheese, poutine. She
has a strange routine here in this strange city. She writes, she draws, eats, sleeps, goes for
walks in the snow, watches the day go by. She is slightly frightened, a door shuts outside.
She cannot stop writing, she puts down letter after letter after letter. She will go down and
have a tea. Something with peaches in it, peachflavoured tea. Maybe a scone. She
meticulously writes down, what she devours. She misses people. She thinks about her
next art installation in Montreal. There is no art installation, there never will be. She is
content with that, maybe visual arts is not her thing. It does not pay well anyways.
Architecture would be good, though. Doesn’t pay well either. She listens to the silence.
Again and again. She used to write songs. None of them was good. They filled up a lot of
space, scrunched up, piled up in waste baskets the world over. In lonely, stale
hotelrooms. She just went to a small mystery novel bookstore on the way to Hotel Dieu.
It was beautiful, clean and nice. The bookseller was very nice. They bonded instantly, she
and him. She asked him about a Swedish husband and wife team of mystery novel
writers, who published about 30 years ago. He looked it up, he knew their names, though
he thought their heyday was in 1976, she thought, it was more 1971, maybe 72. He was
very cute in a bookish, quiet, middle-aged bearded way, in a very inobtrusive
masculinity, that bordered on femininity. In a scholastic, intellectual but not too
intellectual manner. She usually prefers very sharpminded intellectual guys, who pierce
through crap like a snowplough. Pied pipers. On the way to ultimate destruction. Out of
Hamlin, into Hamlin. Or Hameln. She had a picture book about that, when she was a little
girl. The rats and the piper. Somehow the piper became the ultimate in male competency,
the alpha-male. Or something like that. A kind of Robin Hood meets bad boy. An outcast
48
in funny clothes, in tights. With hat. Come to think of it, there are no women like that, no
pipresses. Not that she knows of. There is Jeanne D’Arc, but that won’t cut it. Has to do
with some religious stuff. Boring.
---
She lies on the red-yellow bed and watches this television show, that is not
coherent, not fun, not interesting but color, sound, music in wide-screen. She feels tired
and should pick up the Globe to figure out what the news is. The film she is watching still
is incoherent and the cookies she is eating, are stale.
Now she switched to friends, rachel says rachel stuff, phoebe does her phoebe
thing, some unimportant plot. Should she write stuff like that. Should she write all her
unimportant observations. Should she go on filming her unimportant animations and
submit them to filmfestival after filmfestival after filmfestival until the rest of her life.
She doesn’t know and the artschool adventure does not go anywhere. It is just stalling.
She is treading water. For the last eight and a half years. This is not good. Not good @
all. Outside, Kingston is getting ready for sunset, still white, but smushing itself towards
a darker, greyer light. The shade of a tree is nodding outside the hotelwindow. A cooking
show is annoying the hell out of her. She misses something, someone. Very much
someone. She dreams about him. Every now and then. Not quite a crush. Not quite a non-
crush. He is just so very sweet. Very unobtrusive. Very. Very! There are no words to
describe him. Some persons cannot be described. She watches friends. Which is not what
she feels like watching while writing. One liner piling upon one liner upon oneliner. It all
has to do with love and romance, relationships and she switches back to the cooking
show. Her mind just freezes over, becomes numbingly dull and halts to a stillstand. She
writes automatically, piling word upon word upon word. She imagines herself trying to
49
sell her manuscript to a literary agent, to a publishing place, to someone. She imagines
herself being crushed by the critiques in the local newspaper. But she knows that once
she is back in Vancouver, she will take the bus diligently each and every morning, go
down to Granville Island and make her way to the Computerlab in the Northbuilding of
the Emily Carr Institute and type away, put all her longhand observations into neatly
arranged typed sheets of paper, bind it and send it off to as many publishing companies
she can find in the Yellow Pages and online. And another episode of friends starts to
numb her mind. Episodes’ Marathon. Outside, Kingston goes to bed, the lake sinks into
stillness. Another day written away.
- --
she looks out the window. her hair is cold and wet and makes her sweater chilly. She is
freezing and tries to make the endless televisionnoise go away. She tries to write down
what she feels. She is scared of publishing her thoughts. She is scared of what people will
think. The TV is still talking, laughtracking, and does not stop. Other persons are
watching and she tries to write over it. Make it go away. One laughtrack after the next.
Outside the window, night sets in. The light in the room has reflections in the window.
She tries to hold on to her thoughts and push them down on the paper. She will type all
the words into place, eventually. Trying to shuffle all the pages until they make sense,
until they look good, until they are coherent, until they illustrate her thoughts eloquently.
She is watching friends constantly. The plots are the same. In all episodes. She wants
coffee.
---
Her friend Rudi likes to watch TV incessantly. There is no end in visual pollution,
noise pollution. Image after image after image flickers over the screen. She tries to act
50
nonchalant, but she has enough of American Idol interlaced with Canadian Idol
interrupted by big corporation after big corporation praising their goods and now she has
to listen to someone singing “Michelle”, someone who was born long after the song was
conceived. She feels hopelessly old, trying to fill the void inside of her by feverishly
scribbling word after word into her notebook. She cannot really concentrate on what she
is writing, she feels so inundated by tacky commercial, weirdly glittering vegas like show
after show after show. Her ears feel overpowered by constant whaling and whining on the
telly, so she just writes to combat the claustrophobia that is creeping up in her, around
her. Constant television can kill. This is what she feels. Watching TV all day long is, to
say the very least, interesting. She craves Yoghurt. After watching a yoghurt commercial.
She ponders how she can possibly write something readable while the TV is on. But she
tries. Does not cease. This notebook will be filled today or tomorrow. Once back in
Vancouver, she will write and rewrite it, shuffle the words, polish them up, spit on them,
crumple them up, toss them into the paper basket, fish them out again, recopy them, again
and again and once again after that. She will stay away from all the writing classes in art
school, she will not let critiques smush her prose. She finds a very cold and chilly place
on the floor near the window, she writes and writes. Obsessively. While she is writing
longhand, others in the room type away. The words take her into a dreamworld, as if she
races against the constantly changing voice on the TV-screen. How many times has she
seen this Commercial today? It is about Cheese. Buy Cheese, buy cheese. Buy me! No,
buy me. Now a burger commercial. Fascinating.
Her hand gets cramped and she feels like falling dizzily into a stupor of quietness,
helplessness. She does not feel like tackling big issues in writing, only communicating
51
the feel of this very place. Somewhere in kingston, in march 2008, in a hotelroom, in the
night.
---
Tomorrow, tomorrow she will start editing, copying this, tomorrow she will put
the words into a more readable version, try to figure out, how to align the words in the
same way a carpenter does align two by fours, a bricklayer arranges bricks, a drafter puts
lines on paper. The order of the words will be broken ever so slightly at the edges and the
perfection will and has to wobble a tiny bit, but not too much. She is clueless what will be
the right ratio of order and disorder, junction and disjunction. But she will try. again and
again. Try she must. It is calm outside, Lake Ontario is sleeping. Under snow. Under Ice.
K-town is beautiful. Peaceful. Very peaceful.
---
time has gone by, it is now wednesday, maybe thursday and she finds herself back in the
same coffeeshop on princess street at the same table looking out at sydenham and
princess, looking at the same manhole and the good old tea store on the other side of the
street. The table is still wobbly, she is rained in, slightly wet and it is noonish, some
minutes off. Two tables are filled with women who chat away about their lives, she is not
so very interested, feels her bias croaching up her chest, dismissing their chatter as idle
and generic, gossip, the same the world over. Maybe selfhate clouds her judgement, she
herself has too much time on her hand, she writes away trying to carve out a niche for
herself, a niche of producing something marketable, a commodity. Words on paper that
someone might or might not read. Words that run the gamut of being utterly profound to
being utterly useless. But at the end of the day these are only that, her thoughts, moulded
by her life, her biases, her likes and her dislikes. She misses art school, the animationlab,
52
where everything is possible, where the right kind of drawings pushed into the right kind
of sequential timing interlaced with the right kind of audio sent to the right kind of jury,
be it in edinburgh or ottawa, will garner an award and, after that, jobsecurity. Oh,
animation, a shrine she gave to so very much for the last five years.
But now, she spends her days in kingston writing away, until her hand hurts,
cramps up, looking out at the rain, noticing how slushy the snow in front of this very
window became within two days, she strangely observes the passage of time. The women
behind her analyze the life of some person named “she”, it is always a “she” who is
talked about. People with extra mounds of flesh in front of them seem to attract more
attention. Her observations today are stale and smushy, like the rain outside, the melted
slush, the grey overcast, the white sky without a hint of blue. She tries to pepper her prose
with platitudes, thinks that it is stylistically acceptable. She writes about writing, because
that keeps her up at night, crouches in to her dreams, she automatically longs for
watching her pen gliding, scratching over white paper, leaving marks, hieroglyphs that
she will decode later and type into other marks, other signs on other sheets of paper. Her
coffee is getting cold, her scone is filled with red berrylike gooey parts, maybe
raspberries, or maybe cranberries. She feels alone, wet, homesick. Her writing keeps her
sane, grounds her in a strange way, she could pick up a newspaper or watch the news in
order to follow whatever the media wants her to think about, so that she can garner a
sense of continuity, but she would rather build her own world, her own columns in the
construct of continuity, her words are her own and give her a sense of being, of fighting
dislocation. She ponders whether she should go on dreaming of the beautiful creature she
came upon a couple of years ago or whether she should concentrate on building a
marketable career, make a certain amount of money, support herself, be responsible, be a
53
responsible adult. Not a flaneur, a dreamer. Oh, art school. It lingers in her, all the
funny/funky ideas that are all very debatable. Mixed up with philosophy, poli.sci. and the
like. Her coffee is cold now and she will drink it listening to the music in the coffeeshop
on Princess on a rainy day in march of 2008.
---
She fishes her notebook out of the plastic-bag and picks up her pen to start another short,
short passage of her book. She is opting for a 1000 page book with a myriad of interlaced
scenes that have one common player, herself. She tries to remember whether it is called
protagonist or antagonist. Oh, definitely, protagonist or maybe, in her case antagoniste,
protagoniste. She randomly puts an e at the end of English words, English not being her
original Language, French not being her original language, thus she feels she can fuse
words and mix them up, however she feels trying to smush them into acceptable patterns
or opt for totally new combinations. She is fascinated how similar all the fields are,
whether in art, whether in science, politics, what have you. Trying to forge new ideas,
innovate the tried and true, improve on given accepted concepts. The music on the
speaker is mixing with the staccato-like constant of the conversation at the other table, a
woman walks by to the back of the coffeeshop, a car parks outside of the window, the
rain is still pouring, afternoon sets in in kingston. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees
the reflection of the passers-by in the puddles on the ground, on the wet street, The lines
made by cars. The woman at the table near the wall is saying something about the United
States, her whole surrounding is a collage of differences, slight opposites, held together
by the vernacular, held together by proximity in space and proximity of time. She
chuckles, her sentences sound slightly profound, but she is not quite sure if she can
accurately illustrate her intent, her observation. She is more a visual artist, not necessarily
54
an articulate user of language, of words. But she is well aware that any representation of
reality is always slanted by the maker of those representations, by the medium she or he
uses. Marshall Mc Luhan comes to mind, though she never is quite sure, what he posited.
Sometimes it is utterly crystal clear, lots of times it doesn’t make sense, whatsoever. All
the ideas, that have been hurled towards her, at her over the course of her years in
artschool mush together and are utterly incoherent. She writes essay after essay about
deconstructivism, about structuralism, but at the end of the day she is ever so confused,
tapping in the dark at the door of all these philosophies. She likes it, though. She is
fascinated by ideas, ideas that shape the material. Maybe she should opt for more tactile
fields, documenting what is, categorizing reality, doing field research. Outside black and
yellow umbrellas wobble by, wavelike. The teastore, the teastore. A blue and white
chequered umbrella wobbles by with a woman under it. rain, rain, buses. this is k-town
for you. She chuckles. She could sit in paris and write this. Any urban environment
would suffice. Nature would suffocate her, she likes cities. She was born in a city, she
will die in a city. Or not.
The world around her starts spinning. Behind her people are discussing their lives,
talking about Queen’s, categorizing, analyzing. Kingstonee stuff. She misses home. She
misses her place at the light-table. She misses shooting short, short animations and
uploading them. Four times each, putting it on her blog, U-Tube, Facebook and Google
Videos. Putting it into cyberspace, where nobody will look. Because everyone is too busy
uploading their own stuff. It is still raining, still croaching towards the evening. She has
to be somewhere at Five-thirty, but she still has time to put her words down. Into this
journal like Format. She likes the bookform of her notebook. It is better than all those
loose typed pages that fly around her house in Vancouver. One day she has to order all
55
this, go through her purse, fish out her short essay, array and disarray them in order to get
from point A to point B. She has to give proximity to all the different observations, push
them into one box. She used to pin all the papers on a wall, saying that she wants to
reinvent the idea of the book. But books are not a pack of cards, shuffled around at
random. Or maybe, they are. The same goes for all the frames of an animation, of a film.
Who is to say where the end is and where the beginning lies. What is the perfect climax,
what is anticlimactic. She took a class in film theory, which was a nightmare. An
excruciating tour de force. She has to unlearn so much, she has to overcome the damage
done by those 4 months and the 400 bucks that went down the drain. Outside it is still
raining. Her coffee is chilly now, icy. She wonders what time it is. A woman walks by,
but she is not interested in describing her. She feels confused about using the right kind
of grammar where nouns and subjectives make sense. Where pronouns are in place,
where tenses are accurate. The pipes on the ceiling in this place are brown, the whole
décor is brown and green. Coffeeshops. All in the colour of coffee beans. And the green
leaves of coffee plants. She longs for home. And she writes that down on paper. Again
and again. An autobiography. A memoir. Observations of the passage of time. Rigorous
slinging down of reality on paper, Demarking of what happens around her. Bringing
.down reality on a horizontal sheet of paper, wood pressed to pulp to paper. She listens to
all the associations that take her to different worlds, the conversations at the tables around
her are so annoying, so trivial. She longs for quietness, for stillness. Everyone has
something to say. And the stories seem so very much the same. The observations are so
very generic. And maybe that is good. Continuity, Community. She gets weary of
overhearing all the conversations. She feels so very tired, so very old. Everything is
boring.
56
---
Maybe she can sit in a coffeeshop and just take photos of random people, take
films, tape these annoying conversations, the noise of the coffeemaker, the music, the
swoosh of the cars swooshing by, people walking by her, putting down their coffeemugs,
and all the other constant noise clutter. She is tired and the rain is still falling, deafening
her wish to go back to the hotel. Her allegories and her metaphors are slightly on the
senseless side, her words on the paper start swimming, the letters loose contour and
contrast, she watches her pen make line after line on the lined paper of the notebook, she
feels so very dizzy, but forces herself to sit straight up. Her coffee is icy and her hands
clam. Outside, outside.
The coffee tastes bitter even though there was milk in it. The notebook is filling
up and she feels a hint of accomplishment. She was able to write down a myriad of words
and she ponders, she wonders if her writings will accurately illustrate her thoughts.
Someone in red boots is walking by, someone with a red big purse. The car outside now
is red. Her observations are filled with random registrations of colour, the woman beside
her has a turquoise sweater, the neon sign outside is red, the trash paper on the ground in
the puddle is orange, the man behind her has a yellow coat. She writes and writes and
writes the day away. The music is rhythmic and not very good. Predictable. Something
reggaeish, bluesish. Lost. She knows she is lost here but puts her thoughts down on
paper. She can see a body shop outside, and a place named Copper Penny. She feels like
creative writing is so very difficult. There are no parameters. No limitations. She
stumbles into using her favourite words again and again. She repeats the same words
three times and cannot stop herself from doing that. She overuses words like stuff, smush
and croach. She used to fabricate a lot of new words, smush words together but she
57
abandoned that practice for the time being. Maybe, it is because she is writing longhand
these days. The computer brings out a completely different writer in her. The tool
constructs the meaning and conducts the music, the composition, the symphony, the
fragments and the particles of the final piece. The color of the ink leads the wording of
the sentences, so does the environment around her. The day is going into later afternoon,
somebody runs by, the rain is relentlessly still coming down. She will go to the hotel
now. Run away from this coffeeshop here.
---
second book of kingston-winter/spring 2008
goatstory
she went back to the hotel to pick up her notebook and makes her way back to the
café on princess street that seemed so very, very inspiring to good writing only some
minutes ago, but once inside she notices that her favourite table has been taken, her pen is
out of ink and thus she encounters problems, she cannot watch the street from here and
her tea smells funny, thus she will not be able to write even fairly decent words,
sentences, but she tries anyways, knows that she has to sit here for an hour and put word
after word down; diligently, deliberately – she tries to squeeze as much meaning into her
sentences but even if the words will not take her where they should she will still log in a
decent amount of time- 5 pages being the absolute minimum.
Outside the wintery evening descends on kingston, the city is awash with
expectation- Expectation by young minds that will research the world at this time, at this
moment- document what is going on in other places, places far away from Lake Ontario,
far away from this so very small enclave near studentia, within academia. People around
her talk, conversations, a different crowd than the individuals she left here only an hour
58
ago. Not many persons are working on their laptops squeezing a midterm paper on it, not
many persons are reading- the atmosphere is more halted fun- suspended creativity, the
music here is definitely so much better than the elevator music in the coffeeshop she
frequents in the morning. She ponders if what she puts down on paper in this atmosphere
will be better or worse than what she would pen in a less creative environment. The
visual and acoustic overload of stimuli in this place might very well stifle her
imagination, everything around her is too colourful, too technicolourish, how can she
possibly compete with this environment, especially when words are her only tool no
colourful paint, no photos, no music and thus she cannot produce the same amount of
texture- using only one language, only words- words in a language that she only adopted
that is not really full-circle hers, that she only learned when she was ten years old and not
by immersion, but by memorizing vocabulary, by memorizing grammatical rules.
While she is writing away, people come in and look at her with a look of: Why
are you not leaving but she can’t really leave she still is forced by an inner voice to
produce a certain amount of sentences, the words have to be splashed on this page in
order to document, to demark her existence in k-town in march 2008. Her tea smells very
aromatically like Jasmine evoking a memory of real Jasmine bushes and white Jasmine
flowers, Jasmine blossoms in her father’s garden more than thirty years ago. Old age is a
constant for her, she feels washed up and old, wherever she goes but she is happy that she
still has the strength to hold her pen and put all these inky scribbles on this paper in front
of her. A person walks in with black rainboots with grey and white circles thereon and
chequered knee socks- the music becomes louder and faster- Her tea tastes good, but too
aromatic too calling out for a sweetener, some kind of sugar, the music on the overhead is
staccato like. – She ponders how many times she used the word staccato these days and if
59
there should be a ban for overusing certain words in the same piece of writing. How
many favourite words could one smush together and produce decent work, literature-like
musings that have the ability to compete with film, with cinematic endeavours. She longs
for the days when she sat down at the lighttable with a black pen like this one- usually a
0.7 fineliner and draw walkcycles, waving flags, metamorphing gourds and pumpkins.
Ah, those were the good old days. She ponders if she can use a word like metamorphing-
is there even a word derived from metamorphosis. Behind her people are working on
their mathtests, others are playing scrabble- and the people next to her are chatting the
night away. She feels kind of out of place- and kind of in place- a strange mixture of
contentness and calmness mixed with a decent amount of unease- unease not so much
caused by social awkwardness, but more by her perceived inability to illustrate her
thoughts accurately. She wakes up these days in the middle of the night wondering
whether she is wasting away her time by scribbling all these words on paper and
whether she should run after “real” subjectmatter, whether she should construct plots,
whether she should tackle issues, explore questions, analyze problems. The walls in this
coffeeshop are strangely orange and full of annoying little paintings that are high on
quantity and not that high on quality, someone painted feverishly, diligently in the same
way that she writes feverishly, diligently these days until she will be surprised by her own
words, her own insights that will come by accident, dreamlike, like magic. That is the
kind of artistic soul she is, she courts words for hours on end, for days on end until finally
they all march in place, like little tin soldiers and take her to a world of semi perfection,
or maybe of total perfection. Poetry in motion, perfectly choreographed literature,
sentences that have the right amount of meaning and elusiveness, and the same holds true
for built static objects that are, after all, slightly on the time-based side, too. If you put a
60
three-dimensional object in front of you and walk around it or even lower your head, the
visual image constantly changes and thus becomes cinematographic. The viewer provides
motion by moving around an object. She will explore these notions in another lifetime,
once she will go to gradschool. But that can wait, has to wait for now. For now, sitting in
coffeeshops and observing stuff has to suffice. Free-flowing creative writing has to
suffice and building word upon word. Research based writing will have to wait, should
have to wait. She thinks about how much longer she can sit here and put her words down
on this paper while only ordering one tea, how many pages has she written already,
usually she fills exactly two type-written pages, but this notebook seems to have an
endless capacity to be filled, 160 pages for 2 dollars and 79 cents. Thus she can write
away, foregoing shortness, but courting wordiness. It is getting late, people are having
beer. This is such a weird combination of coffeeshop and liquorshop, but the
coffeeshopelement is definitely so much stronger. Princess street is behind her, she would
like to go for a walk in the cold wintery, so very fresh night. This place becomes so very
convoluted with all these people, she feels like screaming and tries to curtail, tries to
smush that impulse. It is becoming sticky in here, she will leave, has to leave. She feels
sick, overwhelmed by all these people, all these conversations. She needs a quiet place,
where she can hear herself think.
Where words flow easily from her pen. She will drink her tea and leave. It is ten
past nine - lake ontario quivers and shivers under its icy coat - She ponders how to end
her short writing passage but knows that she is fascinated by watching her pen move over
the paper, she cannot stop - in the same way that she cannot stop drawing when white
paper is in front of her and she doodles away until she filled up the white surface with
line after line. She knows she has to rush home to the hotel, but prefers to still sit here
61
and document her surroundings. She still has to count the words and then figure out the
words and then figure out the word per hour ratio. This is what keeps her busy, what
keeps her fascinated, focused. Keeps her alive. Still.
---
more goat stories
It is now spring. finally, chronologically. She is back in the goaty coffeeshop and
takes out her writing pad and starts scribbling away. She feels kind of weird and cold,
sitting down each and every day for the last week, writing away like there is no
tomorrow. She thinks about plots, about subjectmatter, but knows that in the end non-
narrative is her forte. She herself does like to read short blurbs, inscriptions on people’s
T’shirts, different languages, differing scripts, manuals for forklifts, Logos on shops,
streetsigns, longwinded abstracts, the new yorker, anything and everything that smushes
new thoughts into her brain, while she walks through the city. K-town is so very urban,
from where she sits, more crowded than 5th. Avenue, cars drive by, buses, trucks, and so
many, so many people are rushing by, determined, getting ready for the weekend. This is
quite a lively town now, so very different from the small town two days ago, it came to
life, it awakened. Then again, maybe it is only her change of place which constructs the
illusion of change of pace.
Outside she can see the Canada Trust sign on the other side of the street. In this
little coffeeshop quite a lot of individuals are writing away on their pieces of paper, on
their laptops. City of writers, coffeeshop of writers. Music is staccatoing on the overhead,
people behind her are conversing. Actually only one person is talking on and on, the
other one intercepts. She notices that males talk more, females nod. She is genderbiased,
like always. Flip judgements rule her world, make her trust in the illusion of knowing this
62
her world, this her environment. Her tea is getting cold. A Hummer drives by, than a
biker. On a Schwinn.
She drinks her tea, has the raspberry pie with the sketchy whipped cream, all foam
and weirdish, she picks up her pen and starts writing again trying to pin down what she
has to say. A Bus drives by, a truck, a Van. She starts daydreaming, trying to make up a
story. She is no storyteller and not a storylistener, either. She prefers fragments that lack
end, lack beginning, lateral storylines that go on forever, seem to come to an end, only to
have a new story feed on the perceived end, a story that evolves, rejects itself, contradicts
constantly, itself, other notions, a story that experiments with itself. She ponders how
come that all these very thin persons around her are able to eat these so very big portions,
they must wait forever between meal A and meal B. Her words are not marching in place,
today the sunny bright weather outside stifles her creativity, she just observes trivial
everyday stuff. Kingston walks by, in front of her window, she just automatically writes
down word after word, instinctively, automatically, while she is really peoplewatching,
worldwatching while she is sitting still. It would be more fun to move while watching the
world go by, motion on a bus and moving through the world, while the world moves by,
opposites moving against each other. Motion is what permanently holds her interest,
catches her attention. This is what animators do, even bad ones, especially bad ones.
Analyzing motion, putting the movement of a hand into frame after frame after frame.
She knows that she will never go very far as a filmmaker, because she constructs and
deconstructs motion, constantly, forever, till the brink of insanity. There is no time left
for shooting new films, new animations. She can merely rehash what she always made,
Dubbing VHS to DVD, to CD’s, to PAL, uploading her animations into cyberspace ad
nauseum.
63
She looks through her writings, counts the pages, quantifies her prose, starts
counting words, she has not yet met her daily allotment, she tries to outrun her
selfprescribed daily allotment in order to push herself into publishing this, but on the
other hand she detests critique, does not know if she wants to be judged, if she will show
this to the world or if she will crumple it up, toss it into the recycling bin to be smushed
up, ground up to produce new paper for others, to write on and take a stab, at arranging
and rearranging words, in other countries, in other languages, in other scripts, with other
subjectmatters. Outside on Princess Street the sun is brightening the pavement, the busy
first day of spring crowd, expecting summer. She can envision this street filled with
summerdresses, summerhats, sandals. This coffeeshop is full of color, even now, tropical
interior, not grey, beige, black, serious. Color as metaphor for fun and black as metaphor
for seriousness. The person beside her is eating something slightly on the spicy side, the
cumin whiff is starting to become overwhelming, the staccato of the music is too
rhythmic, she would like a more quiet, subdued environment. Everything is too rhythmic,
too much like soldiers marching. Her tea is cold now, but she can pour hot water on it.
She would like to know what time it is, the clock is somewhere in the back of this
coffeeshop. She is longing for Vancouver, battling homesickness constantly, dislocation
grabs her by the throat ever so often.
---
She ponders whether she should write more researchbased literature, whether she
should decipher architecture, buildings, cities. Whether she should write “Kingston
Chronicles”, she wonders what the different burroughs of Kingston are called. New
Amsterdam has the Bronx, Manhattan, this small city should have its different parts. She
knows the music on the overhead, recognition keeps her grounded. Her tea had the
64
funny/maybe funky name “Orange Blossom”. This coffeeshop is much too hip for her,
she prefers a quiet, generic diner/ fast food joint atmosphere. Where she is surrounded by
a sterile environment. So that anything she writes, can shine. Total stimulilessness will
automatically make her build a dreamworld and put it magically into sentences that gush
over on paper, taking form, inhibiting space, transcending and bridging the riff between
consciousness of reader and writer. Her fingers are cramping up, She writes too much,
she wrote too much. She has to leave this place and make her way home to the hotel.
home and hotel smush together for her in this funny adventure of her, she becomes
strangely familiar with terms like GTA and Yours to discover, every now and then
startling when she overhears individual voices mentioning Vancouver, when she reads
UVic on someone’s sweater. Kingston is getting slowly but steadily ready for late
afternoon and the whole place is gearing up for the weekend. She feels dislocated, dizzy.
She states that as much, as she can, as often as she can. She wonders if she should lose
weight, but more or better, any Make-up on, start acting her age. Her tea is cold now, icy,
chilly. Maybe she should move here, find a room, live here, write her silly insignificant
little stories, make her insignificant animations, live the end of her insignificant little life.
She is tired, she will leave.
– --
It is now half past eight and she once more finds herself sitting in the coffeeshop,
outside candelabras lighten up the street, the Canada Trust sign is now illuminated, the
music is not yet annoying and screeching, it is pleasant and melodious, the espresso
machine is soothing and its foamy sound feels strangely familiar making her feel
comfortable and at home, she kind of is falling into a routine in this strange city, she can
see the “op” of the “open” sign in the door facing the street and part of the “e”, people
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pass her by and walk out the door, her tea smells like mint and is a tad too strong, she is
not quite sure what to write about, she never is, people at the window are emerged in
conversation, she tries to figure out how to construct a story, but she is not really drawn
to any particular kind of narrative, lovestories are all the same, either the girl gets the boy
or she does not, she prefers starcrossed lovers a la casablancas, suspended longing until
death does them part, car races, action leaves her cold, stories with laughtracks are by far
the very best, but she is not suited for producing humour, producing jokes, she is highly
talented though at laughing at every stupid joke told, usually she finds herself to be the
only one giggling in a room of pokerfaced creatures, which is a tad on the embarrassing
side. She is drawn to writing longwinded treatises about architecture, buildings, cities but
really lacks the expertise to do it properly, scholastically,
Her stories do not go anywhere, it usually helps if the protagonist is the same
person, then again lots of plots can be changed, there is a myriad of possibilities, take 10
different protagonists, in different times, in different countries and let them go through
the same plot, let them live through the same adventure, which is actually how life is
anyways for all of us, we enter this world, move around a little bit, then die, dust to dust,
that kind of thing.
She ponders whether this place stifles her creativity what with the recurrent
yellowish tea, the recurrent pies, the recurrent music, the recurrent patrons, the same
coffeeshop people, how can her stories possibly be differing , how can they possibly have
dimension, texture, volatility.
She really does not care, she is only fascinated by watching her pen move
erratically over the paper in front of her, as if someone has put a gun to her head, once
she sits in this place, she starts to write automatically, driven. She cherishes that feel. It is
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as if she is in a ship bound for unexplored shores, being drawn towards new worlds,
being swept away, being forcefully removed from reality, from realness. This is a city of
readers, or so it seems, everyone is having their head in a book, in a newspaper, she is not
at all fascinated by that kind of passivity, she prefers to tell her stories, practising how she
can arrange and rearrange words to build sentence after sentence in awe like a child
playing with blocks, or even someone building a house of cards. She ponders how
positive the image of building with blocks is versus the image of a house of cards. Her tea
glistens, so does her pie, all the blueberries. Shiny surfaces, outside of the window there
are so many lights, everywhere she looks there are lightpoints, people are talking, this
place is becoming surreal again, like an impressionist painting, lots of dots, lots of points
of interest, music, she wonders, why she writes, should she write? Will anyone ever read
this and if, will they be interested?
She herself prefers to listen to music, to walk, to go from place A to place B, she
likes to watch TV, movies, she is not necessarily a reader, she loves to write though,
loves to draw. She ponders, whether she should write a story about two writers talking
endlessly about the stories they never wrote, the plots they were not able to construct,
waiting for godot revisited, but this time godot is not a person, it is inspiration, the perfect
play, the perfect story. She remembers the awful course she took last semester in
artschool, where dissecting storylines was their duty, their obligation. She was totally
clueless what was going on, and the more she listened to the lectures the more
complicated storytelling became, the more further from the grasp of any mortal narration
became. She got an F in that class and her GPA went down the drain. Which gave her
time to take time off from school so that she could end up putting word after word,
scribble after scribble on paper, feverishly, relentlessly, all of winter 2008.
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Today, was the first day of spring, so the writing and scribbling will still go on.
forever, whether fruitful, whether in vain. And who is to judge the quality of any given
piece of writing. In her mind, as long as she keeps on writing, there will be success, there
will be a beautiful outcome. She never really knows, when she has written something
near perfection, but she usually has a hint, a glimpse, a very visceral feel, if the words are
marching in perfect, though not too perfect order.
She looks outside at princess street, cars are driving by, the candelabra has
different shades of yellow in its round balls, the Canada Trust sign still shines, she feels
agitated, the music is too loud and too rhythmic, too fast, everything starts spinning,
slightly, people come in, people leave, it is as if this coffeeshop writes her essay, she is
pondering how to end this piece, she is wondering, if she wants to end this piece or if she
should just write and write until she goes insane.
– --
She changes her seat and moves away from the person who tries to study calculus,
she wishes that she could study calculus that she could figure out the strange correlations
of numbers, of lines, of geometry, of reason, pragmatism, logic. Hers is the world of
dreams, of observing strange correlations of music, registering visual and audio, it is not
necessarily what fascinates her, but it seems, more tangible, more doable, physics are, is
far away from poetry, from literary musings, she wrestles with her pen and hopes that the
woman in front of her will not suddenly bump her laptop against her table so that her tea
will splash all over her paper. The quietness of her undertaking, her serious stab at
putting all these lines on paper make her immune against her surroundings, she lives very
vigorously in her small little oasis in this coffeeshop and her tea is ice cold now, chilly by
now, the words start swimming, she fidgets around in her purse to find her glasses, she
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should go for a walk, fresh air would ground her, soften the harsh imperfections of her
writings, ease her mind.
– --
she tries to balance her writing pad on the nightstand between the cellphone, the
hotelphone, the nightlamp, the defunct alarmclock/ radio, the prescription drugs and the
waterbottle. Outside everything is white, winterwonderland in early spring. She should
read today’s newspaper, fish it out of the drawer where she stashes all the newspapers of
the week. “Houston, we have a problem”, Tom Hanks and company is on the telly. She
looks outside and tries to figure out what the funny building is, something far away from
descriptability. It reminds her of Luzern, it has a very distinct mixture of functionality
and aesthetic. It looks like a mix between a bunker and a silo, and she should find out
what it is. Every time she comes to kingston, the very same, exact, slightly strange
building is in front of her window. It stands there, calm, robust within the flatness of
surrounding whiteness. She always thinks that it stands within the lake but when she
looks close she notices that it is standing on land, not on an island in the lake. Once more
the “apollo” crew has a problem, this movie has the word “problem” peppered all through
its narrative. apollo, problem. To her it seems like a propaganda film for some very
white, Suburban, American notion of understated masculinity. It is a world that repels
her, that seems too crude, with easy answers. No dimension, no texture. Go-getters going
to nowhere. Into space. She once wrote an essay stating that she wants to be an astronaut.
When she was twelve, no, ten. Nowadays she is afraid of flying. times change.
She ponders whether she should change to a different startingpoint for writing
down her notes. Will her ideas wander into a different direction, a different world, once
she changes her location. She could go to the gym, sit near the whirlpool and start
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writing. The epitome of normalcy. For some weird reason, people do not start writing
when they watch a footballgame. Everything is exactingly choreographed, Writing in
coffeeshop o.k., writing in sportsbar not o.k. The Apollo crew basically lies down and
looks at the ceiling, men in pale blue shirts looking at the ceiling with funny things
sticking out of their heads. Oh, and there is romance. Not exactly in a Romeo and Juliet
kind of way. More in a woman adores man kind of way. Male equals strength and female
follows adoringly. Male leads, female follows. She smiles knowing very well that she
herself is so very engulfed in that kind of mindset, tinkering after some alpha-male,
looking up at the superior being. Times do not really change. Status quo is so comforting,
tradition holds us in its fangs.
Outside it is so very, very bright. Sun shines. She ponders why she puts all these
words down, what she will, can do once she stops writing. The music in the film becomes
eerie, she does not look up, knows only, how much she detests the film. A film awash
with uniforms, a lovesong to American Imperialism. Not sexy at all, very dumb, very
much a glorification of war, destruction and ultimately death. Humanity at risk. All her
filters go up, she is very strong on her opinions, detests and judges in the brink of an
eyeblink, sees the world categorically after her 52 years on this planet. “I am just sitting
here and writing” she says, kind of bothered, kind of in a very “Let me be, let me live”
kind of way. All these words have to be put down on paper in cursive script, letters
marching in line. She notices how ironic her pacifism clashes with her alluding to writing
as putting letters in order on paper, her tin soldier allegories illustrate her longing for
order, for perfection.
– --
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She has an hour to write, her favourite seat is taken, so she sits in this too sunny,
too bright seat with a view of the water, the ship on Lake Ontario. Come to think of it,
this fast food joint near the water has the best view in town, and one tea and 3 timbits is
all one needs to pay, to look out at the lake, write down one’s thoughts, relax, ponder. It
is late afternoon now, the holiday stretches in to the weekend, the music is loud and
obnoxious, staccato like as always, with a weird rhythm. A woman with a funky touque is
sitting near the window and reading a book, she is deeply absorbed in gazing down at her
reading, her colourful touque has beads sprinkled all over it.
Outside the snow is melting, the sun is shining and she feels slightly unsettled.
She walked by the store that sells mystery books, trying to figure out if she could/ if she
should write mysteries. For her everything is a mystery. Mystery of life, hysteria of life.
She randomly plays with words, puts them together, compresses them into shorter
versions, longer versions, elaborate interlacings of meaning, constructing and
deconstructing syllables, compounding meanings, heaping words on words, changing the
underlying structure of sentences, of words, of suffixes and prefixes. Literature is very
visceral for her, Very tactile, she starts using her hands and tries to illustrate her thoughts
with gestures, even to herself. She grasps at meaning, at meanings, tries to compress her
thoughts into words, and utterly enjoys the process. It is like building castles in the sand.
Sometimes they stand up, and sometimes the sand just runs through her fingers.
She looks at her fingers, her hands and notices the age spots. She gasps, maybe,
she can write them off as freckles. But she knows that they are agespots on her overlined,
overwrinkled hands. Old age. Old age.
– --
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Her tea is sugary. Not by sugar that was poured into it. But by the taste of the
oversugared timbits she had before slurping at the teacup. She is not very accurate at
describing physical things, at trying to lay out exacting locations. She shoots the words at
situations, hoping that they will magically fall into place, paint the picture of what is
going on around her. The restaurant is filling up with people, making it more difficult for
her to concentrate. Too many distractions interfere with her penning down observations,
ideas. And what is the use anyways, this moment will be long, long passed once someone
reads this, words will never suffice in illustrating this very moment in time, Even a
camera cannot capture what goes on, only snapshots, vantage points, that constantly
change, intermingle, vanish, appear and disappear.
She is fascinated by watching, observing time pass her by, she deliberately
chooses the same locations to write down these her moments here in this city.
Outside she can see ice on the water, hovering like a pancake, like the cheese on
lasagne over the waves. Obviously, she feels hungry, cheese metaphors somehow do not
cut the cheese. Funny, funny.
All these people here are gesticulating while being so very serious while telling
each other their stories. She, on the other hand, relishes in quietness, standing still, like
the ice on the water outside, inanimate, only observing her pen writing this down. She
listens to all the fragments of speech around her and makes the motions of the woman
beside her melt into the text, she is putting down. It is the same with drawing, music
makes her flow certain lines on paper, the sounds tell her which lines to put down, how
much to adhere to conventional shapes, conventional drawings and when to abandon
patterns, when to quiver and play with shapes and shades of dark and grey in order to
build a certain effect.
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It is later now, time to pack up her belongings and head back to the hotel, to get
ready for dinner. Her life is very trivial, very slow paced these days. But against this kind
of backdrop, the sheer, the mere output of words is tremendous. It is like she has taken up
residency in a writer’s camp, though she prefers to draw, she courts words these days,
looking at all the slightly strange unfamiliar visuals which crystallize into words, pop
down as sentence after sentence, eureka moments interrupted by gooey long-winded
gravy like, elaborate passages that resemble the stillness of the lake outside, the staticness
and calmness of the stretched building on the other side of the water, the white and grey
of the view from this her vantage point in the diner/ fast food joint. She longs for home,
but relishes the urgency of writing, that seems inevitable. Inevitable for her. For her
existence. For continuity.
– --
The words slightly escape her but are still accurate enough. As open to
interpretation as language is it still serves to illustrate the gist of things, the essence of
this moment. Winter passes her by and spring marches in, slushes down on ice, on snow
and presses that into water. It is becoming late, she will make her way back to the hotel.
Now. Now. In a while.
– --
So many persons here are planning their futures. The essence of a city with a
university in it.
– --
And she is sitting still and takes notes. But more so, she is fascinated by the
whiteness outside.
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– --
The tugboat tugs by!
– --
It is saturday morning and she is back at Tim Hortons. The woman reading is here
again, though now she has her nose in a yellow book. The book changes, the person is the
same, remains the same. She sits at a different table now. Same can be said for this
writer, writes again, only the table, the seat has changed, the day has changed, sun went
down, sun went up. earth moved. Passage of time. She tries to recall how that exactly
worked with planet and sun, starts grinning at her total non-knowledge, her forgetfulness
of the simplest of facts. Her coffee steams, the beige, creamcolored, ochre fluid,
glistening, the creamcolored pastry behind it glistening competingly. Or maybe more in
the same visual vain, accordingly, supplementing. Supplementingly.
People start pouring in, short interactions, they pick up food, leave. Outside it is
another bright kingstony day. She will miss this town, once she leaves. It is a soothing,
calm town. The epitome of exotica. Exotic Kingston.
She scrambles for words, writes fast pacedly, while her morning coffee is getting
cold. More like lunch coffee, noon coffee. It is five to twelve. People are entering their “
Ontario- Yours to discover” shielded cars. The staff in the coffeeshop greats the regulars.
She writes, writes. Not very normal, sitting around, writing. Senseless, so very senseless.
As senseless as making movies, films, as senseless as recording the news, trying to pluck
apart what is newsworthy. Pushing the masses towards overpowering, all-encompassing
biases. Islamophobia. She will battle that one letter at a time, one word at a time.
– --
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She misses, she tries to phantom what she misses, whom she misses. She knows
whom she misses, the one who is so very far from here. Leading a life without her. Who
misses her just as much. Or not. Who cares. As long as she feels longing inside her chest,
life is good. Hope, longing keeps her calm, so very happy, so content, so purposeful.
Dreams undying, Surreal and so very real in their surrealness. Poetry. Words are her
friends, written words more so than spoken ones. She might enter the mystery story
contest at the mystery book store. She has to pick up the application form, write a
mystery, submit it. Mystery, Love, hate, thickening plot, the usual. She has never before
written a mystery, but she remembers writing a story, when she was eight, complete with
pictures, images. To clarify the plot, to illustrate the physical attributes of the
character(s). A girl in ponytails, ‘cause she had to have short hair, so the character in the
story had long hair. She is a grown-up now. Her hair is down to her hips, finally, she can
grow it as long as she pleases. Her hair is a very strong component of her being, defines
her. Delilah here likes her hair. That is not how the story goes, she knows.
The diner restaurant is filling up fast. At this point she calls this place a lot of
different names, for her it is basically the “Writing Place” and for the eccentric woman at
the other table it is the “Reading Place”. Eccentricism, Incoherence. She vaguely
remembers that she jotted down words about mystery writing but just wandered off into a
different zone, headed for a different direction. She has to pack up her belongings and
pick up her stuff from the hotel. The sun is shining. She feels content. She scrambles for
words to end this passage of writing, but the words are running away, have a mind of
their own, minds of their own. She ponders, whether it is futile to fill page after page with
thoughts about writing, about narration, but she knows that it keeps her busy. Which is
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not a strong argument, but it works and keeps her coming back to this table to pen down
all the ideas, all the thoughts, all the observations that are constructed by these specific
surroundings. She merely jots them down, meticulously ethnographing. For the National
Enquirer. For National Geographic. Yellow Magazine with soccerpersons inside. Fully-
clothed.
It is getting cold outside. Bright and cold. People are putting gas into their tanks.
While others are slaughtered on the streets. For the gas, for the oil. She feels useless.
Without options. Only a pen. This pen.
– --
She will check her email, once back in the hotel, she is quite in limbo, has to meet
someone, but does not know if she is too soon. Or too late. She is slightly confused, has
to be in different places at the same time. She prefers to keep sitting here. Removed from
reality. Content. Like the woman in the beaded touque and the beaded shawl, who never
puts down her book. Sits motionless and reads. She is writing for her. Tries to penetrate
her mind. She does not really like what people are reading on a day to day basis. Hates,
what is on TV. Mindless dribble to cement the status quo. She has to infiltrate that. With
her pen. She smiles. Accidental revolutionary. Much too comfortable revolutionary. As
she gets older, she gets more militant. Less complacent. She follows the brown-eyed
boy’s lead. Which might not necessarily be good. She should be above following people
and their ideas. Following utopian creatures and their pied piper existences. She is a
grown-up now who should make rules, not follow rules. It is warm outside. The nicely
dressed woman leaves back to her mindless conformity. To cement the status quo. She
smiles, her words are doing their own thing, rebelling against her. The only constant is
her hand writing down, letter after letter after letter. Once back in Vancouver, she has to
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fish through these her notebooks and find the most noteworthy, most eloquent passages.
A chore to make her hair grey and white. She has to leave. Copy these words into another
Notebook. Trying again and again. And again. In vain.
– --
She starts a story about a lovely lady meeting, well, someone lovely, maybe.
Lovely is so very debatable, lady, girl, maiden, fair maiden. And then there is the boy to
be described. Always a boy, a boy until the end. Utterly beautiful, tall, always taller, so
much taller than the girl. Always older, always taller, older, stronger. And so very
beautiful. Features are so important in males. Females are beautiful anyways. No gender
biases here.
– --
she is back at the goat trying to stop the constant “hecticness” around her and
distill it down to quietness, calmness in order to be able to write down her thoughts. The
very hectic lunchcrowd interferes with her calming down and her “calming” tea interferes
with calmness, pensiveness, makes her more agitated. She picks up the pen and starts
writing, slightly on the antsy side. She knows that the clock is somewhere behind her,
somewhere on the wall, but she feels driven to stare at her right hand moving over the
paper, inscribing the paper with hieroglyphs, archaic codes that will or will not be
deciphered in years far after her, long after she is dust. Posterity is what we are
conditioned to vie for, dead old men wrote stuff, mentioned stuff and we are learning that
in schools, classroom after classroom. That thought keeps her going, day-in and day-out,
the quest for a change of the guard, but more so the quest for transition, to equality,
egalitarianism. She is fascinated by male creatures, who think like her, who deliberately
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slow down and push her to run extra fast. All the Utopian minds, underpaid in academia,
but still so much higher paid than her. She ponders, if she will share these her thoughts
with the world, if it is heresy, shaking the boat. Boats are there for the shaking. People
start discussing environmental issues, she on the other hand writes and writes until she
dies, until the day she will be gone. Bacteria, pathogens, oxygens are the discussion
points she is overhearing, but then again she just wants to write and write and write. Her
prose, her words take her to other worlds, other spaces, where life stands still, where
literature rules, where art merges with science, where academia collides with research,
where all the little minions are colliding, where so much is happening.
Her words are taking her to other worlds, she likes listening to the music, she
looks at the images on the wall, blue fields with yellow on orange walls, on brickstone
walls, she tries to figure out how to pierce through the noiseclutter, she wants to hault the
noise, she likes the liveliness around her, but she longs for the calmness, the quietness of
an island somewhere floating over lake ontario. She imagines herself out there like the
Danish statue of the Mermaid. She has to stand up and she looks at the image in blue in
the picture, kind of looking like the mermaid she was just describing. Generic images of
women, face looking down, eyes closed, as if they are ashamed of their nudity. They are
starknaked, but their faces should allude to shame and modesty. Then again wearing their
birthday suits does not equal shamelessness. Shameless is throwing bombs on children
and letting governments get away with that. Shamelessness is going on an airplane
propelled by fuel made with bloodmoney. Oil, oil, oil. This is always on her mind, oil
that is made into the very pen she writes with. Communal shame. She hates the
preoccupation of this world with idle chatter. She hardly ever speaks but tends to write
down her thoughts. She had a rhubarb-strawberry pie with two heaping mounds of
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whipped cream, she tries to figure out how to calm down her pen. In between she notices
that there is hardly a hault to calm down the noiseclutter in her head, she interrupts her
talks to slowly converse with the person on the other side of the table, the staccato of the
music is interfering with her thoughts, too much spoken words are flying around her, the
sheer mass volume of all these people in this very, very crowded tea/coffeeshop make her
write feverishly as if she needs to fight, to battle the hecticness and calm it down to an
even keel, an even quietness. She looks up, watches people moving, trying to read the
menus on the other tables on the signs above, the prices on the tablets. She interrupts her
sentence, suspends it in midair, tries to haunt down words that fly away, she listens to
people talk, fragments flying through the air, the singer becoming louder, flowing into the
back, quietness only in nuances, even loudness, tea glistening, lightdots everywhere. She
is so very content in her insanity, dots it down, jots it down on paper. Maybe she should
hault her flow of words, maybe she should hault her words, maybe, maybe. She tries to
strike up a conversation with the young woman on the other side of the table, the woman
looks through her, picks her ears and follows-up with pitting blue lines of highlight on
her geo-paper. Around her people talk, change tables, this coffee shop is more like a
cocktail party. The small town atmosphere makes her hold her breath.
– --
She resumes writing tries to let go of all the interruptions, the constant noise
clutter, all the words that seem to pierce through her thought processes. She has to tackle
important issues but she will not. There is so much to see here, the red tea bag on her
plate, the red tea with all the shiny, highlighty dots, the glistening lines, the transparence
of the glassmug. She likes the visuals of this place and she yearns for replicating it on
paper. She wonders, if she should come back here and photograph the sites of this very
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coffeeshop, highlight the strong points and let go of the weak points. She is puzzled by
whether this place will go into a two-dimensional surface, whether any room can ever be
splashed onto something flat. She knows that her words are signs on paper, but so are
images and even photos are pigments on a surface. film is a world on a sheet on a
monitor, She ponders whether watching too many films make her see the real world in a
cinematic way. The images around her mimick film more so than film mimicks reality.
Art follows life, life follows Art, form follows function and other paradigms swirl
through her head. She gasps for air, haults her thoughtprocesses at the brink of insanity.
Maybe she should pick up a book, follow someone into her world, his world. Leave her
own shell behind, leave the constraints of her own thoughts. This place is getting to her,
she feels viscerally sick, outside the sun is shining and asking her to gasp fresh air, to
inhale new life, see new sites. She has to wait here to guard the laptop of the people at her
table. She is so very unhappy, overcrowded. She wonders what time it is but refuses to
turn her head to look at the clock. The letters start swimming. This is obsession, utter
insanity. She is fascinated by that. Not good. Not so very good!
– --
She left that coffeeshop only to rush into another coffeeshop, the one on
sydenham and princess. her wobbly chair is occupied so she sits down near the gate
which is put in the middle of the store. This place is equally hectic, but in a more quiet,
subdued manner. Women are her age, so she feels more at ease, contended. She vies for
her own agegroup, despising others. She is full of haulted, suspended hate. She writes,
writes, writes all day long. This is a new existence, for her. Writing from dusk to dawn, in
crowded places. Maybe she should go for different scripts. Courting exoticness. Playing
with notions of orientalism. Show and shove people their brazen racism, racistness. Not
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that she is any better. We are all monsters. She smiles, she misses the physical nearness
of a lover, the proximity of a body. This is not good. Much too overt for a nice, well-bred
lady. Eroticism. Not her subjectmatter. Haulted voices of description. Stifled lives. she
smiles. Her shortbread sugar cookie has pistachios in it. More a pistachio paste.
Something generic mixed in New Jersey. She writes each and every day. In coffeeshop
after coffeeshop. She has nothing more to say. No stories to tell, no tears to quell. Writing
might not be her muse, but it will always be. Meaningless sentence after meaningless
sentence. Two opposite statements in one sentence. Plus, minus. Slightly plus, slightly
minus. She feels alone, could write once more about missing a body next to her. But
why? To confuse the notion of critique. To infuse shockvalue? The targetaudience, her
tergetaudience is never shocked. Has seen it all. Has no religion, no ethics. Rephrase that,
sorry, no morals, but very, very high ethics. Those are the chosen ones.
But she still longs for physical proximity. Music in the overhead, cookie, tea,
love. Words do not mean much anymore. She will edit this, eventually. Somewhere,
sometime in Vancouver. Back where she belongs. Fits in. Or not.
– --
And once again she picks up the pen, looks out at the furniturestore, tries to glean
some free-flowing inspiration from the golden letters that say the name of the store, on
the other side of princess street. Maybe prose is not the country, the world she should
venture into, maybe poetry is what calls her. Less words, less trees decapitated. But what
will she do with the rest of her days? Do readings? Poetryreadings to small crowds.
While she is wearing black and too much make-up. high-heeled shoes, maybe. How do
poets look like, what is their professional garb? Which professional store sells their
uniforms? She ponders. In her world everything has to do with pondering. The favourite
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word in her animations. Goes with black and white. Transcends music and architecture.
She knows what she means by this, but can only hope that someone who reads this, can
decipher it. Codes splashed on paper, demarking her world, her interests, her obsessions.
The abstract, visceral thoughts that wake her up in the middle of the night. That make her
see certain images, certain shapes. Maybe, the right shapes, this time. She longs for
Vancouver, but knows she will be far away from home, for the next two so very long
months. With a pen, some paper, and so very much to say. Stuff she has to type. All of
fall 2008. Spring and winter 2008 mushed into a manuscript. Notes, notices that go on
and on and on forever. Endlessly, rasping her days away. It is near evening, she once
more has to stop, her writing is turning into the same staccato she criticizes in the rhythm
and the music in all these restaurants here in kingston. again and again. She is out of ink.
finally.
– --
She picks up a different pen, once she is in her room, looks out at the lake, she
can see a dark-blue van driving by. The other person in her room complains incessantly.
She blocks it out, hates how her new pen diminishes her writing speed. Her hand starts
cramping up. She has to go out and find a better pen. One that makes the word flow. Like
Butter. The pen makes or breaks writing quality. Better ink, better words. It is that
simple.
The day passes her by. She still wants to write. Outside of her window are
branches branched against the sky. She starts daydreaming while watching TV, the
outside, the very happy life that passes her by sugary, gooey, saccharinelike. She writes
her observations down, inscribes her scribbles on paper, thinks about what to do with her
life. The music on the TV is annoying, everything is annoying. Her world collapses right
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here in front of her. It actually does not, but she is getting bored. Tries to fill up her days
with writing. Tries to eliminate the void inside of her. She should check her email. She
writes all day long, trying to figure out how to stop once she is back to normalcy. In
normalcy.
– --
Her hand is getting cramped up because of her constant writing. She tries to figure
out how to construct a plot, but knows that she will never be able to tell a story. She is no
storyteller, she was not born to tell stories. She is still in the stage, where she looks with
awe at the world around her, she tries to figure out what is going on. Inquisitive behavior.
ad nauseum.
– --
