and amsterdam by nasrin khosrowshahi

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

she sits down in the slightly sticky college cafeteria, she starts writing. Her pen is black, a not very comfortable ball pen. Next time she will opt for a slender model that fits perfectly into her right hand. She feels her hand cramping up already. But she goes on writing, writing, writing. This is what she will do for all of august, write and write and write some more. All thru her trip, her journey, her voyage. But today she is still in Vancouver, there are bags to be packed, passport and money to be put into a purse, there are loads of laundry still waiting to be processed. Processed, what a weird word for an utterly banal endeavour. She ponders, if she will still be able to write, as good as before, as bad as before. This will be her third book, as unpublished as her two previous ones. Well, she typed them out, printed them out, bound them @ kinko’s. She sent her first manuscript to a publisher in boston. She crosses her fingers, reluctantly. Last year she sent the same manuscript to two printers in town, one in gastown, one on main. She got two rejection letters. Hey, we are going somewhere. She ponders, how many rejection letters she will garner. Ah, there is always self publishing. There is “scribd”. Besides, with publishing there is the “editing” problem. She has to arm wrestle people over each comma, each and every apostrophe. Online she can do whatever she feels like. It is oh so very hot. Fuckin’ heat-wave. People walk by. She should describe them, but does not feel like it. Writing comes so very clumsily to her, like meat balls in gravy. She has used this metaphor before last year. There is a saying about artists stealing from themselves, something, something. Some Thing. She feels slightly nauseated, breathing is tough in this sticky air. She yelps. There is another more accurate word, sighing maybe, moaning, maybe. But yelping? She prefers “yelp”.

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

Langara is pretty desolate, 7 individuals in this so very big hall. Lots of chairs, lots and lots of tables and only 7 persons. It is quiet, studious. She was in metrotown, loud-ness, sea of humanity, that kind of thing. The antithesis of this place. Here, though, the screaming of the air-conditioner is deafening. And pretty useless, too. It is 4:30, she could still go to oakridge and then go home. She ponders, if nonvancouverites will understand the locales, she mentions. As if it matters. As if anything matters. It is far too hot, she is exhausted. She was in the fitness center in kits for 4 hours, make that 3 and a half. A security guard walks by. She could go out to the lobby, which is so much cooler. But then, there is no table there. She should figure out, how to use her laptop in public places. Using a ballpen is so yesterday. She is hungry, the black clad student to her left is munching a sandwich. The security guard is once more approaching. The Tim Hortons to her left is closed. The people at the other table are sharing an ice-cream. She will get one, too. Paper, wait here, till I come back. She is back at the table with her ice cream. Nobody will ever read this. She should document important stuff, not each and every one of her personal moves. She ponders, if this will constitute the musings of a “flaneuse”. She read of someone’s dissertation about the lack of original accounts by flaneuses. Only flaneurs count. Something like that. Something like that. Her teeth shiver, she has much too many ice-creams these days. She lives on ice cream, on chocolate, on donuts. On coffee. On peppermint tea. Her hair falls out in bushels. Could be menopause. Could be vitamins. Who cares.

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

Hm, this is more than she should divulge. She should discuss important things, not her own immediate surroundings. She should non-ramble. Assemble perfect story arcs. Grip the attention of the viewer. Don’t make them, keel over with boredom, don’t shoot for slightly snoring readers. Loudly snoring readers. Writing, writing. Could be fun. Perfecting words, exacting sentences. Wordsmithing. Huh! In Chapters, in metrotown, she fumbled thru the classics. Well, after informing herself about the newest fitness craze, right under the “Chapters thanks you for not taking unpaid for reading material into Starbucks” sign. Anyhoo, she read thru Machiavelli’s life description, Jane Austen’s, Charlotte Bronte’s. They did not use typewriters, did they? She should really try to find out when typewriters were invented. They definitely existed in Henry Miller’s times, she loved “Henry and June”. Not for the not-so-kosher parts, though they were, of course, fun, too, but for his stabbing away at the type-writer, his constant hammering away at the, well, not keyboard, maybe, tastatur, the obsessive homestretch, and the final manuscript, which he binds with a string, like a package and plunks it down on Anais Nin’s doorstep. At least that is how she remembers it. Yep, writing. She could write more about writing, endlessly. Writing, writing, writing. “On Writing”. There are texts by that title, even james joyce wrote about “the author as a young man”. Or something like that. Who knows. 3