she comes to the second cup on princess street again. It is 2 and a quarter on
Easter sunday in 2008. She is still stuck in kingston in Ontario. Her third pen is out of ink
and she has her second sugarcookie. Outside it is bright, sunny, happy, blisslike. She
could sit here all day, all week, all year, put letters on paper. She listens to the
conversations of the people here, while she writes. She has to train her brain to listen and
to write, but she basically knows how to do that. She does it in class all the time. She
definitely knows how to do that and it is always good if the notes have anything to do
with the lecture. One can, of course, write poetry in calculus class and do calculus in
poetry class. Her life, her life. Passes her by. Like the music on the loudspeaker. Her tea
gets cold. She watches it lose its steam. She writes, writes, writes. Misses someone. So
very much. But then again, maybe she just throws that in, because, you know, sex sells.
She tries to balance her writing pad against her plate on this much too small table. She
picks up the crumbs from her plate. It is not pistachio paste in the sugar cookie, it is
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orange zest and chocolate, the coffeeshoplady said. She crumbled it all over the floor,
then swept it under the counter with her foot. This is her life. Very unobtrusive. She feels
as part of the music. Princess Street. Everything is so very calm. She is in love. She
always is. Makes her happy. Makes her smile. Love, love, love. Her pen is really shitty.
Every and each letter has to be pressed into the paper. Carpal tunnel syndrome inducing
shitty pen. She ponders whether using obscene wording elevates or “descends” her prose.
She likes the painting on the wall, the paint, purple and dark green, both have the same
hue, the same feel. She is so very bored. The day is much too slow, she likes hecticness,
staccato. This is a much too slow paced coffeeshop. The coffeeshops on Princess Street.
Either too hectic or too slow. The fast food joint near the water seems to be the most
conducive to superior writing, superb prose, excellence. Brilliance. Maybe a different pen
will help. She has to fish one out of her purse. She is tired, sleepy. She introspectizes too
much. These days. these so utterly sleepy days, so very sleepy, sleepy days. Near the
water in kingston.
Outside there is a blue awning over a store or a restaurant. Every thing looks so
very British, like a street in London. She wants to be somewhere else, far away from
here. She is stuck in this town and so very bored. She just sits around and writes stupid
words on stupid paper. In stupor. never ending stupor. She used to be good at writing, but
her words have run out of illustrating her ideas. How many times can she write about
glistening tea, lightdots on porcelain, music on the overhead, her hand putting down
words. She should write about a body in the coffeeshop and the spacemen who did it. She
should write about slow love, slow attraction between strangers. She should stop. So she
stops.
– --
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new persons came into the coffeeshop. She ponders about who they are. Looks
them up and down, while writing away on her note tablet on the slightly wobbly table
with all the ornamentation on its feet. She just glimpses at the persons and is able to take
in their silhouettes, their specifics in a mere moment, orange sweater, grey short hair,
lived life, washed-up ideas, suspended boredom, life at the end with not much to expect,
a life that will not, cannot change. She knows that these are only snap judgements, she
would rather describe inanimate objects than write about individuals. She likes to sit here
trying to figure out where her artistic career will go, once she is back in Vancouver, how
much money she will make. She tries to figure out her plans, her plans. But at this very
moment she prefers to sit here and write away. Scribble note after note until the words
fall into place, automatically, while this place hectics up and she has to hold on to the
chair near her, because other people will come back. She is not very happy that people
are coming in here, talk too much and disturb the calmness and suspended silence, the
quietness, the very contended, inanimate calmness, the “standing still of time”.
– --
She finally made her way back to the diner, where the woman in the beaded
touque is sitting in her usual chair and is immersed in reading her book. She herself sits in
her favourite seat and starts writing. Continuity, one woman writes, one reads. One
produces, one consumes. It is three minutes to four, the words flow miraculously, easily.
She is so very happy, she will sit here at least for an hour and inscribe this paper. Maybe
she should take up knitting, but she is no knitter. She spins a yarn though, but at this time
it is merely autobiographical. She ponders whether anything is autobiographical? How
much of Leonardo is in the Mona Lisa? How much of Mondrian in “Broadway boogie-
woogie”? How much of picasso in “Les demoiselles d’avignon?” She is not quite sure if
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the name, the title of Mondrian’s painting is “Broadway boogie-woogie”, she is pretty
sure it is something else. Her coffee is getting cold, a subjectmatter, she has explored ad
nauseum these days. Her days in kingston are coming to an end, she will miss k-town.
Now that she has to pack her bags, she feels that she wants to stay here. A week from
now the woman in the beaded touque will be still here, but she herself (the author of this)
is long gone. Lake Ontario will look the same, more ice will be melt, but she will not be
here. This place took her in, but now spits her out. A part of her will die. Maybe she can
just stay, here, become part of the city. Blend into the background.
– --
It is so very hectic around her, her tea is cold now and the eggsandwich is
finished. So very many persons are in here, talk, talk, talk. Only the woman in the beaded
touque is still, reading, following the path of the written word. She herself slows down
while writing, but still maintains a steady pace. Word after word after word. So very
many words left to be inscribed. She will never publish this. Never. She knows, she
should not publish it. But she does not feel like throwing this away. So many words, in
vain. She doubts the validity of what she has to say. Excellent subjectmatter: Selfdoubt.
When did this happen? How did this happen? Did artschool critiques smush her
enthusiasm? The relentless mocking of inferior beings. Who dared to doubt the validity
of her creations. She really did not care about that, spat in the face of anyone who dared
to criticize. You are either with me or without me. Something like that. “He who laughs
loudest thinks the slowest” says the yellow T-shirt of a person passing by her in the
coffeeshop. How in time.
– --
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She finishes the egg sandwich and she knows she will not be able to sit down for
a family dinner. Which is not really nice. But she was just much too hungry. The words
flow from the pen on the paper and she feels strangely disoriented. It is getting strangely
chilly in here, and she does not know, why. Maybe the icy sandwich with the icy egg
salad, the icy tea and the revolving door make it chilly in here, the still not quite melted
iciness outside, the alienation and dislocation that she feels while writing relentlessly.
The suspended insanity. Her wish for structure, for anything far removed from the hell of
distortion, that she feels so utterly viscerally. Dislocation, she vies for it and despises it.
The dichotomy of her very existence, feeling at home and far removed from home.
Vancouver is far away, Kingston is becoming home. Adopted home for the last
ten/twelve days. She lost count, starts counting the days on her fingers. And gets
confused. She writes while watching all the different people here, the reading one, the
shrieking ones, the ugly ones. Oh, and the good looking ones. There is no plot in this
story, obviously. People come, people go. Passage of time. She looks around trying to get
inspiration for a story, any story. No luck. Her sentences are so very short, no artistry, no
insight. No philosophical eureka-moments. Coldness, chillyness. The revolving ideas in
her head. Her tea is icy now and not exactly very appetizing. More revolting. How many
more days will she come here and write her days away. Write her days into the ground.
Play around with words, with language. Form sandcastles, figments of her imagination,
statements without basements, without basis. She chuckles, throws around words, that cut
into each other, sentence structures that are mismatched and utterly disjuncted. With no
meaning, no flow. She wants to cry. But is much too numb. Just obsessive writing makes
her happy. It is like meditating. As if she is in a trance. She looks up, a quarter to five.
She penned down so many, many words in less than an hour. She will have to put all this
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in her suitcase, board the plane back to Vancouver and start editing. Or maybe go by
train. With stops in Toronto, Montreal, and New York. See the world. She’d rather see
her own room back home. Her favourite seat on her couch. Her favourite coffeeshops
back home. Her busstation. The pouring rain. Walks by False Creek. Looking out at
boats, walking under the granville bridge to the market, walking by the water to burrard
bridge. Far, far away from Kingston. It is ten to five, she will pack up her writing tablet,
stuff it into her bag and make her way back to the hotel. kingston passes her by.
– --
She still does not leave, orders another hot tea, cannot, does not want to leave,
still puts down all her words, while new persons come in, paramedics, civilians, person
after person. The woman who reads, left, taking her beaded touque with her. More
paramedics come in, two ambulances parked outside. Her tea is steaming now and she
wonders, whether she should stop writing. Writing so obsessively, so utterly incessantly.
The pen does not stop, writes mechanically. She has to leave but cannot make herself.
Leave. The diligence of putting down word after word seems to become an end in itself.
This is so very much not normal. Insane. Not even a guilty pleasure. Writing day in and
day out. As a vocation. So weird. So extra ordinarily weird. Ten days and 176 pages
already. Non-fiction, fiction, words that are far exempted from genre. Suspended poetry.
Poetry that courts prose. She took creative writing in art school and knew that it came
easy. But writing as artform, writing instead of painting, because one does not like the
toxic smell of paint. Using words to create visual, to create form, structures, shapes.
Drawing with words. Like an architect, like a draftsman. Putting line after line.
Constructing plans for buildings that are not yet. Far away from Cad-cam technology.
Only lines on paper. Meticulously. Trying to create reality. Her words try to recreate
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reality. But they are still lines that will be eventually decoded. Put in a different context.
She will put them in her suitcase, take them with her and arrange and rearrange the pages,
create a new different reality. Only slightly reminiscent of this very moment, only ever so
slightly. Of these her minutes in kingston, ontario. She is getting dizzy from watching
her hand glide over the paper, putting down letter after letter after letter. It is getting so
very late, so very, very late here.
– --
Surreality suspended. That might describe these very moments the best.
– --
another monday morning. she sits down in her favourite booth, happy that she
remembered the word “booth”. Words escape her constantly, float around, only to come
back in the blink of a moment. So very malcom gladwellian. Or gadwellian. She
chuckles. How to the point is it to use words like Orwellian and Kafkaesque, if one
happens to misspell it. her prof misspelled Aristotlean, she pointed it out, she got an F.
Diplomacy, diplomacy. Glasshouses, stones. It is bright outside, but the ice piled on
again. Around her people speak so very Ontarian, so very Canadian. Doing their thing
with their -ou- s. She likes it here. She writes, observes. Edits her observation to make
them politically correct. Not a good way of getting from place A to place B. Nice words.
Who wants to read that. Controversy rocks. It is cold outside and icy. And she writes
away. page after page after page. One lost soul to another. Melodrama appeals to her
today. With a coffee and a donut. Breakfast. So very healthy. She might not be able to
write that much more. Sugar, grease, caffeine, beer and chocolate are her five food
groups. Actually beer and caffeine are not, sugar and grease will do her in anyways. Ah,
life.
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– --
All the words that have to be piled up like trash in front of a house, to be hauled
into a landfill, like bricks that a bricklayer lays meticulously to construct a building, any
building. She ponders incessantly about her metaphors, all the similes, the allegories that
are way off mark. She dreams her days away in coffeeshop after coffeeshop trying to
pierce the laziness, the gooey silence and make her mark, marks. She never really liked
the term “markmaking”, a favourite term in drawingclass. At the art school. May be some
westcoasty term. She always listened carefully to the lingo used by her profs, evaluated it
instantly, them instantly. They were like an open book, their backgrounds so very
obvious, once you hear them talk. Their intellect so very apparent, the words they use
giving evidence of the schools they went to. Most of them could never even come close
to her intellectual caliber. But they had the power. To make her or break her. And break
they did.
She had to take time out from school, she was on academic probation. How so
very esteem inducing, high esteem inducing, self esteem inducing. Now she sits in this
run-down diner and scribbles away. The woman in the beaded touque is not here. Maybe
she is working. You do not get paid for reading. One day she will be paid for writing.
One day. The day slowly croaches to noon, her coffee is cold. She will pick up her
belongings and make her way up princess street to the next coffeeshop. Buy sugarcookies
and tea and watch what words will flow out of her pen. This pen is fascinating, it has
black ink, not the gooey stuff, that comes out of ball pens. The world has changed for the
better since the advent of fineliners. She once gave a meticulous, detailed product
description of a pen like this. She knows that everything she does, animations, drawings,
writings is made possible by a pen like this. No more inkpot and feather.
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Her coffee is icy now and the lunchcrowd flows in. None of them is goodlooking.
Oh, well.
– --
she is back at the wobbly table in second cup, has the same sugar cookie she had
yesterday, writes word after word, like yesterday, like the day before. She stopped
counting the days, the pages, the words. She just sits and writes. Obsessively. She
ponders whether diligently would be a so much nicer word. The world applauds
diligence, despises obsession. One is laudable, one smells of pathology. This is how this
world rolls. Tea in front of her, she writes her assignment. No one ordered her to write
this, she herself assigned this. People walk by, music plays. Peace sets in, the corner of
sydenham and princess, on the other side of the tea shop at the wobbly table, tea and
cookie next to her notepad, line after line she enters her personal hell. Where words don’t
suffice, where the language walks away, abandons her in her own misery, where
perfection is paramount and so very, so very, so utterly unattainable. She writes down,
her thoughts, her noisy clutter inside her head. She ponders whether muses are male or
female. Hers is, obviously, very male, very beautiful, so very beautiful. And so very far
away. From here. From this small kingston town. People talk about Manhattan, about
Beijing, the cappuccino machine foams. And they talk, talk, talk. While she writes away.
Her tea reflects lines, reams, branches. Fascinating. Calm, silence sets in. She enters into
the world where she listens silently to what all the voices dictate. Who knows what they
will say next. Insanity. It is always with her. With anyone. On this planet. A woman
packs the child stroller into a SUV. Is SUV driving not bad for the earth, the future of our
children. Who knows? Who really cares? Sustainability, greenwash. She will write a
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paper on this. But not now. First tea, first watching the day pass her by. On
Princessstreet. Forever.
– --
On the other side on Sydenham there are lots of boxes stashed, box upon box.
Others might see trash, recyclables. The only thing she sees is a glimpse back in time, her
dreams of architecture, her stab at industrial design as go-between to architecture school.
That was her plan with the artschool, first art, then design, then architecture. And
somehow, somewhere she got stuck, sidelined. No buildings in the middle of town, no
monuments that will last for three thousand years. The bricks for her buildings were
never cut, never broken. Stones, rocks and earth is intact, in nature. She did not move
mountains, did not move material. Pritzker prize committees have to bestow their awards
on others. She forces herself to come to terms with that. But the cartons, the cardboard
boxes smile at her, invitingly, ready for arranging and rearranging. Nowadays she plays
with words, which are not that physically tactile, but more malleable. Constructing
words, ideas. Communicating. In her very essence, in her very true self she prefers
inanimate material, she likes how colorblind, how apolitical it is. Cardboard does not take
a political stance. She discussed that with the filmmaker from rhode island who was of
the opinion, hey, lady, architecture is very political. Ideas, life.
Someone walks by in a limp. She should change her seat. The sun is right in her
eyes, interferes with her writing. Words are changed, ideas are changed by her inability to
accommodate the light, the gleaming of the sun. Three more pages left to fill. A red car
parks in front of the window, backs up into the miniscule parking space. She changes her
seat, sits under the too loud loudspeaker, under all the pinned paper on the wall, under the
flyer that says “reel women” and talks about “inspiring” films. Every time she sees that
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flyer she cannot feel but utterly mad, utterly angry, women films are supposed to inspire.
Inspire is short for nurture, for caretaking. Most women are utter bitches, they do not
nurture, they do not “caretake”. Men do.
And she knows that. For a fact. It is her strongheld opinion. Till the day she dies.
She will write this down for all the people who agree with her. She will. She does.
---
The music is too loud, so she writes as fast as she can. Once finished, she will
make her way back to the hotel and fish another notebook out of her suitcase. To fill it
with all the words, that are not yet written, not yet read, not yet thought of. Random
statements, fragments of her experiences of the last fifty-two/fifty-three years.
Remembered in coffeeshops in ontario, all over kingston. While the sun shines outside,
so very bright, while cars drive by, while glass reflects the hustle and bustle in this
suddenly overpopulated store. Calmness changes in a second to erratic conversations,
song after song on the loudspeaker, random statements, random observations that inform
and misinform her practice, her praxis as a writer, artist, observer. Something of that
kind. Architect of lines, words, poetry, poems, spoken word, written word,
choreographed meticulously, danced into oblivion.
People enter, dark beautiful silhouettes. She misses Vancouver, misses him.
Maybe. Maybe not.
---
she sits down in the restaurant where spicy food spreads its odour all through the
space, where music is so very rhythmic, where her tea is served in a so very big bowl,
where everything, everything seems so very so. kind of inspiring, kind of full of aspiring.
People with aspirations, but not quite there. A hub of research and creativity. More
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creativity than research. Music makes thinking straight impossible, it invites dance,
motion, whole body movements, not just moving of her right hand, feverishly, over
paper. thoughts immortalized in a language she hardly mastered, she’ll never master.
Vocabulary spit out on paper, while the music rythmisizes her, puts her into trance, which
she slows down and translates into word after word. Imagination, so very far removed
from fact. But what is fact? Everyone’s facts are different, laced with subjective biases.
She longs for possibilities, dreams slowed down, focused into material, matter,
innovation. Her tea takes the colour of the chamomile sachet in it, the whiff is aromatic,
though too perfumy, much too perfumy. Outside princess street walks by, Canada Trust
greets her from the other side of the street. Lights, reflections in the window glass, in the
tea glass mingle with the song on the loudspeaker, the audio-visual is laced with all the
fragments of people talking. Verbose persons changing notes, smashing their realities at
each other. The sack with the chamomile sinks to the bottom of the glass, she longs for
something sweet. The fan overhead is busy turning and she is out of subjectmatter. She
should read the globe, she should make her mind wander intelligently, focused,
pragmatic, going after logic, after reason. Where truths are pinpointed, haulted and
wrestled down.
The music should stop. Its incessant beat stifles her writing. She wishes for
quietness, calmness, dreamy shores on an island far removed from humanity. Somewhere
all by herself. Then again, she knows that she will always live in an urban environment,
at ease with herself, alienated, dislocatedly bowling alone. Listening to music,
deciphering staccato, in her very own world, in her oasis. That keeps her sane. She would
die, take her last gasps, once she has to bowl with others. Putnam merely writes books,
one can challenge that notion anytime. He himself sits in his own little world, while he
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writes. He bowls alone. Dichotomies like this keep her mind busy, contradictions that are
so very obvious. “The emperor has no clothes” she screams every now and then while she
clashes with academia, but not that much anymore. She’d rather sit in a coffeeshop, tap
her feet to the dancemusic on the overhead, look at the images on the wall, drink her tea.
Her chamomile tea, calming, soothing, shutting uppingly.
---
By now she has reached book 4, by now it is spring here, princess street, kingston.
---
She reads what she just wrote, tries to exact the contradictions, tries to undermine
the semistatements. Her medium is not the message, all her works are scratching, saying,
negating, constantly, but more to go to the endresult, like a DJ scratching a record, but
then forcefully go through with one in-your-face statement. Die! Ok, we are getting a
little too melodramatic here.
She really has to focus on one subject, instead of rattling along from idea to idea.
She has to finish her tea, overwrite the rhythm, the incessant beat on the overhead. She
should walk along Lake Ontario, adore the view, the water. She could care less, there are
words to be written, stories to be told. There are mystery stories to be constructed, to be
submitted to the little mystery story store on the other side of the street facing the Italian
restaurant. Brock street. Mystery of crime, mystery of death, who did it, detective story
genre, something that will be much, much too complex for a simple mind like hers. The
mind of a person who orders chamomile tea and bullshits, waxes endlessly about
reflections of light in her tea glass, dots of imperfection, whiffs of spices and chamomile.
The music started again, mix of rhythm and new-agey bells, too psychedelic, much too
hippy-mippy. Not her style. Not straight-forward. Utterly logic, pragmatic.
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She writes away, listens to the music, wonders if she can pace herself and write
with the staccato of the music, she wonders what time it is. She might die writing this
being the longest writing marathon she ever participated in. The candelabras outside are
white and boring now, they hunger for the drama of the night, daylight makes them fade
into the background, but their time will come, they wait to perform in the night. Gnomes
are standing on the ledge above the door looking down at all of us. She is losing it, ever
so slightly, ever so dramatically. Lake Ontario waits. One could walk by it. One could
jump into it. She is, obviously, the walking by kind. Has to transport her notes out west,
type them and submit them. Or not.
---
She finished her tea picks up the pen again to smush down her observations on
paper. There is so much going on, so many individuals to look at, cars driving by, her tea
glass balancing in the saucer that is much too small. There are spies here, aliens from
outer space, loveloarne creatures, who are not quite sure if lovelorn is spelled correctly,
in short, the usual crowd. There are writers here and poets. Mathematicians and
physicians. Aspiring lawyers, desperate lovers. Cooks, waitresses, former models. She
tries to find storylines, construct storylines. She dreams her days away. Looks at the
brickbuildings on the other side of the streets, the pictures on the wall. Images of women,
images of men. in paint, in 2D. she dreams her days away. The fan on the ceiling is still
turning. She will leave this town. On Sunday. Today is Monday. A week of suspended
life. Writing words in all these notebooks. Again and again. Following some kind of
muse. Listening to music, the drums, the singer. Merely noticing the rhythm. A person
sits near the window and reads. Everyone here either reads or writes. No one draws. No
one knits. So, basically, most individuals in these places do four things: They read, they
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write, they eat, they drink. We are not very diverse, not unpredictable. So very
predictable. So very, very boring. And the music just does not stop. At all.
---
behind her there is a transit map of kingston pinned on the wall, she cannot really
read it, but she can read the caption of “lake ontario” on the bottom and the sky blue
color of it and she likes the caption “where life takes you”, all the busschedules of this
town, no mentioning of the busfare though, which has to be paid in exact fare, upfront, in
coins, just like back home. She read that on the buses that pass her by on the street. She is
tired. She’ll go home now. Home is where the hotel is. Her so very, very weird life.
---
she is back in the fast food place opposite the hotel, opposite lake ontario. It might
be thursday, it might be wednesday. It is white and so very bright outside. Her pen starts
writing once she sits down. Outside the sun is so much too bright, reflects the lake, the
remnants of ice and snow. She starts squinting. Paramedics, construction workers stream
in. The early lunch crowd. A woman reads, but it is not the usual one. She writes away,
trying to construct stories, describing facts. But words are not friendly to her today. Each
and every day is different. She has laundry in the machine, has to return to the hotel to
put the clothes in the dryer. All kinds of uninspiring, cluttery chores. Work, labour. At
this point putting words on paper is her labour. Unpaid labour as of yet. Words too short,
too vague. Her coffee is getting cold. These are the snapshots of her life. Cars are driving
by. Others are cluttered and massed up into the parking lot. reflections on glass annoy
her. And the words are too short, too less poetic, too non-poetic.
She plans out her words, like a draftsman would put down lines and dots, how a
blueprint would be layed out. She hears the tragically hip somewhere so very muted, this
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is their territory, this is what is reflected in that kind of music, it reflects the longing, the
unfinished ideas of this place, a muted, very real lake, a place so very young, so very
mysterious, so very unfinished. She ponders whether her impressions are the same as
other persons’ impressions, but she knows that at the end of the day she has her own way
of seeing things and others have theirs. She can only bridge her consciousness and other
persons’ consciousness with words, signs, gestures, unfinished forays into truth, the
wrestling down of truth, the wrestling down of what truth is and might be. She would
rather deal with facts, with concreteness. Every thing is vague and mysterious, in a so
very grounded and calm way. The military academy sends out its minions, the hobo who
frequents this place stands at the door. She is losing ink. Her life. Her life. All the words
she still has to write. Before the ink dries for today. Ontario. 2008.
---
she picks up the submission guide for the mystery story writing at the mystery
novel store and puts it into her purse. She walks around kingston trying to construct a
plot. She is feeling slightly on the incompetent side, actually very much on the
incompetent side. She splashes tea on the pages of her notebook, her table in her
favourite coffeeshop is much too wobbly. It is a quarter to two on a windy kingston
afternoon. She feels alone, alienated, so very far away from home. Writing a mystery is a
mystery for her. She never did that before, but she knows she can put words on paper and
somehow, miraculously they will fall in place. Or not. The woman with the red hat orders
tea, a chocolate cookie at the counter of the coffeeshop. She could be the murderer. Her
red hat shows a subdued flamboyance and it is red, like blood. Like red, aorta blood, not
like brownish blood, that is thicker, older, yuk. The woman with the red hat left. To
commit more murders. She walks over amphoebias, worms, over small little organisms,
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that is murder. She might garden, pluck flowers. Aha, murder. But socially acceptable
murder. The author ponders: What exactly constitutes a crime? Killing first nations
people? Crime. Throwing bombs over nagasaki? Crime. Bullying? Crime. The list goes
on, the plot thickens. Or something like that. The grand prize is 100 bucks, she should get
started writing a mystery. Protagonist, Antagonist, that kind of stuff. A perfect story.
Maybe she should start with the crime. The body. And then go from there. Or the stolen
clock. The stolen dress. She once lost a shawl. Maybe it was stolen. No, how about the
stolen mystery. The nobel prize winning novel. Stolen. gone. Actually nobelprizes are not
really awarded for one stab at genius, more continuous stabs. Or maybe a stolen
nobelprize. By someone who is bitter that the nobellaureate put her life into writing social
commentary. Instead of mystery novels. The nobellaureate winning a prize in medicine
stealing the nobelprize from the gorgeous writer nobelprize winner. Who is gay. She, the
writer, feels that the storyline seems to go somewhere. Here in Kingston. In spring 2008.
She ponders, love should definitely be part of the story. A beautiful creature, adored by
another not so beautiful creature. Beauty and the beast. Longing, unrequited love. But she
does not want any of the two, be dead, neither beauty, neither beast. Maybe love triangle.
The writer is confused. The storyline does not take shape, is still in its infancy. Princess
Street is lovely, today. Not too cold, not too hot. The coffeeshop people are talking, one
says: what is this? Aha, a mystery. Mystery is such a subjective word, one person’s
mystery is someone else’s trash. All of life is a mystery. Her cookie has a funny taste.
Mystery. She does not recognize the singer on the loudspeaker. Mystery. This is not
good. Mysterystories should have something to do with crumpled raincoats, with sin,
with murder, blood. with greed. She thinks. At this point it is a mystery for her what a
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mystery is. What is the perfect crime, when is something a crime and when not. Is
breathing a crime, is writing a mystery novel a crime? Not good for the trees, not
good for the environment. The writer uses a pen that is made out of petrochemicals, made
out of oil, taken by force from countries that do not have the exacting industrial power, as
the countries who waltz in there and orchestrate wars. Oilmoney, bloodmoney. She
prefers to pin these facts down on paper, ink them down into the consciousness of her
readers. She knows that she is only preaching to the converted, but nonetheless, she
might win over people. One person at a time, one reader at a time. She will reinvent the
genre of mystery novels, put her politics into it, infuse meaning into novels that are only
read for entertainment. She will foster social conscience through mystery novel writing,
use a traditional medium to infuse it with her very own ideas. She knows that
islamophobia is rampant, state sponsored. It makes her mad and she tries to combat it. Or
ignore it. She looks at her notebook, watches her pen fly over the paper. Maybe writing
manifestoes is so very much easier than writing mystery novels. She will start once more:
He is very beautiful, the best looking creature she ever met. When she looks at him, she
gasps for air. He looks like 0 point zero, zero, zero one per cent of the population. Any
population. Anywhere. His voice is intellectual and he is a total geek. He is tall and just
great. Ok, that is character A. Then there is the woman. Beautiful, but more of the
average looking kind. Never wears Make-up. These two are our beauty and beast. The
drop dead gorgeous guy and the average looking girl. The crime is that they will never be
together. Isn’t that crime enough? She ponders. There has to be a crime. He teaches, she
is his student. She finishes her studies, he still goes on teaching. She leaves school,
moves to New York, becomes a famous architect. He still teaches. She moves to
Rotterdam, works for OMA. he still teaches. She starts teaching at Harvard. He still
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teaches at the little Artschool. She misses him, he misses her. She wins a pritzker prize.
They get old, grey and die. The end. She feels like choking. This is not a mystery, more a
tragedy. Maybe mystery writing is more up her alley, romance novel writing is just too
sad. Girl doesn’t get boy, that is far too sad. Girl should get boy, in a perfect world. So,
let us mix it up. Scene C, third act, picture this: A retirement home. In New Haven,
Connecticut. He and she, they are both grey and old. They live in the same retirement
home. Do not ask, how they both ended up there. It just happened. She is 80, he is 90.
Now there has to be a crime, a mystery. How about stolen money. She has 7008 dollars
stashed away in a sock. Under her bed. She wakes up. The money is gone. Who took it?
The police comes in and starts investigating. A gorgeous criminal investigator with a
body to kill for, a miniskirt, the perfectly shaped woman. With perfect teeth. She is thirty,
has hardly any lines on her face. She interviews the old lady, who is 80. They are fifty
years apart. She interviews him. He is sixty years her senior, but still dropdead gorgeous.
She falls for him. He rejects her. She kills him. Crime of passion. It is always a fight over
a boy. Then again, there is no mystery. The only mystery is the 7008 dollars, that went
missing. As it turns out the nurses took it, because they were so very bored with their
work. They did not take the money to spend it. They just wanted some action to happen
in that retirement home. Or maybe Mr. Greery from Room # 37 took it? These are all
mystery stories, different plots, piling up, going into different directions.
It is still afternoon in the coffeeshop on princess street, in kingston Ontario. In late
March 2008. The music does its staccato like hammering away, the cappuccino machine
foams. The author still writes, tries to figure out how many more words, she has to write,
how to type it how to attach it in PDF form and submit her story until May 15. Her non-
story. Her stumbling, utterly inadequate story. Her not filmable story. She puts down her
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dreams and hopes on paper, she still misses the boy back home, the one that makes her
gasp for air every time she sees him. That paralyzes her. That has no place in this her
mystery story. But that croaches into her writing, nonetheless.
She looks up, watches two schoolgirls having chocolate or coffee with whipped
cream. She has to go back to the hotel near the water, pick up her suitcase, she has to
write ten more pages to make this story consist of 3500 words. Or maybe more. Or
maybe less. She has to fill up the pages. To finish her mystery story. Make it more poetic,
less poetic. She will go for a walk. And come back with her writing pad and start editing.
Constructing a better plot. A more thickening plot. Like Gravy, like whipped cream. She
will spin a yarn. In the end. She will pick out the romance stuffi- muffi, and go for more
serious stuff. Use better words than stuffi-muffi. More scholastic ones, blissfully
academic ones. The architect and his lover, oh, or maybe no architect and no lover. No
death, no stealing. Well-behaved people in a well-behaved coffeeshop, who write
coherent stuff. Not purely insane plots, that are funnily insane, senseless. Like poetry.
parametric narration. Whatever that means. She could shoot the loudspeaker on the wall.
The insanely boring music is driving her crazy. Makes her not function as a mystery
writer. And therein lies the true mystery, that is worth 100 bucks. As Award. In the
mysterial contest, the mystery writing contest. In Ontario. In 2008.
It is another day. Wednesday. She made her way to one of the many coffeeshops
on Princess Street. Ponders, whether the term coffeeshop automatically diminishes the
quality of her writing. Coffeeshop being a simile for leisure, too much time on one’s hand
and thus so very far away from serious, research based writing. She herself is of the
opinion that this does not necessarily hold true, but does not feel the urge to plaster and
cement her argument. The day is so much too sunny, too bright in a leisurely way. The
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coffeeshop atmosphere takes her automatically into the realm of uninspired, unimportant
musings, the music on the overhead pierces into any stab at scholastic discourse,
facilitates dreamy, kitschy musings, calls for engaging in trivial discourse, and she
ponders whether this is facilitated by the lack of a deadline. No one forces her to produce
a finite body of work, so she just talks to her paper in a rambling manner, piling up word
on word, sentence on sentence with the hope that she will sift through the mess, once she
is back in Vancouver, at the keyboard, once the urge to superimpose order on the words
in her notebooks in her suitcase, she brought back from her ventures back east, becomes
too strong to resist. She ponders whether she should allude to romance again, once more,
like she did so many times before, but decides on cutting out that aspect, because it takes
her writing to a totally different realm. Hers is the pursuit of wordsmithing for language’s
sake, the process of forcing herself to the edges of articulating ever so elusive thoughts,
hints of insights, vague lights in the night of disillusionment. and the like. Outside she
gets a glimpse at the Furniture store, J. Reid furniture, that is, the regulars are streaming
into the store, she will have her regular sugar cookie, repetitiveness in an otherwise
freeflowing day, points of reference in a strange country, a strange town. On the other
side of the world. In Ontario, 2008.
---
It is near noon on a thursday in spring 2008, she finds herself once again in the
Tim Hortons at the bottom of Princess Street. She has a donut and a coffee. Outside, it is
white, overcasty, a certain bright whiteness, that eludes description. She knows she shares
the feeling of this place with all the others that are sitting here, then again they all might
perceive this place totally different based on their physical states, based on the exact
locale in this very place, where they are sitting, whether they face north or south, east or
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west. She feels a cold coming on, but hopes to battle that by exercising, by eating right,
by winning something from the rolled up rim. Or better yet, not winning. Too much
excitement. She has time to kill until 4 o’clock. The woman in the walker goes to the
restroom. In her walker. It is not really a walker, it is one of the new models with tires.
Maybe it is called a rollator. There is actually a commotion in front of the washroom, the
rollatorlady sat down to wait, another person whooshed by her into the restroom. The
rollatorwoman now stands up in order to walk in. The other woman comes out, opens the
door for the rollatorwoman, smilingly. They are both grey haired, maybe seventy. One
wears red, one wears beige, creamy white. Ecru. One is more elegant, one is less elegant.
One is more sprite, one is less sprite. Another grey haired woman comes in, she is
dressed in purple. The rollator woman comes out, is really fast now. She doesn’t even
have grey hair. Maybe it is dyed, but it seems not to be. The author sits here, watches
people, listens to the loud-voiced Brit at the other table. This coffeeshop is so full of
action. She reads a book called “How to Read Literature like a Professor.” She is not
quite sure if she wants to know about literature, where does literature start, where does it
end. Is a store receipt literature? And who is a professor? Questions, questions. Irrelevant
questions? It is more, that she is afraid, so very afraid that reading that book will stifle her
ability to pen down accurate words, accurate writing. With every word she writes down,
she imagines the mindset of critiquing individuals. Thus she cannot fly freely into the
storm of her own imagination. And she cannot freely fabricate metaphors like the one she
just penned down. Faulty metaphors that seem to resonate with the wish for aesthetic
merit, but clash resoundingly with the wish for logic, the quest for reason, both in writer
and reader.
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She ponders, why her letters are so upright today, they are not cursive and sweet,
like always. The cursive ones are more like fashionmodels, beautiful bodies better than
regular ones. Better than you and me. Her coffee is getting slightly cold.
She remembers that she wanted to write a mystery to submit to the mystery story
writing contest. Something with murder, blood or at least intrigue. Something full of
suspense, not the haulted suspense of the lunchcrowd in the coffeeshop here. With a view
on lake ontario and the holiday inn, parking lot, tugboats floating by. All kinds of cars
roaming around searching for parking, red ones, white ones. Cars with mysterious, so
very mysterious flags in front. Denoting some sports team, possibly. Something red. The
flags back in Vancouver are blue, dark purple. Go Canucks go. The ones in Kingston are
all red. This cannot be woven into a mysterystory, red denoting blood. She ponders,
whether she should let go of the quest for the contest prize, the first one being 100 bucks,
second and third being 50 and 25, respectively. She tries to remember movies like “The
Birds” and “Psycho”, wonders whether they are mysteries. She once watched “The
Mousetrap” in London, she used to play “Clue” with her cousins, she used to devour
swedish mystery novels thirty years ago. A tugboat goes by, time stands still. It is just an
observation she makes, how can time possibly stand still. One does not see time move, it
is not the motion of a hand from left to right. Time is abstract. She smiles at all these
deep insights she has here in the coffeeshop and how she puts them down and fills page
after page. The woman sweeps the floor, she automatically lifts her feet. The author
ponders whether her pronouns go with the verbs, or whether they clash. She should read
the professor, literature book. When she bought it yesterday afternoon in the bookshop on
Princess Street, the bookseller was kind of amused, but did not say anything, the
bookseller woman could not hear her and made her feel inadequate. And there was
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another thing that happened, too and she utterly forgot, what it was, because she started
chatting to the coffeeshop lady. It was about the book and the bookstore and it seemed to
be so very important, but it just slipped her mind. And actually she remembers it now, it
was the poster about the “salon des refusees” show at queens, where all the BFA and
MFA students show their “stuff”. It is the same with literature, “professors” hail or reject
written words. She ponders whether her writings are good or bad, whether what she
writes, will make the cut or not. Thumbs up, thumbs down. refused, acclaimed. Her
coffee is getting cold, others are coming into the coffeeshop. The book talks a lot about
putting literature in context with other literature. There are seminal texts and not so
seminal texts. Who decides what is seminal. An educational institution? That might serve
the establishment or might go against it. The intelligentsia that might serve the powers
that sustain it or might clash with them and facilitate the overthrow of the government.
Intelligentsia as breeding ground for dissent, for consent. She despises this constant
struggle, as if everything is about confrontation. About plus or minus. She remembers the
SFU prof on TV, who posited that the media should not cover war like a sports event, a
sports match. It should cover war like it would cover health, if you do this, this will
happen, if you do that, that will happen. We have to let go of our notion of protagonist
versus antagonist. We are all in this together.
She wonders, whether she wandered off from her initial subjectmatter, her initial
thoughtprocess. She most certainly did, but it does not really matter. Not in this
coffeeshop, not for the lunchcrowd. She is just some crazy lady that sits in her booth and
writes away. Nietzsche ended up in the looniebin. She chuckles at her own
pretentiousness. It is who she is. Her prof in experimental animation called her arrogant
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and gave her an F. it happens. Life goes on. Chickensalad. She should order a sandwich
with Chickensalad.
---
She wrote twelve pages in longhand. Double spaced. Her coffee is icy. She puts
down the pen. Starts observing people, the car backing up outside. Listens in on
conversation, on breaking dishes behind the counter. It is cold here and so many persons
flow into this place. She cannot stop writing even if her words go into all kinds of
directions. Smash around into space. How many persons are in this place? It thickens up
with people, they talk, a baby cries in the back, someone orders coffee. This is quite a
busy place what with the drive-thru and everything. She is feeling chilly, a woman passes
her by, then another, she is getting used to that look of disapprovement. Somehow, sitting
still and writing away seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way, she should wash
dishes, prepare food. Another woman smiles at her, approvingly. The two women who
left were older, the ones who like her are younger. They make money, the other ones do
not work or work for free. She ponders whether she will be able to sell her writings and
thus make it valid. Infuse validity into her words by charging money. Sing for cash? Not
for free.
Marketing, marketability. All these concerns inform her practice as a woman who
writes. Gender issues and a myriad of other issues. Outside the Holiday Inn is gearing up
for the weekend. Or not. It has different signs near the building, on top of it, on the right
side of it. She ponders whether she should name the exact names of the places she writes
about or whether she should change them. She should call this place simply a restaurant
and not classify it, categorize it as diner, fast food joint, coffee shop, tea room and the
like. A name like The Restaurant simply denotes a public place where food is served, a
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“bistro”, a “pizzeria” denotes something more specific. She has problems with all these
words, all the wording, she puts on paper. It is late now, she has written for one hour and
a half. She should stop. It is utterly chilling here. Her words become too convoluted, too
obviously bordering on denoting insanity. She cannot really smush them into space, make
them fall into place so very nicely, dance in space, beautifully choreographed, performing
on stage to the gasping audience down there in the dark theater, her words are so very
hesitant today, so very very trivial, so dilettante, without nuances, words that stumble like
elephants in a glasshouse, words that do not inhale adequacy, exhale articulateness,
words that merely are signs of someone who writes ever so very unsure of her main
objective, exploring subjectmatter after subjectmatter while she is peoplewatching, while
she is utterly distracted by the hustle and bustle in this place. For some weird reason there
is no music today on the overhead, The noise is provided, by cluttering dishes, people
talking, shoes clapping on the ground, hands clapping on teapots. Doors opening and
shutting. She will order another coffee or tea, a sandwich, she will read through her
writings, count the words, count the pages, arrange and rearrange her thoughts, read her
book and just be. And then make her way back to the hotel and get ever so slightly ready
for leaving this place and make her way to Toronto, to New York. Her funny little east
coast adventure is not yet over, it will go on and on until the end of april, her words, her
writing will be the only constant, notebooks filled with so many thoughts, more so many
observations. The observations are the mainstay, the thoughts are more afterthoughts. Or
so it seems. So it is. Today.
---
She picks up the book with chilly fingers. She opens it and reads the passage
about a love sonnet. She does not know the exacting shape of a sonnet, how the verses
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are arranged how they rhyme. She ponders whether sonnets have anything to do with
love, after all one can feel love without feeling poetry, without reading or writing poetry.
She herself is not quite sure if she ever wants to write about love, about the feeling that is
forced into her being by the sight of another creature. She does not know if she wants to
describe that, whether this is too personal to divulge, a sentiment too much on the
intimate, private side to be communicated in a so very public forum as a published story,
a book. She looks out the window, at lake Ontario, at the buildings on the other side of
the lake, the long stretch of white bricks, the rectangles behind the bushes and the
branches of the leaveless trees at the end of march. She feels tired and exhausted, her
glasses are dirty and thick, reflecting the skylights of the restaurant, she wonders whether
this place ever shuts down in the middle of the night. Her hand is cramping up, in the
same way that it used to cramp up after days and days of animating walkcycle after
walkcycle some six years ago. Maybe drawing incessantly uses different muscles in the
hand than writing incessantly. Drawing seems to sore up index and middle finger,
whereas writing “atrophizes” ringfinger and pinky. She has to stop but cannot really put
down the pen. Too much is left unsaid. All the images around her, all the stories of all
these people, all the lives that miraculously intertwine in this place. Two more pages are
still blank, should be eventually filled, so that she can feel a slight whiff of
accomplishment, the hint of adequacy, the establishment of purpose. It is so very cold
outside, she should go to the counter and order a hot beverage. People are chatting away,
she wonders whether she will miss this place, once she is back in Vancouver. The
restaurant is part of a chain, so the physical layout, the material of the tables and chairs,
even the lightning is the same. The people are changing, the players will be different. She
will live in proximity to, to, she smiles because she is unable to adequately pin point
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down the proximity to what. An illusion, a delusion of home. Or something like that. The
embrace of a long lost lover. She smiles at this so very prosaic statement. Prosaic, indeed.
---
Her sentences for today are finished, this, her notebook # 7, has been filled, she
will stash it in the drawer of the dresser in the odd little room on the second floor of the
hotel near lake Ontario, on the other side of the restaurant, to denote the coldness and the
chilliness of this very moment, these very moments.
---
she sat down in the coffeeshop on Princess Street, because she has to wait for the
load of laundry to be dried. So in between loads she has to wait, kill time and frequent
coffeeshops and start writing. She ponders whether she could have ever sustained the
lifestyle she has, were she forced to pay her way or whether, on the other hand, she would
have soared to unexpected or expected heights. In hindsight she tends to imagine herself
in a place so much higher than her actual place, lauded by the world, utterly successful.
Walter Mitty dreams, delusions of grandeur, megalomania, Pipedreams. She scoffs at
these terms, knowing very well that these are terms to hold people in their place, hold
them back so that others can succeed. There are underlings and overlings. “I am so very
happy to be an Epsilon” Huxley revisited. She knows all this, everybody knows this. So
she writes, here in a coffeeshop, so very aware that this is not an office, it is the antidote
to an office. Nothing written in this space will ever be worthwhile. Not because the words
are inherently bad or inherently good, but because the author, any author does not own
this piece of real estate, sits here only because she forked over three bucks for her
chamomile tea. If she was writing this in an office as a staff writer, she would earn a
certain amount of money. Somebody would edit this, someone would make sure that the
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glitches would be caught, the “faults” evened out. But while she is sitting here and
writing away, she is more like an independent entrepreneur, an independent investor. Van
Gogh freelanced, look where he ended up. While alive. Anyone’s worst nightmare. She
will never go there, never ever fly too close to the sun. Hers will be cautious steps, within
boundaries. No risk talking, no risk taking. She ponders. Too much philosophical musing
for a sunny kingston morning. Her tea is awaiting to be drunk. Or is it drunken? Words
escape her, she constantly reminds herself, that this is not her original language. Nothing
but negativity for today. Disillusionment, dislocation, distress. Outside people, walk by,
enjoying their weekends. She saw a young girl, homeless, desperate, on the ground. She
walked by. She is so very jaded, believing that it is only a farce. That person is young,
will pick herself up. She knows it will not happen. She feels helpless. Writes away to
combat negativity. To get from place A to place B. To kill time between loads of laundry.
In spring 2008. She ponders about the validity, the aesthetic merit of sprinkling the word
“spring 2008” all through this text, again and again and again. She does not know, if an
autobiography that mentions the same place and the same season again and again, fits in
with any norm of literature-based endeavour. Any genre. She feels very strongly that
genres are there for the breaking, for extending, for arranging, rearranging, redefining.
Each and everyone of us who uses a language, who produces written or spoken word is
free to play with the form, to explore the form. Outside, people are walking by. She will
go back to the laundromat. In spring 2008. Saturday morning, in kingston, ontario.
---
She reads over, what she has written. It is basically o.k., but there are all those
little wrinkles of incoherence, that have to be ironed out, all those pockets of discrepancy,
all those difficulties in communicating the writer’s ideas to the reader and all those
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fallacies that grapple the author’s pen and inhibit utterly logical writing. Hers is not
necessarily the voice of reason, too much is she fascinated by sound, of melody of the
language. She knows a lot of different languages, and the song of the words take her to
express vague inklings. The drama of insights draws language forward. She writes and
writes, listening to the words in her head. Cars drive by, people walk by. The door claps,
again and again. Very loudly, very severely. A bus drives by, to the water. It is utterly
sunny outside, much too sunny. She has to leave, hault her words. She has to get ready to
leave this city, her oasis of writing for the last two weeks, her inspiration, her pooled
creativity. The city that made her take stab after stab at writing. At formulating so many,
many words, so many, many sentences. again and again and again. Forever. She ponders,
what that really means, but knows she likes the sound of that statement. Language is like
visual arts, like ceramics. You play around, try to not go too near to cheap shots, to
triviality, but not too far into incoherence. Not too flat, not too bold. It is like music, like
choreography. Orchestrating a voice, building meaning, trying to replicate a perfect
curve. A beautiful dance, a motion that relies on itself, rests in utter calmness, utter
perfection. that never will be, never can be.
---
A pink car drives by. It is noon. back to the laundromat.
---
The chamomile tea is finished. Anyway. Anyways. Her words have to be
interrupted. Right here. Right now. Forever. She smiles. Forever is her new favourite
word. An absolute statement. So very full of conviction. So very, very vague. So non-
artistic. So far away from reason. So very far away.
---
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She is not happy with were the words took her today, she knows she has to write
each and every day, like playing an instrument. She ceased to write for two days,
interrupted the flow, the continuity of putting down words. Writing, talking, shooting
hoops, it all is about diligence, about courting mastery. About being at the drawing board,
physically. Open to failure. As long as you are there, you will, might improve. The times
of leisure in between, the pockets of time in between are merely seconds of rest, pauses,
to collect one’s resources and to subsequently shoot for the stars. Again and again.
Without burning. Kind of tricky, but fun. The end result will merit the try. Maybe.
---
It is the last day in March. She is trying to write in the train, which is slogging
towards NYC. The bumps, the noise make it difficult to hold her pen steadily,
concentrate. She just crossed the border, the train is coming from Montreal and going to
Penn Station. Yesterday, at this time, she was still in Kingston. She left for Montreal
about noonish, stayed one night in Montreal, in a hotel, left Montreal in the morning.
Lots of new worlds opened up, she experienced Rue St. Catherine, Quebec and now the
States. She is living in such a different world now, so much happening. She should have
documented Montreal, the train ride, but she didn’t. She is moving, travelling, focusing
on living, exploring, taking in the world like a sponge. Outside snow, ice, trees and trees.
But very fruitful, vegetation, waiting for summer. This is rich land, a feeling of
abundance, of good soil, water, prevails. There is a sense of utter wealth.
---
so she sits in the café-wagon and eats a hotdog which is with a soggy bread, but
nonetheless heavenly, bliss, she looks out at the Atlantic Ocean, beauty, freshness is so
very paramount, she does not know whether she should write or inhale the beauty, so she
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looks up for seconds and writes for seconds, which interrupts the peacefulness and makes
it into an utterly nervous undertaking, like taking photographs, like filming, it is as if this
very kind of view, this very kind of beauty calls for her writing, she has to do something
to deserve this kind of bliss, sixty-one bucks Canadian and a view like this, leisure, and
the like, she has to pay her way, write her way, there is s strong sense of duty to pay her
way, even if in writing. especially if in writing. Suddenly art is not fickle anymore, not
surplus, but purpose. Each and every snowcappy foam on the water has to be classified,
documented. It is actually ice, ice boards, swimming in the water, which could be a lake,
because there is a shore on the other side, a fjord of some kind, a bay. The sky is white,
the water is dark grey, the colors are phenomenal. The trees are dark green, everything
has the same, very east-coasty, very masculine tint.
Outside, there are iced waves, something she has never seen before, iced dunes, it
looks like a fluffy down blanket, a white, icy sea. Words cannot describe it, it is like
clouds on the ground. She runs after words to visualize this, in vain. So she just watches
in utter awe.
---
It is somewhere after Plattsburg, New York State. One thirty, march 31st. 2008.
---
She had one too many cookies, one too many calorie. She will have an orange,
eventually. She is still sitting here, writing relentlessly. Daydreaming is so very far from
what she is doing, she is not taking in the sights, she writes feverishly, pondering, if she
should do this, if this kind of busy bodying will steal the beauty, the moment, the rest.
Then again, this train is shooting through the landscape, is not holding still, not haulting,
artificially it is transporting us, motioning through nature.
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---
As she sits and reads through the passages of the literary theory textbook, she
feels strangely inadequate. She does not like the author’s suggestions that see and analyze
writing with a certain slant, his slant. She disagrees with his analyses. She sees it
differently. The train is making its way through Upstate New York. She is feeling sick,
sea sick, train sick. Writing does not help either. Constantly being tossed from side to
side is inducing a state of haulted vomit, haulted nausea. Outside the lake is so very
white, seamless ice, seamless snow. Merely slight lines, ever so unobtrusively. She
shudders. She is not able to accurately choose her words anymore. Reading the book has
ruined writing. For the moment, that is.
---
She ponders whether she should keep on trying to write away at the mystery
story. She passes a yellow house. She ponders about the merits of writing. Writing in a
world of non-readers. Filmwatchers. The train is becoming quite temperamental. Outside
are trees, a forest without leaves, branches, snow. black and white. Like the black, thin
letters she puts on white paper. Everywhere she looks, she sees grids. This cannot be
good for a healthy mental state.
---
It is about six o’clock. In Albany, state capital of New York. She walked through
the Central Station Hall of the Trainstation. It was magnificent, so very beautiful. An
amazing sight, superbe. She is sitting now back in the train, waiting for the train to make
its way to Penn Station. Outside it is raining. Albany has all these blockbuildings with
tiny, pencilshaped roofs. It is like big blocks with tiny antennas as roofs. That is how it
looks. She bought a postcard for 65 cents. The seller was very jovial, a young pudgy-
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faced lad. Outside it is rainy, darkness is near. Governor Spitzer’s face was on some of
the postcards, but he is not anymore. Lights start to lighten up outside. She likes the
charm of this place, names like Pookeepsie and Schenectady. raindrops on the train
window, New York is crying. She feels at home in her globetrotting ways, being
transient, moving through. Like a gypsy, no place to stay. Catch me if you can. Like a
feather, like a bird, like pollen taken away by the wind. The shrillness of wind, of train
noise shrieks by. The world flies by, wet, glistening. She can smell the wetness outside,
the horn of the train makes her feel it, viscerally. A man talks on his cell, a woman talks
on her cell. She is calm, outside a lake flies by. The orange made her fingers clingy, a
bridge flies by, industrial, beautiful. Lines in the sky.
---
She wrestles with words, all day long.
---
the woman behind her describes the outside to someone on her cellphone and
found the most amazing term to describe the nature, the environment we are shooting
through on this our trip, somewhere between schenectady and New York City. the
starkness, the black and white, not a nice day, but especially the term “starkness”. It says
it all, no word comes even close, It hovers over the visual, encompasses it, translates it
into her language. The author would have never in a million years stumbled upon a term
like that, the idiomatics of each and every person are so fascinatingly describing this
world. Outside it is stunning. she is a stranger in a strange land, and the strangeness
grapples at her throat, makes her stronger, bolder. So many strange people on this train,
outside branches reflecting the wetness, the haulted expectation, expectations for the
night, when she will be in the city, but the branches will still be here, waiting and no
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human eyes will see them and the drops accumulating, the black, the red, brown, the
white. Starkness, and ultimately, darkness.
---
She drives by a buoy -“farm”, a shed that says ABOLISH POVERTY, a lake with
some building or boat inside, that cries out “East Coast”. This all looks like films and
movies portray it. the same kind of feel, and the bridge stretches out over the water,
struggling towards the horizon. New York, here I come.
---
whitecliff, fog on the ground, lighthouse in the lake. She is breathless, puts lines
on paper to resemble the black and white outside, the train motions towards New York
City. Nothing but smoky accumulation of balls of fog outside, tree silhouettes rushing by,
everything is a blur outside. Inside is calmness, collectedness. Words fail to describe, the
language stumbles along, she writes, writes, writes. The train engine blows the horn, the
noise of the constant rumbling of the wheels along the tracks, on the tracks, friction,
surrealness. She takes notes, documents.
---
the water shimmers.
---
And it is spelled “Poughkeepsie”
---
they are now at a place called “Croton-Harmon” – “Yonkers” is next. The night is
out there, sprinkled by lights. Train stations in New York State. somewhere on this side
of the planet, so very far from home. “Croton-Harmon”. She writes this down, grappling
with identity issues, that are submerged far down in her existence, her being, she ponders
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about buildings, bridges, a train shooting through the night. Her friend is this pen, the ink
that rattles down on the paper. “Yonkers” is next.
---
something like the brooklyn bridge can be seen, but it can be any other bridge.
She is hungry. nervous, lightly- headached.
---
the woman in front of her, plays with her hair, incessantly, from Montreal to New
York City. It is dark outside and warm inside. The train rolls along. A child talks. The
train rolls along. It is like a film, with the darkness, the lights. Stage like. Another city is
coming up. Somewhere in New York State. In 2008. The last day of March. And the train
rolls again. She writes and writes and writes. The logbook fills up with all of these
unnecessary observations. A child talks.
---
so now it is april, first and she sits down in a starbucks right in the hub of NYC.
she feels kind of out of place and at the same time very much at home, so much to see, to
inhale, not necessarily to do, she feels more compelled to watch, watch, watch. Not even
observe, there is not even time to observe, because it changes constantly, stimuli, if one
could call it that. The fabric of the buildings is fabulous, breathtaking, beautiful. She
looks up at the buildings, notices beautiful details, stone, slight color inlets, wrought iron,
muted, matte-gold writing, she is fascinated. It is an architecture lover’s paradise, but that
statement is much too trivial. It is a world speaking silently, and she hopes that the awe
will not wean in the coming month, which she will be here. She writes away, time stands
still, she ponders, whether she should still write, she talked to the very beautiful lady,
who talks to her daughter, who is cranky and tired and they leave. Other persons come in
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and sit beside her, she looks at the light dots reflected in her table. She is looking at the
steam coming from her chamomile tea and wonders, if her observations are so very much
on the trivial side. She loves it here, she ponders about how many different nationalities
she encountered since she came here, everyone speaks a different language. She herself
went for assimilation when she came to North America, which might have been the right
choice, which might have been the wrong choice. There are no rights, no wrongs.
Teachers like that phrase, but then they fail you. It is getting darker, overcastier outside,
she still has two hours left until she will make her way to the Pratt Institute (the
Manhattan Campus) and listen to a panel discussion called, what else, “conversations”.
But until then, or until half past five, her pen will just inscribe this paper, relentlessly, and
the staccato of the music on the loudspeaker will, automatically, guide her, write this for
her. Her dreams are palpable, she is so very calm in her world here, she notes the rhythm
of the music, like the rhythm of the train yesterday, the rhythm in all of those many,
many coffee oasises in Kingston. She ponders whether world peace is attainable, having
bought a cell-phone from 3 Israeli guys on 14th. street, while she holds a passport,
somewhere, in her drawer, that prohibits her from “travelling to the occupied territories
of palestine”. She could have talked politics, but why? She looks at this city, which
rushes by, trying to hault time, resolve everything that divides us. She misses a boy, any
boy. She smiles knowing that this is not what a nice girl writes down on her paper, she
smiles, writes it down anyways. The lamps near the window are funny, red, ovalshaped
and superfluous. Not environmentally conscious, this month has earth day in it,
sometime. She writes away, watches the shapes of the shadow of her hand, darker,
greyer, translucent, with holes, kind of like the wrought- iron shapes she gazed up at in
awe, gazed down at in awe ( there were all kinds, all colors, all shapes, and all were
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equally admirable ). It is April 1st, no april fool jokes as of yet. She is much too old for
that, anyways.
She could sit near the window, watch people walk by, write about that. the
window faces busy 8th. Avenue and people are rushing by, it is a quarter after four, rush
hour. school has let out, work, maybe. She walks through the streets of new amsterdam,
slowly, she has been to Amsterdam, and the city definitely has a strong resemblance to
Old Amsterdam, the same, monumental brickbuildings, the same mysterious presence of
giant blocks with all those rooms in them, the mystery that makes one wonder what is in
those buildings, with only windows, small holes into the lives of people. One knows that
all sorts of lives, of work, of activity, haulted energy is submerged in those buildings, the
suspended energy from those buildings is palpable. She wished, she could make films
that show the stories of all those people, she might find her way to the “Storefront for Art
and Architecture” a gallery that has an exhibition that celebrates “architectural models,
maquettes” in film, all those scenes of different films that tackle, show architectural
models. That exacting fascination is shared by her taking her back to the “modelmaking”
class she took about 3, 4 years ago. and the short animation that she made after that. She
feels compelled to write about blueprints, all those lines that will finally result in
buildings like the ones overtowering the people in this city, all the mathematical, exacting
adding, subtracting, multiplying that finally result in the structures around her. She is but
one little, so very small soul, creature within this urban environment, this radical
manifestation of human energy, human potential. Five thousand years from now, this is
nothing, archaic, but for her, at this very moment there is a fascination, a very strong
sentiment, that takes her back in time to futuristic manifestoes, fauvism, the like, a sheer
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fascination with industry, cities, with urbanity and the potential, the positivity coming
thereof. And last not least, the denial of negativity.
Outside the city marches by, conversations are loud and fast-paced, the music is
rhythmic, loud, her tea is coldish with tiny, tiny pearls of condensation. She writes, and
writes, and could write like this forever. Till the day she dies.
---
She sits down in the coffeeshop, takes out her notepad and starts putting words
down, utterly enjoying the music “a kiss is just a kiss, the world will always welcome
lovers, as time goes by” sentimental, bringing tears to her eyes, the music following and
before that bluesy, jazzy, big bandy, after-war, childhood inducing, reminiscent of being
careless in hamburg, careless in hindsight, lost innocence, nostalgia, word after word
catapults deep into her mind, cascading images, intellect meeting beauty, her longing
renders her breathless. The paneldiscussion at pratt the evening before was very
captivating, very trying, very strongly her field, her artistic preoccupations, spoken about
by others, drawing, writing, form giving, incessantly, musical, between consciousness
and unconsciousness. She resents that kind of classification, dreams are for the night, to
make us replenish our physical reserves and function the next day, artistry is a word, she
resents, for her as for her friend, the danish microbiologist, art and science are not
mutually exclusive entities, art can be categorized, classified, stomped into class A, class
B, there is order, grids, and then there is freeflowingness, the two japanese girls walking
by, the wind blowing their hair, eightforms, the music, jazzy, improvised only to be
retained for a moment, pinned down.
She ponders, whether her writing will ever resonate with others and whether that
is what is needed. Maybe, only maybe, the voyage is all that matters, her sitting here,
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putting word upon word, catapulting ink on lined paper, cursive black, very thin letters on
blue-grey lines, that fade into the background of the white and let the black letters shine,
are the perfect addition, the perfect rendition for the black letters, the very subtle grid of
the lines gives weight to the letters, makes them gain meaning, there can only be a first
fiddle with the simultaneous presence of a second fiddle, word after word, on paper,
forever, scratching mere notions of living, of life, the music is so very symphonylike, a
person in a heavy British/ Australian accent is talking into his motorola phone, behind her
women are conversing loudly, outside car after car, rushed, fast, blue, red, noon, is
approaching here in the Starbucks on 9th. Avenue at the corner of 15th. Street in New
York City in April 2008. All her spring she takes down notes, documenting, observing,
trying to make sense, taking picture upon picture in her head and letting them flow on the
paper, and there is never enough time to see it all, only a fraction, a small fraction, a so
very small fraction can be taken in, while she writes and watches her words accumulate
on the paper, yellow taxis drive by, a bike drives by, a person with white sneakers and the
Brit still talks and talks, the women behind her converse in their thick NY accent, the
coffeemachine roars, a red dress flows in the wind, a stroller, a baby, tables are shuffled
on the ground, she is about to break down, not nervously, more appreciatingly, so very
happy, so very alive, so giddy that she has all her senses intact, able to conjure up all
those feelings, all these registrations of what goes on, a hobo is sitting near the door,
scares the hell out of her, his unkemptness signals danger, and she guards herself, she is
always so very scared of street people, maybe because she knows her affinity, her
proximity to that kind of mindset, her balancing along through life very close to insanity,
very close to sanity, in no man’s land, no woman’s land.
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Outside noon approaches, sun glistens up the edges of a taxi driving by, all these
taxis used to be cold yellow, they are now carmine yellow, a reddish hue. Much more
warm, much more roundish, organic. She writes away, knowing that she should draw,
make animations; translates film into words, suspended cinematography. Book upon
book in her flowercovered suitcase, one day to be put into some kind of book. Someday.
Maybe.
---
fast paced people walking by, fast paced rhythms on the overhead, someone is
taking photographs, workers transport a blue, very light blue green with a certain
opaquish transparency board from one side of the street to the other. She haults, knows
that opaquish transparency borders on manifesting an oxymoron, trying to make words
do what you want seems so utterly impossible, documenting, registrating real life is out
of grasp, will be out of grasp, words will never be able to convey reality, real life marches
on, from snapshot to snapshot, haulting reality is impossible, energy cannot be boiled
down, drawing lines might be better, because one can control them, creating a new
reality. Then again, fiction is a new reality. She walked by the box that looks for,
advertises Writing Workshops, Gotham City Workshops and mentions a myriad of genres
of the written word “fiction” – “nonfiction” – “scriptwriting” – “poetry” and the list goes
on and on – “poetry” will always be her genre – animation close to poetry – writing close
to poetry, even a dissertation she would write would have wordplay as its strong point,
not necessarily wordsmithing, wordplay, trying to arrange and rearrange form, like all the
combinations that can be achieved with a finite number of legoblocks, all the
combinations, endlessly hovering over, hovering near to, so very near, but still so far
from reality.
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A singer sings with pathos, about love, conceivably love, singers sing about love,
not so much about regular days, far from romance, from strong longing for another
creature, she listens, gasping at the silvercoloured cars outside the window, approaching
the green light.
She has to count her pages, she knows, she writes incessantly, she should pause.
Nine pages on a sunny morning in NYC, that is what she did on this day,
approaching mid-afternoon. She did not lay bricks, did not brew coffee. A song she has
not heard for more than thirty years, since 1967, pierces, sings on the overhead, and she
still knows each and every word, that was more than forty years ago, she should not have
listened to song after song to Radio Luxemburg, on her sister’s black Grundig radio, way
after midnight, in the room without windows, and the beige, worn curtains. All her
memories are so very skewed, so very slanted to fit into words, a story, a narrative that
holds aesthetic merit. The building on the other side of the street is simply stunning,
panels like weathered boards, greenspan painted on wooden boards to mimick years of
rain on copper, they mirror the music, the sentiment, the emotion, the haulted motion of
this her table, the shadows she makes on the paper. No, she does not lay bricks, not brew
coffee. One day she has to put these papers in a bag and market them, try to find a
publisher, which will be hit and miss, but at this time, scribbling, writing, is what matters,
what keeps the ghosts at night at bay, boogey men under her bed, in this city so very,
very far away from home. This city that is so very loud, so very brash. So very much like
all of us, quietness is for the dead. She will sit here all day long, looking at passers-by,
bikers by, cars wheeling by. Hecticness, hustle-bustle. Energy. A constant change of
scenery, which just calls for someone to sit here and take notes. One of so many books
about Manhattan. Or any other city, any generic urban environment. Downtowne.
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---
She ponders if there was no coffeeshop like this, her own little office for which
she paid five bucks for coffee, for coffeecake and the “rent” to use this table and look out
at the street, if this did not exist, she would have to hover in the cold outside and take
notes or she must have gone home to the small apartment in chelsea and recreated the
scenery from a distance. Now she is able to sit here, in the warmth, and read the caption
on the truck saying “The Manhattan Fruit Exchange” and another one saying
“Newspring”. She will write and write but might not make an honest dime, she should
purchase a laptop to type this and then print it out. Producing words in longhand seems so
yesterday, so finite. In typing one can easily reconceive words, erase them, reerase them,
Leonard Cohen sings, sensual, she knows this song, music “dance me to the end of love”.
She haults writing to listen to the raw sexuality of the song, the haulted lines, erasing,
reerasing of sounds. On the other side of the street it says “Prince Lumber”.
Music stopping. Conversations still flowing on, other singers blurt their chansons,
she has to stop writing. But the pen flows on and on, dotting down everything, registering
everything and anything. Obsessively, Incessantly. There is calmness to the madness,
suspended, haulted antsiness. She smirks, feels so very philosophically, far removed from
the reality, observing, taking score, like a cameraman, like a camera woman. without the
heaviness of the camera on her right shoulder, far away from the editing suite. She will
only use her pen, which might not be enough, her flowerful language has to make up for
the lack of image, she might not be able to conjure up images with words and words in a
language that is not her own, to boot. Trying to write in a foreign language is like a
musician making a sculpture. The end result will be raw, out of kilter, lacking mastery,
finish, polish. But the raw edges make it more individual in its unrefinedness, maybe
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more original, less massproduced. In between writing this down, the beautiful lady at the
table next to her asked her to take a picture of her and her friends, instant community,
instant friendship, she feels bonding with total strangers in this strange city, this so very
strange country. There are words to be written, lines to be scribbled down, all day long,
forever. In a coffeeshop so very much like the coffeeshop back home in Kerrisdale. The
one that has a facebookgroup with 53 members. These days she has no internet access, so
facebook has to do without her. She does not know yet how to use her cellphone, so she
can sit here forever, in this strange city, at the sundrenched table near the window at the
corner of ninth and 15th. Avenues, streets, she does not really know what the exacting
description of her locale would be. She ponders about what else to say, what else to write
down. The notebook is not filled up, yet, so many words more waiting to be put down.
Maybe she should write a story about the strange woman in black sitting near the window
in the coffeeshop on the corner of 15th. and eighth. Writing away, writing away. Who is
she? A heroine, a sinner. This is not so funny. A van drives by, saying “Prime Meat
Market” in many different colours, different scripts. She ponders whether she should go
to Pratt again and look at the exhibition which took her so very much by surprise,
illustrating visually what she does with words, mirroring what she does with film. It kind
of mesmerized her, flabbergasted her that her practice seems so very far away, so very far
removed from originality. Her practice as an artist, as an artstudent merely mirrors the
standard art practice of these days. Her work is so very solidly footed in contemporary
practice, no new countries, no new shores are explored. Everything worth doing has been
done. A dog walks by, making her owner tag along after her. Wind blows at the
streetsign, making it jitter forcefully. April showers will bring mayflowers. So many
words have still have to be put down, inscribed, incisions on white surface, scratching
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thoughts, manifesting floating sentiments, for posterity. At the corner, well, by now we
know, which corner. She pauses, haults. deliberately, hesitantly, forcefully. A runner
passes by, determined, motioning towards 14th. street.
---
Around her, so many individuals are writing, it is, as if this starbucks is so very
filled with writers, but so many of these people merely consume words, read them, try to
follow the flow of someone else’s constructs, she herself prefers the action, the antidote
to passivity, the process of writing, the challenge to use a language to illustrate inklings,
observation, the freedom to fabricate a world, even if it is this closely connected to
reality, she notices everything around her and lets it glide onto the paper. A woman runs
over the street, beautiful, young, thin. The author is not young, not thin, though she feels
like it, looks are not important for her anymore, she knows she will always be pretty
good, average, blending in with the general population, sometimes a tad above the
equator, sometimes a tad below. Ah, life. The wind is still blowing, fiercely, the sun
shines, so many strangers are walking by. She does not know anyone in this city, at least
not now, not here. A musician is editing his notes, a composer. Composing music,
composing writer, it is all the same. It puts stress on her right arm, but she does not feel it
yet. She moves so very far away from visual arts, leaving form, image behind to less
colorful pursuits, a world that does not fascinate her readily. Oh, to put a building like the
one outside of the window on the map, on the ground. Oh, to paint with bricks, with all
these forms and shapes. She can only sit here still and make the city talk to her, with
bricks, wood, steel, glass, colors, motion lights and make her write, listening to the music
in the generic coffeeshop, in New York City, on April second, 2008. while a woman runs
by, so very fast, so very after her goal. While she writes, aimlessly, Only the proximity of
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the words on the page give order to her text, the language being denoted in the same way
that the musician puts down sounds in little black dots and lines. She misses animation,
the world of intuitive motion, scribbled down, image after image, she knows, she will
always be an animator, using that stab at mastering the pinpointing of motion on a
monitor into a language, a lingo flowing down on paper, like fluid, a waterfall, dreams.
Incessantly, insanely.
---
she sits down in another, more crowded coffeeshop. This one is much too crowded, and
she ponders, if this kind of physical proximity, this kind of sardinelike existence will
interfere with the words that go down on paper. She feels that it is too tight around her,
like on a bus, she can hear the walkman of the person beside her, and this kind of
uneasiness makes her write utterly troubled prose, instead of beauty, freeflowing
creativity, she is under the gun, as if in a crowded subway, where you can feel each and
every person breathing on your neck. How can she possibly fly and soar to new heights,
how is it possible to imagine words escalating and towering on each other, over each
other, how can words catapult off their physical basis of the paper, inkinscriptions that
will float so very high above what other words are expressing, she feels suddenly so very
competitive, like outdoing another team by something as trivial, as unimportant as
throwing a round object into a square rectangle, a soccerball into a goal, and all the other
things that sporty types tend to do. Someone outside is selling something, some ideology,
a salesman for thoughts with a pamphlet saying “right now”. Some petitiongatherer,
smiling sheepishly, friendlily. She will eventually waltz out and try to figure out what he
wants. What is so urgent, what has to be done “Right Now”? She feels so very superior,
having lived through wartime, revolution, bombings. “This is not a knife, this is a knife”
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Crocodile Dundee. All her ways in immigrating, emigrating have been gleaned from that
very film. She dances with the natives, like the outbackguy did in the jungle when
wearing the same kind of facepaint as the aborigees. The “Right Now” guy sells his right
now message and no one listens. She notices that it is about environmentalism. She looks
up, everyone around her sitting here, is male. Too many masculine voices and definitely
utterly non-attractive ones. She writes away, is annoyed. Her tea is getting cold. She eats
her lunch and has no clue, how she can possibly produce good prose, while she feels
uneasy, joan baez is singing once more, the song she has not heard for so many years,
“and it’s all over now, baby blue” twice in a row, on the same day. This place is
becoming so very claustrophobic, she sees so viscerally that her prose is haulting,
stalling, here at the corner of W19th. street and 8th. avenue, she ponders how she can
overwrite all this noise-pollution, she is not able to write good stuff, the “right now”
environmentalist has been replaced by another one, both are so very different, but both
around twenty, male, she sees them as salesmen, who are honkering their wares in a
capitalist society, ideas as commodity, two driven young turks, two future breadwinners,
both minorities, religiously, racially. She sits and writes, wonders if this is what she
wants to do, will do. She might still have fifty years left, maybe she should do something
so much more fascinating, so much more sexy than merely put black lines on paper,
cursive script that merely documents her having been here, spent time here. Words,
words. The person near her looked at her words, suspiciously, a salesman nonetheless,
who might ponder, whether this material is sellable. She suddenly hates her existence,
putting letter after letter after letter in all these notebooks, suddenly writing seems so very
much like work, not easy, not freeflowing, like a rusted machine turning its wheels. Then
again, she will not stop, a person just walking in reminded her of someone back home.
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The words will flow from this her pen, have to flow. Even if it does not come that easy.
She has to roam through bookstores, pick up books nyc-related by bernard tschumi, by
rem koolhaas, she has to read “public intimacy” by giuliana bruno, she has to read,
research, pick up the book, she hauled all the way from Toronto to Vancouver back to
Ontario, then to New York, something about animation, Animation 101. She ponders,
how she will be able to ever illustrate her thoughts in a coherent manner, if writing is
even close to what fascinates her. Writing is so very deliberately an isolated endeavour, a
so very lonely person putting letter after letter on paper, obsessively, incessantly. She
starts smirking, grinning, these days the term “obsessively, incessantly” is her overriding
theme. Or the other way around: “incessantly, obsessively”. Words, words. Writers are
merely talkative creatures with no one to listen. So they have to put their words on paper,
roam the earth to find a publisher, destroy trees to make paper and bind it into books. If
there were no writers, no readers, there were no books. “Fahrenheit 451”, so very good
for the environment. Censorship means, more trees, better air. These are the insights
induced by sitting far too long in coffeeshops, writing away. She has to figure out how to
use her cellphone, each and every table around her has people playing with their cells.
This place is filled with people playing with their gadgets, laptops, walkmen, cellphones.
At this point she is the only one, who writes, the oldfashioned way, then again, people all
are still reading books. Outside the afternoon is slowly, but steadily morphing into late
afternoon. Cars are driving by, music is too loud, the staccato of the walkman music
beside her is so much faster than the slow music on the overhead.
she tried to put her lines down in farsi, but the speed was so utterly slow and the
orthographical mistakes kept compounding, the handwriting was not up to even average
merit, totally, utterly subpar. She knows that the written word is merely a tool to jot down
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her ideas and all the ideas that are not yet resolved, that are still in the making, in the
process of being formed and sculpted, put into the kiln, so to speak. Life passes her by
ever so slowly, while she sits in this so very rotten coffeeshop, so very aware that this is
not the existence, she was vying for, an existence that does not readily translate into a
certain amount of cash at the end of the month, word after word, that take her to new
worlds, supposedly. She counts the pages, while the words start swimming into each
other, blurring away.
She starts ever so slightly, ever so slowly, ever so incessantly feel the longing for
her place at the lighttable on the second floor of the north building of Emily Carr, where
life is like it should be, where motions are divided, cut down into short pieces, where all
our movements are replicated with image after image where life is shamelessly cut into
small snapshots, where we are doing nothing but hocus pocus, where we play with image
after image, where motion is shamelessly conjured, where reality is nonexistent and
where illusion is our currency. Where time stood still, where animators live. When
animators roam the earth, pen in hand, motion capturing device after device at their
disposal. She still writes because she is so very far away from the world of light tables.
She is still in this city for one more month, maybe she should seek out places to animate,
places where she can draw, and produce films. Coldness, relentlessness are stifling,
taking her over. Maybe hers are merely letters like this, not necessarily the real thing, she
tries to comfort herself by convincing her visually inclined self, that words are just as
good. Beggars can’t be choosers. Writing is merely another way of expression, not
everything is image, is motion on a monitor, a building on a streetcorner, a table, not
everything is in color. Sometimes words on a page have to do, can conjure up the same
feel, like notes can translate into music. She knows that she has to let go of the notion of
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hierarchy, a ceramic pot does not necessarily outdo a poem. Some individuals put down
words, ever so hesitantly, others are formgivers, make things. And in the best of worlds,
somewhere in the lanes and streets of utopia, there is time enough and talent enough,
mastery and will enough to do both.
She sits back, counts her pages, is utterly exhausted, writing for hours on end
seems to become utterly trying.
---
Her tea is finished and she should venture out, but she knows that it is utterly cold
outside, so she stretches the minutes she will spend here putting all her words down
trying to pierce the border of insight and mere observation, trying to write a book far
away from protagonist versus antagonist, literature that is more like a line, though
anything timebased is flowing from point A to point B, and is thus catapulting a narrative
forward, captivating or boring, storylines without drama, without shedding of blood,
without visible conflict. The lights near the window are superfluous. She ponders whether
she should leave this place, someone complained. No one puts time limits on seating in
Kerrisdale, the words flow away, flee her paper. She still has to write this down.
---
She now sits down in Mc Donald’s pondering whether this is good for writing or
not, will the words taste generically, too greasy, will she be sued by Mc Donald’s for
saying this. Of course not. It is afternoonish, sometimes on the other side of five o’clock.
Yesterday she had a salad for dinner, nothing but arugula, and some fried goatcheese.
Much steeper price than the cheeseburger, she had here. She will buy an orange or
something of that kind. She has to lose weight, to be able to climb stairs. Something like
that. She avoids physical exertion, sits merely in coffeeshops and fast food places, has
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tea, sandwiches, coffeecakes. Like a queen. She likes the squares on the walls of this
place, all colourful, all nice. She draws at Mc Donald’s, she writes at Mc Donald’s. This
place is kind of like a nursery, all schoolchildren, all technicolor décor. Not good
nutrition. So she heard. Clogging arteries. Something like that. She will eat healthy, this
week she had apples and oranges. A banana. It is a new world out there. Full of salad and
fruit. Five servings, five servings. In order to climb up stairs. Maybe the problem is with
all those stairs. If we lived in a stairless world, a very flat world, we did not need to be a
certain weight. Her insights are accelerated, they come and go. A horde of teenagers
rumble down the stairs. On the other side of the street, there is Pratt. Maybe she can take
classes, workshops. She doubts it. She will seek out lectures, free things. Walk in Central
Park. Which is somewhere in the center. At this time she just stays in Chelsea, feeling
kind of alone in her lifestyle. At the ceiling there are easter eggs hanging and mutedly
colored crepe paper thingies. She is totally clueless what they are called in English, so
they are plain thingies, skinny paper, twirled around, bunny shapes hanging, eggs
hanging, as shapes, as plastic eggs, some painted paper eggs, some christmas decoration.
This Mc Donald is a hub of creativity, and that is not necessarily a sarcastic remark. She
writes away, forever, forever, sprinkles her words with pauses, with repetitions, tries to
infuse music, rhythm into the language. The music is merely instrumental, no specific
style. Trying to appeal to as many people as possible. Sanitized music. Her tea is getting
cold. She received a tea, without teabag, but milk, so now she slurps hot water with tea.
Might as well, she feels warm and toasty. She should take the subway, to Times square,
roam around midtown manhattan, find an internet café. All that chelsea has to offer are
gay clubs (catering to males) and laundromats. And lots and lots of tiny dogs slagging
their owners behind them. Or being brought from place A to place B. like handbags. She
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writes away, notices the round lamps with red edges on the wall. An old man is looking
through his lotto receipts. A woman checks her cellphone. She feels she should write
more. Poetry, shortstories. Political commentaries. Useful stuff. Fascinating words, that
resonate. With others, supposedly. Writing should not be just an exercise of putting
words down, it has to be meaningful, purposeful. Not literature for literature’s sake. Who
makes up these rules? Must be some white male mastermind. It is always one of them.
Luckily she totally lacks biases. None whatsoever.
Somehow she feels her prose drifting into lower structures, lower lifeforms,
sketchy territories. The words she uses, the words she can use. Too many holes in her
vocabulary, there are only so many combinations of wording she can come up with. She
thinks that English not being her first language might enable her to use this tool (the
language) more virtuously. Like a musician making a sculpture. She chuckles. She might
have overused this allegory, might have milked it dry. Outside a child skoots by in a
green parka and a helmet. Here she sits far away from people motioning by, so she does
not have as many stimuli, that might make her write. This place makes one become
introspective, but at this time it seems depressing and stuporinducing. On the other side
of the street she can see Dunkin Donuts. Ah, donuts, reason enough to leave your country
and emigrate. donuts, burgers, malls. So very New York. Suburbia in its omnipresence.
She ponders. What to write, what to write. This is book 6 and there are still so
many pages to be written, to be colored in all the tints, all the hues of this winter/summer.
She has to write to interrupt this environment for the better. Or, maybe, just merely for
pure fun. No one posits a theme, no one posts an essay title. She can write, whatever she
wants, fly wherever she wants. She follows the words, wherever they take her, wanders
after them. This is not a collaborative process, it is one lonely steppenwolf making its
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way. Through the world. In April 2008. Here in midtown Manhattan. Or downtown.
whatever the categorization might be.
---
She put down 26 pages so far on this april second, looks up at the grid on the
ceiling on the other side, which is intriguing, in a grid, and she had not noticed it before.
It is definitely more industrial, not technicolor, not sugary. Clean lines, muted greens,
yellow lines, white, lit rectangles. She has to stop, should stop. How much longer can one
write relentlessly, churning out word after word. far removed from genre- consideration.
Unclassified sentences. Piling up of words. Lines as abstract as the drawings above her
seat. Lines that motion, that convey interruptedness, fragmentation contained. All these
notebooks are awash with her words. She is tired, exhausted. Her hand is cramped,
physically the flow of words has to stop. For now. Until tomorrow. Back in one of these
coffeeshops.
---
she picks up her pen again and starts writing, this time she wears her glasses, thus
she can write smaller letters and use less paper, less ink. Her main focus when penning
down her prose, are logistics, physical layout of her writing, the contents seems to be
fading, the writing itself, the physical inscribing of letters supercedes meaning. It is
different when typing, one tries to find the letters, the hammering away at the tastatur is
so much more physical, like jotting down letters, pushing buttons, like shooting hoops,
though not with the whole body. Writing longhand is more sedentary, more reflective,
one writes and at the same time listens, inhales the words, it is more passive, it is as if a
story is told to her and she listens. Outside, the day comes to an end, shadows must be
longer by now, it is after seven. The two women who look so much alike, so much like
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New York, are still sitting in their booth, talking. The old man with the long beard is still
sitting in his booth talking to someone she cannot see. She herself is writing and her
elbow is starting to hurt. She has to rest this, start over tomorrow morning to throw these
seeds on the ground, all these words on paper. Down on paper. Relentlessly.
---
so now it is wednesday, april, numero 3, in 2008. she finds herself once more in a
coffeeshop, people burst in, burst out. The woman behind the counter was borderline
rude, italian tourists put their USA guide book back in their bag, a Russian man talks on
his cell. She feels out of place, in place. Writes away. Outside, one of these Avenues, 8th,
9th or 7th, trucks in the middle of town, small NYPD cars, yellow cabs, people walking
by with strollers, with dogs, cars idling, honking, breaking, hecticness is here, music very
rhythmic, very soothing, calming. She watches people, glimpsing up at photographing
equipment, a woman in one crutch, italian speaking, the city, the city. She has to go back
to her small apartment, in a very quiet neighbourhood, opposite of a school, reminds her
of Hamburg, Zurich, something of the European kind. When she lies in her bed, she can
see the street, it does not really feel, as if she is inside. The treelike plant in the middle of
the room makes the place feel more like a treehouse, private sphere amalgamated with
public sphere. She writes away, writes, writes, all day long, a person near her is looking
through “casting” ads. This seems to be the hub for artists, people who want to sell their
talent. She writes away, wondering why there is no term like fledgeling writer. Like
fledgeling actor, emerging artist. What exactly does fledgeling mean? And is it fledgeling
or fledging? Words, words. The rhythm of the music is suddenly annoying, piercing
through her body, needling her. The world goes by, outside, she feels apprehensive,
antsy, George Brown though feels good and exclaims that at the top of his lungs. Age,
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age, he is dead now. So many people are dead now. A woman comes in with her child.
Passage of life. Outside she can see the sign for NYSC - new york sports club, it is round
and red and from here just above the starbucks sign, two round signs. Everyone here is
speaking Italian. There must be a reason, she ponders, feels like in Milan. Where she has
never been.
Words, words, she writes incessantly, watches her obsession flow on paper, while
the words start swimming, while she listens to Italian that she does not understand, that
has a certain regional dialect, she does not speak the language, but can figure that out.
Like Québécois French being different from Parisian. She should have studied languages,
but she knew them already, so there was nothing to study. She recognizes a person she
had seen in another coffeeshop two days ago, this is becoming pathetic. Or maybe, she is
carving out a neighbourhood feel, the little chelsea niche, here. A tall, very beautiful man
walks by, looks inside, looks at her. She writes away. She definitely has met the man and
woman in the other coffeeshop. Small world, small world. Like she met another person
from the restaurant in the coffeeshop. Because all these people are eating out, all live in
this neighbourhood. She laughs. Today is not her day of deep insights, she just assembles
trivial observations, like beads on a necklace, and calls it something, “literary pursuits”.
She ponders, whether the sign of “New York Sports Clubs” is literary pursuit. When does
writing seize to be just that: notes, when is it literature. How many words, how many
sentences. Does there have to be a perfect narrative curve? Her animation prof. would
argue “Yes”, but he does not count in the scheme of things, he gave her an “F”. Which
gives her the freedom to dismiss all his accumulated knowledge, he does not know
anything about animation. Or he would not have failed her. Classes, school. So much is
so very debatable. She still reels from her substandard grade, tries to assemble the
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shattered pieces of her damaged scholastic esteem, to weather the blow to her academic
career. She is on Academic Probation. At the tender age of 52. This cannot be good. Sour
grapes, complaining. Outside the sun is shining, New York is getting ready for noon. This
must be the best time to be here, spring. She has always come here at this time, or in
September. Not in summer, which is supposed to be stark heat, pure hell. The music is
really rhythmic, motion inducing, some kind of dance. She sits near the coffee - milk
-half and half place, everyone comes here beside her and takes their stuff. She has to stop
and count the pages she put on paper. How many words are enough. To make something
readable, to make something publishable? Outside, on the opposite side, is a place called
“Breadstix Café”. Breadstix. With an X. Poetry. “x” instead of “cks”. She tries to read
something, anything into this deliberate misspelling. But why? etymology, linguistics.
Playing with words. The language, any language is so very much alive. Especially if it is
in its natural habitat. She plays with words, all day long. Not so much in spoken form,
more listening, and writing down. The music jazzes along. fragments of ideas clutter
through her mind, there is motion everywhere she looks. a pink building facade on the
other side, babyblue diagonalish ceiling. huggs boots that are too light, a brown garbage
can. Her eyes wonder, the music takes her through the minutes, gives continuity to her
time here, a person with a yellow broom rushes by, very loud, scarringly, people come in
and out, she just sees them move out of the corner of her eyes, while she writes, looks at
letters developing, while she notices the person in front of her moving his black sneaker
up and down, while too light huggs are standing near her in front of the half and half
station, now a yellow-shoed person stands there, scary, tattooed. She ponders, what if
someone reads this, she jots down observations of total strangers. She should fictionalize
stories for them, but is not really able to do so. Lovestories, hatestories. Lovestories are
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so much more fun, longing, requietedness, nonrequitedness. Definitely she would go for
requitedness, longing for a lover, until the breath inside ceases for a moment, lapses.
Wednesday, what is my so very far away, so very longed for creature up to? She would
rather write about chairs, tables, buildings, coffeecups – tactile stuff. Who wants to write
about love, when one can write about buildings, about politics, about current issues?
About the red, fluffy boots of the woman who walked by. About the sun outside. The
green leaves on the napkin on the brown and beige chequered table. The dreadlocks with
white flowers in it, the purple grey sweater, the five thousand sights she registers in the
snap of a moment. Everything and anything, pinned down on paper. The coffeemachine
is loud and unceasing, venti something. Words have to be put down, fast jottings of this
city. She will leave now, she wrote eleven pages already. Take her notebook, venture
somewhere else, write something else. In New York City. On April, 3rd, 2008.
---
she sits down in this corner of a tiny little foodcourt in front of her the yellow wall
and blue linoleum stuff on the table, a kfc poster in front of her, she is sitting on
something barstool like, beige woodeny, the seat is square has a black back, trash cans
are on her right side, lots of noise behind her, children’s voices, a woman talking, she had
a tiny hot dog, with mustard, dijon mustard, she is tired from too much walking, she
could be a weekly winner, so the colonel says, she walked through 5th. Avenue and
Broadway, she went into a Radisson and emailed friends and family bragging about New
York City, i am here, you are not, thus I am better, they were not impressed, at all, the
nerve. She looks at the chicken poster, crispy beige, crispy brown on blue, brown, blue,
going with the blue of the table, the beige of the wall. She always thought KFC is red and
white, it seems to go for blue and beige. She writes away, as if her tomorrow, her
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tomorrows depend on it. She looked at the box again that advertizes Writing Workshops,
Gotham Writing Workshops (they are sprinkled all over NYC, she saw them before, on
other occasions) and one of the categories that are taught, was “Memoir” – she is
wondering if her account of her day-to-days could be memoir, technically not, it is more
a travel log book, she looked into directions for filmmakers, actually for shortfilms to be
part of a contest for a mobile-phone downloading site, e-phone or something, and it was
all about constructing a story, conflict, context, theme, very step by step, constructing a
narrative, on the other hand, there was definitely room for defying the rules, totally,
completely. If all stories told in this world were non-narrative, traditional narration would
be experimental. Stories, narration. The person beside her looks at her with big eyes, why
is she writing? Or, maybe, he is just pondering something, he has an oversized cellphone,
something in between blackberry and cellphone, with a yellow lining, something from
somewhere else. She is writing away, listening to the noiseclutter, a child cries, the wall
in front of her has blue scratches, there are all kinds of subtle lines in the yellow of the
wall, texture. all the garbage cans here are like that colour, too, it must be the decor of the
foodcourt. She writes away, looking at lines forming, letters forming, it becomes
meditative at a certain point, automatic, like the body is taking over, it becomes like
treeplanting, when the body takes over and puts the seeds into the ground, she never
treeplanted, but an animator in her class made a film about that, and his voice was
commenting on the animation and talking about how the body takes over and goes
through the motions, semiautomatically, a hybrid, an amalgamation of body and mind,
the same is happening with her writing, she puts down word after word, automatically, in
a zen-kind of state. Driving is like that, walking is, we do it unconsciously, running up
and down stairs. reflexes. She ponders, had a conversation this morning at the pratt
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institute with a graphic design student, she was from Korea and had so many interesting
things to say, A shimmer of connection, an exchange of information. The person beside
her rudely smushes her bag, without saying “excuse me”, how very rude. Like Stefanie in
“Full House” would say, “How Rude”. So this is the big city, actually a big city, like all
big cities. Urban environment, people talking, lots of noise, songs of the city, downtown.
She writes about that, she makes animations about that. The smell of fried chicken
whiffing through this place does not necessarily induce great thoughts, this might not be
necessarily an environment conducive to great insights. Chicken, Hamburger, Hot Dogs,
somehow the antidote to poetry. Poetry of the 21st. century. Mirroring urbanisme, dead
animals put into bite-size, sustainability. All the time these kind of issues croach into her
writing, slant the melody of her prose, try to preach. She is not really able to break away
from this kind of quest for purpose, that might eventually inhibit her from good writing.
She fishes in her handbag for a coughdrop. It is getting chilly in here. Not chilly in a
temperature kind of way, more in the shuffeling of tables, people cleaning up, a whiff of
hostility towards the crazy lady writing away. She is well aware that writing and drawing
in places like this might be frowned upon, writers should produce their stuff tucked away
in offices, animators should sit in front of lighttables. On the other hand, a place like this
is so overstimulated, that one does not even have to search for subjectmatter. Everything
is subjectmatter, the mere “being here” has to automatically result in great work. Words
are formed by listening to strangers yell, gossip, chairs shuffeling, the man beside her
clapping the tablets, in a kind of accusative way, you write, I work, as if writing is less
physically exhausting, it is not. It takes a lot out of her, her hair is turning grey. She
should change her seat, get a tea, look at people, look at the blue-glistening seats that are
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rowed up like the awning of a building, like wrought-iron, like lines in space, defying
gravity, courting beauty.
The person behind her is yellingly talking, she does not understand a word. He
sure has a lot to say, in the same way that she sure has a lot of words to write. He talks, so
very forcefully, she is taking notes. The voice talks, she writes. It is that simple.
She tries to figure out, how many more pages she has to write today, will she
finish scribbling away in this notebook? Her letters are not cursive today, they are upright
standing little soldiers. She feels anxiety, so she writes straight up, like walking extra
straight when facing hostility, enemies. The city seems to undermine her confidence, she
feels that too many strangers are around her, in this strange city, in this strange country,
so very far away from home. On April 3, 2008. In Midtown Manhattan. In this so very
generic Foodcourt, suburbia inside the city. Very strange, very weird. The artificial
lighting is getting to her, she cannot look out the window from this seat. All she sees, is
her notepad and her hand feverishly inscribing it. This is not insane. Or maybe, it is. She
has to stop writing, find a teacup. Or something. How many more notebooks will she fill
on this trip. She does not know. Yet.
---
she walks up the street, ends up in another fast-food joint, orders a tea and starts
writing again. Her table has a lot of texture, is white, more ecru, grey, and has a yellow-
golden edge. On the ceiling are blocks with lights in them, very architectural. fast food
meets bauhaus. yellow is still everywhere but warmer, contained with elegant, aubergine-
colored red. People here are nicer, happier. Outside one can see NY rushing by, it is
somewhere near Times Square, at least she knows, it is Broadway, the Music is very
loud, the person behind her is very loud, too. Talking into his cellphone. He is yelling. It
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is a cellphone. He was distinguished, polite and very yellingly. The music is loud. Her tea
is getting cold. There is an upstairs here, she should go up the stairs to get a better view.
She is sitting here, where the view is not so fascinating, pondering if there is really a
hierarchy of views. Which view is spectacular, which one is not? Who determines that?
Oh, the philosophical questions that are simply induced by watching too much Seinfeld,
too much, way too much.
The old man at the other table is busy talking to the old woman at the other table,
he is shamelessly picking her up. They must be both seventy, so maybe it could not be
classified as romantic endeavour. She smiles. Lovestory, romance. She knows she reads
much too much, into everything. She has to. It is a tool for any writer. To spin a yarn. to
philosophize. To construct and deconstruct narratives. To fill notebook after notebook
while trying to recognize the song on the overhead, that she can even sing to, word by
word. Some kind of cheesy loveanthem. Buses drive by, blue and white ones. This New
York Day is so very fresh, buckling up for summer. spring is everywhere. She went into a
Victoria Secret store. It was huge, so very huge. Very feminine. Men were in there, too,
very out of place. It was a woman’s world, very pink, very lavender. She looks at the
stylized golden Arches in the window, so very elegant, so very stylized. A new, very
modern take on golden arches. Or postmodern, postpostmodern. There is a sign on the
opposite wall, about Choking. What to do, Heimlich Manoeuver, that kind of thing. Her
friend in Alamo told her about the restaurant in Danville, where the choking scene in
Mrs. Doubtfire was filmed. In Danville, California. She went there everyday, about 15
years ago. Her life, her life. She is so very old. Her tea is getting cold. Cold. Old. Outside
New York walks by. Like Kingston used to walk by. On Princess Street. At this point, all
these places shrume together, mush into one. She is a stranger in a strange land, she
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knows that, happily dislocated. Dislocation as status quo, dislocation as deliberately
forced lifeform. She likes it, loves it. It comes with a certain whiff towards
irresponsibility. Not of the serial killer kind, but of the bettering yourself kind. She eats
fruit since her traintravel out of Montreal. She acts her age. She talks to strangers, well,
polite, very polite strangers. Central Park should be somewhere near here, so should be
Fifth. Avenue. Petula Clark sings, she sings along “downtown” the woman at the other
table looks up, downtown, downtown. She will fish her animation out of her basement,
get a clearing for the song and start submitting it. Should not be too difficult. She has to
research how to do that. At Pratt there is a workshop today about, how to get clearance
from the get go. She has to do all that, will do all that. But not yet. At this time, she takes
notes, daydreams, manifests that on paper, talks to herself, sings along to songs on the
overhead, in a strange city, in a strange country, on the other side of the world, far, far
away, so very, very far away from home. In NYC, on april 3rd 2008.
---
she is now sitting in her room in the small apartment in chelsea, looking out the
window, overseeing the school on the other side of the street. There are leaveless
branches outside, there is a big mural in blue on the schoolwall. She ponders. Likes
pondering. Likes to use the word ponder. Maybe it has something to do with pond. There
are daffodils on the table. So very beautiful. She tries to balance her notepad with one
hand and write with the other, which is not very comfortable. She should walk out and
find a coffeeshop. She walked to the one that is two blocks away, but it was filled to the
brim. She wonders, if she can write in here. Not enough going on. Someone laughs in the
stairway, cars drive by, ebbing up and down in noise. Changing decibels. She listens to
the noise, the scratch her pen makes on paper. She never noticed that before, the noise in
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the coffeeshops overpowered it, whereas here in the quiet room it is pretty loud. Someone
walks by, outside on the pavement. Maybe this paper is thicker and thus the pen
screeches while leaving its mark. She is waiting. For the sun to go down. Passage of time
in NYC. Passage of life. She writes all day long, walks through the city, explores all the
different sights. Talks to the Korean student at Pratt, tastes different samples in the
grocery store, sea scallops in Cajun sauce, half cooked cauliflowers with red
pepperflakes, dry fruit, banana, guava, apple, cashewnut, she did not try the breads in 4
different oliveoils. Outside there is a U-Haul truck parked she can look down at it. A man
walks his dog or the dog walks him. She likes the quietness of this street, the haulted
noise of the city and the calmness before the storm, that permeates this little Street
between 8th. and 9th. Avenue, where cars roar. This street is so very quiet, even the
walking on the floors of the neighbours is audible. Something outside clacks constantly,
but she is clueless what it is. She should fish for a cough drop in her purse. She has to
write a story with a beginning, with an end. Some middlepart, some structure. Something
being pushed into literary conventions. Who started writing? Homer? Someone on caves,
a cavewriter. There is so very much she doesn’t know. ignorance is bliss. She definitely
feels bliss. She should, could watch TV. Listen to laughtracks, to something political. The
news that someone chose for her. Her news is strolling through this strange city,
exploring. She went to Macy’s pondering why it was in the news that it shut down, no
bankruptcy here. She walked by a gallery that explored abstraction. It was beautiful. She
still writes and her pen, knock on wood, seems to last forever. the same pen, she gave a
beautiful, amazing presentation about, a product analysis. In her ID-course. It was really
good, not your typical powerpoint, but presentation as artform, as performance. Which it
always is, anyways.
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She loves New York, well, milton glaser makes her do that. She looks at the street
lights outside, two yellow dots. on the wall, above the mural. Two black figures walk by,
towards 9th. Avenue. Something clacks all the time. She has to go up, do things, find her
coughdrop, but she is mesmerized by the task of writing and cannot stop. A churchbell
rings. She feels strange, a bird still sings. Someone clasps with pots and pans. She feels
strange in this strange apartment. She likes it is all yellow, brown, orange. Very nicely
colorcoordinated. Like an oasis. And the monstrous palmtree meets Ficus is so very
overpowering. Like the old growth trees in tofino. The tree definitely dominates the
apartment, it is as if the rooms are built around the tree. As if the tree was there first and
everything else came later. She wonders if others will come and visit her here. If she can
write while she has visitors. She saw an interview on the telly about the woman who left
Canada, left New York to move to Paris, to write. The change of space made her write.
She left home and wrote. There is definitely something to that, she never ever wrote this
much in her whole life. But she is writing non-stop since Mid-february. Since Kingston
happened. She wrote in Toronto, too and in Vancouver, on granville island. But the sheer
quantity of output here on the east coast amazes her. Might be quantity over quality, but
usually quantity begets quality. Courts quality. She ponders away. While writing away.
While sitting here looking over at her purse where the coughdrops are. This is so insane.
She starts tapping her foot on the table. The heater is warming up too much. Her landlord
wrote something about turning down the heater when leaving the apartment. But this
heater, her hand leans on, seems to be central heating. This apartment fascinates her. It
has these very mysterious idiosyncrasies, the shower knobs have a life of their own, the
lightswitch is somehow mysterious, she never knows if it is really turned down, switched
off. She has no clue, where to put the garbage, so she lets it amass in the garbage can.
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Outside on the streets, there are garbage bags and garbage cans and she does not know if
they are for everyone. She has never lived in someone else’s apartment, in someone
else’s reality. She likes it. It is very spartan and she likes that kind of unclutteredness.
Outside it is getting dusky, not yet dark though. The day embraces the night, New
York falls asleep. The city that never sleeps. Funny place. She changes her place and
moves near the table. It is cold here. She will go for a short walk. Through Chelsea. She
has to be back here at 9 o’clock. But it is still 7:33. So she has an ample amount of time.
And it would do her quite good to run away from her pen. This is pure insanity, all these
words clumped together in her head. Pushed out on the paper. She has to physically stop
this pen from writing. She wishes, she could draw again, but the synapses seem to fire
differently now. Write. Write. She will bundle up and go for a walk. Explore the
neighbourhood. And, as always, this her “journal entry” ends with the date, the place.
April 3/ 08/ NYC. and a curl.
---
she finds herself again in a fast-food-joint. This one is very futuristic meets retro,
very chrome sleek mix of vegas and diner, all the shiny surfaces remind her of space
films made in the 50’s and 60’s. This is a place near Madison Garden, near Penn Station.
She wonders whether she should use her time in this city writing or whether she should
roam around and explore sights. She enjoys this more, it is so much more authentic, she
takes in the city, subway, the six kids playing cards, gesticulating loudly, the three ones
talking away at the other table. All seem like field-trip-kids, well behaved, living in their
own little world. Where cards matter, motion and the reflection in the mirrors on the
ceiling matter, awe matters. Where life is there to be explored, sights to be seen. Where
there is so much extra time to write down, whatever jumps into one’s consciousness. Her
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pen is ending its lifecycle, it scratches along the paper without much inkflow, it gets
harder to write and more force is needed, with worse outcome. She skipped a page, not
having the best tools irritates her. Mark Twain did not write about his struggle with
writing, he wrote about the world. She basically writes about herself, again and again.
Her trials and tribulations, in their simplicity, their banality. Paces of an ordinary
existence, day to day life. For her everything is new, everything is so utterly exiting. She
changes her Fineliner to a ballpen, because the fineliner is inkless, at the edges of
inkiness. She lets it rest, maybe the inkflow will come back after resting horizontally. She
slightly remembers that happening, she does not really know why. The pen was so
thoroughly analyzed by her in her product analysis, what the lines signify, who the
targetaudience was. In the end, she was the enduser, because it was her favourite pen. Her
tea is getting cold. The fieldtripkids leave. Someone barks at them: “Get Ready, get
ready.” an authority figure in the making, a future leader of the pack. She sits in her seat
and writes. Following is not in the cards, neither is leading. Taking notes is good, so very
good. The tea is getting cold. It is fun to watch the fieldtripgroup, they all talk at once.
And trouble in paradise, one attacks the other one, pushes him down, they play, laugh,
look at her. She is the mom, any mom. The teacher yells at them “Can we go out the
door.” She chuckles how anyone presumes that she is some kind of authority figure
merely by the way she looks. She does not have time to yell at kids and put them in line.
She is not some police woman. She has raised her children, those days are over. She has
so much more important things to do, she has to write, to draw, to build. To play. And
hopefully get paid for that. All the coffeeshops in Chelsea were filled with aspiring
writers, aspiring actors. None of the fastfoodjoints is, no one here types away on her
laptop. No one draws. Outside buses drive by, the world drives by. A securityguard in an
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auberginecolored blazer is overseeing the hustle and bustle, the commotion of this place.
He looks utterly bored, devotedly chewing his gum. She writes away, sometimes spelling
out her words loudly. She loves this place, it is very clean. Constantly someone is
mopping the floor. The wall beside her is red honeycombs, dot after dot, very tiny, with
some metal separating the honeycomb-dots. She thinks of the Bee-movie, this is a red
honeycomb-world. Like the blue horses in Art, these are red honeycombs. The blue
horses, Klee, Klimt, not Klimt, der blaue Reiter, she forgets her arthistory. Not good for
an artstudent with one more semester to go until graduation. She writes away, leaving the
domain, the country of visual arts to paint with words, to draw with words. Her audience
will thus be smaller, Readers are few and far between, not that many, whereas anyone can
watch an image, follow a film. Our world is so very visual and we are visual beings. We
tend to look at the world around us, not read about it. Hierarchies of perception. She does
not really know what to do whether she should write, whether she should draw. She
definitely knows that she will never sing. She ponders, creeping out other patrons of this
place, while she writes away and stops only to look searchingly into midair, as if she is
trying to grasp a word from the ceiling. Oh, the theatrics of being a writer. It seems to be
a role that suits her. She can do that, stare into space, opening her already too big eyes a
little bit more, then squint them, then smile to herself, then form words with her mouth,
then write away. All the world is a stage. Fake it till you make it. She was too busy
looking like a writer, she forgot her flow of words. Logic escaped, continuity of thought.
She is 52, 53 in a month, wondering how much longer her mind will be accurate. How
many more years to live? How much more time to learn, explore, write, draw, play, the
like. Live as if there is no tomorrow. One liners, platitudes, inscriptions on a T-shirt.
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Makes one go from A to B. she writes, writes. As if there is no tomorrow. And no end. In
sight. No Insight.
---
she found this dunkin’ donuts and sits down near the window, looking out at the
street. she starts picking up her writing stuff, her notepad, her pen. She bought a new pen,
it seemed to be overpriced. It is too runny, the ink glides out, there is not enough
resistance. She has to slow it down, force it to slow down, which is too hard on her hand.
She will get writer’s cramp before she gets writer’s block. She puts her cellphone on the
table awaiting a call. She never hears the ringing of it, if it is tucked away. The life of a
cellphone user is a new one for her and it does not fascinate her. She does not like to be
held back by some ringing box, it interferes with her freedom. And it sparkles too much,
the metal reflects the light and annoys her. She turns it around, matte side up, and she
does not know whether it is on or not. She does not know much about the intricacies of
cellphones and is startled by it. She should have a donut, but she merely drinks tea.
Which was 2 bucks. This city is so much more expensive than Vancouver, than Ontario,
Nice restaurants are pretty affordable though, but she did not really take elegant dress-
upy wear with her. It does not hold up nicely in the rain, and thus is not comfortable
when travelling. She can see herself in the mirror beside her, she can see her pen move
out of the side of her eye. people walk, by, determined. A child slags along home, not
determined at all. At home there is homework waiting, or merely boredom. School is
more exiting. Today there is overcast, there is boredom, setting in. She writes away.
Outside there are phones, landlines still exist. She writes away. The woman from today
vegetable has unloaded the truck. She is very determined, fast-paced, in control. She runs
the show. The author feels that she is so very useless, her physical capacities definitely
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weaning. Even walking through this city is a chore. This is not good. On the other side of
the street is a sign saying “Marathon Bank of New York”, though the “Today Vegetable”
truck is in the way, does not show the whole sign, blocks the view. While she writes this
“Today Vegetable” drives away, a fatty with a yellow T-shirt blocks her view now. She
ponders, whether using the term “fatty” is politically correct. She looks at Marathon
Bank. Trucks drive by, taxis drive by, non-helmet wearing bikers. Definitely east-coast.
Helmet sales must be really, really low here. She stands up, walks around, looks at the
donuts. Timbits, donut holes in this place are called munchkins. She prefers not to have
one, which is kind of difficult, all she has these days is apples and salads. She wants to
lose weight to have more energy. She ponders whether these observations are too trite.
Much too trite. And not observations, to boot. She writes away. Wonders, why the person
outside is wearing a “Burton” touque. In the heart of New York City. Which halfpipe
does he want to take? She is not quite sure if halfpipes are for the taking, even though she
hales from “Rebagliati” country. She smiles, wonders if she should look out for serious
issues to tackle. Something more profound than “I can see half of my Dunkin Donuts
cup, only the “NKIN” and the “NUTS”. in orange and pink, dark-orange and dark pink.
There is a word for describing a darker shade of pink, a darker shade of orange and she
does not remember it. words, words, kids scoot by on those small city-skooters, that were
so en vogue five, six years ago. a Coca-Cola Van parks in front of the Marathon Bank of
New York. People behind her complain, an artist walks by. With sketchbooks. She has to
find the galleries here in chelsea, go to the MoMa, the Guggenheim. But she’d rather sit
here, knowing that she will never exhibit in those places. She had her 15 minutes of fame
already.
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Cars drive by, people walk by. To the right, to the left. She could sit here all day
and take notes. The old man behind her is still reading his newspaper, yesterday he was
sitting in Benny’s café. She meets the regulars, becomes a regular herself. The salesladies