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

What bugs her as a writer is the divide between Chicklit and masculine, more serious lit. Women write about romance, men do not. What a crock. Guys happen to be much more vulnerable in lovey, dovey affairs. They jump off a bridge more easily. Maybe not. Who knows. There are no research data available. Maybe there are. It is really hot. She should have another ice-cream. She might have a heart-attack. How much sugar, how much fat can one body process. She moves to the lobby, plunks herself on one of the green benches. People stream out of the lecture room, loud, happy, pensive. Two women observe her writing. She feels like a freak. A performer. A girl in braids marches by. Literally. Like a happy smiling soldier. She should have another ice cream. She ponders if she should be more careful with her pronouns. She, she, she. It is now 9 past 5, on a saturday, on august 1st., in langara college, in vancouver, british columbia, in canada, yeah, yeah, yeah, she could fill this page with descriptions of locales, ad nauseum. -----------------------------------------She is having another ice cream. That is why she is so uberfat. Not slender. Not thin. Fruits and vegetables, that is where it is at. This cannot be good. She should at least go for a walk. Around the golf place. It is too hot, though. So, she’d better sit here and pen this. She could describe this hall, this table. The blue recycling bin. The banner that reads “recyclerecycle-recycle. - Langara College - The Langara College Recycling Bursary stands at” and then

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

there is an address. She is not quite sure, if she is reading it right, she sits too far away from the banner. Her teeth are, once more, too icy, she should stop biting into these drumsticks. She should buy some ice cream, that she can lick. Like the woman in front of her. Then again, that ice cream seems to be full of blue food coloring. She ponders, if she should not skedaddle into scholastic writing. She starts counting her calories. Today, she must have eaten near to 3000 calories. But she exercised for 3 hours. Somehow this should even out. Somehow. Fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables. She used to be a good writer. When did this all dumb down. How come, the author lost it? She used to be a good writer. Maybe, if she repeats that long enough, the right words will descend upon her, onto the page. She ponders, if she should find a literary agent. She should email her editor in boston. By now, he should have received her manuscript. He seemed really nice, he is @ MIT for 30 years now. He should be as old as her, give or take some. She tells herself that she should not write about her struggles with writing, with getting published. She might offend someone. Or not. She should become a film maker. Or not. A nurse. Or not. This is getting silly. It is too hot. Her finger hurts. She has to stop. ----------------------------------------------------------

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

Tomorrow she will write better. Much, much better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Outside, near the water, it so idyllic. Cars drive by on 49 th., birds fly by. She writes some more. So she might never find a reader. Does it really matter? What matters is this her moment demarking her moments on this planet. She could write all day long, only the seeping hurt in her finger makes her stop. Make her hault writing in order to observe. To listen. To look at the duck in the pond smushing its head into the water. Ah, bliss. Something like that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------It is sunday. It is August 2nd. It is summer 2009. she is sitting all by herself in the basement of the AMS - building, @ UBC. There is ”The Little Tea Shop”, there is the “IRSA” sign, the “SELF SERVE COPIES 5 c “ sign , neony, backlit. 2 persons walk in, a math teacher, his student. The math teacher is always here, this is where he tutors, year-in, year-out. The same way, that she is here, year-in, year-out, writing, editing, drawing. No compensation yet, though. This place is pretty cool, cool as in physically cold, a kind of scary refuse from the heat. Scary in its solitude, desolation. A room with chairs, tables, computers, yellow stabs of light on the ceiling. Light reflections on the waxed polished linoleum floor, black, red, white. Today she will “hop” on the train bound for toronto, 4 days on the train. Ah, fun. Moving, moving, moving. She is still happy here on solid ground, relishes the static stillness. Her right thumbnail pierces her middle finger, she should trim it. The nail, that is. 6