are squabbling about wearing a uniform. One yells out “You have to wear a uniform”,
later “But you have no uniform”. The other one laughs. They talk about their visa. The
author ponders, how long she can stay in this city with her passport. There was a time,
visa issues were paramount for her. Twenty, thirty years ago. Her life has changed so
very much. For the better, for the worse. Nowadays she writes all day long. Refusing to
construct a plot. She liked plots, artful constructions of conflict leading up to, well,
climax. She smiles, wondering, whether that is the right word. Nowadays she piles up
word after word, assuming that they all will fall into place. Like magic.
Outside, she can see a metal water tower on top of a building, glistening in light
copperish yellow, ecru. The air conditioner in this place is very loud, could be the fridge,
could be the Vendingmachine, the Cooler. It is very fluid, non-disturbing. Her tea is
getting cold.
She starts playing around with her cellphone, staring at the monitor trying to
figure out how it works. She is not very gadgetoriented, a pen being still the most
fascinating gadget for her. She ponders whether she should have something drenched in
sugar and grease in order to clog up her arteries. We will all die anyways. Sooner or later.
Profound insights. You come to this world, you die. You put words on paper. Cars drive
by. There should be more to life. She gets bored. Maybe fresh air would help. The old
man has left. She writes away. She has to eventually type this, edit it. Or put it
somewhere and forget about it.
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She should sightsee, go to museums, do something other than write. Read a
newspaper. Travelling has lost its luster, she has to get back to her regular life. She needs
structure. Writing word after word is useless. She could read and edit. But she hardly ever
finds something to edit, there is nothing to criticize. A bike drives by, a red motor bike
drives by. This is going on for the last two hours. A dog struts by. A woman walks by.
All the author does, writes this down. Cars are mushing together into a blur. There has to
be something more interesting. Time stands still. A purple bike calls for her attention. At
this point everything calls her attention. It is a busy street. She has nothing to do.
Boredom is gripping her throat, tearing away at her clothes. This place is too hot, she is
falling asleep while she is writing. She looks very school ma’am like, with her glasses,
with her hair in a knot. Plain jane. She now has grey strands in her hair. Maybe she
should revamp and overhaul her whole appearance. It never works, though. She is who
she is. Some average looking creature. She once listened to her friend going on and on
about how average is the best. Actually she herself (the author) does not think she looks
average. The world seems to think so. But she knows better. She looks the best.
The cameraman outside her window spits on the ground. His gear is very fancy,
but, nonetheless, he’s a spitter.
The author ponders, how many persons will ever read this. Maybe some close
friends? Maybe she should start sprinkling her writing with Sex, Violence, Drama,
Controversy. Es-Ee-Eks seems to be the best, sex always sells. So the saying goes. And it
got us all here, brought us to this planet.
She ponders. A woman in purple walks by. She is utterly bored, it is written all
over her face. Maybe she, too, should sit down and write her memoirs /autobiography
/nonsensical observations /explorations of the banal. Deep insights. Who is to determine
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what is good and bad in art? A bike bikes by. She will make her way back to the small
apartment on 21st. and 8th. In NYC. On April 4, 2008.
That is enough writing for today. The writer blocks herself. Deliberately. A red
convertible speeds by.
---
she is sitting near the window and looks outside. Like an old woman, or better
phrased, like the old woman she is. Outside, on the street, people pass by. It is slowly
getting dark. The night invites this friday evening, is anticipating the night. In this city
where so much is happening, seems to happen. She, though, found her small little niche,
the neighbourhood cafés, the fastfoodjoint, where she can write forever, the café, where
patrons are unprovokedly hostile and shoo her away, this so very loud, so very hectic city
with this oasis of quietness. in this street. The street is a complete replica of the street she
grew up on, she feels so very much at home. As if it is fifty years ago. Time is standing
still. Where will she be fifty years from now? In 2058? Long gone? Outside the branches
turn golden, illuminated lines, glossed over, glistened over by streetlights, beauty behind
the open shades, and passers-by down on the street, one black-clad, one white. The tree in
her apartment speaks to her. Visually.
She writes away. Outside the same staccato- like clacking. Tomorrow she will
buy a phonecard. Call home. Until then there are all these words to be written, all these
notes to be taken. Maybe she will go to Brooklyn. Not that she would know the
difference from chelsea, streets are streets, buildings buildings and people people. Why
would she pay the subway fare to see other parts of New York. To her it is all the same.
Some place, that makes her write, some place that dictates its songs to her.
---
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And here she is again in this so very , very busy coffeeshop around the corner, it
is saturday, april 5th, New York, 11:37, she feels a little bit too hot, too many layers of
sweater upon sweater, outside the sun shines, very bright, very weekendish, Jazz plays,
muffled over by conversation pieces, it is chelsea, so in the heart of gay-community
living, she ponders, why she mentions that, does it even matter, she feels like writing
forever, putting word after word down, the lady who was sitting at her table, looks very
seriously at her writing, the author feels selfconscious, and is wondering, whether she
wrote something offensive, she suddenly tip-toes with issues, editing and reediting,
courting political correctness, which should never be part of writing, it inhibits, it changes
the flow of the writing, the sheer, pure analysis, political statements, she ponders, trying
to figure out why there are suddenly so many seats without occupants, she watches the
shadow of her hand moving, she notices people come in, she wonders, whether her
writing is so very much too thin, too plotless, no heartbreak, no star-crossed lovers, well,
except for all the boys who could not have her and suffer terribly all over the world, she
left them to suffer somewhere, authorless. She smiles, life is good. Her pen has ink, paper
is cheap and waiting to be filled, she found her calling. One day she will stand in a room,
wearing black, reading from her book, no, make that one of her many books. She smiles.
“Charlie Rose, here I come.” Lines on paper, scribbles, one after the other, like step after
step. Narratives are for the birds. She looks up, sees an ad for “Khaled Hosseini- the Kite
Runner”. # 1 New York Times Bestseller. White guilt, white guilt.
Plots are for the birds. She writes away, her existence depends on these scribbles,
her raison d’etre. Words, words. While cars drive by, while trucks, cabs, all kind of
wheelies make their way from right to left. On ninth Avenue. The letters start to shimmer
and glisten, she puts them down, is amazed by their shimmery trace, that is there for a
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second, glistening, only to dry away. Someone is reading a spynovel, that is what she is
up against. Hey, sir, don’t read that, read my stuff. You seem like a very nice guy, what
with eating meat, having a big coffee and orange juice. Middle-America. If you have to
read instead of writing, read my “literature”. Support the Homeless. Support the
unpublished writers. If you pay 100 bucks for your nike’s, pay 5 bucks for my book.
Maybe I should subsidize my writing. Here, I pay you, read my book.
The author haults, she changed tenses, changed the narrator’s person, first person
singular, third person singular. She is waiting for a phone-call, she looks at the shadow of
her spiral-binded notebook, the curly lines on the beige-brown table. Someone yells about
a Mokka, about a Frappuccino, outside the world walks by. Someone with some
University shirt walks out the door, her hands were in front of the University shirt. A
woman with a suitcase comes in. The author writes, writes, writes. There is no end, words
take her with her. On a flight towards darkness, towards brightness. On the other side of
the street a “New London Pharmacy”. She could change the script of her writing. For
now, that is what she does. And while writing, she notices how she courts, the same kind
of alliterations, the same kind of linguistic elements, the same kind of even slightly
musical, poetic gimmicks, tricks, the slightly visual use of the language. She is not even
sure where language ends, where drawing starts. Where sculpture ends, where music
starts. She sits here, writes her days away. Outside the city roars by.
---
It is 12:19 p.m. now. She pushes the buttons on her cellphone, randomly,
deliberately, controlled. She hopes the phone does not need to be recharged yet. She is
still in the dark about how to use this, and tries to avoid dealing with it. Dealing with any
kind of technology. She does not run after it, avoids it. Uses it as a tool, a necessity.
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Preferring, romancing nature. Not nature with tics and ants and cockroaches, nature with
fresh air, in a city. Near cars and trucks. Near coffeeshops. In coffeeshops. With “New”
on the other side of the street, a “rainbow flag” above it. Where light reflects on the
pavement, where her hand casts a shadow, many shadows on the paper she writes. That
kind of nature.
She ponders whether her writings have logical fallacies. Not for her, all her words
make perfect sense. In her world. The man with the suitcase leaves, it was not a woman,
but a Japanese tourist with long hair. She likes the abundance of tourists in this place, she
feels at home. All these nomads, all theses globetrotters. Intermingling with the natives.
She should stop writing, go back to the small apartment. But she writes away, it is so
much more exciting to hold a pen and write. Her phone should be somewhere, she uses it
as a watch now. Holds it in her hand, to answer, if someone calls her, if someone needs
her. She used to dismiss people with their phones, people who want to be needed. The
author prefers to be in a state of non-neededness. To be free, to soar, to write. And,
eventually, to build, to make music, to change the world, for the better. solution, problem.
(The stuff with part of the solution, part of the problem). The words take her away. She is
exhausted. She writes much too much, falls asleep while writing. Only the physicality of
her writing propels her forward. She said that before. Someone in the little French Bakery
on Ninth said that yesterday, that one should just write and see where it takes you. Same
sentiment was voiced at the pratt institute at the panel discussion: draw, see, where it
takes you. Seems to be the sign of the times, exploring creativity, freeflowing, order and
structure will be superimposed, later, transpiration, inspiration. All those maxims. And
outside the city goes by.
---
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She looks out the window, looks at the green wrap, the sandwich on somebody’s
table, the green bag on a chair, the green sweater, all things green. She wonders, whether
she should buy a lap-top, the one, she likes is about 200 bucks. Very light, very heavily
promoted. Should type out all her books, print them, bind them, send them off to all the
publishers and – a phone call interrupts her line of thought, her daydreams. Gotta run.
Duty calls. Writership has to wait. For now.
---
she has not written for her text in the last two days and now she finds herself back
in the coffeeshop on 8th. Avenue and start writing, automatically, like a clock that starts
to tick like a clock which is started by turning the switch, the clock-turning-on-
mechanism. She ponders what the exact term is, she tries to figure it out and does not find
it, she gets into an ulceration with another patron, who accuses her of not covering her
mouth when coughing, which is ridiculous because he has his back to her, how would he
know, but he was actually right of all the times she coughs, this time she did not cover
her mouth, but she is just flabberghasted by the sheer rudeness of this person. The new
yorkers of chelsea are quite a piece of work (not that there is anything wrong with it). She
stopped coughing afraid of this person, which is a new kind of cure for the common cold,
scare people shitless and they forget to sneeze, their throats clear up, bodyfluids
normalize. Maybe the white labcoats in hospitals make people sit up, the authority of
health professionals makes diseases go away.
A woman at the other table is writing her suduko-puzzles, solves it, the author
writes away and tries to pinpoint the moment, let it linger on the paper, expand, she tries
to make the longing in the song flow on paper, the longing for a long-lost lover, for
something amiss, something so far away, a dream that cannot be caught, a hope, love,
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liking, the wish for the resolution of a problem. She counts the days, counts her pages
that she has put down, has lost count, tries to figure out why it even matters, how many
pages between start and finish, how many days between leaving Vancouver and getting
back to Vancouver, getting back sitting outside at the busstop, going to Airport station,
then taking the B-line into the city, leaving at 41st and taking the UBC-bus to leave either
in front of Mc Donald’s or Hills. That is where she will be, in 27 or 28 days, no, wait, 23
days, in three weeks time, with double the baggage, she left with, and she will miss these
days of “forever-writing”, these days of culminating creativity, when she is forced to
write down her observations, her thoughts. She ponders if, whether this is even creativity,
creative was the idea to put her thoughts on paper, all these people in the coffeeshops
could do the same, well, not the little baby who talks to herself in the stroller, plays with
her toys, analyzes the toy. The only reason, why she writes and writes, is, that she cannot
physically master walking around forever, she is a totally accidental writer in an
accidental touristworld. She never saw herself as being creative, she is much too non-
choosey, draws whatever she feels like, writes whatever she feels like. Like a marathon
runner who practices each and every day, come rain, come shine. “The loneliness of the
long-distance runner”, one of her favourite films, back in ’63, on black and white TV- in
the morning. She might have had a crush on Tom Courtenay, being drawn to the person
who never laughs. She was reading a book at that time, about a child, that never laughed,
having sold his soul to the devil. Faustian dilemma. Later on she was fascinated by
“Michael Kohlhaas”, by “Der Schimmelreiter”, all tragic, lonely figures, alone against
the world, in pursuit of an idea, an obsession. She grew up with a ten-year older sibling,
that makes for building, constructing the perfect loner. Put linguistic discrepancies with
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the environment into the mix, you have the perfect making for an individual writing away
her days in kingston and new york in spring/fall 08.
The woman at the other table has her little Sudoko-office at the table, the man at
the other table is busy figuring out his cellphone, his blackberry, textmessaging. Outside
the sun shines away, people are singing behind the counter. The starbucks here has such a
different vibe than the Starbucks back in Vancouver. Someone sneezes, someone puts her
coffee on the table. Everyone is doing something. She writes away, puts down all these
scribbles, all these lines, all these words, while they are starting to swim in front of her
eyes, each letter being written in a kind of foggy, nebulous surrounding, each letter
slightly bent to the right, each letter freestanding, she prefers to write in block, not in
handwriting, it seems to court the illusion of legibility, of finale and finite coherence. She
starts spelling out the words, at this point of her dislocation, her travels she starts talking
to herself, courting insanity, once a person at the streetlight at St. Marks place turned
around, noticing her speak. Crazy old lady. A woman with white hair walks by, she
writes and writes. The Sudokowoman left, was called on her cellphone, she spoke some
French words, Québécois, Montreal. The author ponders, whether she should start
focussing on spinning a yarn, writing a spystory, a mystery novel of 3500 words, max, to
send to the Wolfe Island Contest in Ontario, by mid-may, to win 100 (grand prize), 50
(second prize) or 25 (third prize). She wonders what runners-up to the Nobelprize get,
nothing, zip, zilch, they have to leave the stage like Canadian Idol, like American Idol,
like America’s Next topmodel, like a contestant for Project Runway and Project Runway
Canada. The author herself is giddy since yesterday evening, she received an email from
the NFB, from the phone company, that puts downloadable shortfilms on its site to be
downloaded for mobile phone use, they liked her animations, all of them, all seven of
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them, life is so very good now. Finally, we are getting somewhere. Maybe writing is not
needed, maybe, we’ll make it after all. A hat flies through the air. She counts her pages,
her blessings. Her pure luck. She is 52, going on 53, alive, in New York City, happy,
healthy, life is so very good here. Lucky bastard, lucky duck. She pinches herself. The
sun shines away. She has to count all these pages, then stop go somewhere else, take the
subway, get out somewhere in the city, more mid-townish than here, find a fast-foody
place and start to write some more, letting the hecticness of the city permeate her
consciousness to make her write - Lovestories, hatestories, dreamy long-winded
dissertations about the state of the world, this world. She has to stop, for now, make
herself physically stop, put her left arm on the right arm to hault the neverending,
neverseizing pourdown of words. Her fingers are cramped up, too tight, much too tense.
---
she ended up having a chamomile tea in a small knitting store meets teashoppe
meets coffeeshop and is above a small animationstudio, that had sandbags in front of its
door somewhere behind a woodeny, gardeny, urban oasis-foresty pathway, full of
branches, full of rocks, stones on the ground, very secret underpassy, mystique-mystery,
with computers behind dirty window glasses, animation in a mysterious castle-basement,
her chamomile tea is red, a mystery in itself, it has some lines of smoke, it is in a pen
bowl-like cup, very lattéish, people here knit away, do stuff with noise from a spinning
machine or something, that has rotations per minute, some loud device, there is music in
the air and wool, wool, wool on the wall. Outside, in the little sidestreet, people walk by,
behind her, the spiral of her notebook reflects the lights, mimicks the wool, the
metalbaskets on the wall. Her tea is getting cold. She paid much too much too much for
her tea, 3 dollars and then she gave a dollar tip, an overpriced, reddish chamomile tea,
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that must be more a raspberry tea, or a hagedorn tea, it is delicious though, people here
have pompony, knitted socks, pompons the size of big peas, the size of big chick peas,
garbanzo socks in lots of yellow, orange lined fabric, in wool with lots and lots of lines.
She likes it here. She has no clue how to knit, but likes the quietness of doing something
this meditative, like drawing, like writing, like animating, like doing research, like
bricklaying. She likes the collected, communal energy of this place, where people gather
to build, to construct a better world. She will look up the name of the animationstudio, it
is called Michael Spoon Inc., she could ask the knitting store person for info, but she is
contemplating shyness. She could turn around and look out at the street, but she wants to
sit here and contemplate the workings of the interior. Inside, outside. She looks at the
wooden board on the floor, a dull salmon colour, darker than salmon, less pink, more
velvety, brownish, blueish, blackish, with yellow lines in it, looks like the wool of the
pomponsocks of the knitting woman. This place has beautiful cupcakes, very red, very
cream on top, very cherry in the middle with a green leaf. She had the same kind of
cupcake the day before, sunday, yesterday, in williamsburg in an artsy fleamarket named
fleas an things, it was much smaller, a minicupcake, but the same style, lots of cupcake,
lots of cream, a mound of pearly-white, ecru, eggshellcolored whipped buttery cream,
with an artery clogging static consistency, the color of the cupcake of the woman at the
other table matches her knitting, matches the glassescasing of the other woman, matches
the red knitted shawl of the author, that is hanging on the chair, matches the red of the tea
in front of her that reflects the lights above, in tiny dots. The author sees red everywhere,
she wonders why red is bad, she is calmed by red, lifeline, blood in our veins. She
wonders what happens to the red blood in our veins once we seize life. She feels like
crying thinking of all the death-seized people, whom she knew, who left her here to cope,
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to be strong, to hold her head high. She feels like a small child, vulnerable, with a
grittiness to write, which sustains her, which is inevitable, which makes her draw her
lines in the sand.
Speaking of sand, the day before, in williamsburg, she had an enchilada in a
caribbean-island themed restaurant, with sand on the ground, which flew and smushed
into her sandals, it was beautiful, a restaurant that mimicks the beach, someone came in
to fix the floor in this knitting store, the floor she just described the salmon, yellow
wooden floor, turns out it has cracks and it goes down, while they step on it, the saleslady
and the carpenter in his workboots, there are nails in it that seem to not hold down the
wooden beams as good as they should. She ponders, about why fixing floors would
generate money, whereas fixing knitted loops will not, trades, crafts, along genderlines.
She writes, puts lines on paper, is she consumer, or is she producer, is an endproduct that
is merely thoughts on paper a viable product in late-capitalist society. She knows that
society likes and loves its poets, its musicians, artisans and builders, formgivers and
claymators, vesselmakers, its tradespeople. She knits a yarn and it is funny, ironic that
she ended up in a room with people who literally knit yarn, she wonders why they are all
women, are they mere hobbyists or will they market their goods, will they expand on
their craft and align themselves with colourship, endowment money, grants, places that
will put taxpayermoney flowing to their pocketbooks instead of supplying the army with
funds to ultimately destroy human life the world over, somewhere far away from here.
Her tea is getting cold, paler, pinker, diffused water infused with blood from people less
fortunate than her. The author gasps, writes away to counter the flow of sinking into the
abyss of uselessness, of prostitution, of compliance with the man. She is not an overt
troublemaker, but she refuses to sing along. She misses Vancouver, but is happy to seek
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out all these oases of contemplated intellect, that make her write, that force her to write.
All these flat surfaces all over north america, all these tables that she plants her notebooks
on, to write, to write.
The ceiling here is beautiful, ornate, with lots of lines, looks exactly like the
fabric of an ornately knitted sweater, she sees lines in everything in this place, yarn is the
fascination of the owner, lines are everywhere, metal basket, ceiling, floor. The theme are
lines like the strings of yarn. Knitted into something bigger, line upon line to create a
bigger entity, a pane with holes in it. This is very different than creating a continuum out
of bricks that has no holes in there. Creating a surface with holes is like architecture by
Herzog-Meuron. See, everything reminds me of Basel, these days. All these weirdly
funny insane days.
---
she ended up in another small café and starts to write, another chamomile tea,
another notebook passage to be filled with all those lines, all those words, all those
observations that take her all through New York City. This time her chamomile tea is
very yellowish, it has small residues swimming on the surface, tiny points of chamomile
that might accumulate in her throat and make her cough at night. There is a small spoon,
so she might fish around the edge of the teacup and fish it out. This restaurant is very
brown, very earthy, the wall is brick, dark, glisteny, her teapot leaves the dark-brown
surface of the table with a wet puddle, not too 3-dimensional, more glistening, gliding
water on black-brown that vanishes, as time goes by, absorbs into the surface, absorbs
into thin air. She ponders, ponders all day long. She sees a pink awning far away, streets
away, a traffic light before it, in front of it, a go-sign, now a red hand to stop and hault
people. The author is getting tired of writing down her observations, she is weary of the
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day when her words will seize her. The people at the window speak French or Hebrew,
more French than Hebrew. The walls are all-hebrewwriting, she ponders if she should
start writing in Farsi. Outside people walk by. Outside is a Do Not Enter sign. Her life
passes her by. She wonders whether she should put some sucrose, some artificial
sweetener in her tea. Which is sweat already, by virtue of being chamomile tea. These are
her deep insights, in a world of conflict, of genocide. Deep insights, deep observations.
Seven people walk by, in front of this restaurant that is called 12 chairs. She coughs
incessantly. People here are too polite, nobody reprimands her for coughing up a storm.
So the body is taking over, getting sicker and more diseased. She feels sicker and sicker,
sitting in this too warm, too comfy, too toasty place does not help at all. She should be
out there, walk all over town, let the wind and the breeze sharply do their incisions into
her face, make her shiver, fire, fight it with fire. But she has to write, has to write.
Forever, so many words that are waiting to be put down. She longs for Vancouver, for
health, for not having to cough and sniffle, all day. She wonders when this place will
have a dinnercrowd, it is pretty quiet here, she writes away. words, words, while singers
sing philosophically, which makes her write philosophically, haulted, word for word,
trying to say something while not really say something, following the words like others
follow the wind, are blown by the wind, blown in the wind, through the wind, her wind
analogies fall flat. She follows some pied piper, some obsession within. She filled out a
test yesterday evening in the internet café, somewhere on third avenue, somewhere on the
NFB-site. She was deemed mildly obsessive, but still fully functional. That should be
better than full-blown neurosis, full-blown paranoia. Courting some obsession is always
good, maybe it could breed creativity. She really doubts that, she detests all the romantic
notions about poets. In the late-capitalist society. Oh, what the heck, in any given society.
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The world over. In the back of the restaurant some grindingy machine makes noise,
something rotates. It stopped. The place here is quiet, the people in front of her are
definitely French. Pigeons are outside, grey on grey pavement. They say “chercher” or
“Cherchez”, that is French for you. She ponders. They are not Québécois, she left
Montréal a week ago. The restaurant outside next to this restaurant was where she had
dinner some days ago, all arugula, all goat cheese, all health-conscious. She had fruit for
a week now, how healthy, but ever since she lives the healthy lifestyle, she feels like total
crap. Can’t walk, can’t hear, can hardly breathe, has tears in her feverish eyes. And she
talks to herself. In broad daylight, in plain view of total strangers. Who might be more
accommodating than one’s own kin. Just another crazy on a street filled with crazies. A
harmless insano. Outside, she can see the pink awning with the red street light in front of
it. And she notices, once more, all the red lights, all the red points, lines surfaces, red
walls, red everywhere. She sees red. Metaphor, red as metaphor for what. Sometimes,
lots of times, red is only red. Today, in the morning she saw twenty-one NYPD cars in a
row, driving her by. The people at the other table speak German, try to figure out
German. She feels sick, so very sick. She could help them with their German problems,
linguistic problems, grammatical confusions, then again, she has left the ability to
accurate, conquer linguistical, grammatical glitches, she now does English. For better or
worse. Her eyes are full of fever, she should pay and leave. Fresh air. salt. wind. She
misses her city. So very much. She is a stranger in a city of strangers. Where everyone is
from far, far away. That seems to be the common thread of all our lives here in NYC,
dislocation pared with instant location. Communal dislocation, dislocation as vice,
dislocation as virtue. The beautiful woman behind the counter exudes beauty and
femininity, something the author will never exude. Not with all the make-up in the world,
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all the plastic surgery in the world, all the sit-ups in the world. Some people are born that
way, her design teacher was like that, zero point zero zero zero one per cent of the
population. Any population. Some people are borne like that, making the rest of the
world gasp for air. In disbelief.
Outside a yellow cab is waiting, a grey old man comes out with oxygen tubes in
his nose. She ponders whether she should go home, email each and every one she knows,
to make sure they are all fine. She assumes the best, hopes for the best. Writes away.
Looks at pigeons, at the biker biking away, the old woman making her way. Mortality, it
is somewhere in the back of our conscience. We are all still alive, we should all be still
alive. An ambulance roars by, another one sirens by. Her tea is cold and icy. She will
drink it and make her way to the tiny apartment. In Chelsea. Maybe she‘ll have some
pinkberry. to chill her throat. She has to stop writing. For now.
---
she is back in the coffeeshop, she had a discussion with a war protester who
wanted her money, which did not make sense to her, she was not quite sure why she
should give money to her, why should she depart with her finances in a way she would
support cancerresearch, the woman seemed to be part of the problem, not part of the
solution, she was arrogant and self-righteous, could not understand the irony of her
request, she was operating on enemy’s turf, her problem was with the American political
system, that seemed just illogical, because she did not ask the real questions, she glorified
FDR, as if that made any difference, she could not even see that the whole apparatus that
brought her here, the colonialism of Europe ultimately results in the US bombing other
countries, the woman wanted the author to finance her alleviation of white guilt and, not
only that, she was so very adamant like a schoolmarm instructing a child. It was like a
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slavedriver trying to tell a slave to finance the anti-slave movement. What? It was plainly
illogical, but the author could see that the woman did not understand that, she was raising
funds from whomever she thought had some dollars in her pocket, from whomever had
some dollars burning a hole in her coat pocket. The author is pondering whether to get
another writing pad and another pen and whether she should go on writing, she is pissed
off at the activist woman who seemed to blame the author for the mismanagement of her
government, as an American she suddenly blamed the victim, she did not even notice the
illogical assertion. The author knew that her illogical clash with the woman was so very
severe, she walked away. But she still could not stop thinking about what just happened
here. She knew that the woman was right, but she did not really understand that in the
eyes of the author she was just one more American who is ultimately responsible for the
doings of her elected government. The rift was there between two women about the same
age, about the same socioeconomics, the same beliefsystem, it suddenly became so very
personal, and instead of community there was a rift. And if push comes to shove, it had to
do with religion, with being powerless, with pessimism.
She counts her pages, notices that she has 14 more pages left in this very
notebook, she writes away, tirelessly, trying to sort through things, through issues, she
listens to the music on the overhead, she is haulting in putting down all these words, she
is feeling kind of bad about herself, she felt that the peace activist was trying to accuse
her of things and, at this point, she cannot see straight, think straight.
She puts down word after word, while wars are waged against the innocent and
they are all innocent, she hears protest songs on the overhead, joan baez singing against
injustice, she writes away in this small, so very generic coffeeshop not knowing whether
her writings will have any clout, whether she can change the world, whether she wants to
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change the world, whether she is in a position to change anything, whether she should
live in this country if even for the split of a second. Her pen takes her to new heights, to
new lows, and this is what she writes about, each and every day long, she looks at the
yellowish ceiling, she looks at the papercup in front of her, she is afraid of the scary
peace activist outside in front of the coffeeshop, she wants to find an oasis far away from
this place, far away from politics, from religion, she wants physical proximity to a
breathing body, to some other creature’s skin, she wants a seabreeze in her hair, her face,
she wants to write perfect prose without even trying, she wants something that she cannot
even name, she wants to write all day long, she tries to formulate her half-woven ideas,
her plans, her dreams, she wants to use the word “perforate”, because she woke up at
seven fifteen and saw herself using this word, she dreams about her writing, about the
sentences she constructs, the words she chooses, she still has to write so much more, so
much more, so very much more.
---
she find this very beautiful pastryshop in Brooklyn, she orders a chamomiletea
which costs one ninety which is less than she paid yesterday, though one could argue it is
the discrepancy between teabag and loose-leaf, but for her the cheapness is paramount,
she still is basically forking over two whole bucks for hot water and the temptation of
very good, very creamy, very beautiful pastry, the whole place is like an Italian trattoria,
an Italian ice-creamplace, cups are hanging with bows in the blue transparent, chiffony
curtains, outside is brooklyn, the first station out of Manhattan, on the L-train, the street
is bedford avenue, the location is called Williamsburg, as far as the author knows, she
writes away, enjoys the atmosphere, looks out at the bicycle, wanders why her table is a
wobbly one once more, her hand cramps up, the pen is a ball pen which needs too much
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force to make it fly over the paper, so she has to take long, long pauses, long, long haults,
arresting the development of this her story to nowhere. Negativity is paramount. The
neighbourhood here seems wealthy, alternative, old-hippyish, not necessarily wealthy in
a material sense, more in a well-educated, confident sense of self sense. She writes away,
misses her gelroller pen, has to stop. the place’s name is fabtane’s, retired people in front
of her discuss loudly important issues, two beautiful women are talking at another table,
people walk by, she ponders what to write about and if using this pen might even vaguely
result in good writing, she uses handwriting, not print, which seems easier to do with this
pen, printing needs more force to inscribe the letters, to make the lines even marginally
perforate the surface of the paper. She writes away while listening to the samba-ish
rhythm of the music, could be Italian, could be any romance based song, rhythm colliding
with rhythm, the pink sugarbags in front of her catch her attention, she inhales colors, this
is what is the mainstay of these her travels throughout 2008, inhaling visuals, exhaling
them on paper, trying to figure out if she should start typing this up or whether she should
amass more and more material, eagerly, waiting to be edited in Vancouver. The other
people are discussing socialism, government, education, everyone has an opinion,
opinions are good, to make them collide, to discuss the world, to make sense of the
world, while the world walks by, to try to pinpoint issues, within the context of ideas,
within the context of ideologies, all the ideas of this world, while people walk their dogs,
their kids, she writes away, trying to count the pages, she should write more, so much
more, until her pen will stop, her tea is chilly now, she runs after ideas, the political
discussion at the other table propels her incessant writing, on the other side of the street
the bricky building is all brick, all brown, with this one rectangly-square, lonely within
the brown bricks with the beige mortary edges, she writes, writes away, people are
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discussing all kinds of New Yorky, political, specifics, she loves that, she likes that kind
of discourse that is far away from trivial issues, on the other side of the street there is a
store called “earwax” People talk away, talk away. She rests, she writes, she thinks about
her discourse in the morning with the peace-activist woman, the author agreed with
everything the woman said, she was stating the obvious, the author just did not want to
fund her ideas and that is where their worlds clashed. Politics are so very important, they
have to be discussed, day-in, day-out, to further our understanding of the world.
The author listens to the music, there is so much going on here, she is hungry, but
tries to loose weight, in order to run up stairs, but she might faint until then, keel over her
notebook, suffer, faint and have a heart attack, in this strange far-away town, where life is
fun, where she feels at home, where the sun shines and her notebooks get filled with word
after word, where the text takes her to indulge in new worlds, in new constellations of
sentence piled upon sentence piled upon sentence, where writing is a way of life, where
she puts in ink and paper to reach the ports of knowledge, gates of insight, doors of a
glimpse at accumulated wisdom that reflect all her past years, she looks out of the
window here in brooklyn on april 8 or 9th, 2008.
---
And she suddenly notices that another page has still to be filled, while yellow
schoolbuses drive by, one after another, while the clock on the wall is five past three,
while the afternoon on this new Yorker Tuesday, this Brooklynish Tuesday clashes with
the trumpet in the overhead, the pink sugarbags, the blue curtains, the red mailbox
outside, with people walking by through the sun reminiscent of Princess Street in
kingston, ontario - some weeks or days ago. This is her life now, a tad too meaningless, a
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tad too freeflowing, but well-documented in all these notebooks, on the lined leaves of
these her books, sketching down thoughts and ideas, that will eventually careen towards
deeper meaning, issue-based discourse, scholastic observations interlaced with trivia,
because that is who we are, intellect and emotion and definitely, decidedly intellect.
Today, tomorrow, until the days we seize to exist. Breathingly.
---
she once more sits in the coffeeshop around the corner, another book to fill with
writing and it is not necessarily a writing pad conducive to her writing, she has to guess
where the lines are, they are basically invisible, which makes for constant guessing, for
writing in free space, without grid, without order, everything mushes together, and
another person is writing too, this is surely a city with people fond of journal taking, note
taking, writing, she listens to the music, she has a gripping cold that makes her eyes fill
up with tears, she has to wait for this to go away, to vanish and she feels bad, whether she
is up and running or whether she is scrunched up, crunched up in her bed, she feels so
very, very sick, she can feel her temperature rising by the minute, by the second, she has
lost her appetite, lives on chamomile tea alone, this is not good, she had an orange, a
piece of pizza, a slice of marble cake and tea, tea, tea. She is alone in this big city, where
everyone seems to be alone, the people around her talk, talk, talk, but the other writer
writes away, she feels that she has to write at least 20 more pages to fulfil today’s
requirement, today’s allotment, she looks for her cell that is somewhere in her purse, she
has to know what time it is, the other writer checks his cell and the watch, this is what
people do, collectively, communally, the city grapples the author, the other writer leaves,
some kid who glances at her, he packs his “war and peace” in the making up, the author
still writes away, forever and forever, word after word, plotless, an anti-narrative par
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excellence, the pen flies over the paper, she has to leave, but will come back, she leaves
her things here, all over the place, she might meet her editor, she laughs, there is no editor
yet, why would there be, how could there be, a shallowish travellog, stories far from the
edge, in utter quietness, in an oasis of tranquility, in a so very hectic city, where red and
orange lights illuminate 8th. Avenue, where cars rush by, where bright lights, big city is
the status quo, the world at ease, restless, slightly mindless, rushing forward. She
wonders, if it would have been the same some fifty years or so ago, when she was born so
very far away, somewhere in Hamburg. She interweaves the narrative with her own
stories but changes the data randomly, whereas still courting truth and facts. At this point,
everything mushes so much together, so utterly together, fact and fiction, fact as well as
fiction. in short, fact follows fiction. She looks outside, is waiting, she looks at her cell,
she counts the pages, she ponders when her sickness will decrease and lighten its grip on
her. She has not been back home since March 13, and it is April 8th, now.
---
it is now April 10, she was sick for a day and did not write at all, a disruption in
her routine, so she went straight back to picking up her pen and putting words on paper,
even though she is still kind of shaken and disoriented from two days, or better, nights of
fever, which was not good at all, which makes her feel weak, strengthless, full of
resentment about the discrepancy of her own strength and the vitality of the blossoming
spring, the fledgling heat, the brightness, the sun, her coffeeshop here at the corner of
23rd and 8th is her sanctum, it is still the same, she made it her home, this one and all the
other coffee places, tea places, where she writes her journalentries and ponders, where
journal ends and where literature starts, given that anything written reflects the
penwomanship of the author, she ponders, ponders, ponders away. She is now at a point
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where she expects herself to put down 40 pages straight, which is quite a strong regimen,
which might be too much, counterproductive, that kind of thing, she starts tweaking parts
of the page, does not fully cover it with her words. She is still reeling from her cold and
feels restless, wondering, if she should just stop, there are so many more days left to
write, so many more days, years, minutes, besides, this paper is so very nonconducive to
writing, the lines are not pronounced, so it is like writing on non-lined paper, which
makes the ideas wishy-washy, non-ordered, the pen one uses, the paper one uses,
produces a certain outcome. The color of the ink, the grid of the paper, this is what makes
and breaks writing and nothing else. The author is a very practical writer, a very
pragmatic artist, her tools are the most important “tool”, not her mind, the mind is totally
at the mercy of the “tools”. The pen makes for good insights, the lines by good ink are the
illustrators of coherent sentences, coherent thinking, the physicality of the pen carries the
story, the direction of the piece. She ponders, whether she should elaborate or just stop in
midair, in midthought, suspend the flow of thought abruptly, to just take in the situation
in this particular place, with its so very American music, she feels very Canadian here,
very from a different planet, a visitor that just looks around, wonders, judges, is happily
dislocated. This is a so very different city, but the author is taking to it like a duck to
water, without being immersed, without losing her sense of self. She tends to have this
ability to adapt, to adopt a place, but to make it work on her terms. She has lived all over
the world, so she is not fazed by ever so slight differences in our common humanity. Or
something like that. she still, though, deliberately, bowls alone. It comes with the territory
of writing, Putnam himself did it when he penned his book.
The music above is all about love, very country, very sugary, longing, the longing
of a boy for a girl, maybe to market it to a lot of girls, she does not care, the words are
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very conducive to eager happiness, all kinds of accolades of the “you are my sunshine”
kind, the sheer innocence of fascination with another creature and the non-jaded approach
of admitting that, the generosity. The author smiles, lovestories are always her most
favourite stories, happy romantic, live ever after happily, ditties, another country song
where a breadwinner sings how he will work all day and that is where love and romance
goes awry and wrong, where women are forced to play second fiddle, where the sheer
rage of feminism is bred, cultivated. These are all very important questions, she ponders,
but she should stop and count the pages. and she did.
---
she sits down on a bench near the spring street subway station and has a tangerine
that she bought from the fruitstand near the benjamin moore paint store. the tangerine is
not that good, not that bad, half of it falls on the ground. She sits down on the bench, one
of many benches. people have flocked to this place, they are soaking up the sun, having
late lunch, letting New York City pass them by. It is nice here, bright people walk by. No
one writes. She watches the very sharp shadow of her hand. She has thirty more pages to
go to write for today. She did not write yesterday, so that would make forty more pages,
thirty plus forty, seventy pigeons are on the ground. It is spring in New York City near
the spring subway station. Corner of 6 and spring.
Writing makes her sick.
---
She finds herself back in the small knitting store slash café slash teashoppe, the
one above the animationlab / the animationstudio, the one that looks more as if it is
nestled in a little sidestreet somewhere in italy, where a very thin lady gave her a
chamomile tea, a lady with a Chinese amulette, people are walking by, the music is
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beautiful, she has a really bad cold, the author, that is, she coughs and writes. No one
knits in here today, last day she was here, there were so many individuals, now there is
just her, the singer, people walking by and all of this multifaceted view, she wonders
what to describe, it is so very interesting here, word comes after word, she wants to hault
this moment, let it seize to flow, let it tread in space, she wants the moment to be
freezeframed, she misses her city, but does not really want to leave this city either, this
city makes her write, makes her be so very diligent, renders her utterly disciplined, makes
her write, write, write.
The words flow from the pen, there is no writer’s block on the horizon, she puts
down all the words she has to, she follows the articulation of her dreams, her passions,
that kind of thing. She admires the lines and the shadows, outside of the window, the
street is so very narrow, a narrow, narrow street like in an old city in Europe, so very
non-American, but it is New York, she knows that, she smiles.
She counts the pages, so far she only produced fourteen pages, that is not enough,
it is way too little for this day, she has to still produce so much more, she is at the same
time slave and slavedriver, she forces herself to write away as fast as possible, and the
words flow not that softly, she is not productive enough, and she ponders, if she wants to
produce that much, like a person knitting away, she might number her pages to see some
progress, to see achievement, to see physical evidence that she tried, as hard as she could,
to build her writing business, her animation business, her putting words on paper
business, she needs tangible, physical evidence of having tried, of having been in the
flow of producing incessantly and word after word-ish, she wonders, if she should write
in this place, in a place which is geared towards individuals that take flexible strings and
twirl them around with big sticks and make flat surfaces. They knit. The house on the
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other side of the street consists of all those small rectangle bricks, rectangles of baked
clay smushed in place with mortar, which works as an adhesive between all the bricks. In
the end these are panes that are glued together out of small units, panes made out of
smaller entities, bricks. So knitting and bricklaying is basically the same. Might not hold
up in a court of law, but the author herself is satisfied by her observations, her metaphors,
her seeing the communality in seemingly disparate fields, disparate modes of material
existence, material manifestations of matter, material ways of human production. She
wonders, whether writing is too time-based, too non-solid to be able to even try to
compete with a building, a knitted sock.
people walk by with kids, lots of kids, fieldtrip group, something like that.
Outside there are blue strings that look like a curtain, all blue strings amassing as
curtains in the window of the knitting store.
The author misses home, misses, misses home.
---
she wrote near to twenty pages already. It is two forty-two, so there is still time to
write more. for today.
---
she has to leave this place, but she will miss the instant companionship of the
knitters, they are all so very friendly, so very well-behaved. She likes it here. Maybe she
should learn how to knit, knit, knit. Instead of writing. Maybe she will be able to do that.
It does not seem to be too difficult. Maybe, one day. For now, she writes, she animates.
She’ll leave, she’ll walk through New York City dreaming of lighttables, missing some
things she does not really know how to articulate. She wishes for peace, maybe, the
embrace of a lover, maybe, the wind in her face, maybe. false creek, so very maybe.
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---
tedium seems part of this knitting business, it seems to be part of the bricklaying
business, tedium is part of writing. She ponders whether her philosophical musings are
valid. She selfdoubts. Which is fine. In this vacuum of beauty.
– ---
she sits down in this Deli at the corner of 14th and 8th, remembering vaguely that
one is a Street, one is an Avenue, but at this point of the day she is slightly confused,
which is which, because there is East, West, South North to be put in the mix, she did not
want to get out here, but it is fine anyways, she knows how to get home from here, on the
other side, there is this big Gourmetplace called Balducci’s, she is still slightly sick,
slightly squashed by her cold, the lights from the ceiling are reflected in the green marble
of her table, she can see people coming out of the subway from where she sits, the
window is exactly near the steps of the subway which is fascinating, she looks at people,
notices vaguely that there is no music in this place, which is a first in all her constant
travels, in ontario, in québec and in new york, a place that does not need music, that relies
solely on visual entertainment, the noise from the street, conversation, music is not part
of the equation, then again, maybe there is some music somewhere, somewhere in the
distance, she looks outside where the world runs by, where life runs by, this place has a
certain unhappiness, a certain uneasiness, she suddenly can hear music, which was there
all along, which was there all along.
---
She ponders if simply repeating words will make for good writing. Of course not,
it is very skilful filing away at sentences that will propel her adventures here in
literatureland, in the linguistic landfill that she is dropping her insights into.
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Outside, the city goes by, moves by, people are coming out of the subwaystation,
there is a beige stairway going up here. She should have a tea, but it does not really hault
her cold. The person at the other table is drinking a Red Bull, the author ponders if that
kind of energy drink would supply her with energy, she is tired, still full of pangs of
fever, that make her sit here and rest, that make her try to regain her strength, to go into a
state of normalcy, where she can breathe and swallow easily, again.
The person at the table opposite of her eats and talks to himself while eating, a fly
bumps into her face. Something smells, some foul smell. The Deli is situated at a very
strategically valid corner, it must make a lot of business.
She wants to leave.
---
She sits down on a bench in the subway. A woman with red nail polish is reading.
So she, the author, thinks, that maybe she should sit and write here. It is rushhour people
rush by, transfer between L, A, C and E trains.
The subway, breeding ground for musicians, visual artists. Looking at the writing
pad, while seeing all those legs rush by. Walking cycles, lots and lots of biped walking
cycles.
All kinds of colors, red pants, brown shoes, black pants, wheels of strollers, of
suitcases on wheels, people rushing and running, striding, strutting elegant persons and
non-elegant ones. high grey heels, pumps, that were bought at a cheap outlet store. She
writes away, Someone wheels by canned fruit, behind him someone wheels by a stroller.
Someone reads, someone writes. Someone talks, someone listens.
The author smiles. Her observations get more profound, the more her surrealistic
state of tourisme, of dislocation progresses. Will she be able to adapt to normalcy, once
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she is back in vancouver. She can’t really sit back home at the Metrotown skytrain station
and write like this. She would feel weird, strange. Here, on the other hand, this seems
normal, writing to combat insanity, uncertainty, dislocation. That is what pens are made
for.
---
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She just writes away.
---
she is now back in the dunkin’ donuts on 9th avenue at the corner of, maybe
24th., maybe 25th. street, she cannot see it from here, she ordered 5 munchkins, or,
actually, she wanted 3, but she always gets 5, they always want to up her sugar and fat
intake, here, take more, clog your arteries, for free, it’s on the house, some person at the
donut place has a bypass surgeon in her family, it is just one big conspiracy, corporations
and other culprits, organized anything, it is just horrible and it is getting worse, by the
minute. She feels sicker by the minute, then again she feels a tad better than before. That
does not really make sense, but, basically, she would like to feel really, really great. And
this cold is just draining her, interferes with her creativity, her ability to pen accurate
illustrations of the world around her, substandard writing being the obvious consequence.
Sorry, we are not writing “War and Peace” here, we have a cold. The poet doesn’t know
it, the cold makes her write down rubbish.
Outside New York happens. At this point, everything here seems ordinary, she
has her favourite hangouts, her favourite food, her favourite pastimes. She meets the
same bums at the same time, and they meet her. Useless lives. she is slightly pessimistic.
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She fishes for her cellphone. She detests that she has no access to the internet, she has to
walk for thirty minutes to get to the nearest internet café or take the subway, take the A or
the E, and then change to the L and then walk again. Too complicated, much too
complicated. She will take the subway and go to Macy’s where the world circles around
what matters, fashion and the ability to fit into certain sizes. That is what we are fighting
for. Shallow ideas, clothes et. al.
She ponders what to do. Should she take the train uptown and have fun. She wrote
already thirty-five pages, that seems to be enough for today. The more she writes now,
the more she has to type, once back in vancitay. The more trees have to go down, the
more ink will pollute the ground water, the more petrochemicals to make pens, the more
blood for oil.
stop convoluted answers, stop convoluted answers. Stop simple answers. She
thinks of the guy with the grey t-shirt, whose T-shirt said I love Jahad, with the I written
as I, the love as heart and the jahad written in Arabic. Fusion, in your face. Take that,
islamophobic US. She is mad, at a lot of things. Ragingly, but then again maybe not mad
enough. What is she doing here anyways? Talking like these people, walking like these
people. Her alliances are multi-faceted. As if that is an excuse. For anything.
A biker, a stroller wheel by. Life outside of the dunkin’ donuts window. Passes
by, slow and fast. A pigeon, two persons. And so many cars. Roaring, whooshing. Music
on the overhead. Rhythm, staccato. People talk behind her. Something Urduish or so. She
has to leave, wants to leave. This is getting unbearable. So much to write, so little, so
very little time. So little time left on this planet. For the myriad of things she still has to
achieve. World peace, that kind of stuff. In her spare time. While having fun. Lots of fun.
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And making a buck. And dreaming of romance. That is always good, goes with anything.
With any pair of shoes.
---
she sits down near the photographer who takes pictures of flowers. She looks up
at skyscrapers and wonders, ponders, whether she let go of what matters most, so very,
very tall buildings, scrapers of skies, of clouds, buildings that take her breath away, that
makes the gasp in her lungs hault, for a second. “Delirious Manhattan” and “The
Manhattan Transcripts”, buildings, buildings, buildings. That have their own narrative,
their own storylines. Midair wonders. People rushing by, 2 kids discussing stuff in
Arabic. The world, the world. A woman with 3 blue bags walks by. She haults her
writing. She watches the world. She writes, writes, writes.
---
she finds herself down in the cellar, the basement of macy’s, with a peppermint
tea, trying to figure out whether she should still keep on writing pure trivia, whether she
should even be here, whether writing is a vocation, the usual. The fleeting feeling of non-
entitlement. The idea that we should all be trailblazers is some vague idea that moralizing
individuals will bestow upon us. Something like that.
She is deep in the heart of touristy big apple, a foreigner in a foreign country
surrounded by Strangers. Neil Young is singing some Neil Youngishy song. It comes
with the territory of being Neil Young. She writes in front of this glass partition that
reflects her writing hand. She sees her hand write, sees the shadow and the reflection. It is
strange, weird visually. Writing times three. It does not really make any difference, not
for her, at least, whether she writes good or bad, 10 out of 10 or 0 out of 10, as long as
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she can watch her hand write in 3 different, shapes, the pen being an extension of her
hand, gliding over paper, leaving marks in its trail.
She looks up. she sees so much but does not feel like reflecting about it, on it. She
longs for quietness, when the urge, the obsession to leave one’s mark seizes. Maybe that
will be once she is dead and ice-cold. Hopefully, that will be, when she seizes. Not
before. Not a second before. And now to happier topics. To life. To happiness. To
writing. To pens and pencils. To paper. To dreams and hopes. That take us through life.
Salute.
---
We drink to that. With a slowly coldening peppermint tea. In the basement in
macy’s. In NYC. In spring of 2008. Oh, and at the age of 52. The author tries to drown
her stagnant inability to pen down heavy, fluffy, sweetish prose by accumulating number
after number. Quantify the moment.
---
Quality might follow. Will follow. In this little basementy public space. Where
the music is loud enough.
---
she wonders whether she should still write. whether she should still describe this
place and whether it has enough gritty-ness, enough dimension or whether this is
basically the underbelly of late capitalism, the basement of macy’s and whether she is
even in a position to complain about capitalism and whether capitalism is sheerly, purely
a monster, we like to hate, the beast that feed us, that builds us up and tears us down. The
author listens to the music, brought about by some loudspeaker built by some
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corporation, built by the man. She smiles, because if she ever publishes this, the “man”
will publish it. Anyhow, blame it on the man.
She listens to “Simon and Garfunkel” on the overhead, here in the basement of
this very tourist-oriented store, all the songs are so very recognizable, all top ten hits of,
well, actually, since she was born. She holds her phone to her ear, because she thinks that
she missed calls and she does not really know, how to work this piece of new-
fangledness, she must be the last dinosaur who is totally clueless about the workings of a
cellphone and decidedly so.
The less she can be reached, the more time to pen words. Every woman is an
island. At this time of the day, platitudes have to suffice for intellectual insights, clichés
propelled by listening to loud but light music, songs, she can hum to, she has heard
before, she writes her days away for nearly all of the last month, putting down all these
words and watching the notebooks pile up on the brown, rustic coffee table in the small
apartment in chelsea, between 8th and 9th, in the street so reminiscent of the street she
grew up on, so many, many years ago. This is a far-away country, a far-away city, but the
street is still the same, so very much the same, the eeriness is palpable. Then again, it is
not really eerie more ironic, utterly ironic in a funny, visceral way.
She likes this place, each and every song she knows and that is what is important,
continuity, the feel of community in a strange city, points of recognition. She does not
really care about the no-tv, anti-everything crowd. Viva commercialism.
She ponders whether she managed to pay lipservice to basically all different
viewpoints, that exist. Or, on a lighter note, whether she managed to offend friend and
foe.
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She has to go now. It is getting late here. People eat their food and stare straight
into the front of them. She writes her days away. It is fun and it is a tad tough, it is
difficult to find the right words, the best words. Night must be near, she ponders, whether
to stop and make her way home. How much longer can one person spin a yarn? How
much longer into the night? She feels like a train careening into the night, racing by
points of orientation, signs of whereabouts, she shoots by hoping to get somewhere,
hoping to get a moment in time, something like that. Something so very kitschy like that.
She writes her days away. Writes, writes. And stops abruptly. This is far too exhausting.
---
Time to find her way home to her apartment in chelsea.
---
It is april 15, 2008. She is sitting here in harvard square. It is 10:10 in the
morning. The sun is shining. She is meeting someone at eleven, so she still has 50
minutes left. She is sitting here near this grey, golden thingie, statue-sculpture creature
behind her, looking up at the cambridge savings bank, is writing, kind of like a geek, but
this is what she does these days. Yesterday was fun, she was all over Boston, a woman
with a Yale handbag walks by. Well, Yale bag. A Fed Ex truck drives by. She balances
the notebook on her lap, aha, you might call that Laptop. She did not have chocolate-chip
ricotta cannelloni at Mike’s Bakery in Little Italy, she has to lose weight. To be able to
make it through some more years on this planet. There is lots of construction going on at
this harvard square here. policeman yells at person, person leaves cursing. harvard,
harvard. she subwayed by MIT, too. She loves the subway here in Boston. It is called the
T. It is very clean, very neat. The wayfinding system is superb. The transit card is called
charlie-card. Lots of charles named places and streets, lots of revere named places. Little
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Italy. She loves the accent of the people here, she thought they are all Scottish or British,
until someone told her that this is Boston accent.
She likes the mall near her hotel/house/residence. Everything is very clean. She
liked the busride from New York to Boston. She liked Renzo Piano’s New York Times
building. The sun is shining and she likes everything. Everything. Everything. She is kind
of disappointed at the cutsiness of everything, though, it seems too far removed from
straight scholarship. Well, maybe, it is more straight scholarship, with the world neatly
arranged into colored blocs, in primary colors, without mirroring complexity, messiness,
multifacetedness. Everything arranged neatly in categories, so very, very formulaic.
Abstraction as the only way to deal with the world, abstraction because of the
incompetence to mirror the world accurately.
This seat is getting cold. She has to find a warmer, warmer place. She goes into
the Cambridge Savings Bank and sits down in a nice, warm chair, an armchair. She starts
writing some more. She ponders if her observations about this place were accurate, or if
they are biased. Predisposed into a certain area, only based on the subway she took. And
what is wrong with the neatness of a legoland like subway, without the grittyness and
filth of big city subways. What is wrong with a mall, the glib cleanliness? What? What?
And, to take this further, what is wrong with brash statements in an essay, that do
not pierce the status quo? Brash without being brash. Cookie-cutter brashness? She still
has twenty minutes to wait. She did not have cannelloni. She ponders and looks at her
new shoes. Her so very pretty new shoes. She will go sightseeing, museumhopping. It is
better than writing. So much safer. Consumption versus production. Consume ideas, do
not produce ideas. When ideas mean scratching power. Power that manifest in
scholarship. And is so utterly debatable. And Galileo went home mumbling under his
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beard. The very nature of scholarship. Since the beginning of time, to the end of time. So
very, very sad.
Maybe evolution will bring us further, when we do not dare to do revolution. We
don’t do revolution. We do not need the blood, splattered all over these walls. Of
capitalism.
She is sick of writing in sickening metaphors. She will get ready to sightsee. Now.
In spring 08. In Cambridge, Massachusetts. At a quarter to eleven. AM, which means
before noon.
---
so i am sitting here in front of MIT, looking at a red bike, feeling scientific and
hot, eating a cliffbar that is too gooey, writing, writing, thinking that I have not what it
takes to be a scientist. Daydreams take me away.
She notices that she uses the wrong tense, the wrong, pronoun.
She should go back to NYC.
It is hot, so she soaks up the sun. a lift truck drives by, all scrunched up. She likes
it here. The steps are very dusty.
She feels scientific. She reads the words: “couscous-couscous- falafel kitchen” on
the truck on the other side of the street. She writes away, trying to pinpoint down, where
poetry and science meet. They, of course, meet in the pen she uses, applied science
materialized, used to construct word figments, that might go somewhere, might not go
somewhere. Like a scientist experimenting. Or something like that. It is too hot.
---
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she sits down in this store and tries to write. It is not easy, because there is no
table. This is not conducive to writing. She ponders what to say. The name of the store is
garment district. She stops. She leaves.
---
she sits down in the train that leaves Boston at 6:45. Her feet are so very tired, she
sightsaw every second for the last two days, which is, of course, an exaggeration. But so
it seems and her right knee seems to quiver and exhale and inhale and something inside is
knocking to get out. She is happy to finally sit down and write, the blue interior of the
train is soothing in its graininess, the air conditioner commands respect. Penn Station,
here I come. She paid 59 bucks and she thinks the bus might have been cheaper. But she
came by bus (yesterday morning) and she now wants to go back by train. This was a lot
of adventure, though today just stretched forever and forever. She liked the sailboats on
the charles river, when the train drove, rode over the bridge from Boston to Cambridge.
She toured Harvard, a tiny bit, and MIT, more. A Frank Gehry building she saw.
Outside, Boston, says good night, dusk, reflections of the sun against the grey of
the concrete, the train, grey and yellow, beauty of industry. city through dramatic bridges.
Au revoir, Boston. Loved yer. For two days. Mysterious fascination, funny, fine accent.
The city is so very majestic. South Station Back Bay Station. The train goes on. Luckily
nobody sat near her. As of yet. Tunnel Yellow lights.
The train stopped and now goes further into dusk, further near to the night. She
looks at the sun like a golden dollar, bright behind the trees. Or silverdollar or golden
coin. trees swirl by, she tries to write. Outside feathery trees, flying by, branches dark
against slight white. She writes away. There is no time to sleep, is there?
---
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She would have never chosen to write. It is an obligation, a chore now. She has
stopped for too long. Life happened. Writing had to wait.
---
she shivers. She can’t really hault the beauty of this trainride, pin it down and
draw an image, pour the very peaceful, very visually silent surrounding onto a surface,
the dark that flies by, orange lights, the rumourless springnight, the rush towards New
York, the commute, the moment in time, the moments in time, she can take notes, but the
dream evades. Restlessly, peacefully.
---
Outside, the shadows draw reflections, the lights pass by, she writes all these so
very short lights of observations, curly orange light floods by and down on her notepad,
cities like providence and pawtucket flood by, the night of the Eastern US rolls by the
train, the spots of lights roll by like a suspended firework, frame by frame, on a long
timeline, on a neverending storyboard. Some city outside, she wonders, which one.
---
she looks out the window between new haven and stamford and grapples with
selfdoubt, should she and could she, can she write? Genreless narration, lines of thought
on paper, motionless narratives, suspended storylines. Negativity encompasses
everything, stomps her lingo in the ground, flattens the words, hinder their flight into the
spot, the spots next to the sun, above the moon.
Words are so very difficult, so plain, so hard to paint with. Crayons they’re not.
The train slides her from side to side, roaringly it tugs along towards Penn Station.
Relentlessly.
---
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she drives by a place called port chester, the train drives by other stations, cars on
a freeway drive towards the train window, outside lights, outside a truck, fog, lights,
sparkles in the dark, for nanoseconds, splitting by, parked cars, a place called Harrison
trees, houses, a silent city, her reflection in the window, her image, she writes, while
others read, outside the fly-by-world, a freeway, a truck, an underpass, a station, the
world flies her by. Boston was so very beautiful, so easy to miss. It is just a city, a city,
though, with very distinct songs, its own rhythms, its own drummer. Beauty personified,
mystified. New York seems to be here already, the city lets you arrive. A place called
New Rochelle on its way to New York.
She stretches her legs, wanders what time it is. Outside business, dreaminess. A
powerstation, bridges, underpass. Lights.
---
The lights quiver in the water. The city is here. Tall. Majestic. Finally. The train
stops. in front of a fence. wrought iron, line after line, a house, cars parked, street lights, a
bus driving by, turning, a car, another one. Silence. trees slightly ghostly. She anticipates
the city, she looks at the two red lights, that vanish once the train moves, a parking
garage, the train shuffles, stalls, then moves along, not that fast, more quietly, subdued,
an Orchard Beach Highway sign, a yellow stretched light, a glimpse of a light behind
trees, a glistening truck, apartment buildings en masse, the city, the city. She sketches
what she sees, but knows she has to stop, find a place for her notebook in the macy’s bag,
she writes, she writes.
---
A super-deli, a mini- market. This mysterious city after the other mysterious city,
Boston, New York, somewhere on the East Coast, somewhere in 2008. The train rolls
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into Penn Station, there is nothing more to write. Her hand puts letters on the white, the
train toots its horn, it is elevenish. The city is quiet from here, lights subdued, lights in
rows. Like vines on a vineyard. The trainstation opens its arms.
---
selfstorage signs and billboards say hi, she seizes to write. It is mysteriously,
mysticly chilly. The mist of the lights rolls by. The wagon has a lot of friction is so very
heavy.
---
it is wednesday. it is april 16, 2008. she waits at the corner of 34th. and 7th.. In
front of Macy’s. The place is chokked full with people waiting for the 10 AM opening.
weather is nice, sunny. No showers, no flowers. store is at the brink of opening. Hop and
Pops are rushing by. She smears ink on her fingers.
---
she finally made her way down into the basement at macy’s, balancing a green
tea, that is supposed to be refreshing ( it said so on the package of the teasachet, thus it
must be ), her bag, her purse, her writing tablet, she scours all the brown tables for the
best one, one is wobbly, one round, one square, there are high ones, low ones, lightened
ones, darker ones, some with noisy neighbours, views of interesting, invigorating people,
she finally sits down, someone moves a blue kitchen cart by, that makes a lot of noise.
She feels she has to catch up on her writing, with her writing, she definitely has not done
forty pages per day, she was busy with her life, writing was somewhere on the
backburner, a notebook tucked away somewhere in her bag, like her knitting. Not that she
knits, but she writes in knitting shops, she writes in department stores, she writes in all
kinds of places. A bright orange jacket over the back of a seat catches her eye, she looks
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up at the “sandwiches” sign. When she was on the seventh floor at macy’s she noticed
this longwinded writing over a neatly made bed, writing in white on black, different
lettersize, and the writing resembled her writing, it was citytalk, very eary, very “berlin
alexanderplatz”, she sat down on the nicely made bed, knowing that everything has been
done before, knowing that we are merely clones, dollys, artist clones, poet clones, little
numbers with souls. She misses something, someone. So very much someone, that it
hurts somewhere in her intestines, makes her stomach turn, the void scratches from
inside. She loves that, she feels alive because of this her constant longing, her violent
wishes for his smile, that make her stall in her stride.
A girl with long hair and a blue coat walks around with her breakfast on a tablet
and tries to find the best spot in the restaurant. Her little brother and her mother follow
her around. Tourists. Everyone here is a tourist. She is out of ink. She has to find another
pen. She finds her greyhound pen, that she got from the bus station. It writes very thinly,
she has to put on her glasses to read what she has written with it. She has to count her
pages. She has to do this and that. So much. She finished six pages already, which is
good, given that it is not even noon. Six down, thirty-four more to go. Everyone here
holds a map. Or maybe she is seeing things. She should go somewhere else, see
something else. Change of scenery is always good. It brings out the writer, inspires. That
kind of thing. She has to force the ballpen onto the paper which interferes with
wordsmithing. “big girls don’t cry”, sings Fergie. The author is not a big girl, she is a
small girl, feeling inadequate, non-strong, up against words that do not fall into place,
that have no deep insights to illustrate, no worldchanging thoughts to image down on the
paper, nothing to say. Nada. she scratches her head, maybe she should just roam the city,
sightsee, figure out how to make her way to the statue of liberty, to the Whitney, to
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Pentagram. She has seen so much of New York already, this must be her tenth time to
this city, in this city. Maybe more times, maybe less. She has lost count. She writes. With
the wrong ballpen. The inkless one. The one with the stalling ink. She tries the marker
again, but it is basically out of ink. The pen from greyhound has ink, but the marks he
leaves are barely visible on the white. She writes away. No one writes here, whereas
everyone writes or reads in Chelsea. The writing brigade does not gather at macy’s. her
tea is getting cold, it splashes all over her. She looks up at the sign that says “Cucina &
Co.”, she does not like it in here, not that much. She feels her cold coming back. She
feels like falling asleep, she tries to listen to the music, she has heard it before, the singer
is from Vancouver, something about a bad day, but she cannot really hear it, there is too
much noise here, she likes the music video, she looks over her tea with the tiny lights in it
onto the writing that goes into, onto the paper very vaguely, not deep enough, but still
making a stand, putting down a trace, cursive letters in line all nodding to the right.
She can see the kitchen from here, the bakery, it is supposed to be a showcase,
one can see the big round clock over their head, everything is white and grey, all the
breads are stacked on shelves, it is sanitary and clashes with the brown of the tables in the
eating area. She could write here forever, no one minds, though this place is more a
respite for shoppers. She has been here so many times, that she ended up buying a pair of
shoes, on saturday, the shoes are not as comfortable as the ones, she is usually wearing,
but they are prettier. Pretty uncomfortable. She wore them in Boston, in Little Italy. She
walked with them forever, until her feet could not carry her anymore. She hardly made it
back to South Station. She should do the same in New York, get a map, start walking.
Walking with a cause, not moving aimlessly from street to street. wherever the wind
takes her. But she likes that more, has found all the fascinating encounters. The knitting
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store in Greenwich-village. The 12 chair restaurant. Pratt. The streets take her, invite her
to follow them. She came upon the new “New York Times building” by accident. She
never saw “Le centre Pompidou”, but she now saw this “Renzo Piano” piece. Yesterday
she came upon a Frank Gehry building. At MIT. To her there is no difference between a
building that looks like a box, and something that looks like motion suspended in midair,
a dancing building. She draws, she can make her lines dance more pronouncedly. She
scatters words over paper and hopes for the best. Magic, music. She misses art school, art
class. She misses talking about form. She misses listening to individuals talking about
form. She sits here and writes. She should have had the canolli in Mike’s Bakery up on
the hill in the Little Italy of Boston. There must be a little Italy in New York, a
chinatown. Oh, and a statue of Liberty. Somewhere near battery park, somewhere
glimpsed upon from the Staten Island ferry. She’d rather write, listen to the elevator
music, she’d rather sit here, safe and secure, where she can finish her writing for the day.
Forty pages, forty pages. Until the pen drops out of her right hand and she keels over this
round, brown table, until she loses it and breaks down in tears. It is twenty-five to noon,
the lunchcrowd is streaming in. She has to count her pages. She should stop. For now.
She makes up random structures, random time lines, dead lines while she goes.
Superimposing order, structure could string the sentences along.
---
Like pearls, like beads.
---
Abba is singing, pretty loud, though the restaurant noise overpowers it, muffles it
down, makes it generic, too sweet, which is difficult to do to Abba music. The author
wonders, if, whether she should take her notebook and find another place to plant herself
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down and put down her notes. She is getting tired, is gliding to the brink of exhaustion,
she misuses words, she starts doubling them up, tripling them up, interrupts the musical
flow of the rhythm, the rhythms, the words are so very reluctant to dance themselves into
newer, higher, fresher configurations, she stumbles over her own heavy-handed lingo, the
clumsiness, that has to be worked through to jump into elegant, eloquent pirouettes,
above the soil, far over the ground, flying suspendedly, in muted colors. She listens to the
music which is artfully in a commercial, replicable, replicated sense, more so because of
the place, she is sitting in, a public place, a restaurant. This is not an opera house, where
people listen in awe, it is a food place, where people gather to eat. The music has to play
second fiddle. She is tired.
---
She wrote too much already. Nineteen pages. And it is barely noon.
---
she makes her way up the stairs in a wendy’s near penn station, the floor here is
carpeting, all red and blue and beige shapes, out of the corner of her eyes she thought, it
was all linear triangles, turns out, it is more wavy, curly triangles, like curly fries, she is
hungry, but is only having a tea, for now, she should go more for salad and fruits, so she
is snubbing fast food and eats better stuff, though everything might be slathered in grease
and absorbed into the veggies without noticing it, without the end consumer noticing it, in
the same way that her writing seems to absorb tons and tons of trivia, smushed in with
quasi intellectual musings, semi-scholarly barf, nauseating shit. She feels that sprinkling
her lingo with profanity might mask her lack of profoundness, she is at a point now
where quality rides on the back of quantity, her neverstopping pen, her never-ceasing ink
will, must eventually garner semigood results. She looks out the window, she can see the
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Wendy’s logo plastered all over the windowpane, and the little girly-face, too. On the
other side of the street, there is a Fed Ex Kinko’s, a nun is going around collecting money
for an orphanage, the author informs her that she is a muslim. No luck here. The nun
mumbles God bless you, or something, and walks to the next table.
The author writes, writes, writes. This place is very warm, conducive to writing.
The words seem to flow onto the paper, with ease, without stalling. The music on the
overhead is rhythmic, rolling stones, should i go or should i stay now, it is cheerleading
in a very inobtrusive, matter-of-fact manner. The author likes it here, she numbers her
pages and is now on page 23. Doublespaced, doublespaced.
She puts down all her words, until she will finish thirty-six pages. The words have
to come. They just have to. Outside it becomes spring, there are blossoms, there is green
on the trees. In the city, in mid-town Manhattan. It is spring now, time to buy flirty skirts,
sandals. Fresher colors, flowery fabrics. She will be fifty-3, come May. Old age, old age.
The edge of the red wall near the window is chrome, it shines and glistens, she looks at
the plastic salt and pepper shakers in front of her. Behind her coffeemug, which is brown
and yellow. All of it matches the table, the wall, indescript yellowness. So is the
smushed-up napkin, with the used teabag. The author ponders, wonders, how much
longer can she go on covering her tablesettings, describe trivia, banal surroundings,
logistic layouts, spatial configurations ad nauseum. She is now on page 25, she has only
fifteen more pages to scribble. This book does not have enough pages, so she has to finish
this notebook and then buy another one and start filling that one. Her greyhoundpen now
comes into its own, the ink is flowing smoothly, this pen is outdoing all the other pens.
Go Greyhound.
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She looks out the window, wonders what is happening on the street. This table is
on the second floor, she cannot really see the street, except the upper part of a Fed Ex
truck. and half of a green street light, somewhere cut in the middle, the upper part is non-
visible, so is the lower part. The midriff, though, shows. The chairs here are black and
green, she thinks of all her days in the Tim Hortons in Kingston. She found more to write
about, maybe, because the place was more close-knit, where as here in New York City,
there are people from all ways of life. The downtown crowd, or in this case, the midtown
crowd. She is slightly hungry, living on tea here. But first she has to write this, force this
through, finish this very notebook, she cannot really stop. people are streaming in,
talking, teenagers, telling each other their stories. Older people follow. The author looks
at her pen glide over the paper, all preppy letters coming out. The pen spits its words out,
demarking, highlighting the boredom of her existence. Someone asked her, so, what did
you do here for the last sixteen days, she answered: “I wrote”, but somehow that seemed
not be good enough, not tangible enough. Not enough of an achievement, writing only as
exploration of where the words can take her, seems not to suffice.
But she knows that this is what she has to do, is forced to do. The words have to
take her, will eventually take her. On a flight, up the stairs, down the stairs. Into
nonsensical territory, into utterly sensical territory.
She might venture into Spanish Harlem today, rush over to Columbia. She has to
do more than just write, write. But writing grips her, and the pen does not let go. Only 29
pages, only 29. That is far too little, not far too much. There are so many more sentences
waiting in line, patiently, to be put down. The overhead is playing something
psychedelic, which is not exactly very conducive to sanity, what with all the loud
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conversations around her, the laughter, the eating, what with all the hunger pangs in her
tummy.
She wonders what to do next, once the writing ceases, once the “daily” is filled,
once the muses have, what they need, once the exhaustion is unbearable, sticky and
gruesome. She writes, writes, writes, mechanically, in the same way, she used to draw,
draw, back in her animatordays. In the animationlab on Granville Island.
She ponders, she wonders what time it is. Something way past noonish. Her
fingers cramp up, she should stop. Writing is not an end in itself. Or maybe, it is. A
blessing, an obsession. A marching-order somewhere in her head, that forces her to write,
that proclaims: “Write, write, forty pages, forty pages. Everyday, until you die. Until you
fall to the ground and disintegrate. Into small scattered pieces, bones, nails. Disgusting.
There should be nicer, sweeter metaphors available, on a sunny, beautiful day like
today. When music is in the air, literally, when flowers shine, actually, literally, too. The
blossoms on the other side on 34th. are drenched in haulting sunshine. She ponders
whether she will ever be able to use the language, any language virtuously, so that it can
paint an image, replicate the truth, the reality, that she sees from this her chair, from her
vantagepoint.
She ponders how to use the language, sheryl crow wants to have some fun, that is
all she wants to do, the lady in the chair next to her is singing along, while dropping some
white paper on the ground.
page 33, give or take some, she might have miscounted, misnumbered the pages,
she fibs ever so slightly, she cheats herself, she does not know if her writing will ever go
anywhere, if she even wants it to. She herself likes to be a visual artist, make sculpture,
make sculptures in the middle of the town. Inscribe the world with her structures, splatter
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her suspended forms over town. Put frozen musique into the sun light, into the night lite.
String blueprints into bricks, into stone. Like Henry Moore. And that will never be. So
words have to suffice. For now. In this her life time. Page 34 is finished.
---
it is thursday, april 17, 2008. She finds herself first thing in the morning in the
coffeeshop in chelsea and is flabbergasted how many joggers, exercisers she meets. This
being the city, people still have very typical suburban lifestyles. For some reason city for
her means still a place one dresses up for and ventures to, not a place of living. But if this
is your neighbourhood, you act like that, decitify the city, transforming it into a
neighbourhood, taking it out of the formality, the elusiveness, the exclusiveness.
three women come in, a man with a suitcase, a woman in exercise shorts, a man
with the number 89, no, 47, on his shorts. Outside a pepsi truck, outside a rainbowflag,
outside an “emagedental” business, outside “the new Venus restaurant”. The day gets into
gear, it should be sometime between 7 and 8 in the morning. The street outside is
predominantly grey, with all these spots and dots of interest. The author just writes,
jotting down, what she sees, remembering the collage lesson, she took last summer. The
task was to let all the images, all the fagments of visual stimuli, all the fragments of
overheard conversation, sound amalgamate into a visual collage, something 2D or 3D
that manifests the multifaceted experience, that is the city. Something of that sort. The
author remembers the animation she made three years ago, the one she named
“downtowne”, the one she submitted to the “cineurbana” at the Urban Forum in
Vancouver. The author remembers the graduation projects in animation at Parsons, which
she saw four years ago and which all had “The City” as subjectmatter. And she
remembers the student who complained about “the city” being the overriding subject of
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each and every gradyear, the problem being that there is only so much one can produce
pertaining to “the city”. But the author knows, that “the city” is endless, an endless
inspiration for artwork, the epitome of human existence, of human interaction, of man
made structures and of tiny creatures walking their little dogs in the alleys between slabs
of concrete with tiny holes in them. The city is the ever-pulsating existence of animate
and inanimate together in close proximity. Longing music wavers in the air, long lost
lovers not hearing it, but the singer still has to tell her story about drifting apart, still has
to bemoan, why she can’t be with him, for whatever reason, for whatever fucking sad
reason.
The author scratches her head, tries to careen her writing back to describing
bricks, concrete, steel, tries to steer clear of notions of emotion, glimpses at romance.
Rationalism, pragmatism should soak and seep into her writing, not wishy-washy
femininity, that only plays into the stereotype of woman as underling. A girl looking
dreamily out of the window wishing the body of the boy next to her, his skin within
inches from her, that is not what will build the west, not the spirit that will make us as
species rule the world. You go girl. Do we really need those kind of ra-ra-ra ish slogans
still? Yes, we do.
The author looks at the schoolbus outside, she looks at the writing saying capezio
on the woman’s bag, she looks outside at the New London Pharmacy, she listens to a
singer singing about London and Tokio. The author wonders how many pages she put
down already, kind of like a drunk would count the beers she poured down her throat.
The pen glides over the paper, while pigeons walk by. On the pavement. Someone
sweeps the ground in front of the new venus restaurant. The author has to go back to the
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little flat in Chelsea, she will write more later. This has to do for now. A bike rolls by.
This is spring. In NYC. In 2008.
---
And she put down seven pages already. Not bad. Or at least, good enough. For
now.
---
she missed the train, so she sits down on the bench at the subway station, at the
23rd street station, she fishes out her notepad and starts putting down letters, the person
next to her starts reading, letters fascinate us, guide us, to a place of higher
contemplation, higher understanding, maybe not higher, more as tool for “more”, “more
knowledge’, accumulation of glimpses of understanding, of making sense, of ordering
stimuli, while the A-train rushes through the tunnel, while the A-train rushes me by.
The author puts down her letters, while the mid-town bound train comes in, stops,
then leaves. From where she is sitting, she can view three tracks simultaneously, moles
under the street, rushing to work. She wants to know if the person next to her is reading
the book, she had to read, but she restrains herself and does not ask. A woman with
golden shoes sits down next to her, the shoes are not all golden, only golden arabesques
on shiny black. Another A-train careens by. The reader fixes his shoelaces, jumps on the
train. The author notices that he was really reading the book she was interested in, it was
heavily promoted anyways. It was written by this slightly controversial woman, who
called Clinton a monster. She was nice and she was right. So much for politics. The
author is now sitting in a breakfast place in either brooklyn or manhattan, it is at the foot
of the brooklyn bridge. The author thinks she is in the brooklyn heights, in front street,
washington street. Something like that. The heater near her is way too hot. The author
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thinks that she should not have really seconded Samantha Power’s remark pertaining to
Hillary Clinton, who cares about politicians anyways. And Samantha Power apologized
profoundly, so did Geraldine Ford, when talking about Barack Obama. Politics are not
that interesting for the author, politicians come and go, regimes come and go, ideologies
come and go. Marxism, capitalism, who cares. Religions come and go. The only thing
constant is the here, the now. The moment. Of us, the people. The only thing constant is
the pen scratching over the paper, the words that feed upon each other, catapult each
other into meaning, into scratching the surface of understanding. The author tries to let go
of the constant newspollution in her back, the TV bringing down the news, the noise, the
words that let not write her, the words that intermingle with her writing. She is not able to
listen to her own words, because the voice on the overhead is talking about the Gucci
loafers of the Pope. Her tea is getting cold. She looks out at people walking by, she is
sitting a tad lower than streetlevel, so she sees the legs of people walking by. She has
enough of listening to the rubbish on TV. She would rather listen to a lovesong. Politics
and religion leave her cold, icecold. She looks at the sign that says Bon Appetit with the
accentegue on the e. Outside the street is beautiful, a tree is green, a tree grows in
Brooklyn. She smiles at her connotations, she looks at the sign that says “Manja”. She
picks up the flyer of the restaurant, it is something Italian. Her tea is getting cold, she
tries to concentrate on writing. Baseball talk on TV, which is nicer, it does not make her
blood boil like other issues. She looks at the stacked spaghetti in the bottle near the
Manja sign, which is actually a plate with the image of a slice of pizza with one
pepperoni, one mushroom and one green halfmoon reminiscent of a piece of pepper, a
slice sliced out of a green bellpepper. It could be cucumber too, it is something green.
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Three men are sitting at the other table and having breakfast. The applefrittereating one
with the earring talks a lot about food, sugar and grease, while packing on the fat and
shovelling it, make that, forking it into his body. They talk, some masculine stuffy-muffy.
She smiles, trying to figure out if her descriptions are even close to accurate. More legs
are walking by, in socks, in skirts, in pants, all kinds of legs, all kinds of walking cycles,
wheels wheel by, up the hill, down the hill, some lassie like black and white dog brings
her owner for a walk. She writes and moves her lips while she writes. Writing, why
would she do that? Will it bring her anywhere, will it become better and better or will the
words take her down into a pitless abyss. Is this the right language to converse in, is it the
right medium for her. Why is she letting go of other modes of expression, is this really
the only mode of expression left for her. Can she not make it in the world of images, the
world of visual forms. Is this, where she stands after seven and a half years of formal art
instruction. She leaves the world of visual expression to enter the world of linguistic
expression. In a foreign language, to boot, in a foreign country, to boot, on the other side
of the planet, to boot. A stranger in a, oh, so strange land. Far, far away from reality, her
reality. The only thing constant being her pen, her relentless, aching obsession with
scribbling words down. On some piece of paper, on some piece of surface. Could be
sand, she could take a stick, sit on the beach and put lines into the sand. That the wind
will blow over. That is, who she is now, a crazy, oh, so crazy woman writing in the sand,
marking her existence, documenting her days on paper. Drink to that, the tea is getting
cold. In the Restaurant on Front Street, the watering hole that says Budweiser and serves
tea in the morning. The so very versatile all-day food place, where writers like her can
and should hone their craft. Drink to that. Drink cold tea. She scrambles at ending her
writing in a perfectly virtuous way, but she is not able to do so. The ringing behind the
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counter does not help, the discussions about motorcycles at the other table do not help,
the smoked whiff of something sausage like does not help, the woman in black leggings
and black pumps, the poodle strutting by does not help either. the white truck with the
black bike in front of it does not help either.
The author writes, writes. Forever. She could once more say: “drink to that” and
hope that the words fall into place, she can hope that she choreographed her lingo
precisely and exacting. Someone on the TV yells about a dog, on a talkshow, on Maury.
The author ponders, whether she can muster deep thoughts while listening to the Maury
show. Seems like an oxymoronic endeavour, she looks at the mannequin in the
shopwindow on the other side of the street, the yelling on TV is mind bogglingly stupid,
she ponders whether the word oxymoronic endeavour makes any sense.
---
It is now 9:11, the author has to look for a new place to sit and write, the constant
yelling on television interferes with her writing. She cannot write under these
circumstances. She has to leave Front Street Pizza. She fishes out her phone, she checks
the time, she finishes her tea. the author leaves the store and puts her notepad on a
newspaperbox that contains “the onion”, she starts writing while looking up at parts of
the brooklyn bridge, which is such a fascinating slice of the spectacularness of the bridge,
the drama of the steelstructure between buildings. The author does not have a camera, so
she has to jot down what she sees, with words. She looks at the sparkling motorcycle in
front of her, she looks sideways at the steelstructure against the sky, she ponders, whether
she looks weird standing here writing. She ponders a little bit, watches a red-clad woman
walk by, she looks at the beautiful green recycling box with images of white-grey
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garbage on green, a decorated recycling bin that yells recycle from the other side of the
street.
She plummets down on a bench in brooklyn bridge park, where people walk their
little dogs, where one can look at three different bridges, where the view is spectacular,
where she can see her hair, her silhouette and her writing hand silhouetted in grey and
blue, shadowish, on the lined paper, where cigarette butts are on in perfect ninety-degree
angle, where a train goes over the bridge to her right, very loudly, very noisily, very
ebbing into quiet oblivion a moment later, where a pigeon stands on the walkway, where
a steel-fenced garbage can is standing next to her, where the shadow of a tree paints the
chequered pavement in front of her. She does not have a camera, words have to suffice.
New York is too grey, too brown, she does not even know if she is looking at New York,
at Brooklyn , at Newark, she is looking at Water, bridges and buildings, she is describing
the light and the colors, the sky is too beige-blue today, so all the colors are too muted,
the contrasts are not high enough. If she was a photographer, she would come back to this
place another day or use filters or retouche-techniques or photoshop, as a writer she can
just whine and write, either this or that or both. As an animator she would use black lines
on white, or white lines on black, instantly conjuring up the image, the silhouette of
bridge, of building. The manifestation of blueprint after blueprint, exacted against the
sky.
---
she sits down in this park called walt whitman park, on a green bench, birds are
singing, birds are flapping by, three hobos are talking, actually one is talking, the others
are nodding, behind her is the way over the brooklyn bridge, the author could do that, but
she is afraid of heights, of sunburn and of aching knees, especially the right one, so she
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sits here, looks down at her own shadow and writes away. “Me and my shadow, me and
my shadow”. “He walks a lonely path, the only one that he has ever known. . .”, seems
putnam does not listen to green day or vice versa, the author looks at the red glistening
ball on the other side of the park, a bikehelmet, the hood of a motorcycle or the lights of a
black car. pigeons abound here in walt whitman park, flowers blossom in the distance, in
red, orange, yellow and white. She plays with words, like a child playing with sand. Like
the child playing with colored glass. Isaac Newtonish. The days pass her by, this new
york spring passes her by, cars pass her by, life passes her by. The only constant being
her pen, scratching black lines on white paper. Inscribing her existence, documenting her
days. She could come back to “the stranger in a strange land” quip, but she knows, that
we are all strangers, on this planet for a so very short moment. Yusuf Islam, sing on.
The day smushes itself towards noon, she writes, writes, writes. The sun is
shining, the birds are singing, the hobos are talking, a tiny insect is flying by. bliss and
trouble in paradise, the dichotomy of both. More Ying than yang. She writes, writes,
writes. Her days away. She will go back to Vancouver, start typing and putting this into a
bookform, a little box, an object to be moved around. She looks at the tiny plane in the
air, she looks at the people in pink and black passing her by, behind her. She has to catch
the subway, take her notebook somewhere else. The pigeons might start shitting. On her.
Or her notebook. It is eleven-twenty-nine. It is actually ten-forty, but she wants the day to
march more ahead, so she mentally fast-forwards. The pigeons scare her. She’ll count the
pages somewhere else, somewhere more sheltered. Without too many pigeons, sun and
hobos. Somewhere inside concrete, somewhere inside a building.
---
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she sits down on a bench on the brooklyn bridge, somewhere near Manhattan. The
bench quivers, reverberates, trembles from all the cars going on the street, on the bridge,
on the platform below. The walking and biking area is on the upper floor. It is hot, sunny
and somewhere, some time around noon. Beauty, engineering, industrial structures, built,
built, built environment. A stroller rolls by, joggers jog by, cars move by and can be seen
through the wooden slits, motioning somethings. People talk, a British guy for a split
second. Tourists and natives, in perfect unison. She stops, some beautiful lady is raising
money for scholarship, something in East Harlem. I am from Canada, thank you, good
luck. The woman is so very friendly. The author loves New York. New York. New York.
The sun is too hot, though. She stops writing, she might get a sunburn. She looks at the
very tall building. Then again, it is too hot here. And the cars go on her nerves.
Moodswings. We change our ideas by the second. Why not? Life is fun as an accidental
tourist, a professional tourist. With travellog in hand. April 17, 2008 - Brooklyn Bridge,
New York. She wonders what the Zip Code of this bench is. It is 11:48 a.m. Others
walked all the way to and fro Brooklyn, faster than she did one way. Oh, well. The author
wrote instead. It is not a race, not a race. Everything is a race. Everything. And it is
getting hot, too hot. Much too hot.
---
She finds herself trying to decipher the music, excavation, elevator, U2, about
seven years old, so much has happened since then, so very much, she went through art
school, which was quite an experience and it is not over yet, her certificate, her funny
piece of paper is not issued yet, she needs still two, no, three more classes, actually two,
because one class is six-credit, she will take those, once she is back in Vancouver, she
has to check out the website of Emily Carr, if and when she can make her way to some
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internet café somewhere in this city, but at this time she navigates her way towards all
these places with horizontal surfaces, where she can plant down her notepad and start
writing to make sense of her surroundings, it is becoming physically hurtful, this
obsession with holding a pen in between right thumb, index and middle finger and
pressing it down, hunched over, trying to avoid the woman, who might throw her out in
this Mc Donald’s near Central Station, what with 30 minutes max.– non loitering policy,
hey, lady, i am writing seminal and semi-seminal texts here, full of introspective
insightful ideas, full of the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of near to 53 years, that
kind of stuff, that kind of stuff. Stuff might not be the right word, stuff is too slangy, too
colloquial, stuff, stuff, stuff.
The music whines longingly, she knows the song, but cannot really place it,
besides, she is too fascinated by all these people, the woman in the floor-length brown
coat, the pink shoes of the child hopping up and down, the tattoo of the old man. She
looks at the tuxedoes to her right, the ones she can partially see in the window display on
the other side of the street, the yellow light in the reflection on the window of the post
office straight ahead. Her tea is still warm, the weather is still warm. It is 1:35 p.m. on her
cellphone, she will need glasses to read the small numbers on her phone, at this point she
manages to hold the phone at arm length and squint. A woman talks in Russian on her
phone while packing up the trash to whirl it into the bin. She doesn’t whirl or swirl, she is
polite. If she was to write her memoirs would she do it in cyrillic? The author thinks
about this a lot these days, she does not really care that much about contents, but more
about mode of delivery, the tools that she has to make do what she wants them to do. It is
the same with using paint, one has to make the tools dance to one’s tune, brushes, paint
and in the end one is never satisfied. Never.
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She looks at the dots on the papermug, the ones that say cream, sugar, sweetener,
other. What would constitute other? She wishes for something, some kind of sanity, what
with all the “stranger in a strange land” stuff, what with all the “stranger in the not so
strange land” stuff, in the future, once she will be back in Vancouver. She will miss
travelling, the novelty, the excitement of all these new places. Some music makes her bob
up and down, “I just can’t get you out of my mind, kylie minogue, boy”- la – la - la she
smiles and looks at the “no smoking” sign, the singer has her in her grip or something
like that, she listens, then makes up her mind to go somewhere else, maybe a museum or
something. While in New York. She could find her way to the Whitney, she could.
Maybe. Maybe, not. She reads through the last passage knowing that she caved when
writing, she wanted to write about cancer, but stopped herself, sidetracked into safer
waters, breast cancer making her hault her ways, stop for a second, being reminded of
mortality, especially by the idea of dying before one’s time, dying young and beautiful.
She will never be able to phantom how that is possible, she would rather write about
lines, about curves, about abstract, about concrete, about matter. Not about monsters, that
lurk somewhere and might suddenly abyss down. It is 1:56 p.m. She will leave. Try to
find the Whitney. Look at art. Whatever.
---
she wrote forty-one pages. While 7 hours passed her by. That could be, should be
enough for today.
---
She sits in the lobby of the whitney but she does not feel like paying admission,
given that tomorrow after six this place would be free. Her feet hurt what with all the
constant walking all over town. Visual arts is not that compelling anymore, it is like
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checking out the competition while holding back pangs of jealousy, somewhere inside.
And she has to pay, to boot. Oh, no, not that. She wonders if the biennial is international
or national. Probably international. She decides to pay. Dearly. She might not like it.
Actually, she is more afraid to see stuff that resembles her own, thus making her stuff
lacking novelty. Ignorance is bliss, as long as she feels that her “stuff” is utterly unique,
she can blame her aversion to marketing for her failure as an artiste, her financial failure.
And the green is what counts, the ascent to non-starvingness, a new state, a new reality.
She is going in. Finally. And then there is the guggs, moma, the whole enchilada.
---
she sits down in between the second and the third floor of the whitney, she really
likes this bench, more than all of the art, which was pretty crappy so far, the building
though, is good, she likes the walls here, textured concrete, more grainy than the Yale Art
Gallery, but the same concept, the very same concept. Let there be light. Let there be
concrete. Someone painted on the steps. red and white. Like art school. She has to see
more, she will manage to go up the steps. She liked the elevator, that said “the end” on
the doors, she liked a sound installation, though a colleague of her did a better one in
school, she liked the “dwelling” in between the floors. So, there is some good stuff, far
and low, sprinkled in between. At this point, she feels like an art installation, live and in
person, all writingy, all intellectual. All tired, with achy feet. So more mix of tourist and
scholar. Scholar tourist. Or, flaneur, as they used to say back in Paris, back in sometime
fin-de-siecle-ish. She has to go up and look, so that she can go back and catch a tea in the
museum café. Art watching is quite an ordeal. Art. Art. Art. Go up, see more art. She is
feeling too hot and slightly sunburnt. From her surreal walk over the brooklyn bridge.
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She will make her way up the stairs. Should not be too difficult. End of entry into
Logbook, this is not an excursion to the South Pole. Sure feels like it, though.
---
she is just tired, plummets herself down on this beige bench in a small room with
images on the wall, that she does not like, her cell phone goes off, she answers, nobody
minds, all these people who came here en masse, leave just as hastily, it is a ghostgallery
now, nobody but the intimidating museum guard, who looks suspiciously at the little old
lady, who writes on a bench in a gallery, hey, writing is art, non-visual, then again, one
could argue that type is art, a book is a sculpture, thus we are expanding the definition of
visual art, she is so very tired, the tourist existence is quite trying, she should still do time
in the guggs, in the moma, in the new museum. But there is no time, no time. She will go
down and have a tea. Tea is art, culinary art. The author is ever so slightly losing it.
Which is good. Or not. She really loved the installation “lights over new york city”, that
is what she likes and loves, simple forms, architectural lines in space. linearity is what
counts, geometry. strong statements in space. Or subtle statements in space. The
museumguard looks at her suspiciously, once more. She feels watched. She does not like
that. She feels watched. But she will not start screaming. Not this time. Must be tough to
be a museumguard. There is a bench here. People discuss art. Not very intelligently,
though. Definitely not. Oh, art. She sees herself leaving the artscene, then again, she saw
really fantastic stuff in individual small galleries in town. She loved the installation at
Pratt on 14th. street, she loved the installation by the three MIT guys, she loved the two-
dimensional work, she saw in a brooklyn gallery. She knows that free art is usually better,
more edgy, more fresher. That is how the cookie crumbles. She ponders if she should
sprinkle her writing more or less with cookie metaphors and words like “stuff”. She is
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tired. Her feet hurt. She would never discuss the shitty work in this room like the two
people are doing here. It is just gawdawful work, that should have never made it into a
museum. The museumguide stares at her. She feels unhappy. He leaves. She writes.
Maybe she should not feel selfconscious. and write away. It is 5:06. On a sunny afternoon
in Manhattan. Where she is glued down on this bench, writing away. While she is stared
down by the museumguard. In uniform. Well, life goes on. She puts her notepad away.
Stops writing. Starts watching the shitty art. That was not produced by her. Which makes
it automatically shitty. And she uses too much profanity. It is quiet here. She can hear her
pen scratch over the paper. The author makes herself stop writing. Instead of obsessing
over words, over text. Over lingo.
---
she sits down in the lobby of the museum. At least, no one gives her dirty looks,
when she writes here. She feels exhausted, has hardly enough power to pick herself up
and leave. She is hungry and tired. She has a meeting at eight. It is five-thirty now. Or
something like that. There is a discussion today at seven. Artist talk. She is way too tired.
She needs fresh air. Sun. Love. Physical would be good. Oh, New York in spring. So
very Breakfast at Tiffany’s. So very much like a movie. So very tiring. And the sun
shines on.
---
It is a golden day, sun shining, beautiful light, brightness outside. There is the new
Venus Restaurant with the three orange lamps coming down over the inscription, there is
all of 8th. Avenue smushing itself by, all these people passing by, going by, to the left, to
the right, there is the counter person behind the coffee machine singing, recognizing the
author, there is the woman with the button sprayed laptop behind her, there is life,
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happiness, a new day and Marilyn Monroe upside down on her official visitor guide. This
is New York, which is actually a line she is overhearing from the man and the woman at
the table right behind the column to her left, analyzing the city, which seems to be a
favourite pastime in this city as it is in any other. We as individuals like to categorize,
analyze our location, our choices constantly, laude or dismiss our surroundings, put them
into context with other parts of the world, other cities, other little villages, with the pro
and cons of other real estates. The author ponders whether her assessment holds true, she
does not know, she just formulates a sentence and shoots it into midair, a hypothesis, an
inkling.
The day is sunny, the beauty grips her by the throat. Writing is her raison d’etre
these days, for better, for worse. April slouches ever so silently into may, makes its way
into sunny, sunny tomorrows. The woman with the hiplong braid sweeps the floor,
loudly, diligently. Someone talks about a satellite, nowadays that means television
programming. The author smiles, when she was born, satellite did not even exist. The
world was black and white, she remembers when television became coloured, the author
is a dinosaur. The sun shines outside, half of the New London Pharmacy is visible. A
white poodle walks by, a woman who looks like a poodle with lipstick looks at the
author. Marilyn Monroe is still upside down, an image near an ad for the Moma. The
author reads the caption on a truck passing by, executive cleaner something, then another,
whiter truck saying “sher-del transfer”. The author writes away, takes notes, takes note of
all the fragments of her surroundings, that randomly pierce the cocoon around her
consciousness. A beautiful red-shirted woman stands near the milk and half and half
station, the instrumental music makes strong statements in jazz without using words. The
author plays around with all the words in this foreign, strange language, all the words she
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can remember. Arranging them, disarranging them, rearranging them. Just like the
saxophonist improvising his jazztunes, virtuously, randomly, for everyone to hear on the
overhead, not that people really listen, all of them being grappled by their own immediate
decisions, to talk, to type, to order coffee, to program their cellphones, to leave this
interior, to mix and mingle with the city outside, the on-goings on 8th.
---
she is standing near Port Authority, at the corner of W 42nd. and another street,
in front of the new “New York Times building”. Her sweater is way too hot. It is about
two in the afternoon. Writing does not come that easy. She saw a construction worker
measuring something, at least that was what he said. She is always fascinated by people
using devices, machines that do “stuff” that are mysterious to her. A mountain of a crane
is sitting on the other side of the street.
---
she is now sitting in the subway, hoping to find her way. The door opens and
closes, it is slightly hot in here. She should have worn cooler clothing. The city is
becoming sticky, moist. She looks at the sign that says: be part of the solution, not the
pollution. She wonders, whether she is in the right train. Her subway riding is basically
“hit and miss”, the maps are very incomprehensible, she will complain to Mayor
Bloomberg. How come your subway map is so utterly confusing? Constructed, utter
confusion. No subway map is like this.
she ends up in grand central station, after taking the wrong train on its way to
flushing. She now sits near the steps that will take her down to the uptown 6 train and she
will get out at 72nd or 73rd. and find her way to the elegant restaurant that sells bite-sized
sandwiches and miniscule Cookies, where everyone is very elegant, except for the
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tourists, and railthin, where everything is very park avenue and smells like old money,
where thin housewives have to take care of their children, while their well-educated
husbands make the big bucks, where life is painfully reminiscent of the author’s own life
twenty - thirty years ago, where time stands still and real exploitation takes place albeit
with charles jourdan shoes, cartier watches, jaguars. The author ponders whether she
should even go to that place given that she never really escaped. Never really will escape.
Her funny little pedigree.
She smiles, because smiling is fun these days. She is alive, she sits in the subway
in New York, on a bench, writing her semi-scholastic observations, producing a book that
might be, in the end, be better than many and worse than many, all those tirades some
individuals put down on paper, in a fruitless conquest to hault time and space, to fracture
the passing moment and all passing motions into words, into letters, on pieces of paper,
on papyrus, write in sand, until the wind blows it away and distributes it all over this tiny
planet.
She is hungry, she will find the restaurant on madison avenue and 73rd. She looks
up at the yellow strips in front of the silvery-chromen column, she watches the old man
with the toothless stare and the white hat. A child rushes by clapping her sandals. Time
stands still, time moves.
---
she sits down in the subway station at 77th. Street and Lexington, somewhere
near a place called Lennox Hospital, which she remembers from the day before, when she
went to the Whitney, when she went up to the fifth. floor in the building where the
gagosian gallery was, when she went into the chocolate store, where chocolate was art
and where the pieces of chocolate did not have prices on them, boutique-like. She has
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been to Geneva and Zurich, there everything was only exquisite and snobby-posh, if it
was geared to tourists. A woman with dangling earrings sits next to her, another one,
more plain-janey, follows. She ponders, what would happen if someone reads this, some
stranger whom she just describes.
On the other side of the platform schoolclass after schoolclass streams in, the
fieldtrip set, the fieldtrip crowd. The train whooshes in, stirs up a breeze, swallows all
those noisy creatures, vanishes and leaves the station deserted, barren.
Another silver bullet comes in, soaks up people, spits out people. The lowly writer
takes notes, scrunched on her bench, documenting feverishly. From the frontlines. Of
triviality, banality. Another train rushes in. A woman with a T-shirt saying Manhattan
East walks by, boards the train. Manicured sandals walk by her, is it sandal time already?
It is still spring, still april. The author knows, there are lots of museums near here, Central
Park, so much to see. She does not feel like paying admission, she would rather go to
galleries, where admission is free. The platforms are full of people, talking, noise,
lollipopeating. The author feels hungry. She should make her way up, leave her mole-like
existence here in the subwaystation, underground, go up the stairs, soak up the sun, sun,
sun. She wrote the word sun one too many times, not sure, if it sounds good, artistically
sound. People walk by with bicycles, others come in, another train whooshes in and
makes her hair fly in the wind. She writes, writes, writes the day away. Relentlessly,
obsessively. This is what she does with her days, authoring seemingly seamless
sentences, pairing metaphors with meaning, peeling away all the obstacles that stand
between her and the perfect line, the one stroke of genius the trace in the sand, that will
quiver for a moment like lightning in the dark, to be washed over by water, to be blown
away by sand. The one hault in the ever-changing glide of the dunes.
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She ponders, whether this is worthwhile, her minutes, seconds, hours down here
in the subway. Where musicians have their very best performances, give their very best,
where keith haring rose to fame, long before his too early demise. He was 3 years
younger than her. On the other side of the platform she sees a poster saying: mariah/
E=MC2, something here smells like melon. People clap, she should leave. Get something
to eat, soak up the sun, count the pages. To feel that she has achieved something,
anything. Quantify her “literature” output, the words, the letters. She is leaving the sense
of sanity what with all this noise, all the trains, all the commotion. Sun would do her
good, peace, quietness. 19 pages for now. And it is only 3:31 p.m. Quite impressive. The
author is happy with herself, she put all these silvery trains passing her by, all these feet
stomping her by, into words, pinned them down in black letters, on lined paper, soaked
the world around her into this tiny “8x11”ish notebook, documented the images into signs
and letters, the visual, the motion into an ordered volume of neatly arranged letters, trying
her best to draw, to paint, to take photos, to record the sounds, the audio, the music, the
never-ceasing motion of this city. Once back home, she will miss this, her moments in the
subway station, while the trains roar by, squeak by, while time stands still for her, while
she watches her pen rushedly inscribe the paper, fly over the lines, while insanity grips
her, but is still contained. While she walks to near to the edge, but can catch herself,
letting the train fly by into the tunnel. She will still sit here, take notes, while the world
rushes by. And now it is time to hunt down that bite-sized sandwich, stroll through
Central Park, stop the pen. For the moment, this moment.
---
she sits on fifth Avenue and 77th. street, behind her is Central park and some grey
wall is behind her bench. She had a sandwich, it was overpriced and too fatty, the sun is
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too hot, too many tourists are walking by. She looks through her visitor’s guide, she looks
at the pigeon, which is white and pink and grey and looks more like a seagull. She misses
a place to have tea, a place to buy an orange. Or a tangerine. Something citrusy,
something fruity. People walk by, she feels alone. Her only friend is the fat pigeon on the
ground with the shimmery pink around her neck. Two others come, these pigeons all
have pink feathers in the grey. They hover around her, another one with green shimmer
comes, they scare her with their beaks. Hey, I am not an old pigeon lady, not yet. Not all
old hag, yet. As of yet. She feels depressed. The Guggenheim is near here, so is the
Metropolitan. She has seen them before, three, four, five years ago. On different
occasions, with differing exhibitions. She does not feel like museum hopping. Or park
hopping. She feels like a cup of tea and a piece of fruit. Not necessarily in that order. She
wants to leave the outdoors, hover somewhere indoors. Her pen makes two shadows, one
dark, one light and they are opposite of each other. She will go for a walk, fly a kite,
enjoy the sun. Which is a tad too hot. She feels like whining and complaining. The words
stick in midair, they do not flow in perfect harmony, perfect unison onto the paper. The
writer has some kind of writer’s block. Not good. Not good at all. There is no cure for
this. Maybe hopping on the subway, rushing through a dark tunnel. Sight-seeing buses
pass her by. Who decides what the sights of a city are. To her, to the author it is the
roller-blader, who hops over the pavement, only to land in a perfect curve, it is the girl
with the stroller, the child screaming for ice-cream, the woman in skirt and cell phone. It
is sun in the air and slight sea-breeze from the water. For her, the sights of this city are
concentrated in this pen of hers, in all the pens she bought in all the drugstores, used up
and threw away into the open-mouthed dark-green trash cans, that are splattered all over
town, are waiving to her at each and every street corner. These are the real sights of this
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city, conducive to writing, so is the blue greyhound pen, she fished out of her purse.
Something parade like is coming near, some bagpipy sound is piercing through the air. It
is annoying.
---
Her pen is out of ink. She feels nautious.
---
She stands on the street near Madison Avenue and starts writing. She looks at a
truck that says “Halo Cleaning Co.” and 987 Bklyn Flushing. It has funny, muted shapes
on it white, blue, grey, clouds, stars. She likes the building on the other side. It looks like
a building with a hairnet, a redhead with white filigree, a white hairnet. Very exquisite.
Near her shoe is a half-moon shaped man-hole. No “why are manholes round” questions
inspired by this manhole. She writes, she writes.
She stops in front of the stoney house, she can see glisteny square man holes from
here, with a black handle, yellow crayon, yellow chalk marks, a brown poodle walking
his pink-clad keeper, flowers on the street, beautiful, ornate buildings on the other side of
the street, a serious nurse, a tree waiting for its summer leaves. She sees the coils of her
note-book, a flag in the wind, a dog with too much hair. people talking on phones, herself
holding her pad against the wall, until the ink dries up.
She sees a fire-hydrant coming out of a building, red against white. She writes,
writes, writes forever. A FedEx truck goes by. She writes.
---
She sits down once more on one of these brown benches and starts writing. The
L-train comes in - it is brooklyn bound. The author wonders what time it is, which station
this is. She feels tired and her feet hurt. Her eyes are burning and her right hand is
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cramping up from putting down too many letters. She could count the letters, but each
line is different, each dot, each curl. She could go down to Brooklyn, but she should
make her way home. She should write some more. Even more. She does not know how
many pages she logged in today and how many more she should put down. She feels
squished between wheels, between rocks. She feels squashed, beaten-up, chewed-up, spat
out. It is 6 p.m. precisely. She hovers around down in subway stations, she writes, she
writes.
The author spits out words like blood, like mucus. She has nothing essential to
say, nothing more. So she starts spitting disgusting metaphors on the paper, horror-stuff.
Instead of nice and neat, it is time to demolish the beauty of the written word, subvert
aesthetic values. Another brooklyn-bound train arrives. A woman walks by with an
ornate oak-table. Someone screams. A yellow-clad woman walks by in black, shiny
pumps. A sneaker person walks by. Black sneakers. White laces. In the end it has the
same effect as the shiny black of the pumps, black with contrasts, black with highlights,
with white dots.
It is 6:17 now, she has to find her train. She has to count her pages. Drink tea.
Rest. Shudder off the exhaustion of a whole day spent searching for words. All over this
city. All over New York. In spring 2008. Her office is the street, the subwaystations and
various coffeeshops. She is tired. Exhausted. The words cease to come. At the end of the
day, they all line up in some shelter like buses in the parking garage. To be called out
again, first thing in the morning, to march into places. To soldier on and fight uncertainty,
oblivion.
A woman inside a train looks at her, suspiciously, disgusted. The author once
more feels out of place. Given, that she is sitting on a bench in a subwaystation and
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writing away, maybe, she should feel strange. Especially, because she starts smiling to
herself. It is getting late, the trains are too noisy here. They disturb her “train” of thought.
---
It is 6:16 p.m. April, 18, 2008 – NYC – Subwaystation at 8th. and 23rd.
---
She is back on her favorite bench in the underpass at 14th., near the fruitstand or
better, near the fruit bonbon/ newspaper stand. And she is not even sure if this is 23rd or
14th., she just knows that she has to take the Uptown E or the Uptown C to get to her
small apartment, the small apartment, because she leased it from someone who leased it
from someone else, and the real owner lives somewhere in Vancouver. These are, of
course, stories that she makes up as she goes, constructs narratives, that make her pass
her time, fill up her lonely, abandoned life in the big city, this big city.
A woman sat down next to her, she looks through her. A man rearranges his
belongings, he kneels down near the floor, his poloshirt is blue, black and white. Striped.
The author writes her last passages for the day, her never-ending entries in to this
never-ending journal. Once she boards her train or her plane back to Vancouver, she will
stop. May be. If she can. Writing is strangely, mysteriously addictive. A woman in a red
long coat walks by.
---
She filled thirty-eight pages, so she has still two more pages waiting to be filled.
Writing is a chore, a chore, she likes. More so than dishwashing, than digging a hole in
the ground. A chore, nonetheless. All those words, all those letters. While people rush by
from train to train. She missed a page, left it blank, she has to rip it out and use it in
another context. Maybe, to make a paperairplane, shoot it around, let it fly in Central
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Park. Let it graze with the green and pink necked pigeons. Let it listen to the lowly,
lonely bagpiper in central park. It was not a parade, it was just one blackclad bagpiper in
a bandana, standing on a hill, bagpiping away. He definitely got better with each blow
into the pipes, he improved tremendously. Writing is like that, the more you write, the
better it gets. Supposedly. There are no rules. It can just as easily descend into oblivion,
into an abyss of mediocracy and utter discordance, utter non-literature, total anti-
literature. That kind of stuff, that kind of existence. That kind of literary existence. It is
the end of this day, the author stumbles over her words. She scrambles to produce
meaning, she stutters, she stops writing. A woman in jeans and white top makes her way
home. Tired, exhausted, slightly fulfilled. That is life. So utterly sisyphian. So utterly in
vain. Exhaustingly in vain. A woman sits down near the author, people pass her by. And
she continues writing. Into eternity, into infinity. Happily, insanely, confusedly,
blissfully. And evening descends over New York City.
---
she sits down in the small croissanterie in times square, where she has a much too
big coffee and a much too big croissant loaded with almond paste. and it is much too cold
here what with the door open, the music is too loud and so very many people are walking
by, unstoppable, but most of all she is fascinated by all the screens, all the animations, all
the oversized monitors, all the neon, all the hecticness, one big fair, it is monday