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

Someone walks up the stairs, someone clatters over the linoleum. Someone asks for the Rec Center. Doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like her answer. Someone microwaves behind her. She hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even noticed the two microwave ovens. The microwave bell chirps. A father with 3 children comes in. The air conditioner is deafening. Which is good. It is cool here. She ponders. Why is this ball pen so squirmy @ dispensing ink. All her letters are hardly visible. She has to extra-force the pen onto the paper. She has bought 3 note books with 200 pages each. That should take her to Toronto. She still has to edit her first manuscript. This better be good, this writing endeavour. This is getting slightly redundant, writing. Book 1, book 2, book 3. Journaling away. She still has a slight headache. Luckily, knock on wood, she is not a headache person. But once it hits, it knocks her out. Makes her barf. Lingers on for 2 days. She should pack a plastic bag. For barfing on the train. Several plastic bags. She should write about bigger issues, peace, war, politics, environment. She should sing about misery, about Love. S-E-X maybe. She smiles. It is 12:30, a pink girl is moving thru the copy place. pink shirt, pink hat, very pink. Her wallet is pink. Ah, the pronoun does not match. She still should write. Has to write. She will have a tea, peppermint with a Brazil Crunch Cookie. So very AMSy. ---------------------------------------------------she now sits in front of the large window, that looks out @ shadowy trees. music in the back, peppermint tea in front of her. Very, very blissy, blissy-esque. Peace, Calmness, some harmony, not-yet-boring. Not deafening peace-ful mess. The right mix of solitude and sporadic people. Someone sneezes. Twice.

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

A person in green walks out the door. Laid back, west coastish. Ah, a summer day @ ubc. With peppermint tea. She parks her heavy boots on the brown plank, that constitutes the â&#x20AC;&#x153;coffee tableâ&#x20AC;?. The tea table. With peppermint tea. With cream in it. Omgwd. Who will ever publish this? Let alone read it. She should skedaddle back to animation. She must be the only trained animator who ended up writing. Trained animator. Sounds kind of pretentious. Sounds bloody good. Above her there is this pancake like grey-black earth hanging. Yep, she is as good an animator as any. As good a writer as any. Sans viewership, sans readership. She herself knows about her oeuvre. And then there are the 5 blogs, that no one ever reads. Except herself. Oh well, so we have marketing probs. In the end, there will be readers, viewers. Every written word will finally hunt down its readers. She could pay people to read this. Somehow she has an inkling that that is not how it works. Readers pay for books, not authors pay readers to read their books. Must have something to do with capitalism. Ah, the day marches slowly forward. Music plays, louder, faster. A bike rolls over the shadowy green. Red leaves move in the breeze. And the music gets louder. Cheezier too. ------------------------------------------------------She is now sitting in the library. It is still quiet, people are sitting here, quietly. She ponders how to describe stagnation. How to muffle the words, make them stand still. How do you describe a gummi plant? The stairs. The roundish table. The woman upstairs. How do you describe stickiness. Hot summer ness? Librarian talkativeness. How do you cut thru boredom with a butter knife? Writing she must. With hurting fingers. Writing she must. There is no way around it. No Exit. Words have to be mumbled onto the paper, splashed into it, inscribed, 8

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

inscribed. Hacked into the surface. Words have to make the moment stand still, for a short, short while. Lingering, longing. ------------------------------------it is two ten. She sits in the Tim Hortons on dunbar, suddenly lots of refugees from the hot sun stream in, old, young, it is the perfect sunday distraction. Outside the sun shines, glimmers, it is fascinating to bask in the sun from here, in the shadow, in the highly airconditioned tea shop. Always a tea shop, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather have tea. Honey cruller. A beautiful woman in pink and black, long, pitch dark hair, glasses on her nose is reading. Read what i write, read what i write. Some souls read, some souls write. She ponders why she uses a word like soul, must be her advanced age, judgement day nearing, spirituality, now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time 4 cramming to pass if there is another world. Her friend, agnostic 2 the bones, is picking up a dark blue koran. Oh, otherworld. Cars drive by on dunbar, her tea is getting cold, she wrote enough. for now. FOR now. ----------------------------------------------she should go 2 the fitness center, she should pack some more exercise into her body, that will be sitting for four days straight, what with constipation and all. She should skedaddle away from disgusting lingo, only describe shiny, technical, inanimate, non-organic motions, functions, materials. Hers should be highly sanitized, abstract language, next to Mathematics, logic, pragmatism. Chicks should be extra vigilant with the words they use. No emotions, no emotions. Cold as ice. Over compensation dares to rule. -----------------------------------------------

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

It is nine in the evening. She is sitting waiting for her so very delayed train. Everyone is sitting here in this â&#x20AC;&#x153;loungeyâ&#x20AC;? place waiting, waiting. There is a band playing, singing, it is like an outdoorsey cafĂŠ here. The adventure is starting. Someone is smoking. The music is pretty catchy. Hardly anyone takes the train anymore, especially from Vancitay to Tee dot, 4 days on a train for 300 bucks, they are playing a song, everyone her age recognizes it, reacts. Must suck to play here or not, what difference does it make for a musician, some small train lounge, some big concert hall, it is like writing, who cares, if anyone will ever read this, as long as she is happy doing this, as long as all these letters flow over onto this page. No wonder Via Rail was on strike, the group using this train here is miniscule. --------------------------------------------------------------------and now she is sitting in the train, happy that there are other people too going a long way, even longer than her, all the way to Halifax. She has no clue why she was not allowed to take her suitcase as a carry-on on this train, there is plenty, plenty of space. She was asked to check her suitcase in, which does not really make sense, because there is more than enough space. Guess, rules are rules, her suitcase did not fit into the measurement thingie. At this point she feels kind of spaced out, everything is surreal, dreamlike and she is loving every minute of it. Everything is strange, dream-like, she is guarded, slightly afraid to talk to strangers. She should read the magazine in front of her, start walking around this train, Explore it, she kind of feels she should stay put. Somehow she is baffled @ how very, very miniscule the passenger group in this train is, how do people go to kamloops, to Jaspers, Banff, Edmonton? Car or airplane. She loves a train ride more, she has all the time in the world. The One-Way-Tic was pretty expensive, though she thought it was a steal, 300 bucks instead of 700, but still air would have cost less. Maybe not, this is high season, august, she feels kind of shy, not that good @ making friends. 10

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

The train was supposed to leave the station @ 8:30, it must be ten by now. Nobody knows, why it takes so long. There is a silvery train outside, glistening. There are people talking, chatting. She writes, she writes, she writes. Something is wrong with the little lever that moves her chair back and forth, she does not really feel like moving it anymore, because it seems to get stuck. She should write, she should take off her shoes, she has a hole in her socks. She feels kind of disoriented, she is slightly pissed off. Something is slightly off, she smushed, all her stuff from her suitcase into the carry-on and it bothers her that somehow all her stuff is smushed together @ random inside of the blue carry-on. Nothing neat, she is getting slightly paranoid. Which is so weird, disorganized is her middle name. Somehow this journey is throwing her off-kilter, even before it started. Nothing seems to be falling in place, everything is slightly weird. All these strangers on this strange train. It is as if someone pulled the rug from under her. She has to ground herself somehow, try to find a routine in this train. She should write, write, write some more. The air conditioner is working very good here, last time she used the train she was wearing croqs. Her feet start hurting, she is uncomfortable, feels desolate, disoriented. This is not that good. She does not have enough light to write and read anymore. So she just writes. Editing can wait. For now. It is pretty tiring here. Sitting and not moving. Why is this train not moving. What is wrong? What? What, what? Somehow she should finish this her writing. Tiredness sets in. She hates, hates, hates Travelling. To be so very far from the everyday. She misses Seinfeld. -------------------------------------------------For some weird reason the train is stuck here in this station, non-moving. She writes to tame the boredom, to play against the ghosts. She could describe the visuals, the audio, the

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

mesmerizing black shadow of her ball pen piercing the paper, the very textured shadow against the paper, which could be caused by the chain link fence outside. All the knobs make the light on the paper kind of knotty, knotty shadows. The train moved forwards, only to move back into the station again. It smells slightly weird. She ponders why she still writes. Ah, why not? On the other side of the street she can see a 530 on the wall, skinny trees around it, she writes, writes, writes. The moon is in the sky, not full moon, not half either. A very non-moonish moon. She can hear a child snore, she feels that she does not want to write anymore. ---------------------------------------------The train is just staying in the station, somewhere behind a car-dealership, somewhere waiting. She should walk thru this place instead of stagnating down here on her seat, stopping motion. She could move, she should move. Instead of pinning down letters in the semi dark. -----------------------------------it must be monday morning, it is so very beautiful on the train, vista, view, spectacularness of the morning. a small yellow cab within cliffs, the sun not yet that risen, the water, the spectacle of nature, mesmerizing, people photographing, the beauty, the beauty. Somehow she gets bored of watching this, she does not feel like just gazing, there should be more to do than just staring, somehow she does not feel that overwhelmed, feels slightly underwhelmed, anxious, too. She does not really know, how to react, sharing the beauty with total strangers. Documenting pristine nature. Something is missing. Could be the brown water in the sink of the train washroom, how is she supposed to brush her teeth? She cannot take a shower, which ilks her. No first morning gym. How is she supposed to get her exercise. She is used to moving, moving around vigorously, first thing in the morning, she likes her morning 12