morning, not even ten, and everyone is rushing to and fro, she waits scared that someone
might ask her to leave, because she is taking space here rudely, in the end she has to leave
because all these Danish tourists are squeezing her out of the tiny foodstand, they could
be Danish, Dutch or something else, they are serious, say something about her
“schreibe”, are all kind of matter of factly typical touristy, like “I own the world”, which
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is actually what the author does, too, the tourist-existence is a different one, very
ephemeral, very much in different timezones, different languages, different degrees of
politeness and rudeness, it has adventure and, as the author knows, different degrees of
animation. She is now standing in a bank and the chase manhattan bank letters are
moving over the screen to her right, it is actually only chase in white, and blue forms,
elementary, so very elementary animation. She stands here and writes, waits for the sun
to come out, but today is cold, fresh. The author has her hair in braids, she experiments
with her hair, pippi longstocking in New York, as a senior citizen. Life is good. She
counts her pages: Not even two. Yellow writing outside on times square, fascinating, this
is what she did for the last six years. drawing letters that dance, and now she takes them
back from motion into staticness, on paper, smushes them back into conventional forms,
after all those plays with experimental forms. There is no experimentation in art, what
ever is done least, automatically becomes experimental, unique. If all houses are round,
the square one is the odd one out, if all houses are square, the round is the odd one.
Context defines normalcy. That kind of thing is obvious, the author stands here and puts
down the obvious. It is slightly chilly, she feels strange, standing in a bank croached over
a table with depositslips, writing. It is ten fifteen in the morning, april 21st., 2008, times
square, NYC. She finished six pages, like others put stuff into their cameras, photos,
films, audio. She walked up the escalator, sits down in one of the chairs opposite the
customer service, listens to the never-ending rumple of the escalator, and starts writing.
This is quite good, it is reasonably warm, the floor is blue, the coffeetable round, brown,
the chairs weirdly checkered. She cannot see any animation from here, only static, so
very oversized letters, ads as big as a house, letters as big as a house. One could advertise
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everything like that, but, hey, marshall, we are so very, very jaded, none of us would
admit that we are mere minions in the fangs of corporate mindblowing brain washing.
The author is happy that she wrote so very much all over winter, all over spring,
all over northamerica. She plays with words, moves them around, she blogs, she
downloads and uploads forms and motions, she still has to figure out a way, to be paid for
this, to translate her efforts into small green pieces of paper, into numbers in a bank
account. At this time she creates her own inscribed papers, maybe she can go into a store
and buy a burger with a poem? It is monday morning, she did not write over the
weekend, her logic, her pragmatism has become rusty. Yesterday, she did laundry,
yesterday, she watched a film about a hapless musician. Who tries to sell music,
compositions. This is the third film of that kind, she saw this year. Struggling musicians-
galore. What about struggling other creatures? Writers, filmmakers, scholars?
The author looks up. She does not know what time it is exactly, she forgot her
cell-phone, which is nowadays her new watch, her timepiece, a clock in the pocket of her
jeans. All the logistics of her life change, she lives in strange quarters, eats strange food,
writes strange notes, she is dislocated, is losing weight, she acts strangely and talks to
herself. She concedes at being insane, she succeeds at being insane. In a very well
behaved manner, very harmlessly, politely, utterly contained.
She has problems with her notebook, the paper is somehow smushing into the
wire, obstructing her writing. She has a new black pen, one of many, she writes away.
“Schreibe” as the danes were saying.
Two ladies are sitting next to her, converse in a language that could be Spanish,
Italian or Portuguese. It works for them, their gossip is perfectly formulated, their
discussion of the atrocities of this world. They are united in their utter complaining, the
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tone is universal. They disapprove, both of them, of something irritating, whatever that
might be. The author, too, makes her world work by jotting down, what she sees. Another
woman in silvery balletslippers sits down beside her, she joins the other woman and starts
putting on lipstick, that she fishes out of her white bag with green appliqués on it.
The author tries to weave a story, a narrative through her observations of total
strangers, something, that will bind all these creatures together, will make them go
through highs and lows of a storyline, like ascending and descending a mountain, many
mountains. Alas, the only constant in this endeavour of writing is her pen on paper, her
constant writing, her constant mumbling, her jotting down of hieroglyphic musings,
which seem to lack beginning, seem to lack ending, formulations propelled by random
conversations overheard, random visuals like the blue triangleshaped lamps above the
customer service desks, the ones that mimick the blue neonlogo, the blue floor.
Suddenly all the persons around her vanish, each of them doing some kind of
business. This is a place of business, alright, the author’s business is writing. Writing
about it, listening to the rumpling of the escalator telling her its stories. The ceiling lights,
the neonsigns, the yellow and white letters on the greyblack wall outside of the window.
She has to count her pages, leave this place. Find another place to write, a chair, a table.
Shelter from the elements. Here, in this city.
---
Thirteen pages have been put down, she wonders if she could put her feet on one
of these chairs. Obviously, that would be frowned upon. She notices that writing is so
much more unobtrusive than yielding a camera around, waving an image-telling device
through the air. Writing is tolerated, somehow, politely, everywhere. At least, in the
places she chooses. It is becoming later in the morning and the constant rumple of the
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escalator is annoying her with its subtle staccato, she wonders, what the customer service
people are doing all day long. To her, all they seem to do is socializing, one big cocktail
party. The author writes away. Writes, writes. Fourteen pages down, twenty-six more to
go. Like hoops waiting to be shot, like bricks on a pile, waiting to be arranged with
mortar, ready to be piled up into a building. The words are out, there, ready to be
wrestled down on paper, grappled, restrained in to the flowering flow of a storyline.
Ready to march in line, in order on paper. Ready to be written, ready to be read.
---
she sits down in one of the nicely partitioned, brown, weathered seats of a typical
subwaybench, somewhere in the madison square garden station, the wind is blowing into
her neck, a chinese woman is sitting down near her, picks up the chinese – language
newspaper lying around in the seat of the bench, instant recognition, instant community
in cantonese, in mandarin, the author was strangely drawn to the banner on Times
Square, that said “Welcome” in Farsi, the fascination of absence of strangeness,
familiarity in this very hodge-podge of cultures, she is freezing, it is too chilly in here,
sitting near a garbage can, having the wind blowing, whistling into one’s back.
---
she sits down on a stone bench on Verdi Square, that is the name of this place, it
kind of reminds her of harvard square, where she was a week ago, it has the same wind
and the kind of construction noise, but especially the wind, the elements that might
interfere with her writing. Someone talks in Spanish into his cell phone, or in another
language, and people behind her are discussing, something, seriously, the buildings are
tall, she is sitting in some kind of crossroad here, verdi square near amsterdam avenue,
people are discussing wiring, painting and plumbing, a cheap newspaper plays in the
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wind, a pistachiohat is on the ground, the shadow of something flying moves over the
pavement, a pigeon picks at a cigarette butt. She writes away, watches the edge of her
paper fly, a woman in a green coat feeds the pigeons, she eats some, the pigeons eat
some.
The writer, the author bought a new jacket and she feels so very beautiful. She
falls over her feet, exited about the very best black jacket there is, right price, right size,
beautiful fashion statement. Life is good, all shopping, all writing. Better than being a
pigeon.
She looks up at the tulips, red, yellow and mix. People walk by, construction is
loud and constant, so very tall buildings are everywhere, right, left, and presumably
behind her. She can see the layered roof of the building in front of her, like a cliff, like a
mountain. The garbage cans in this part of the city are different all netlike steel, in
different forms. diagonal, checkered. She looks at the blossoms of the tree, waving
through the air. She sees the seasons changing, more so because she writes about trees, on
and on, and thus she notices the progress in leafiness, for lack of a better more accurate
word. The people behind her are now discussing sour bread, the tulips wave in the wind.
The author writes away, a woman with curly-patterned socks walks by. It is not summer
in the city, still spring in the city. One lonely red tulip is standing among all the yellow
tulips, in the back is another one. The author notices the very nice curvature of the
subwaystation, it is exquisite. She can look at midtown and see the skyscrapers stacked,
geometrical, linear. On her right the buildings are not so high, more ornamental, more
residential. Ornament as metaphor for individualism, for individual lives. Private lives.
The office buildings are more streamlined, places where little numbers should perform
in unison. At least that is what the buildings seem to want to dictate. She wonders, if
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these are merely random interpretations and how much, to what extent she can
substantiate her ideas.
The author is getting hungry. It is way past noon, and she has to stop writing. For
now.
---
She sits on a bench, that is kind of wobbly and she hopes that it will not break, not
break, under her. Cabs drive by, one after the other, on the other side is a place called
Rigoletta Pizza, there is a Locksmith near to it and the name of this street is Columbus.
children are walking by, school must have let out. It is peaceful here, a woman claps her
red nailpolished feet in black sandals by, blossoms came to the ground and mingle in the
crevices on the pavement, the building on the other side is red and white, so is the one
next to it. A woman walks by in a leopard patterned shawl, a woman walks her baby in a
stroller. Afternoon sets in, the sun goes up, goes down, not literally, but the light above
the overcast changes constantly and ever so slight shadows are followed by stronger,
brighter lighting.
The author still writes, but she longs for days without writing as a chore, when
words are not her constant enemies, when she has a more structured life, wherein she has
not to wrestle with every sentence, with every word, where there is a more linear grid, not
the constant wobble from word to word.
The author looks up at the FedEx truck, which is dark purple and green-lettered,
instead of Red and Blue. The author writes as fast as she can, she stares at people walking
by, she stares at the yellow and white flowers around the bottom of the greenleaved, short
trees, which spread the notion of loveliness. She looks up at the street lights, which are
sort of beautiful, a hint too tall, a tad out of proportion, iron-wrought nonetheless.
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Someone with a drill walks by, a child wheels his shoes by, a stroller rolls by, and
another one.
A woman walks by with a violin in one hand and another instrument in the other,
two old men walk by, one in a touque, the other one very bent. Slowly they move by, a
woman walks a stroller by. All ages pass by the author. She finds another place to write,
near a spa, a “lancôme boutique”. leisureful people walk by, the pace in this part of town
is so much less hectic than in other parts. Nobody rushes, the workday is not happening
here. Everything moves slow, everyone moves slow. In times square everyone seemed to
be a tourist, but they were all rushing, breathing into each other’s neck. Here, one can
watch the pigeons, the trees, the dogs. Here, time stands still.
---
so she is now down to book #10 or up to book #10, how ever one looks at it, she
has two more books at home in Vancouver that document her train voyage from Toronto
to Vancouver in Midfebruary of this year, a very surreal, very white undertaking, she has
some typed papers about the artschool and about toronto, she is happy about the physical
accumulation of book after book, she can see it on the low, massive coffeetable in her
small apartment, a pile of books, all the same size, the written word as a box a little
bigger than a shoebox, a brick, but basically she is reminded of a box, she likes the
physicality, the 3-dimensionality of her written word, which would not be quite the same
if everything she wrote this year was stored on a disc, or in a usb-drive. She remembers
watching a film about Anais Nin and Henry Miller, when the pages of their respective
manuscripts, or, maybe just the pages of his book got wet and they pinned them up on the
wall to dry or maybe arranged them on a clothesline. For her, writing is very physical, it
is interlaced with motion, with moving to different locals in the city, writing needs those
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spurts of interruption, of physicality in between the moving of the hand, it needs the
accumulation of the final result in one place, where the words of that one continuous
book are smushed together in close proximity. She used to pin her written text interlaced
with drawings on the wall in the north building of the art school, trying to deconstruct the
idea of a book, make it into a surface of words, these days she courts the idea of the
conventional form of a book, to give her writing more clout, more weight, a higher grade
of marketability. She looks at her coffee, her marbleloaf in the paperbag, the moma ad on
the tourist guide on the table, once again andy warhol’s marilyn upside down. She might
go out and find the artgalleries, or museums, use the sunny day to pay 15 bucks for
waiting in line to stay indoors and look at images, she seems to know inside out.
The author looks at her bag that says h-streetmarket, she is lugging it everywhere
these days, puts her notebook into it and starts writing, everywhere. The Venus
restaurant, the earth cleaner, half of the new london pharmacy, all these familiar places
are still in place, inspire her writing, take away from her writing. Abysmal work, she
might hit that goal today. She looks at the partially visible Exit sign, she does not know
how much longer she is permitted to sit in this place. Highly knowledgeable persons are
conversing at the table next to her, animated talk about T.S.Eliot, Broadway shows,
Schumann or Schumacher, all artists that she is not that versed in. Nonetheless, she
enjoys this kind of discussion of the intricacies of certain artworks, the author ponders
whether her writing will be scrutinized like that, once she is gone, death being a sure
catalyst for success in artistic endeavours. Her coffee is getting cold, the sun shines, the
music screeches, the coffee mill spills beans. 4 pages, 4 pages already.
---
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a new mother comes in with her baby, the author wonders, if that woman is
twenty-seven years her junior, which would mean, math, math, the woman would be
twenty-six, actually, she looks like twenty-six, the author wonders about her own age,
which is her favourite pastime these days, anyways.
Outside blue cars, yellow cars drive by, a man in a red T-shirt walks by. The
author tries to hault time by writing, by sitting here, she is not really able to do so, the
woman at the other table is talking too relentlessly, giving too much information to her
friend, who writes down her every word on a legal pad, the author feels that she is
copying the woman’s words, the woman sounds very schoolmasterly, so one tends to be
interrupted by her speech, the author cannot really concentrate, the woman’s baby starts
crying, which might hault the woman’s constant and very boring discussion of some very
boring logistics. The author is not happy about the people around her, it would be nice, if
the tables adjacent to her would have conversers, who say something that would be
conducive to the author’s writing. What is it with all these people not knowing that they
are in company of a creative genius? They should all behave accordingly. The sun is
shining, thus behaving, the elements are conducive to the author’s writing, the music is
good, not too loud, not too quiet, the heat in this place is perfect, the roof is not leaking,
the table is non-wobbly and clean, the paper is nice and smooth, the ink is flowing.
Everything is perfect and conducive to good writing, the intangibles are the other
customers in this coffeeshop. The baby is really tired, her mother talks too much. A man
in a hat enters, he is followed by another hatbearer. One was wearing an artistic hat, one
was wearing a baseball cap. Jocks and artists. Bodyworkers, Creative workers. The
author wonders, what the headgear of scientists, of intellectuals is. Glasses, maybe,
unkempt hair, maybe.
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The author looks dreamingly onto the street, the face of a poet. “I’m a poet and I
know it.” She has no typewriter, so she definitely fills the image of a poet. Longhand, oh,
so very old-school. The author usually wears black, so very existentialist.
The author is a tad tired of writing, but she is gritted-up to write forty pages, fill
that minimum requirement for this day. She had only penned twenty-eight pages the day
before and nothing over the weekend. So, forty, would be the least amount of pages to be
produced today. Behind the author, the woman with all the beads, all the buttons on her
laptop is laughing silently to herself. In Kingston, there was this woman in beaded touque
and shawl, with glasses, who used to read day-in-and day out. In this coffeeshop in
chelsea, there is the constant of the woman in the beaded laptop, day-in, day-out. She,
too, wears glasses. And in both cases the beads were all colors, multicolored, and the
surface thereunder was black, black touque, black laptop.
Two men in matching blue baseballcaps are walking by, one more turquoise than
the other.
The author should stop writing and take the subway, either uptown or downtown.
Change of locale might inform her practice as a writer, might better her output. Might.
The author is wondering if that would really work. Should not the ideas dictate the
outcome, the sheer tugging away at formulating words, the “smithing” of the words, the
hammering and polishing of the raw material, the language. Reading might help, looking
into the NYC official visitor guide in front of her, the deciphering of the brown-white
starbucks logo on her cup, the listening to the spanish conversation at the other table.
Could be Italian, could be Portuguese. No, definitely Italian. Someone comes in with a
book, the author tries to decipher the title. The author looks at the orange script outside,
“new venus restaurant” it is. The “rant” is non-visible, the black writing on the starbucks
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door is hovering over it. Women in blue capris, walk by, an old lady in hat and shawl
walks in. The beaded laptop lady leaves the café for a smoke, she will be back; her
laptop-office is still intact. Her office, the author’s office, on the other side of the new
Venus restaurant. The woman on the overhead whines for love, about love. The author
wonders whether she should interlace her musings with discussions of love, love-
discourse. She knows that love is not up for discussion, love is physical, grapping one’s
intestines, haulting her breath, making her tear up. Love is so very primal, so extremely
pure. Lust, love, in her book that is interchangeable. And longing, longing is always fun.
Full of hope, for all-encompassing lingering wants, wishes. For losing one-self in the
other’s smile, in his eyes, in his unbearable gorgeousness. The acute paralysis, the sudden
shudder. That kind of stuff. The author smiles, smiles. Life is good here, in spring 2008,
here in New York City.
---
The author counts the pages, sixteen it is already, that means that twenty-four
more pages have to be filled with words, scribbles, observations, with ideas, discourse,
discussions, syntheses overgalloping hypotheses, remarkable stuff, oblivious and trite
accumulations of words, sentence upon sentence, good, bad, ugly. In the end, what
matters, is the proliferation of a certain, diligent output of ink on paper. If she would be in
another profession, another field, she would make other marks, other codes. She would
put lines for a blueprint on paper, she would put down notes for a symphony, while
playing the piano, she would draw at a light table. She would stay away from computers.
The author looks at her right hand, grappling the pen, forcefully guiding it over the paper.
Sentences fly by, words accumulate. She has to take a break, come up for breath. Before
drowning.
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---
she sits down on a bench in Soho, on the other side of the street is a small shop
called “chelsea girl couture” and a focacceria called “L’Ulivo”, she just passed a place
called “La Dolce Vita”. This could be Little Italy, a sopranos picture was in a window,
she is trying to find the “New Museum”, but it might be quite a walk until she gets to a
street called “Bowery”, the bowery, she lets New York walk her by, the elegant lady on
the other bench exclaims several times, “such a beautiful day”, “what a beautiful day”.
Little green pollen dots come down on her black sweater, they do not move, so they
might as well be plant-based. She writes, starts feeling dizzyish. People walk by, walk her
by. It is constant promenading, so many, many people. The city is pretty, sits so very
pretty, her sweater is bathed in all these green dots. She’ll better leave. The dotting is too
much, too much of nature.
---
she walks by the Vesuvio or Vesuvio playground, which she has seen before, she
sits down on a bench in front of a skateboard shop, across from a Hardware store called
Metropolitan Hardware and Lumber, with a Graffiti based mural the size of a house, the
whole wall is blue, black, red and white, very linear, very clean and strong, very
appropriate for hardware. Kind of like the drawings on the skateboards behind her in the
window, strong clean lines, strongest of outlines, strong artistic statements, clear and
concise.
The author does not need to find the new museum of contemporary art, she lives
surrounded by contemporary art, within contemporary art. golden, silver, flowery shoes
walk her by, while she stares on her notepad, skateboarder, green shoewearer, talk-talk-
talk. The author grabs the fragments out of the air, documenting diligently, wishing for
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her place back at the lighttable. She writes down the city, jots down the city, a stroller
rolls by, she writes the city down, like she used to animate it three years ago.
Downtowne, urbanity, anytown, anycity. Benches for writers to write on. Thanx, Mayor
Bloomberg.
She should move along, see some more, to write some more. Ink flows easily,
watching the yellow lifttruck on the other side of the street helps. Fast instrumental
percussion streams out of the skateboard shop, a bicycle rolls by, hey, wear a helmet.
Even if you live on the eastcoast. People with red-white shopping bags walk by, half-red,
half-white, vertically partitioned. a blue balls rolls to the pavement, towards the author.
she walks by a place that has eco-chic chocolate, she just loves the term eco-chic.
The place is on greene street and spring street, it is called vosges haute chocolate, the tem
eco-chic is so chic, for all you sustainability-freaks, for all you eco-designers. Make it
cool to be good. The concept that will bring us from place A to place B. That will
ultimately force in progress, forge progress. Utopia as elegant mainstream. Something of
that kind, something like that.
---
she made her way to the new museum which was closed because it is a tuesday, it
took her forever to find it and the building was, ah, not too shabby, she walks back,
plunks herself down on a bench, talks to a total stranger, who is her benchmate and a
tourist, too, she recommended the Moma show and the guggs, tourist talk, the MOMA
show is supposed to be nice, with lights, lights are good, but she has to figure out how to
get there, she feels she should write instead of watching passively, she should produce,
not consume, and her feet are killing her anyways, she writes, forever, she should eat a
tangerine, she should stop sitting here, writing in stupor, what might people think, oh,
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what might people think? Yes, what might they think? What exactly. The other tourist
left, that one is here only for a short, touristy moment, whereas the author feels like
she belongs here, waltzing all over this city, not really from here, not really removed
from here. Somewhere in between, somewhere in transition. With a pen in her hand,
laying down lines, laying down the law illustrating obscure thoughts, omnipresent
manifestations of dislocation. The author is slightly surprised at her ability to describe the
same phenomenon, her utter feel of dislocation, the visceral touchable aka tactile
grappling with alienation in this alien, strange place, where dean martin sings in the
pizzeria behind the bench. Her ability to state the very same occurrence of surreal out-of-
placeness in evermore flowery words, in poetic sentences, in pragmatic sentences. She
looks up at the watercooler on the roof of a building on bowery, she looks at the “one
way” sign, at the traffic light that says “go”. She stops writing, she has enough. For
today. But she knows, she still has to log in more, more pages.
---
She sits down in the reading room in the guggenheim, the guggs. She likes the
name guggs, being friendly with a building. She is not that fascinated by the exhibition,
which consists of a myriad of dead wolves, taxidermed. She is very opposed to that kind
of macabre spectacle and prefers to sit in this library-like space with a book in front of
her, that says art spaces-architecture and design, a suspicious museum guard and lots of
other books. The table itself is roundish, a rotunda in 2D. This is frank Lloyd Wright
land, she is kind of happy now that she never seriously forayed into architecture land,
where success is sparse and life is tough. She will check out the exhibition catalogues,
hoping for theory, hoping for something that can ultimately be smushed into her essays,
something “pertaining to film, to art, to architecture, something that explains buildings,
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the total grappling mystery of the built environment”. It is too hot in here, too annoying,
the tables are not in a nice colour, too retro. She stops writing, haults writing in order to
read. Maybe, this is the time where and when research should start, not just random
observations, not mere watching of one’s shadow on the paper, not only staring at a black
pen flying over paper, inscribing lines, inscribing codes.
---
she sits once more down in a pretty dumpy, pretty dark part of the museum, there
is no light, the whole place is darkened and dull, she feels like a mole and depressed, she
got into stuff with the museum guard, who was obnoxious, she hates museum guards,
who annoy her, she cannot roam around the museum freely and happily, she wants to go
back to the place to look at the filmtheory book, but cannot really because she had to
make some semisarcastic remarks instead of keeping her big mouth shut, she writes
away, sitting in a room with nice paintings, having a bad knee, she should get an
audiotour thingie, but has to stand in line. The museum is not bright enough inside, she is
too hot, she whines and complains. The day is getting to her, she has to go out to breathe
some very fresh air.
---
she plunks herself down in front of the guggs, she is happy by the wind that blows
through her hair, the stale air inside the museum was taking her breath away, she likes
sitting here where the air moves, motions. She feels her tired bones, she murks about that
she could not look at all the books, the film theory books, she is startled if there were
grains of knowledge in the reading room that could not be found anywhere else. She
needs to do more research, which would be more substantial, more trying, challenging,
interesting than writing about pigeons and about the small brown bird, about the woman
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in a red sweater, about the blue garbage can, about the yellow sign, about the yellow
cabs.
Something that has more meaning, more wayfinding properties, more
wayshowing properties.
The first law of something, the second law of another thing and, last not least, the
third law of something else. Actually, there should be, three laws of the same thing. A
blossom falls on her back. Startles her. She will waltz back into the guggs, this time with
the audio thingie. Guggs, here I come. A woman jogs by.
---
She sits down in Central Park, near the entrance, cars are driving by. She watches
people exercise. Her hand seems to become knobby and muscular, what with all the
endless writing. a man and his hot dog walk in. He has a red jacket, he eats a hot dog. The
author is hungry, but has to wait until dinner. Until eight. And she has to write three and a
half more pages. Her life is governed by all these numbers, do this, do that, be here, be
there, at certain times, on certain days. Her touristy days are really structured, with
specific, mind less chores. She marches like a soldier, her drummer is pretty specific. The
sun is in her face, the page is number thirty-seven. Shiny cars drive by, black, green,
tinted window, non-tinted, bikes roll by, joggers, well, jog. People in suits decipher
blackberries, a non-good-looking man in a pine-stripe suit sits on the bench next to her.
What a waste of nice suit. A jogger looks just plain funny. Some people should never be
allowed to jog. A too big car drives by. The author feels like criticizing everything and
anything. She should be home near false creek now, seeing the eagle on the highest mast,
she should walk to London Drugs, she should catch the Arbutus bus. She should not be
here.
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But she is.
So she is writing, slightly afraid of catching the plane back on May 1st, hating the
“We are all going to die” feel that turbulence inevitably is causing her, the mindnumbing
primal fear that crouches through her body for five hours, from take-off to landing. She
looks up at the “allcounty plumbing truck”, wonders why the woman beside her is sitting
too close to her. A jogger jogs by, happily, blissfully. The author writes away, squints
against the sun. The Central Park cyclists are healthconscious, what with helmets and all.
Maybe their bikes are rented and their helmets, too.
The author wonders about all these trite affairs, she lives in a cocoon of oblivion,
bliss, next to her own mortality. The words spit out on the paper, line after line, sentence
after sentence. Finally, she is on page forty, life could not be better, even the sun came
out and glistens up her page, the paper she is writing on. It is time to put down the pen,
smush it into her purse, stow the note book away into her blue bag with the h-street
market sign on it, the one an English lady was glancing at, h-street meaning high street,
meaning something familiar Londonish, a woman talks on her cell next to her about
whether John should come or not, the author is happy that she managed to fork out forty
bloody pages. Life is good.
---
she sits down in the small starbucks near waverly place, near washington square,
she orders a coffee and a marble loaf, she sits down near the window, her notebook
comes out, with a certain urgency, immediacy, she fishes the black pen out of her purse,
she starts writing, does not even start her food, her fingers become numb and cramped-
up, even though she has not even finished a page, she wonders about the reason for this, it
could be that she does not write in italics, so the straight letters are not that comfy for her
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hands, it could be the effect of two months of day-in, day-out writing, it could be
psychological fatigue, the obsession with the thought of utter uselessness that is inherent
in the formulation of half-baked, half-thought through insights, the free-flowing of ideas
on the other side of structure, reason, conventional wisdom. Who owns conventional
wisdom, who sets down the rules of convention, who defines the parameters of
convention, tradition. Who makes the waters flow into the mainstream? How about
blaming the patriarchical society? The author does not really care that much about
engaging in blaming males for stuff, mainly because she likes guys. More in a visceral
sense, as objects of lust, of longing. She tends to utterly objectify males, thus why blame
them? For anything. She smiles, feminist discourse has come full-circle.
Outside, the city walks by. A large group of field-trippers walk by, politely, with
name-tags.
The author ponders, whether what she just wrote vis-à-vis men, women is even
appropriate, talkable, whether her statements are true, justified, battling the status quo,
affirming the status-quo. Her coffee is getting cold. She feels that she is nothing more
than a washed-up housewife with too much time on her hands. She smiles, by the same
token, one could quantify any male, who ever made his bed in the morning, as a washed-
up house husband.
She looks at the red building on the other side of the street. Utter beauty. She does
not know the exacting description of the style, she knows that it is beautiful, elegant, with
a strong sense of quiet, well, beauty, elegance in bricks. Buildings, buildings. This city is
chock-full with the most beautiful buildings, she has ever seen. And very ugly ones, too.
The music plays, she writes. Her days away, in New York City. All through April. It is
slightly fun, slightly struggle. 40 pages per day. Minimum.
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---
She looks through am-New York, a free newspaper that was lying on the beige
round little table here in starbucks. It has local news, discussing stuff that is interesting,
talking about the L-train, Bedford station, places that she has been. Twice, no, three
times, or is it thrice. The author feels strangely located here, her ability to get naturalized
in strange places is second to none. She takes like a fish to water, any water. She feels at
home, easily, anywhere. The author attributes that to her reserved, jaded nature, it is easy
to be part of the crowd, part of the gang if you make sure that you stay in your own
cocoon, that your guard is up, anywhere. That you do not let people pierce your
vulnerability, that you show the right mix of vulnerable and, well, help me here, quick,
what is the opposite of vulnerable? for the lack of a better word, non-vulnerable.
Everything is so very calculated.
People walk by, buses drive by, a child and his dad, they look so much alike,
though the kid is exactly half the size of the father. She tears up, misses her father. Life
goes by, yellow cabs drive by, a NYPD car stops. She writes, looks at the sign saying
Waverly Restaurant, with the middle not showing, being layered over by a lamp-post.
She writes, writes her days away. A green bicycle rolls by, being pushed by a person in
red shoes. Her black pen is out of ink, she fishes for another pen in her things, in her
beige, strawy purse with the brown handle. She goes through pen after pen these days.
This coffee shop is filled with people writing, reading textbooks, it is an office for all
these brainworkers, penworkers. People who write. Who play with paper, with laptops.
Accumulate ideas, do research, engage in discourse. The author wishes to be paid, in hard
cash, for what she does. Money makes the world go round, or is it love?
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The author ponders what to write about. She looks up at the sky, blue, hardly any
cloud. Only a white, barely visible net of feathered strings of white, like cotton wool.
Waverly Place with the middle not showing, the grey lamppost smack over it, the pierced
sign.
The author crouches over her notepad, looks at the ever motioning street
sideways. Her pages fill up, the paper embraces the black ink, a symbiosis between letters
and paper is created, something new is scratched down on a generic surface, ideas that
have never been, and never will be, quite like this.
Individuality.
My world, this is my world. On paper. It is now page ten. At 10:31 a.m. On april
23rd. In 2008. White cars drive by.
---
she is sitting down in the subway station at 34 penn station, which is the sign on
the subway station column. She has to somehow figure out how to get on the 6-train
bound for spring street. She likes this mole like existence, living in the subway, so very
much underground. Her stories build up without even trying. There is adventure in the
sheer number of people she encounters, the pressed humanity. Souls lost, souls gained.
---
she sits down on a bench on 50th. street and Broadway, somewhere in the
underground, somewhere to rest to have a respite within her quest for wayfinding, her
adventure in wayfinding. She writes feverishly, not quite sure what degree of meaning
she is able to instill in these words, what degree of reason, of logic she can possibly distill
onto a trite page, she tries, but the words start swimming, disintegrating the minute they
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hit the paper, the pavement that makes them run, in all directions, relentlessly, utterly
obsessed.
Poetics take over half-wisdom, half-knowledge, form disguises failure. A girl
with a “the best girls are Canadian” shirt boards the train. Too late, to ra-ra behind her.
The author has to leave, find another train to board.
---
she sits down on a beige-brown, kind of rusty-colored wooden bench, in spring
street, at the corner of Elizabeth Street, near something that looks like a Vespa-knock-off,
in front of a store with lots and lots of Steve McQueen images. She had rice pudding at
Rice to Riches, cheese-cake flavour, the one for three dollars and seventy-five cents. This
was lunch and a pretty filling one, too. She is on her way to the New Museum. Should be
open now. Bowery, here I come. She feels strangely familiar in the strange city, knowing
and seeing more places than she does back in Vancouver. But, hey, vancouver is still
calling, is and will be always calling. She trots through all these cities all through her life,
she writes about it, makes films about it and, maybe, one day, she’ll make photos about
it. But words are still the most purest form of expression to simulate, to recreate the songs
of a city. A “B Kool HVAC” van in deep red parks in front of her and look, it is from
“B’KLYN, NY”. I wonder, what that means? Could it be brooklyn. What does brooklyn
even mean. She will now skedaddle to the museum. Off we go. Tourists are walking by,
conversing in Spanish. Oh, the existence of a tourist. So utterly useless. So much forced
fun. She longs for home. A little bit, she will miss the absence of adventure. Of very, very
safe adventure. Looking up at fire-escapes on the outside of buildings, one green, one red,
one black. Writing about all of her days. While the wind blows up the edge of her page.
While the day waltzes her by. Near noon, falling into afternoon. While words play with
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her, like the wind plays with the transparent, glistening paper on the ground. While she
writes, writes, writes her days away. While the be kool black-clad hvac worker yells in
Spanish into his cell about something, something Bowery. While life stands still and goes
on, while she has to smirk propelled by her own inability to write a sentence without
contradictions in it. She’d better explore the museum. Hopefully it’ll be cheaper than the
guggs.
---
she sits in the beautiful exhibition in the lobby of the new museum, all
architectural models, maquette-galore. everywhere models, she feels like in paradise. She
met a student from Emily Carr in the bookstore, familiarity so very far away from what is
perceived at home. They just nodded, instant recognition, expression of “hey, you here,
small world.” Transplant into universes that bind us, take us together all over the world.
She writes, writes but has to hault, stop and start looking, watching, observing. She is
sitting on a very cold, very metally chair, that looks funny and is just that, funny, in a nice
way, in a very positive, very comixy manner. It looks like a big shiny cartoon-eye.
She sits down in the second floor, after waltzing through floor three and four, she
liked both exhibitions and the stairway of the building, not so much, though, this second
floor. She likes this bench, though, in front of a TV-screen with a nice film around form,
shape, abstract, contrasty “stuff”. So she writes away, being forced to do so by the
building, which works much more from the inside, then from the outside.
She just writes, while watching film after film, film upon film, unobtrusive, short
narratives, four films that go on and on, are quiet, silenty music, she likes the subtlety of
the whole building, of the curating, the light that makes the exhibition go, flow into each
other, all through the floors, all through the building. The author likes how the building
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itself subordinates the exhibitions, the main show being, first and foremost, the interior of
this space. In the same way that Judd and co. make the building work, press the artwork
into the white cubes of the walls, into the walls, period. Black and White animation was
part of the exhibition, someone whose aesthetic mirrors the author’s. Life is good, life
makes sense. As long as line-based animation has the propensity, to build a market, to
conquer a market. As long as lines can eventually morph into a book, a blueprint, a poem,
into a suspended building, a bridge, frozen music, into mathematical formules that no one
understands. Collectively.
---
She should leave her tiny, little place here on the edge of the metal bench, her
own place of heaven while she watches shapes on the monitor, in pink, orange, black and
white, abstract films with music that loops, never ends. Like her writing, maybe, not that
she wants to engage in selfcritique. She should still see the end of the show, get an i-pod-
audio-tour, explore the books in the store, maybe catch an overpriced tea, it was two
dollars and a half, the museum though was only six bucks, for students, much less
expensive, than whitney and guggs, and students were exactly half the price of non-
students, very commendable. The shows are much more intellectual, too, the building
itself has a certain intellectual feel. Not that she can really say, why, well, she could, of
course, but she knows very well from up to eight years of life in an art school that the
translation of visual stimuli into exacting words is always debatable. She has to fish her
cell out of her pocket, she should leave this bench, to make space for the viewers of the
films, she should behave more politely. She is too tired, she has to make this space dictate
its stories to her, thrust its narrative on her, into her mind, her hands to write down all
these parts of poetic essay, of visible, concrete language. She thinks of the Brown-
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educated filmmaker from Providence who stated that architecture is very political, she
thinks of architecture as spectacle as posited by Rem Koolhaas, maybe, could be, she
thinks of forging architectural theory into filmtheory, she jots all this down, while the so
very abstract film is playing and looping in front of her eyes. She has to leave, hault the
insanity, wake up out of her art induced oblivion. Museums tend to do that to her, to
anyone, with their quietness and self-importance. With white- washed walls. With all of
that.
---
she sits down, in the lobby, starts writing, she should go out, get out, breathe some
fresh air, but she cannot make herself leave, she is fascinated by this place, by everything
it represents, by forms, by beauty, by the contemplation of contemporary art, by the
interplay of film, of architecture that permeates this place, by the potential of a career, a
not-yet-realized roadmap, at the fringes of, at the borders of scholarship, not necessarily
the gated walls of scholarship, because the gates are so very open at a place like this that
accumulates all that what interests the author in visual art, what keeps her in its fangs, in
its grip, all the mystery that is defined at the crossroad of art and design and media, more
so at the intermingling places of art and science, at the parts where form is still new, still
engaging, so full of utopian potential, where models are still half-realized and utterly
evolving, ever changing, where slight words, subtle sounds are used to translate form
and visuals, where concrete meets abstract, that is where we as a species should and can
exist.
The author writes, all day long, trying to get nearer to the concept of being able to
put the not yet evolved idea of a slight hint into words, or, for that matter, into shape, into
form, into a tangible reality. For the author this matters, very potently, it is at this point, a
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matter of survival. Realizing form, realizing space, courting form, permeating space,
motioning through space, these are her preoccupations as artist, as being, as a being, that
is. Words do not suffice in ordering all her ideas, all the experiences she squashed
densely into this very day, all the things she encountered on this short foray back into her
smallish artworld. She longs for making perfect sense in describing her notions of the
visual, in the same way that forms can speak unmistakenly, unequivocally. This very
space here in the new museum is a very clear manifestation of all her interests that lead
her so very strongly into art school.
And now, on a lighter note, she is becoming hungry, will pick up an audiotour
thingie, will move around some, motion through time, through space, through the
building. That is so very fresh, as one of her instant friends upstairs noted, the walls still
smell of fresh paint, they exude newness. Maybe it is all in the name, new museum.
---
she now sits down on a bench outside of a pizzeria, it is the same place where she
sat down the day before, it is a magical place, actually, that is not true, the author just
wants to finish her daily requirement of written words, five more pages, so she writes as
fast as she can, as fast as the wind, something like that, the art museum left her tired and
exhausted, the exclusivity of art practice kind of nags inside of her, eats away at her
enthusiasm, she is very much of the opinion that artists are picked at random, to succeed,
whereas others are shovelled into the gutter.
Maybe relentless, sisyphian trying will ultimately result in success, result in the
morphing of the starving artist into the non-starving one, going through the right schools
at the right time, heavy self-promotion, that kind of thing. The whole business is much
too fickle, only a popularity contest.
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Thus, she sits here on a bench in front of a pizzeria, enjoys the sunshine, listens to
Sinatra, while jealousy gnaws at her intestines, well, at least inside of her, that she has not
even been able to conquer her shabby, little degree, let alone have a show.
Maybe she should be more aggressive.
At this time, though, enjoying the sunshine seems like fun, all the intellectual
questions are somehow, somewhere buried in all these floors of the artmuseum, there
were books to be read, there was an i-pod-tour, to be listened to, there was a five o’clock
tour that she could have attended.
She will go back and listen to it. She liked the neighbourhood project, the
collaboration between the bowerymuseum and a museum in eindhoven, she could go and
listen to the tour, but she is tired, she cannot plump more info into her poor head, at this
time she’d rather sit here and watch the world go by.
Whiffs of pizza come out of the restaurant, a hobo asks her for forty cents exactly,
she refused, adamantly, he did not approve, too bad, starving artist here, starving author
here.
She writes away, is getting more hungry, more tired. The place around her is
becoming filled up with individuals rushing to and fro, cars honk, the whole area is so
very lively, purple and white balloons are hanging from the streetlight high up in the air,
a very pink woman smokes her cigarette, pink shades, pink hat, pink bag. The author
writes some more words, heaps them onto the page, hopes that forty pages will be finally
finished, ponders, why she sled into this kind of self-imposed hellhole of constant
scribbling, constant writing. A very beautiful black dog strides by, in a green leash, with
two of her or his keepers.
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The author is nearing the end of today’s chore, she writes automatically, in the
same way a bricklayer presumably would lay bricks, the body takes over, the words
appear automatically on the page, hopefully slightly meaningful, they are nonetheless
magically appearing, her hand hurts, her arm hurts, her eyes hurt, she is not sure whether
the text is able to construct the illusion of meaning, diffuse negativity is taking over.
Respite would be good at this point, hovering over seemingly endless pages of
unscratched, uninscribed pages seems utterly fruitless, in vain, futile.
The time pushes itself towards six o’clock, she might still rush back to the
museum and use up the remainder of the time she has paid for, but her hand just keeps on
writing, her legs refuse to move. Some annoying little dot-like insects fly around her, she
looks up at people talking away next to her into their cell, a brown, utterly poodle catches
her eye, a child in a fluffy, fluffed pink dress, a noisy, rolling black and brown suitcase.
Cars roll by, people walk by. Blue shoes, roller blades, sandals. Another pair of sandals,
with red toes.
She feels alone, everybody around her seems to know each other. The author is
not amused, she is very hungry, she feels very alone. She will take out her cellphone and
start talking into it, pretending to have a conversation with an imaginary friend. Which is
of course so very normal, not at all on the other side of sanity. Sanity is highly overrated,
anyways. Who needs sanity anyways, when one can just grab a pen and start writing
away, on a bench in front of a pizzeria, in a strange city, next to two slightly rusty black
bicycles. While looking up at the yellow graffiti on the lamppost to her right, trying to
decipher the fading dark-grey imprint on the bottom of the streetlight. A skateboard rolls
by, someone whooshes by on roller-blades, very clumsily, which seems to be impossible,
but there is no other term to describe that.
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The author is getting near to the finish line, only two more pages, only two more.
Buildings glisten in the sun, someone from another, slower era is singing, martin, sinatra,
bing crosby, who knows. A grey bicyclist, a grey car.
People walking by, all kinds of looks. Very tall and thin, very short and stocky.
The cyclist takes his bike, unfastens the lock.
So many people walk by her, towards her with frozen yoghurt in their hands. A
UPS- truck is parked on the other side of the car, the balconies of the building in front of
her are beautifully ornate, golden against the grey-black backdrop of the window frame.
The author can now call it a day, the words finish today’s narrative, the forgotten
plot of a tourist among tourists, jotting down her constant, seemingly never ending
travellog, that demarks her travels through this city, pushing the songs of this city into the
consciousness of herself and others.
The writing day is over, her writing day is over. Until tomorrow, until forty more
pages of tightly inscribed pieces of paper. Until tomorrow. Here in NYC, on all these
benches, all these tables, searching for word after word after word. All through spring of
2008. All through.
---
she sits down in her favourite coffeeshop around the corner of the tiny apartment
in chelsea, she starts writing, she knows it is some time after ten in the morning, she
knows she has to put in forty pages and she woke up in the middle of the night with this
piercing, undefinable, mushy, non-ceasing pain in her right arm and she knew
immediately that the muscles of her arm revolt against the constant misuse, two months
of using exactly the same muscle group is never good on the system, she longs for being
back in vancitay to type this out, on the other hand she is kind of weary to leave this
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place, leave its sights to be enjoyed by others. She should find a better, more concise
guide book, instead of the free NYC- yours to discover that she picked up in a McDonald
near Grand Central. She should frequent all the art schools, that kind of stuff, she should
do this, go there.
Or she could go back to all the gems she found by herself while making her way
through the city, the animation studio at the end of a leafy garden tucked away near the
knitting studio, the coffeeshop catering to all the knitters of the city. She should go into
the computerstore, the scales in the departmentstore, her very own bench in the subway.
The minute that she entered this city she marked her territory, all my favourite places, the
artificiality of making herself at home. The demarking of reference points in a strange
city.
---
she tries to write while the subwaytrain chuggs along, which is not exactly an easy
task, somehow it is not very conducive to exact penmanship. The adventure, though, is
good, the pen has stories to tell, automatically, she can write more fluidly when the train
is stopping, obviously.
---
The author stands at the entrance of Columbia. She suddenly has this very real, very
surreal urge to make an intellectual contribution, this as her goal in life, her raison d’etre.
She found her calling, right here, right now.
---
she sits down in the basement of avery hall, trying to figure out the logistics of this
place, it is basically a very informal walkway with tables and it has coffee, tea, muffins at
the end, lots of architectural photos, and a plant that might or might not be real on each
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table. There is a computer in a corner, tucked away, so she checked her e-mail. She
listened to an anti-war rally, looked at an exhibition and likes this place the most. There is
food here, though the lines are long. The surface of the table, she writes on, is shiny.
Shiny being good. As long as we have shiny surfaces, life is good. These days she is full
of instant, oh, so very deep insights like this, being propelled by the segments of light that
are reflected into her field of vision. Round halfmoon after halfmoon, like the half of an
old LP, and actually less than a half, and all of them arranged like a bee-hive, in bee-hive
pattern. It is at times like these that she wishes to take a photo to hault that visual moment
in time, to recreate it later, to document it accurately, visually copying the image she
sees. Alas, words have to do, elaborate shovelling of linguistic fragments, short codes of
understanding, glimpses of light. Something of that kind.
The author is exhausted from too much sun exposure, walking through the sun,
standing in the sun, but, basically, she feels so much at home at a place like this, where
studies are conducted, may be conducted, where civilization meets minds, where
intellectual struggle is paramount. Where intelligentsia might determine future
endeavours, undermine future endeavours. Where academia might prostitute itself,
serving its masters. But, where, nonetheless, ideas count. Where minds are silenced and
minds are challenged. Where so much is wrong and so much is right.
Where pens are used to put down ideas. The author knows that she wanted to
illustrate one very essential idea, discuss and mention something important, but she
totally forgot what it was. Amnesia, senility, it comes to her like the feel of ephemerality,
of dislocation. She should get a tea or something, have some food inside her body,
reinvestigate her thoughts pertaining to her ideas about academia. Her strangely love-
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hatey relation with scholarship, dismissing the worst, glorifying the best that schools have
to offer.
The author has to edit her writings more vigorously, more drastically in order to
erase glitches, she has to balance her path between fiction and non-fiction more
diligently.
The author had a tea in the cafeteria and four mini-muffins in a plastic container,
that she will dispose of, which is not at all good for the environment and the sugar and
the chocolate chips in the mini muffins are not good for her body and the non-refilling of
the tea is not good either. Basically, columbia does not seem to be as recyclinish as ubc,
there are definitely problems here, and basically, all of the east of North America is pretty
wasteful and inconsiderate to greenness, to environmental concerns, when compared with
the west-coast mentality. There are very obvious discrepancies in mindset, in mentality,
and west coast would definitely win, glean more brownie points in eco-friendliness. In
terms of brashness, matter-of-factness, entitlement and can-do-attitude this part of
Northamerica would win. Thus pairing both ideologies, if one could call it that, would be
a positive thing. Give me sustainability, give me comfort with implementing change.
Give me NY- attitude. Make things happen. Let us change the world. If sitting in a
basement at Columbia will propel the world forward, so be it. The author is sitting here,
in the poshness of her privileged life and writes away. At the other tables there are two
women, about her age, both clad in red tops and black bottoms, writing away on their
laptops. Maybe, change is somewhere in the making. But, the author knows, that change
of the guard in itself will not foster change, not forge progress. The author looks at her
tea, starts reflecting on her two months of travelling, her constant writing. She enjoyed
shiny tables, light dots on tables, the change of the season, but most and foremost her
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constant writing, her constant tackling of observing, documenting the mundane, and the
not-so-mundane. She looks up at the photographs put up by the architecture students,
buildings in black and white, in sepia, some green, fragments of buildings, giant clocks,
the fascination with the built form, the geometry, the ornate, the linear and the
curvilinear, volumetrics, planes, lines, the mix of dark and light, the resulting drama of
the image, the spectacle, the theater, the mimicking of a stage, the cinematographic
aspects of the built environment. She can look at all the images in front of her, on the
wall and notices how significantly they play up the drama that a building possesses, how
a 3-dimensional structure will always be seen as a 2-dimensional image or as a multitude
of 2-dimensional images, if the viewer walks around a building, or through a building.
The author thinks about her flight home to Vancouver, she has butterflies already.
Today is Thursday, and next thursday, she has to board her plane at about this time. Feel
sketchy and scared for approximately five hours.
The author writes away, while enjoying the casualness of this place, the optimism,
it exudes. This place is very light and bright, it is the most positive and happy and
optimistic place in an art school or an architecture school, she has ever encountered. It is
not burgeoning sentimental, not broody, not suicidal. It is happy, calling for people to
build happy, new buildings. It is more like an engineering school, it smells like the fun
and the excitement of applied science. She loves the basement of avery hall, she will
come here again and again for the next seven days. She will sit down at exactly this table,
facing the three totally blacklish photographs of night, some night-city-scape, the black
building in snow, and the clock fragment, she will look at the half-plant, half-artificial
flower in the green plastic pot with the cut-outs at the bottom, the curly, checkers of the
table top will propel her writing, make it use language to conjure up images, the visual,
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the black and white film, that plots along in her inner eye, in front of her inner eye, in
front of her inner eye. She will think, long ever so slightly for the one, she left behind, but
she will finally erase his memory and start thinking of him as a regular being, stopping
herself from worshipping his “holiness”. She smiles slightly, scratches her head, trying to
figure out whether she should include the highly personal in her writing or whether she
should stick to the pragmatic, logical, the public. The author writes away, she is amused
by being asked by the other woman to keep an eye on her belongings for a second, it is
the same in any school, be it columbia, be it langara, be it emily carr.
The author wonders, if she can just sit in in a lecture, try to explore this place a tad.
Maybe she should stop writing for the moment. Hault the flow of words. Interrupt the
constant humming in her poor brain, stop wordiness and go for a walk. Through the
building, up the steps, down the steps, through the rooms of this place.
---
she sits down on a bench in front of a gigantic black sculpture, an asymmetric
wave, in front of the business school at columbia, maybe it is called urbis hall or ibis hall,
something ending in -is, maybe, could be, who knows. people are on the lawn, the
weather is nice. So she writes. people are playing frisbee with a ring, a frisbee without, a
centerless frisbee. What kind of world is that, where bottoms fall out of frisbee. It’s the
end of the world. She sits within reach of flying footballs and flying frisbees. What if it
flies on her head. These people seem so utterly incompetent. She should leave. Before
getting injured. The people do not know what they are doing, the person to her right says,
how do you work this, smushes it up someone’s head, who is barely hit, but does not
notice it, the woman laughs. - “We are scary people,” the author says: “that’s it” and
leaves, this is all funny, playful, a woman in purple leggings walks by, it must be the end
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of the semester, because the school is a tad too happy, or, maybe, it is always like this.
The author has been here before, four years ago, she liked the parklike ambience, the
easiness of the school, the happiness. A bird frolicks on the bench near her, then on the
ground, the wind is blowing, the author does not want to leave. But she should keep
moving, finding sujets to write about, other issues, other items than yellow jackets, red
pants, gothic columns, green-topped buildings. She should write some more, revise the
gothic column-description, because actually all the buildings here look like transplants
from athens, acropolisesque or acropoliesque stone informations, stuff doric, ionic,
corinthic. And the hall to her right is called “Dodge”. Euro centrism et.al. The author
leaves this.
---
she sits down at the whole foods place in the mall at columbus circle, near the
everchanging screen, which is blue right now, but will morph into another colour in
seconds, for some weird reason it refuses to do so and seems to stay, actually it became
purple and lavender, and even more red of a purple, she loves these ever changing
screens, it is now deep pink and now pink red, it becomes orange red, light orange, light
yellow, lemony yellow, guess, green now and, supposedly, blue after that only to start the
circle again. She took a taster at jambalaya juice, which is very good and very fruity, and
she is sitting here writing her days away, and a lady sits opposite of her and people are
sitting behind her and the colors are constantly changing in the glass wall beside her, the
glass is milky and fascinating, she wonders what else she should write about, the woman
leaves, the author does not know if she should have instigated a polite conversation,
instead of continuing to write, the woman left now, the persons behind her are still
conversing, very loudly, she writes away, the screen is now clear blue, very deepskylike,
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the author would like to skedaddle over to jambalaya juice and get another taster, because
she does not feel like standing in endless lines, she has to write, write, and her forty pages
are far from over, they are a requirement, the requirement for this day, the people behind
her left, and the noise in this place is unbearably loud, people conversing utterly loud, the
roaring of the jambalaya juice blenders is extremely loud, the loudspeaker yells, this is
one noisy food-place, it sounds more like a factory that blends all those smoothies and the
lines at whole foods are long and winding. The screen is blue again, she manages to put
down one page between blue and blue, everyone here is extra-yelly, this is one loud place
and she says that again and again, repeats her writing, which might take her lingo into
utter boringness, the screen is now red, constantly morphing, the passage of time, slowly
changing colors, constant morphing, rainbow in slow motion, without sudden
interruption, without motion, just blending into each other, like the ever-present blending
of the smoothies at Jambalaya Juice, smushing of food into each other, smushing of
colors into each other, and at this moment, the author is viscerally, physically feeling all
her days smush together into this very moment of writing, of putting down letters, of
trying to put all her moments into one over-arching tableau, into one image.
The april here is warm and heavyhandedly galloping towards summer, no april
showers in this city, knock on wood, People are wearing summery stuff, flip-flops, tank
tops, T-shirts, the author, though, is pretty happy in her warm and toasty turtleneck.
She is wondering, what time it is, she knows, she should fish for her cell phone and
push the button and then another button to decipher the time, which is actually quite an
undertaking, because she can’t really make out, what the numbers say because of her
eyesight, so she has to find her cell and then her glasses, so everything gets a tad too
complicated and she feels that no one, no one would ever be interested in reading this, so
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she might as well take all her books and throw them into the Hudson River, or into a
recycling bin, and she is utterly filled with self –doubt, not in a traumatic pierce of self-
doubt, more in a constant living with self-doubt, self-doubt as a non-acute aching, a state
of utter negativity or, maybe, a state of glimpse at reality. But she writes anyways, she
knows that she has to white-knuckle it, write through the ebbs and the highs, low stuff,
high stuff, there is no constant in art, muse is there or is not, some days are better than