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

coffee, all her routines are off-kilter, so she complains to her notebook. When she used to write last year, she would cut the so very personal out of her writing, now the whining is taking over. Is it true, that every artist has one masterpiece to produce and that is it, perfection can be attained only once, then you have to move on, conquer a different field. If you paint, you can only duplicate what you did before, produce a lesser version of your best piece. Only one perfect Vermeer forehead per person. Or is it totally different, is each newer version a better version, a slightly more complex, ever so slightly more masterful, more skilful construct. Do we have only a set set of cards we can deal? Or are there infinite ways to arrange and rearrange small units, be it words, lines, flecks of paint, be it notes, sounds, be it ideas, mangled up, cut up, crunched into each other, smushed together to quiveringly hold onto each other. So many realities, so many possibilities. She feels like a so very reluctant philosopher queen, writing away while her surroundings change constantly, whittle her thru nature, while she is moving slowly towards the east coast of Canada. She does not know if she is still in b.c. or whether the train is now going thru alberta. She could ask someone, but, hey what is in a name? As far as she is concerned, it is all summery vegetation. “Walhachin” says the CN sign she passes. “Walhachin”. A dump truck passes by, silvery glistening. --------------------------------------------------------Outside water, hills, birds. Outside beauty. How come no one uses the train in this country. How come everyones uses the train in Switzerland, in Japan. Is it the long-distance 13

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nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

factor? No, it is not that. It is just the fashion of each and every particular country. Our communal instinct. She. Someone suggested that she should name this her third book: “She”. “She revisited”, “Accounts of She”, that kind of thing. It is always “she”. She who moves between cultures, from world A to world B. She, who is slightly identityless. Especially when being a transient. A passer-thru. On her way from West to East. No home, no tomorrow. A passport in her bag. Which means a lot. Gone are her no-passport days. She must be really something now. Ah, she attained proper documentation. How utterly nice. When she smushed herself into the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco, stroller in hand, the guy said: “So, what passport do you have?”- “Iranian” “Well. before I even consider giving you a Visa, you must bring this, this, this…” BEFORE I EVEN CONSIDER- funny, this is how we divide this planet, there are papers, that cut it, papers that don’t, non-papers. There are winners and losers, Powerfuls and non-powerfuls, but the nature is the same 4 all of us. The view is there. If you are lucky enough, to have your eyesight intact. The water slowly is straddled by the breeze, the train is standing still. No one lives here. She misses her shower. She should go and have a breakfast. She should do this, do that. She does not have a watch, it should be around 8 o’clock. It is morning, she can see that. She writes, writes, writes. And writes some more. ----------------------------------------------------------and now she is in the lookout wagon, has a free coffee that is slightly too cold, she writes, writes, writes. ----------------------------------

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

so now she knows where she is: kamloops. kamloops, kamloops, kamloops. she has been here before. 14 years ago. Oh, where has the time gone. Or better, what did she achieve? Absolutely nothing. Hey, we are just doing time here on this planet. She actually was here last year, a 30-minute train stop in the early morning, while it was still dark. Ah, she contemplates. Sees herself in context to the world around her. She counts her days on her fingers. This is how old i am, this is how young i am. Maybe, women are so much more into age. Their bikini-figure whittles @ age 17. Everyone goes out for a walk around kamloops station. So stop writing. For now. For now. ----------------------------------------------------she now sits in the observation deck. she has a place on the too hot side, too hot, too hot. The more shadowy side has hand bags, people’s stuff, so she thinks that she cannot sit there. She watches her pen, the shadow of her hand and the pen shadow which hobbles up and down, she can see the reflection of her notebook and her hand in the glass to her right, she can see the image of her blue lined note-book, with its glistening wires at the book-spine, she can see her hand with the black, skinny ball pen, part of her tea shirt, part of the sea horse on her black shirt, she can see the image of her coffee paper cup, the two leaf-logo thereon and all of that in front of the granite, the cliffs, the forest behind it. She writes, she writes. People stream in, talk, talk, talk. Instant companion-ship. On a train bound east. She would really like to pen “war and peace”. Here in her spare time. On the train. She would really like to grab the perfect lingo out of thin air. Here in the look-out wagon of the via rail train. Here somewhere between Vancitay and Teedot. She has one too many coffees. Getting slightly nauseated. Tough to pen “war and peace”. Who made “war and peace” the gold standard of literary pursuits? Who defines masterpiece A and pits it against masterpiece B? Who categorizes shitty art and pits it against 15