others. Tomorrow she will figure out how to get to an exhibition by Herzog and de
Meuron at the Architectural League, it should be somewhere on 53rd. street, tomorrow
she will make her way to the Moma, which will cost about fifteen bucks, tomorrow she
will get a visitor pass for all the 22 libraries at Columbia. The author is not very much
into sights where she has to pay. She might as well make her way to Pratt which has an
open house today, from 6 to 8. It will keep her busy and it is interesting. A project, a
project. To kill time, positively, in a positive manner. That kind of stuff.
---
she sits in front of a sculpture in pratt and there is something like a reading going
on, and she doesn’t really know where the open house is, but she likes, actually love the
school, it is just one big sculpture garden and it is very artsy, though much more hippie-
mippie than emily carr, though it really has the aura of anti-science, and she knows that
she would really excel here in this very non-mathematical environment, she can just write
herself through grad school, in the same way that she scribbled and wrote and talked
herself through artschool, to the brink of graduation, even though it took some years. The
readings are just pure crappy, all the same, white middle class protesty stuff, but that
seems to be the trend here, just like the white-guilt shit back in Vancouver.
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The author does not know, if this kind of jadedness is really that good, that
authentic, or basically totally hypocritical.
After all, what difference does it really make, if protest is propelled by survivor’s
guilt, by repressed hate against authority, by whatever. As long as we know as a species
that the status quo is never enough, that we have to fight the good fight, that it is our
obligation, whatever the fuck our background is.
Cold anger he said in his book. Cold anger. Debatable, but true.
So she writes.
---
One of the students who was listening to the readings, was laughing and smiling
to her, while she looked up, when writing, and he was standing behind her, she hopes that
he was just acknowledging her writing and that he did not read that she called the
subjectmatter and the readings crappy, she was dissing the work alright, but she sure has
utter respect for people who stand up in front of an audience and read their shit out
loudly, that takes gutsiness, to make oneself that much open to criticism, open those
vulnerable parts of oneself to total strangers, she applauds the readers, the writers to
submit their stuff, to read it, she just dismisses it on the basis of artistic meritlessness, on
the basis of, in the end, taste. The readings were just not her cup of tea. They were shitty.
To her, that is. In the same way that she sits here in awe looking at all these sculptures. It
is getting dark, she should leave. Up in the sky is a light line inscribed by an airplane into
the sky. Life is good. Full of lines, of sculpture, of metal standing up. Poetry in space.
---
She can see herself studying here. The problem is, of course, that she’d rather stay in
Vancouver. As fascinating as this city is, as dynamic as it is, as inviting as it is for artists,
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it lacks false creek, lacks rain, lacks familiarity. It is not home and it will never be, can
never be. She misses the city she calls home, the ever so slight illusion of home, she
misses Vancitay. But she is still fascinated by this so very strange city. And, then again,
one could argue, that Vancouver is, of course not her birth place. Hamburg is. And so she
sits here, grapples with notions of flighting identity. At this point it is getting dark, she
should make her way to the apartment in chelsea. She should find her phone and not lose
her key. Again. She should put herself together and act slightly on the mature side. If that
is possible. At age 53, in NYC, in April 2008.
---
she sits in front of the library at pratt, she looks at a really giant white marble head,
a giant wheel, green, white, black, dark-green, well, for the lack of a better term, thingie,
she looks at two silvery thingies, and curly, rainbowy stuff. And then there are all the
brickbuildings, the sculptures we live in. One day, she will build, ehem, something, but
until that day words and drawings have to suffice, so nothing will disintegrate, nothing
will implode, no cranes will tumble to the ground, people so much better than her, so
utterly more ept than her have designed structures that ultimately collapsed, maybe, just
maybe, origamifigures are all 3-D structures, she should dare to design, and if , she gets
really edgy, really daring, she might hang her papercranes, her paperships from the
ceiling and let a mobile blow in the wind, she might build sand castles, write lines in the
sand, until the waves wash over them and make them disintegrate, smush them into
oblivion, back into water, back into earth, back into wind and air. Dust to dust, that kind
of stuff. The author watches dusk take over, the shadows are getting longer, the two
schoolgirls here on the brooklyn campus are chatting the day away, she feels so very
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calm, so very contended, so very much at peace. With herself, with the world. It is time to
go home, wherever that might be.
---
she sits down in the coffeeshop where she usually has her coffee, this being april
25, and usually seems to have set in within the span of the last 25 days, she has her usual
hangouts, is a creature of habit and navigates through this city, taking it out of
strangeness and claiming it for herself, forging her temporary existence. She could go all
philosophical and liken this phenomenon to our existence on this planet, but then again,
there are total inconsistencies, minor and major discrepancies, thus likening,
metaphorizing, forging allegories will not necessarily hold true, make sense.
The author prefers to stick to describing what she can see, the round table on
which she writes, on which her notebook lies. The table is round and has a chessboard
pattern on it, but the squares are not all in the same kind of brown, the brown squares
near to the rim are dark, the ones in the middle are light. Who designs these tables, which
are the same in Vancouver, in Zurich, in New York. She has her coffee, tries to plan her
trip to the MOMA. Marilyn still is there somewhere layered under the beige napkin with
green leaves on it. A woman with a Louis Vuitton- patterned handbag stands at the
counter, this is a totally new design of the old LV-logo, a fresh repatterning. The woman
herself is disgustingly ugly, utterly uglyish. The author finds, discovers her inner bitch.
This is nice, travelling too much does not bring out the best in her. She might fulfill her
writing assignments, but her ethics just swoosh down the drain. She’d better stop. For
now. Three pages are filled already.
---
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the author sits down in the MOMA on a bench, she is slightly tired which means
her feet are killing her, she needs respite and she seems to be better suited for plunking
herself on this bench and for writing notes, observations, which is actually not a precise
description, because all that she is observing at this time is her pen on the paper, in this
very non-well-lit room, her pen is only 0.5 mm, the store did not have 0.7 mm, which
might as well be, less ink, and it still does the job, actually, it does the job better,
differently than the 0.7 mm point, because there is more a scratching feel, in her hand,
she feels more like she inscribes something, like hammering hieroglyphs into stone, like
scratching lines into branches of trees, that lie on the ground or like taking a branch and
forcing lines into wet, dark, rained-in, most earth, that is dark and black.
The author looks up, she is surrounded by greatness, jackson pollock, Rothko,
Giacometti and she still does not know how many c’s and how many t’s make for
Giaccometti. How about more m’s, more g’s. She feels like writing, but might look kind
of weird, she is supposed to watch stuff, but her legs say “no”. She liked the exhibition in
the 3rd. floor, wondering whether she had seen the artist talk in room # 260 on the second
floor in the north building of emily carr. She saw a jeff wall poster, the minute she
entered Moma. The author wonders, whether she herself should forge her artcareer a little
bit more forceful, with vigor instead of with a totally laid-back, potheady, west-coasty
attitude. She is so much too old, does not really feel like proving anything, is not so very
hungry. Then again, maybe she will fish for a happy alliance, once she is back to
Vancouver, try to construct some kind of studio practice, establish something, contact the
better business bureau, incorporate something called delta-b, which she wanted to do 20,
30 years ago and before that it was a place called H. None of these plans got really
realized, they are still latent, they surfaced in other realizations, in other forms of
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appearance. Like water morphing into ice and then into vapour. fluid, solid, gas. The
same happens to our dreams, they do not vanish, they come back to haunt us and propel
us forward in slightly different forms, in newer but essentially same-being forms. The
author grapples with the language, while writing away, while looking up at paintings,
while noticing legs and feet walk by within her field of vision, but this room being so
very dark and muted, and lightless, she is more concentrated on formulating her own line
of thought, following her line of thought. The author thinks that this place here within
Moma is pretty lightless, so that nothing happens to the images. She wonders, like
always, what sets artist a apart from artist b, is it self-promotion, marketing, luck? In her
mind, the main thing would be stamina, politics aside. The “hanging-in-there” factor
always prevails. She wrote enough, maybe she should move, maybe she can move, what
with her bad knee and all. She could find an audio-guide, but then again, maybe sitting
here in stale air is fun, too. Gasping for air. The air is not really stale, there is a steady
flow of air, the staleness is more caused by her feel of depressed alienation, which is
haulted by dots of interacting with all the other slightly overwhelmed or underwhelmed
fart-lovers. Art, art, art. She would really like to just lie down on this bench, stretch
herself, with her arms under her head, looking at the ceiling, which is so much more
fascinating then all the images, white with brown-black, inletted lines in them, perfectly
geometric, a blue print, the plan for a building on the back of a white napkin.
A tour leader talks about the painting, she is standing in front of a jackson-pollock
and, basically, is yelling at the group of listeners.
---
The author should stop writing. For now.
---
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she sits down in the blinding, glistening sun and starts writing, in front of a
fountain, in front of a starshaped, golden sculpture, the fountain-water-lines are exactly
like the sculpture’s lines, beams, glistening, at this point even the trace of each of her
letters in ink is glistening, wind blows, people are walking by, it is somewhere here in
midtown manhattan, sometime around midday and she feels somewhere in the mid of
bliss and torture. A child bumps his green ball on the ground, a girl in pink balances on
her checkered skateboard, a mix between skateboard and skooter, something new-
fangled, the author had seen on the sky-train in new-west. The world walks by, she is
tired of stating this again and again. The MoMa was ok. ish, not that great, it does not
really make sense to revisit museums. She should go to the FIT, at least it is free. And
free is what makes and breaks a place. Free good, Non-free bad. It is too sunny here, too
sunburn-inducing. She has to find shadow, shelter from the sun, the brightness. Streams
of the fountain pulsate into the pool, calming, soothing, the voice, the noise of water,
songs of water interrupted by click-clack of shoes on the pavement. New York City,
somewhere midtown, somehow noonish. April 25, 2008.
---
she found a more shadowy place near another arrangement of fountains, wind is
blowing, oversized transparent fabric-triangles are in the air, people from all the offices
in the highrises are picking up lunches and afterlunches, she writes here, because the
street seems to be her office, here at the foot of skyscrapers, where there are waterfalls,
seats to sit, it is like in a small valley surrounded by high cliffs, high rocks, mountains
streaming up to the sky. She writes away, feeling kind of hungry, wishing that she could
spot the nearest restaurant without walking forever, she had enough of all this pattering
over the grey pavement. A woman next to her changes her red flip-flops to beige flats and
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goes to her office, something with yahoo judging from her yahoo-lanyard. Everyone
around here has lunch in hand, supposedly having food at desk is the trend.
The author is tired of writing, writing, writing. All that is there to be said, has been
said already. She liked the design exhibition on the 6th. floor at Moma, it was called
design for elasticity and it was more like science world. It was just fun and good and very
cinematic, very theatrical. And then there was a color exhibition, which was ok. ish. But,
basically, walking through the Brooklyn Campus of Pratt was more fun, more sculpture,
more interest, less tourists, or, better said, no tourists, only her.
The wind is blowing too harsh here, into her neck, the wind takes her away to a new
place, through the streets of this funny city. Cars honk, the water splatters and whooshes.
---
she sits down on a green chair in bryant park. Under very old trees, she does not
have shadow here. The better shadowy seats, the ones with table, are reserved for reading
room people. Not that anyone notices, in the end she could decide on an ideal or semi-
ideal table, no sand on the ground, not too much stuff from the trees, one person, though,
who tells his life story to two others. The author tries to concentrate, tries to block out
voices, tries to listen to the honking though, the ambulance, the rushing by of traffic, she
tries to notice city, first and foremost, tries to look up at people, at buses, at Metropolitan
Hardware and Lumber, which she actually knows the location thereof by now, and her
feet are witness, she saw more of this city then of any other, ever, or so it seems. There
will be a test.
The hardware van whooshed by, she looks at the pigeons here, which are black
and have a white tail, they are from a different pigeon family than the Central parky ones.
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The author thinks, that, maybe, she should just watch the city, let it whoosh over
her, instead of taking all these so very obsessive, relentless notes. A yellow concrete
mixer rolls by, lemon-yellow. She suddenly misses the ocean concrete mixers, the one in
blue and white near the artschool. Green dots from the trees are falling down on her, on
the table, on her paper into the holes of the wires, she ponders, whether they will have
animals and insects coming out of them, hatching, once she puts her eleven books into
her suitcase and heads home to Vancouver. All kinds of animals will come out and fill up
her suitcase on the flight, within five hours. A girl next to her is starting a monologue for
her friends, me, me, something like that, a free performance and the director is there, too.
You have to be more sad, now he wants to act. See, and you want to pay for a broadway
show, this city is chockfull of free performances, free readings and the best that
saxophones and guitars can bring out of people all over the subway. And she can write,
so very, very easily, the wind, the buildings, the curved glass of the pyramid beside her,
the wind, the cars, the light take her by the hand and force her pen over the paper. A bird,
a black crow flies over her, she is lying, suspendedly, over the table, watching the ink
scratch over the paper.
Grass is in front of her, around the bottom of the tree, all knee high, leafy, green
stuff, with lots of triangly leaves that are, for some reason, lower than all the grass.
There are so many more leaves in her notebook, unwritten, not written yet.
Spielberg next to her talks way too much, or is it Stanislavsky. He sure has a lot to say
about drama and theater and acting. There are rules that have to be followed to a T.
The author loves the building next to her, white, asymmetrical grids on black
glass. She is falling asleep, her hand cramps up. She should stop writing. Less is more. In
writing as in life. This does not make sense. Platitude galore. A man with very thick
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glasses is reading. She is losing it. Thus, she stops writing. The words do their own thing,
anyways, do not follow any virtuous rules. They bump into each other and make no
sense. They are clumsy and awkward and screech. This is not her day, fatigue has set in.
A grey, glistening truck drives by. She will not be able to put down forty pages today.
She has to make up for this at a later time. Her right hand will thank her.
---
The author ponders if she should name herself “Lola” in this story and thus make it
less autobiographical. It would be the story of someone named Lola in New York City.
And the name “Lola” is so, well, non-cheesy. No offence to Lolas the world over. Maybe
the author should stick to calling the main character, the protagonist “the author”. It has a
certain unisexy quality. She ponders, if she wants that. At this point she just wants to stop
scribbling away. She feels pity for the one who has to type and edit all this. Maybe even
the reader. Maybe.
---
She counted, she still has to write twenty-four pages, her right knuckle, the one
between ring finger and little finger is hurting, is too much in one position, the muscles
are pressing the nerves. Something like that. Who knows how it is really anatomically,
something bugs her. Anyways. Some man is walking by, talking to himself, scaring her.
The people at the other table talk about him, too. The sweeper with the green broom
comes by. The author writes away. She could write about the red flowers that she sees
from here. She has nothing more to write about. She is bored. Bored by her own
sentences. The conversation at the table next to her is so much more interesting. Her own
words make her fall asleep. She should find a subjectmatter. Instead of shovelling words
onto paper. Into eternity.
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---
A group named Amerique goes by. A tour group, leader with red amerique flag,
followers with red amerique backpacks. She suddenly notices the golden ornaments on a
black fence all around Bryant Park. She does not describe it accurately, but she can
assure the reader that it is kind of beautiful. The wind blows around this place, she feels
so very tired. But there are fifteen more pages to be written, it is a chore and someone has
to do it. Besides, if one writes all day long, suddenly, insights fly towards the notebook.
Supposedly. So she has heard, so she was told. One should court success, intelligent
insights, they just come. Or should come. Over time.
While she is writing, someone gives her a magazine and asks for money for the
homeless. The magazine is free all over town, it is at every streetcorner. He just took a
bunch out of the stand and now distributes it to the tourists.
This is how it goes.
She writes away. Fourteen more pages to fill. With junk, maybe. With good stuff,
maybe. Writing used to be so very easy, like drinking water. Ever since being critiqued
one too many times, she has lost her confidence, has to scramble for words, she has to
write incessantly and still not have one good sentence to show for all that effort. But she
does not really care, she writes anyways. The words will come, have to come. If it kills
her, the whole week has to be spent writing. Today is friday, the author will take saturday
and sunday off, only to start fresh on monday and follow through on tuesday.
Wednesday, she will pack her stuff, thursday she will board the plane back to Vancitay.
These are her plans, and plans might just take the words along, squeeze meaning onto the
page, like toothpaste out of the toothpaste-container. The building in front of her is
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greenish-blue, glassy, not necessarily classy. She is happy, the words rhyme.
Inadvertedly. The trees here are very spring green very young, very delicately leaved.
She likes it here, kind of, everyone is conversing, sight-seeing buses are
constantly driving by. Red ones, blue ones, grey ones. One after the other. So many
people are taking pictures, but no one seems to use words to document the city. The
author ponders, whether she stumbled upon a niche-market, though she knows very well,
that book after book has been written about this very city. Not by her, though, not by her.
The author wonders, what time it is, she really liked the exhibitions at the Moma
and she knows that she can still go back until 9 o’clock and watch the rest, she could see
the movie, which starts at a quarter to seven, she could walk through the rooms full of
light and shadow by the Icelandic artist whose name she can’t pronounce, olafur
something. Maybe Gustavson? Maybe.
She looks up at the inscriptions on the sun-umbrellas next to her. They all say
“Reading Room- Bryant Park”, she looks at the brown dog that is walked by two serious,
elegant women, she notices how many less dogs there are here in midtown manhattan,
when compared the residential areas. Seems, nobody lives here, this is only an area of
business, office upon office upon office. Seems the mixed neighbourhood concept is not
that popular in New York, then again, there are always tourists roaming around, so it does
not really get unsafe. And mugging seems to be less than it used to be. If push comes to
shove, she does not really know, does not really care, at this point she just wants to finish
her daily requirement of written pages. She is down to eight pages, which she has to
scribble full of deep, oh, so deep insights. The accumulation of her fifty-three years here
on this planet. This is getting a tad too tense, a lot too dense. She can feel the back of
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her right arm tense up, she can feel her right back muscle. It seems to be like weight-
training with the problem being, that she is overdoing it and only using one particular part
of her body. She knows that she will be sore, her body will act up. Either way, she is
walking too much, or she is writing too much, drawing too much, or sitting in front of the
computer too much.
She has to do it all together, change positions constantly. Like the pigeons on the
ground, picking stuff up, flying away. Well, flying is not really possible.
---
She sits down near the B.P. Café , the Bryant Park café, which is chock-full with
people, it is like a giant cocktail-party and it is kind of diagonally behind her, everyone is
talking, though one male voice seems to be monologuing away, propelled by alcohol, it
kind of smells like alcohol, a slight whiff, though it must be four or five in the afternoon,
or maybe six, lots of people are walking by, promenading by, she grabs the handle of her
purse, what with her passport, keys, wallet, everything in it, only her metrocard, the
subway card is in her jeans pocket, she is pretty happy, that she put on her toasty black
sweater, with turtle neck, it is pretty cold and breezy here, maybe, with all the tall
buildings around the windblowing is exasperated, she writes away, writes, writes, writes.
All these words, they have to be neatly typed, eventually, at some time, her journal.
She looks up, another person is writing away, in his journal, supposedly, he looks kind of
dumbfounded. The author, of course, dismisses him, because he is “The competition”.
Well, not everybody here is writing “the next big thing”, people seem to prefer to sip
their beverages, feed their kids, walk their dogs, though there are no dogs here, the whole
place has a very strong leisurely aura, the weather is so very nice and lovely, all the
crowds are streaming to this oasis within the city. She ponders, whether she should have
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planned her trip to New York more, well, plannedly, at this point, she merely roamed
around and came upon places by accident. She talked to the people who live here, though,
and was able to navigate her way through this city. Somehow. She really likes it here, in
midtown, it is very cosmopolitan, very far from over the world. United Nationey.
When she looks up, she can see the big white sign with black letters that spell out:
“SUNY- State College of Optometry”. She can see an ornate stone-“thingie” in grey,
which should sit smack on the entrance to the subway station, it is becoming louder
around her, everyone is talking. She seems to be the only one who sits and “talks” to her
piece of paper, but actually so does the model like creature with her laptop at the other
table.
The wind is blowing the whiff of alcohol towards her, which is disgusting, she can’t
stand the smell of alcohol. Too many dogs are suddenly here, and they are all barking.
She has to finish her writing, she has only three more pages to fill up with her
excellent musings. In front of her is an over-sized grey flower pot and a dog owner is
sitting next to her, luckily he left politely, when he noticed that his scrunchy dog was
hovering under his chair. Back to the description of the flowers, blue, red and, of course,
green, for the leaves. The dog-owner is back, with a friend in a pink shirt.
The author changes her seat, she has to concentrate on her last pages, her last words
for the day. She feels like a diligent schoolgirl, sitting here, seriously, studiously putting
down letter after letter, in a foreign language, in a foreign city, in print.
She reads the sign in white letters on blue, that says “polonia” and has a phone
number under it, she looks at the curved building in front of her, that a French tour leader
was discussing with the members of the tour, he was leading, she is writing away,
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amassing all these totally trivial observations about all these strangers, in this very
strange city, where her only friends are all these buildings, her pen, her notebook.
She feels as alienated as the very professional looking photographer-woman, all
clad in black, with black camera-equipment, who very professionally bends down to take
a shoot, she feels as alienated and at the same time very serious, very professional at
dotting down, what goes on around her, she feels that this is her obligation to seriously
document her surroundings at a time when film, photo, word interlace, when audio and 3-
dimensional representation are interlaced, at a time, when new forms of expression are
and should be explored. The city seems to still be the catalysator for individuals to try to
invent and reinvent modes of expression, and she, in her own so very alienated, singular
place, tries to focus on writing down, what she sees and notices, hears and, to use an
overused term, feels, she is partly propelled by the exhibition she saw at the moma this
morning, hints at futurist, fauvist, cubist, fin-de-siecle-explorations, but most of all, it is
the city itself that dictates its story, its stories to her.
---
so this is the week that she will leave this city and make her way either back to
ontario or back to Vancouver, it is very rainy, wet, not pouring, just a wet city, she sits in
the coffeeshop, it is still the morning crowd streaming in, one upon the other, the author
just takes up one seat with her yellow-black polka-dotted umbrella on the ground near
her, smushed between her chair and the milk station, half-opened, half-closed like a giant
yellow flower upside down on the ground with a silvery stem poking out, she has her
blue, slightly wet plasticbag behind her, and her purse hanging, too, all the coffeedrinkers
stand next to her, put sugar or half-and-half in their coffees, people are constantly tossing
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the little sugarbags, a familiar sound, the sugar has to be equally distributed in the little
paperbag, why, is not really evident, would it flow not that evenly if not shaken first?
The author writes away listening to the cranberries, stories of oppression, whining
about suffering, colonialism, taking of the land by power, by force, she has never been to
ireland, but music has definitely helped the IRA make a point, she is not quite sure, if she
knows the politics that well, she is not quite sure if a pen, a song can really forge change,
this romanticized notion that standing up for one’s right will stop brute force, she thinks
about this, while sitting here looking at the green dress of the woman with big white
flowers, she ponders about her own task, the author, that is.
She wrote for close to two months, without pay, without recognition. She wonders,
if that makes her an obvious bum, and if publication of her words, circulating it and thus
creating jobs, would rectify this waste of time, energy, means, that happens when one
merely haults life and scribbles ideas on paper. Like vomit, he said, like vomit. If you just
create without a plan, it is like vomit. Something like that. She has her marble-loaf, her
coffee, tosses the paperbag crumpled up into the hole in the table, move over, shaq, she
sprinkles her observations with forcedly interesting observations, she looks out of the
window, sees part of the new york sports club, she has so much, so very much to write, in
the rain, she has to sit here or somewhere, indoors, write, write, until her hands can’t do
anymore, at least she can look up and see motion, hecticness, which is more than office
workers see inside the cubicle, then again they see their coworkers.
The author tries to write as fast as she can, she still has to clean the small apartment,
pack and repack her stuff, wash the seats, buy a thank-you present, some chocolate, some
alcohol, a whole array of chores to be finished over the next days, while writing all these
notes, amassing all these words.
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The author did not write over the weekend, she went to new haven and listened to
all the presentations in a symposium for art historians, at yale. It was just amazing, so
very good, very intellectual. She is still reeling from it, fascinated by what can be done,
what can be achieved by using words. This is the world, she wants to enter, eventually.
After she graduates from art school, if she ever graduates from art school. At this point,
she is writing away, wondering, if she can edit these her words and, basically, sell them.
Bind them in a book and distribute them, for money. For cold cash. One word, one buck.
What is the market value of words, do monosyllabic words demand a higher price, do
polysyllabic words commands higher remuneration? How much should be charged for
semicolons, what about exclamation marks? A statement condensed into a line and a dot,
a statement, forceful, dramatic. Like the clasp of the heels of the beautiful woman at the
milk-counter.
Are challenging ideas good or pure, old sycophancy? Words, words, power of
words. What about words that just flow along, like a subtle, always moving, harmless
creek. Never standing still, but never making big waves. No high-tide. Stalagmites,
forged by one drop over time. Constant, silent movement, that eventually erodes rocks,
constant motion that moves continents. The author writes, contemplating, well, stuff.
The persons next to her, smush as many expletives, as they can, into their
conversation. The author wonders, what time it is. She should go somewhere else, rest,
change position, start again. There are forty pages to be filled up, still.
---
Eventually, she might name this “the new york chronicles”, pair it with her
“kingston chronicles”, “montreal, vancouver, toronto and train” chronicles, smush them
all into a book and, well, market them, somehow.
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She ponders about that, while she sits here looking at “the breadstix café”, that is
now out of sight with a big, white van in front of it and a police car, a yellow cab. She
writes this down, the scenery changes, in an instant, the café can be seen, again, in all its
glory. The person at the milk counter next to her smells too overperfumed, and he has to
stand here forever, manipulating his cell or i-pod, he left, taking his cell or i-pod, he left,
taking his still lingering smell with him, for the most part. But the disgusting smell is still
bugging the author, it makes her feel nauseated. She will leave. Write somewhere else, all
over this silly town. She is getting tired of her status as a wandering poet, now she starts
offending the city. She takes some phone calls, is not that happy that she can be reached
that easily on her cell, she feels kind of weird starting to yell into her cell in a crowded
public place, in Azeri, she herself does not really like when people use their cells,
anywhere, anytime, but it seems to be part of the culture, especially here, people are
definitely not that anti-cell phonish anymore, it is part of life, she liked the idea of using
Azeri, hey, look, I can use a language that nobody understands, how very elegant/ exotic.
Given that she has a very decidedly plain-jane aura playing up the interest of foreignness
would be definitely good.
People come in, all-rained-in, all with wet umbrellas, the author just writes away,
thankful that no one asks her to leave, as of yet, what with occupying this table for 13
pages straight now, she writes away, hopes that the person next to her will not wet her
page with his super-sized coffee. She should leave. Through the rain, walk through the
rain and find another place to write, another space to pen her masterpiece. She refers to
all her notebooks lovingly as a monumental piece of literature, wondering, of course, if
she might even scratch the surface of literary mediocracy, if her words make sense, if
they are able to adequately illustrate her thoughts, that kind of thing. Her days in this city
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are numbered, she has to get ready for leaving, but she cannot really make herself leave
this her “writing-post” in the coffeeshop, people are taking shelter from the elements
here, all wet, the floor here in this place starts to look like a big amalgamation of
glistening puddles. She will leave now, change will be good. She feels like she is hogging
this chair, this seat, she should wander off, change her place, her space, her pace, and she
notices that she is a poet. She knows it. How very funny, how exquisite a thought. How
eloquent a wordplay. Her days are going by her, she keeps utterly busy, trying to project
the world around her on paper, smush it between the leaves of a notebook, again and
again, like seemingly same-ing snapshots of the same building, reiterating the same
subjectmatter again and again, discussing her pet peeves, with herself, with the world.
---
She is this woman, who sits on the ever-so-moving subway train and writes away,
in the same way that others are reading on the moving train, she puts down all the letters
that she can find, she waits for the train to stop, so that she can write without being
annoyed, outside, in the tunnel, blue lights flash by, the train stops in 23rd. St. and Ely
Avenue, it screeches loudly, very surreal, like a ride to hell. She wonders, where this train
is going. And, there is the answer: Queens Plaza. The train is now somewhere in Queens.
The train stops somewhere in a station called 71st. Avenue, she does not know where that
is, she does not have a map, there are two maps in this car, but people are sitting in front
of them, so she just sits here without orientation, slightly disorientated. The train stops at
a place called union turnpike, two passengers leave. The author just keeps on sitting here,
feeling seasick, trainsick, tries to think of other, less nauseating, things. The station now
is called Van Wyck, but the train just rushes through. She writes, she writes, a red light
goes by, another one, still another one. Sporadically, there are blue ones. The station now
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is called Jamaica- Van Wyck and it is not lit. She should look at the map, to fight
disorientation, to fight the urge to barf all over the floor in this train. Others here are
sleeping, there are only four more people left here, one very scary man, now only two are
left, Mr. Scary and Mrs. Normal. And herself, somewhere in between: the
subwayexploring tourist. On the road to nowhere. The E-train is not necessarily
mentioned in guide books, but it is now commemorated, here in her little notebook, her
seminal text. The author writes away, wondering why the train is waiting for so long in
this one station. Someone says something on the loudspeaker, that she does not
understand. This place seems so desolate. The doors close, the voyage goes on. The train
rumples away, screechingly, loud, hollering. Someone wrote on the walls in the tunnel.
She leaves the E-train, in the last stop, which is called “Jamaica Center” and it says,
“Parsons/Archer” on the outside of the train, too, in the little window, where the
destinations of the trains are displayed. She is wondering, whether she should go out and
explore this place, but she really likes the bench, she is sitting on, it is made out of metal,
it looks nice. Outside it might be raining. She could go back to Manhattan, this train goes
down to the World Trade Center. But she had enough from trainriding, for the moment.
She is no Hobo, or maybe, she is. A modern day Hobo, a poet on a train. Very nice, very
elegant. Jack Kerouac revisited, Jack London, how come, the people who pen certain
genres, are all called Jack? Another E-train comes in, the E-train that goes downtown has
not left yet. She writes away, a woman asks her for directions. These days, everyone asks
her for directions, she must have an aura of knowledge about this city about her. She
always looks like the locals, blends into the background. There is definitely an
explanation for this phenomenon, but she does not really care. At this moment. She
should pick up her stuff and move up the escalator.
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She finds a coffee place where she orders a small tea, with milk, and she has a
black-and-white cookie. She starts writing, while looking out at the rainy street. People
are walking by, all umbrellas, all raincoats, behind her the TV is giving the 12 o’clock
news. It is once more the discussion of construction- accidents which happened all
through this year, cranes collapsing on people, a disproportionate number of fatal
incidents. It has always been one of the major deterrents for the author, to go into the
building industry, this capacity of death-inducing materials, the very real life and death
consequences of mistakes. Human error consequences for a poet are supposedly
miniscule, they are much more grave for someone constructing buildings, real structures.
She looks at the beautiful red-brick church outside of the window, admiring the final,
elegant finished project, but wondering about the blood and sweat that made that
possible. People come into this Java-shop with folded umbrellas. She likes this place, she
likes this table, which is kind of wobbly, but not too wobbly. She has fifteen pages more
to write and she wonders if she can fabricate something deep, delineate something
insightful from very trivial observations, whether the sheer “look” of her black-and-white
cookie in its glistening, light-reflecting plasticbag will make her write good stuff, whether
looking at the lady in her business suit will automatically result in utterly insightful
thoughts, spitted-out truths, that kind of stuffy-muffy. She is back to using terms like
“stuffy-muffy", trying to trivialize the world around her, paying homage to simplicity
slightly near to vulgarity, courting low denominators, trying to simplify the language,
take it away from scholarship.
She knows that language is the same, lingo A though has superiority when
compared to lingo B. Words like “stuffy-muffy” do not necessarily lend themselves to
multifaceted observations they belong into the world of slang, common-people-muttered,
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well, “stuffy-muffy”. Seems everything has to do with hierarchy, hibrow, lobrow and the
mix of these in order to construct style, that is interesting and thoughtful, both at the same
time.
Her tea is getting cold, while the lunch crowd is streaming in, what with the
exacting time of twelve o’clock noon, outside is nothing but rain, she writes her days
away, wondering, whether she is taking up too much space here, her being just a useless
flaneur, a total bum, in this place where everyone seems to have a goal. Even her lunch is
frivolous, sugar en masse, she did not like the sandwiches here in this place, and the cake
was much too yellow, too food-colored, she writes her days away. Next to her people are
talking about court, about CNN, people are discussing current affairs. She looks out at the
rain, she is happy. She looks up at the sign that says “crunch coffee”, she writes away.
The people next to her, talked about Al-Jazeera, wanted to become political, then
stopped, went on to more trivial stuff. They kind of looked around, self-censoring. She is
kind of flabbergasted by the propensity of the people in this city, not to say what they
think, it is as if the media of this country really dictates what people think. This is not
good.
---
The person next to her has a very professional photo apparatus hanging around her
neck, so she will definitely take photos for journalistical purposes, she will take images,
he will write, they are newspeople and very, very young, twenty max, the author prefers
her way of writing, she produces the final draft and sells it afterwards, she does not
answer to contracts, she produces something and sells it later, the problem, though, would
be, if she can’t sell this. A poem, a poem, where one can charge a certain amount per
word. She looks at the sign that says “Fruit Smoothies” and at the other sign, that has the
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image of a sandwich wrap. She is not quite sure, if the place that she is sitting in, is even
conducive to writing, all she can see from here is a street bathed in rain, a religious
building, buses, cars, umbrellas, and feet walking by. The middle is not visible, the part
between umbrella, head and feet, because all the signs are in-between, layering over the
view, obstructing the view. She fishes her cell phone out of her pocket, automatically
pushing the button for the watch. It is 12:49 p.m. and she is not quite sure what the date
is. It is sometime at the end of april, she knows that and her flight back will be on May
1st, worker’s day. She wanted to call it labour day, but she knows that that would be a
different day in this country. May 1st has a slightly communist slant, International day
that commemorates, celebrates, glorifies manual work. Put in place by people like the
author, whose manual labour constitutes whooshing a pen over paper, who flip pages to
write some more, who type, who push buttons on keyboards. The author is happy, she is
finishing page 33, today the ink flows ever so freely, the two-day hiatus has been good
for her capacity to formulate scenes of this city and accumulate them on paper. Behind
her someone bumps his chair into her, which is kind of annoying, especially when she
tries to lean forward, and her black sweater gets caught in the chairs, the person behind
her, though, is totally oblivious, in his own world. Now he is shaking a bottle, which the
author can hear, especially because the woman opposite of him is yelling “Shake the
bottle, shake the bottle”. As long as he does not shake it over her precious War and
Peace-Wannabe, her notebook numero eleven.
People are gathering in front of the counter, all in officey garb, she feels so much
in tune with them, she, too, is sitting in her little office, her mobile office that consists of
the V5 - Precise pen and her eleventh notebook, that is plastered on tables all over the
city, eagerly awaiting to absorb her thoughts, her visual sketches, that are using words
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instead of silhouettes, color, lines. The counter is so very busy, a woman is leaning on the
counter, while ordering. Someone comes in with a suitcase, though there are definitely
much less suitcases here than in chelsea, where everyone seems to be a tourist. People in
this part of town speak English or Spanish, in the coffee shop near the apartment in
Chelsea, people are waving around maps and talking Italian or German. The author
wonders whether her slight caricatures are too simplistic, whether it is enough to take one
strong line in her environment, her environments and highlight that, stress it and interpret
it in her utterly subjective manner. It is now page 36, that is coming to an end, she is
wondering whether she has the stamina, to write through, sprinkle the mundane
surrounding with interest to weave a narrative that manages to incure the visual and
cinematic effects of what she sees. In other words, can she document what she sees as
accurately as a camera could, as perfect as an audiorecorder could. While writing, she
infuses her own world into the subjectmatter, she gives everything her own slant, the
world is documented through her lens. If she would take pictures, the final image would
be slanted by the machine, the camera and the photographer would create reality by
cropping the image, using colored filters or contrast-dulling lenses, by retouching the
image in photoshop. The photographer would manipulate the image at random, but the
final image would look more true to reality, more like recreated reality, less like created
image.
The writer, the author has differing tools, the language does not necessarily have
the same power of persuasion as an image has. The author knows that observations like
this have been and will be worded more eloquently, but she nonetheless takes a stab at
defining the differences between literature and cinema, between word and image, static or
moving. The author feels time standing still, she writes away to, basically, reach the
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finish line, she can feel the hurt in her right arm, her right hand, nonetheless she wants to
finish today’s requirement, so that she can live her life, sightsee, enjoy her last days here,
in this city, she wants to finish the ink in this pen of hers, so that she needs to buy only
one more pen, so that she is finished and done with pen buying, with obsessive, erratic,
never ending page filling. She does not really care about a conclusion, an end, she can
end anywhere, once tomorrow comes, tomorrow’s page forty fills up, automatically, this
story is finished, the last word automatically ends the story, the narrative has to be cut
somewhere, sometime, in midair, it has to still have the flow of the perfect curve, it has to
hint at the propensity to loop into infinity, like a bridge, like an elegant strong line in an
image, like the visual manifestation of a moment in time, like words that further the
flight, the flights of our collective imagination.
The author haults, wondering, pondering, if these are merely wishful thoughts, or
realities, her reality.
---
it is may 1st, she sits in JFK, she watches the little birds fly all over the seating area,
it is inside, an interior, but still there are birds in this waiting hall, someone is feeding
them, the author is kind of tired, and hot, and she feels agitated. She can feel her cheeks
be all red, she looks at the phone card she just tore up. She bought a phone card for five
bucks and wanted to use it up, but everyone was at work and had no time to talk to her
and she does not know anyone who can use it, maybe she should just have given it to
anyone, because it had still 3 bucks and 50 cents on it, she could have given it to anyone,
but that would have been weird, thus she tore it up. She watches basketball on TV, on
two screens, she knows the face of the basketball player, he is famous and she has not
written in two days, this is her last part of her last note book. She feels surreal, not quite
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normal, somehow in transition, she is pissed off that she had to pay 150 bucks for her
overweight luggage, only to find out that she would have to pay only 25 bucks, if she
would have put her luggage into two bags instead of one, she had the luggage originally
in two bags, then she put them into one and gave the other one to the salvation army near
her apartment in chelsea, well, not her apartment, but the one she had lived in for one
month.
The author has all her notebooks in a “Godiva” bag and she will put that in the
overhead and she has to make her way now to the gate, but she does not feel like sitting
there, because she has to wait there, too. Then again, maybe, she should go. The author is
slightly losing her head, she feels so utterly disoriented, dislocated. Looking at her pen
keeps her grounded, familiarity, letters made by her, her own handwriting. A plane
whooshes by. A woman reads something Dutch “Ik noet ye something, something
vertellen” or it could be “je”, basically, the title of her book should mean “I want to tell
you something”, so the woman in her green T-shirt listens to what someone wants to tell
her. As a species we seem to be very eager to talk, and the author sure likes to tell her
banal lifestory to her notebook. “I want to tell you something”. She should find her gate,
though. Stop chatting up the paper. Finish her tea, find a trashcan to put her junk into it,
tea cup, bag, some paper, torn-up phone-card. And then she has to find gate 27. Delta
flight 161. To Salt Lake City.
---
she found her way to the boarding gate. Everyone is still waiting. This hall is so
much bigger than the other one, lots of shops. The author wonders if she should get a
waterbottle, but thinks that maybe not. She has to deactivate her cell. She learned how to
do that yesterday.
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For a second she got scared, she could not shut it down. She has to stop writing, fish
her passport and boarding pass out of her purse. Put her cell in her pocket. Try to not get
a heart attack. What with flying and the notion of planes falling out of the skies. What
with the notion that walking is too much for her, she can hardly handle that anymore. At
her age. Let alone board a plane. She should have taken a train. All the way to Vancitay.
Four days of watching the world move by, roll by. She has to go on the plane now.
---
she sits on the plane now, she would really like to use the facilities, but, given that
she has a windowseat, she must ask the nice lady to let her go through and she does not
really feel like doing that, she fishes her chewing gum out of her purse, she notices
something which she forgot to write down, because she has to get ready for the flite, table
up, buckle up, stopping to write.
---
she is up in the air, with clouds beneath her, she reaches up for the air-conditioner,
she is slightly scared. She detests flying. She has about thirty pages to fill up and what
better than whining. Maybe, in Salt Lake City she’ll just take the train. She knows that
that will not happen. She just hates to fly. And she has to use, well, you know what. And
the college student is now sleeping. The author would like to kill herself, just strangle
herself. It is too hot, she cannot hop over the lady, she should stay put. She cannot fill
thirty pages with talking about, you know, that she has to write something insightful, a
meaningful ending to all her texts, something to pull it all together, a kick-ass conclusion.
But she does not have anything, she looks at her pen, that guides itself over the paper,
without her doing much, the sun shines on her left cheek, the artificial wind from above
does not cool, it just blows her hair into her face, her ear needs swallowing, she still has
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her metrocard in her pocket. She writes, writes, writes. She should move her legs, her feet
what with deep-seated, vein, thrombosis, you know, something, something syndrome.
She feels like she is near to a heart attack. She is sleepy, too. This is not fun. Flying,
flying. There is not much to say, not much to do. Not much to see. She should find the
food menu. Her neighbour brought a starbucks bag. The author did not bring anything.
She feels hungry. Already. Hopefully they provide tomato juice. The author always
drinks tomato juice on planes. Makes her feel grown-up. “I used to fly in the old times”.
Her first flight was in 1963. When she was eight years old. With PIA or PTA, must have
been PIA. A Pakistani airline, the pakistani airline. From Hamburg to Iran. And back.
Yeah, the good old times. When she was sweet and young. Not non-sweet and old. Like
now. The pilot talks a lot about taxi. She likes his voice, his accent. Very matter-of-fact.
Like baseballish. A base-ball-fan. Very middle-america. Unpretentious. At least that is
how he sounds. The woman comes around and gives out the Menu, saying something like
Insider menu or Consider menu or Spider menu. The author wants to lose weight. She
will eat in Salt Lake City. the local fare, something with salt. From the lake. Funny, huh.
The author, the author. Is tired from authoring, put all her notebooks in the crumpled-up
Godiva-bag in the overhead. It might stumble down on someone, if the overhead is
opened. Someone might spill milk on it. She has seen baby milk seep out of the overhead
on people sitting below. The author has put the notebooks in a plasticbag and, after that,
into the shopping bag. But still, the shopping bag is open. Her “war and peace” might get
destroyed, her “dr.zhivago”. No, more “War and Peace”. Or, to quote Elaine “War- what
is it good For? Absolutely nothing.” The author always watches Seinfeld. It has to be
watched. The author hopes for tomato juice. Tomato juice. The lady said something about
food. The author was writing, so she is not quite sure, if there was something said about
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complimentary. A baby cries. Not much, though. Wait, there it is again. The author feels
like having a heart attack. She thinks about today, yesterday, the day before. But she’d
rather reflect this moment in her notebook, inscribing the page in very upright letters
instead of her usual tilted ones. Desperate times call for desperate measures, matters,
something like that. Stiff-upper-lip, hold yourself straight, we might all die. Die. So, pull
yourself together, sit straight. If we plummet to our death, sitting straight will have my
bones in perfect condition. What rubbish, why do we have to fly anyways? People should
walk. No flying. No modern stuffy-muffy. Good old times. And where is the tomato-
juice. She is on page sixteen, so she still has to put down fourteen pages, no, twenty-four
pages. Make that twenty-two. She used up two pages for other purposes. Outside there
was a line of a cloud, the same kind one sees in the sky behind an airplane. She hates
flying. Hate, hate, hate. Pure and simple. Hate, hate, hate. She has to bring these
notebooks back to vancitay, all eleven of them. Type them out. That will take all summer.
Boring, boring. Or she might just toss it into a landfill. Into the recycling bin. Into
something. False Creek. Let’s see what we can do. Tomato juice, tomato juice. This is all
so very mature. What time it is? The woman with the food is still so very far away. And
she might have complimentary tomatojuice or she might not.
The author notices, that a plane ride is so utterly non-conducive to writing, so
very much on the boring side. People are just sleeping. The author just wishes she was
dead. Not that dead, though. Not the scattered into a thousand little pieces- dead. More
the whining, rhetorical dead. And the author does not even know, if using the word
rhetorical makes any sense here. It just sounds good. And that is what counts. After all.
The author wishes to express her innermost thoughts, feelings. The woman beside
her went to the restroom, so the author sprints after her. The author still does not know,
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where it is restroom, where washroom. I guess, in canada one rests. In Farsi, the same,
actually in Azeri, too. But, then again, Azeri borrows it from Farsi. And Farsi might have
borrowed it from Arabic. Then again, maybe not. The language purists might scold her.
The author writes, writes. She watches out of the corner of her eyes someone
trying to fix the airconditioner- buttony- thingie, a woman with long hair, big nose and
golden blouse comes by, the baby makes noise, very happy, la-la-la, la-la, la. Where is
the tomatojuice? Outside Clouds. The author can do without that view. Clouds are
scary, they look benign, but they are filled with H2O. The author really manages to come
up with profound observations, thrilling associations, word- associations, that is. She
cannot really write while fear for life, fear of death is gnawing at her bones from inside.
She wonders where the location of fear is? In the tip of her nose, on the most outer edge
of her honker? And is it honker or hunker? Or something else. This is what happens when
tomato juice is lacking in the system. Words do not fall into place, not into their right
rightful places. They gibber down into gibberish.
The author prefers to write about buildings, structures. She likes to describe things
she can see, she can make out with her eyes. She ponders about non- narrative lines,
linear piling up of words, mounting escalating tirades with strong, abrupt valleys, the
conducting of a beautiful symphony of words, utterings, mutterings, silent moments,
long, self- reflecting pauses, staccato. Rhythm. Like buildings, like the buildings in a city.
A cityscape, any cityscape. Industry manifested. The author still did not hunt down
“Delirious Manhattan- a retroactive manifesto” and maybe she never will. She used to
read parts of “City in Motion” by Nigel Coates, use his wording in so many of her early
works in artschool. In essay after assay, in animations, in presentations. She based her
whole artstudent career on his book, his books. She is drawn to the place, the space, the
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locale, where film, art, architecture, design, math, intersect. Where science meets art,
where they say hi, nod to each other. She would like to use better words, concise ones,
correct ones. Words, that make a perfect line, a perfect curve. That exact.
She misses something. Anything. Time stands slightly still. The tomatojuice is
coming.
---
she is finally in salt lake city, sitting near to a big clock, that shows the time: 8:33,
she still has to write, write until she finishes today’s requirement, she can see the airport
directory from here, something purple and blue and white on it, it is a really good map, as
she can see from here, good, concise, wayfinding system, everything here seems pretty
clear and concise, big on contrasting colors, idiot proof, but that is actually a derogative
term, the author means positivity, her first impression is well-planned, so did the city
itself look from the air, well-planned, on a grid, and the salty lake was impressive. A
horrible creature sat next to the author for a short, a very short while, an utterly rude,
obnoxious one, the author is still flabbergasted.
The author looks at the trash can, that is in front of her, to the right, to the right, it
says recycles, no, SLC recycles in big letters, very, very good, NYC was pretty horrible
in recycling, SLC seems to be much more west-coasty, with the total normalcy of
environmentalism, a total mainstreaming of the “green” consciousness. And these are the
observations of a person that arrived here about half an hour ago, is sitting on a bench in
the airport, in the transit section, has talked to one person, went to one washroom, who
needs real engagement with a culture, when snap judgements, in a quarter of a second,
can do.
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The author writes away, has no time to explore, she can see a framed poster
depicting something brown- beige, very tasteful, she can see a stand that says premium
chocolate- a little bite, and looks nice, she can see the very nice, very bauhausy white
partition, a woman who recycled and looked nice, the clock that now says 8:49, she can
see Millcreek coffee, from here, where she would like to have coffee, she can see a white
bench, that is nice, a shiny surface, and at this time everything here seems nice, clean,
fresh. The pilot said that salt lake city had snow today, it is May first, so the author, is not
quite sure whether she heard right. The author should look for her gate, she should have a
coffee, she should explore, she could write. She feels compelled to finish this notebook,
write as fast as she can, with letters as big as a house, well, that is partially a metaphor,
the clock is 8:45, the numbers are red, lit, in black background, forcing the author to write
fast, strong words, she likes the ATM- machine, which looks artsy-fartsy, people speak
italian, the author writes, looks at the red dots in her notebook, where the red cover shows
through the three holes, the author should look for her gate, she finished page twenty-
eight. Hooray.
She can see Yovana Cinnabon from here, a man in green, who scratches his chin,
the author can see the people who are coming into the airport from here, as they are
inspected, searched.
---
she sits down in this tiny, tiny aircraft to fly back to Vancitay, it is so very tiny, she
wonders how long the flight will be, how much the elements will throw her through the
sky, she hates flying, as was stated before, but at least she can write away, briskly, very
fast, the plane is still boarding, people are still streaming in, pushing their bags into
overheads, she has the airconditioner stream exactly onto her hair, onto her scalp, she
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feels weird taking notes here, but no one seems to mind, everyone is wearing red, pink,
strong pink, light pink, four females all around the author are in different shades of red,
the author writes very fast, very brisk, she can still see the reflection of her notebook in
the window with the pen flowing over it, ten pages to go, the flight is one hour and
seventeen minutes, something like that, she could write more, once she is back at YVR.
The author feels so very homesick, right now, right here, so very far still, so very near.
Flying agitates her, tears hauntedly at her nervestrings, she scrambles around for finding
ever more strong words to seize the moment, describe these her last minutes of this
voyage, she tries to quiet her fears, her anxieties, she wonders how people feel, who do
this for a living, flight attendants, pilots, day-in, day-out. Connections or something, the
woman in the uniform says, the author writes away, looks out at parked white cars,
baggage-cars, or service cars, they are all white, it is dark outside, but well-lit. The author
means that it is night, but the surface, the pavement is well-lit. The author has problems
with her words now.
---
Up in the air, it is dark outside, she can see the reflection in the window even
more pronounced, slightly yellow, her hand writing, the pen very pronounced moving,
kind of jittery, the reflection seems so much more pronounced, the pen very fast, very
strong writing, she tries to put as many pages down, she does not really feel like holding
her journal in her hand once she is back, where home is now, she will end her story here
in the air, up in the air, sentences that glide over the paper, mush together in hopefully
perfect unison, whatever that means, she is pretty happy that eleven notebooks are filled,
to the rim, editing will come later, the draft is down and that is all that matters, the
abstract is in her head, abstract for non-narrative, wanna-be scholarly treatise, the words
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that cascade on each other, trying to forge meaning into thin air, out of thin air, trying to
trace blueprints for meaning, meanings, for insight, but first and foremost recapturing of
reality at a time when image is paramount, where a cell phone can take a film, pin down
reality, document it for posterity, at this time, words have to and should mimick cinema,
film, cinematic elements in use of language can and should enrich the language, any
language.
The author haults, insights have to wait, tomato juice and crackers are served.
That is more important. At this time. Writing has to wait. For now, that is. She stretches
her sentences anyways, writes pure rubbish just to fill the pages. It is not good, not good
at all. Then again, vancouver is somewhere down there, Kits, Kerrisdale, False Creek,
everything and anything that a city should be. And her own bed.
The author writes as fast as she can, given that the airplane is roaring away, given
that there is not much light, given that the letters are starting to swim. It is late at night for
her, she doesn’t really know, if it is 2 or 3 at night. Something like that.
---
The author looked it up, it is ten to eleven here on the westcoast, so she would be
on ten to two east coast time, in the middle of the night. The apartment in chelsea should
be by now inhabited by its real owner, she misses the light in the apartment, the place
which is basically so much part of the street, facing the narrow street, where light from
the street lights is everywhere in the room, where the plant is omnipresent, the plant
smack in the middle of the room.
Outside the airplane roars, her last sentences are put down on the paper, her hand
flies, leaving sporadic sketches of ink, heaping thin traces of black, lines, line upon line
on the last pages of this her eleventh notebook. She wrote all winter, all spring, all of
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winter and spring. Starting 2008 like this, writing and drawing, uploading animations,
submitting her “all of winter 2008- shorter version” to the NFB-shorts-contest and the
mobile phone animation site. And she wrote, all through Vancouver, all through Toronto,
through Kingston and Montreal, through New York City, through train and plane,
airports, subway stations, streetcorners, through Brooklyn and Queens. It was fun and
utterly exhausting. The life of a flaneur, or so they used to call it. She observed protests at
Columbia, she watched the day go by on princess street. Through it all, she tried to hone
her craft, to develop writing. As a woman at a table in a small bakery on 9th and 23rd.
said to her friend: “I think one should just start writing and see where it takes you”, as the
writing on the wall of the clinton elementary school for writers and artists, the one
outside of the apartment with the tree inside of it stated “When we write, when we read,
we become heroes, we grow wings, we go to places, we have never been and we will
never be”, as she wrote away on benches in subway stations like the dislocated lunatic
she was, she created a world of awe, while she watched where her pen was taking her. All
the buildings, she saw, all the hustle and bustle, the hecticness, all the rush and the
silences, the pauses, of so many people, all the quietness, the land, the nature, she
observed from the train, while crossing from east through west, all of this is sketched
down in all these books, on all these pages, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter,
because the journey, the voyage, the process was, what was fun, the sheer excitement of
grappling with all these words, all these ideas, day-in, day-out, all these moments, all
these songs of a city, all the silence of the land, all through winter, laying over, playing
over into spring of this year, of 2008.
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Storis of East - November 2010 Version REVISED

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Storis of East - November 2010 Version REVISED

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stories of east nasrin khosrowshahi

ever so subtle shades and light, it is as if I am watching a movie while I type my

future. I don’t really like that idea. I hate heat.

reality. I used to be an animator, in a different lifetime, meticulously drawing motion,

lunch. Wonder what the specials are today.

printing card. If, when, or something like that.

existence. In order to give the staccato of banality a hiccup.

make sense of my surroundings.

that has not yet been imagined before. Futile endeavours.

by whoever has the power to grade her.

in Ontario, somewhere in Toronto. Vancouver is so very vary far away.

changing color and becoming ultimately dust.

parkingstatues. I will miss it. I will.

beside me is embroidering, brown lines on beige surface, linebased drawings, and I

trees, stylized, barren.

environment, totally industrial cubicle, using a pen made somewhere in a plant,

It is later in the evening and we stopped 4 a while in a place named Capreole.

A really nice and friendly metaphor, this.

bored. On the train from Tdot to vancouver. February 2008.

Somewhere in Saskatchewan or maybe already in Alberta, the white field that

resolution of answers, miraculous dissolve of unanswerable questions, quiet going away

animations to be drawn, so many theories to be plucked apart, so much to learn. So very

nothing to do with her.

common inhumanity. A pun. Funny, huh? The train numbs my perception, my

willingness to explore different avenues of thought. I rehash what I thought before in 52

binder, another notebook. To chart my thoughts, to jot down observations to listen to

mentioned beforehand. Edmonton, here I come. Edmonton, home to the West-Edmonton-

Where is the address?

discrimination here. I will go for illustration at Risd. Or something. My pen should be

somewhere, this pen doesn’t do it. Observations, observations. I am bored to death by my

up after midnight. My oh so favourite prof. accused me of arrested development and then

fellow student said that, very wisely, very convincingly.

Trees outside are so fascinating, no leaves whatsoever. I am feeling kind of

Today we will go to Jaspers and Kamloops.

best, dreams carved in ballpen, whatever that means.

panics easily on a train – on a plane – in a car - Easily mortified – easily amused –

of social awkwardness – of bonding and fear of strangers – This notebook was my

and try to edit this journal in a cohesive manner.

–hell’s gate is coming up. ahh.

Finally, so back home, so very much surrounded by familiarity, so pemberton, bc,

Boy, do I resent travelling!

a semester off. She prefers to write anyways. Who wants to be an animator?

expertises in scholarly English and monkey bar English.

screen from here.

she's pretty”, now silence.

She is feeling chilly and cold.

She has to proofread this.

January morning in Vancouver, British Columbia. In front of computer clib15 with a

to her, she is typing in her pinnumber.

upon adventure and a typewriter listening anxiously.

Endless passages about the dilemmas, the problems of writing.

something at every street corner. Green, liberal, who cares.

take transit. Whatever.

She is utterly annoyed at everything. Her writing happens to be substandard, and

now. This is life. I guess.

on the artsy fartsy side, who knows?

what she does. Before going to the market.

matter and content.

to be translated into Dutch or Chinese, to be read by strangers somewhere far away.

analyses of her words and sentences, understanding, misunderstanding.

word after word after word.

despair, dislocation and disillusionment put down on tabloidlike newspapers, smushed

there is something reminiscent of Olympia everywhere. Around her. Everywhere she