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nonshitty art? Who are the classifiers? The hierarchy setters? Who? Who? Who? Obviously not the ones, who ask who. Not necessarily the ones, who ask who.The ones from Oomba-Loomba land. She just wanted 2 use the word oomba-Loomba land. The girl she met on the train used the term. Or something of that kind. Oomba, Loomba, maybe a technical term straight out of WillieWonka, chocolate factory, that kind of stuff. She writes, writes, writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------“My life” - How about that for a title 4 this her manuscript. “Working title” - I guess that means a title for a book or a film or a music piece that is still under construction. Buildings don’t have working titles. They usually are named way before conception. There is a relationship there to be analyzed. But she feels slightly too off kilter to analyze in depth. To find analogies, relationships. She feels slightly dumbed down. Being moved ever so slightly from one side to the other does not help. A red lift truck, trees, some more trees, the shun shining on her. Once back in Vancitay, she will once more type this out. Live in her pee jays, hammering away @ the keyboard. Rummaging around the house, laptop in hand. Move from sofa A to sofa B. Couch surf. kitchen table, couch, kitchen table, couch. Interrupted by brisk walks thru the neighbourhood. She - getting insane. She. She. SHE. ---------------------------------------------------------------she writes some more. It is better than eavesdropping on all the conversations going on around her. she should move around this place. ------------------------------------------------------------------

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

she feels slightly hungry. She took one big bottle of water and a loaf of bread with her. She is drinking the free coffee in this place. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------The day moves slowly forward. She changes her place. In order to interrupt the tedium, the boredom that grips the body when it stagnates. She moves from side to side, she moves her pen, moves back, fidgets, this has to do 4 exercise. She chats, using oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouth to blurp out random sounds, this should have to suffice as exercise. There is no gym in this place, but, hey, it is less sardine-like than an air plane. She can make random observations, document what she sees, look @ the shadows moving towards her on the roof of the train in front of her. Next time she could take a camera. Next time she could do this, could do that. Next time, she will try to get a cheaper fare. This train ride is 300 dollars, One-Way, but a flight (a return flight) would be 400, so one way would be 200. Oh, math. Bargain hunting is not really her thing, but she likes to write about it. Why not? Pretend to be frugal. -------------------------------------------------------------------She constantly loses her train of thought. Here on this train. She ponders if there is some witty wordplay in there somewhere. She ponders if she should switch narrator gender. He this, He that. Would it become less autobiographical, more masculine? Is there even a difference if the maker of a piece of writing is male or female? There shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be. There is certainly no difference in math performed by males or females. An equation has one solution -> two + two equals four. Obviously, this is different, she randomly amasses words. -------------------------------------------------------------------

and amsterdam

nasrin khosrowshahi 2012

now she had a sandwich, now she is having a tea. Writing and eating. writing and eating. This better be good. She ponders. About the title of this. She tends to call it travelogue. Travelogue 1, travelogue 2, travelogue 3. Like Rambo 1, Rambo 2, Rambo 3. She is not quite sure, if Rambo is even numbered. Rocky is. Methinks, @ least. “The Sound of No one Clapping”- Now there is an interesting title. @ this point she calls this “SHe - ReViSited”- It is kind of nonsensical, but maybe she can shoot it into the realm of “artsy-fartsy” by using non-conventional capitalization of the letters, lower-case, upper-case, should fly well in the times of scribd, email, rap. Yep, Word. no, word. she has 5 blogs @ this very time. Like most blogs, no one ever reads them. One person in Indiana did, one in Brazil, one @ Cornell. The train is stopping. She heaps words onto the page. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------it is hot in here, people come and go. She writes away. Words, words, words. She looks @ the Sortie-Exit sign in front of her. Two arrows pointing down. The VIA Rail Canada inscription on her white paper napkin. the “bare” logo on her paper cup. She feels nauseated. She should not have had the “ham and cheese” sandwich. The ham and cheese are starting 2 fight inside of her. Vomiting would not be cool. Not yet. Not here. Not now. There is a raging river outside, trees above her, too much sun glaring down on her. She feels sick. Sick, exhausted from doing nothing. sickly exhausted from doing nothing. --------------------------------------------------------------she writes, writes. it is hot in here. she should move around. It is way too hot. Half a day on a train and boredom suffocates her. Makes her whiny. The heat annoys her. She looks @ her tea. Hopes that it will not splash over the page. Outside the boreal forest. a creek, river, greenness. 18

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She hopes that boreal means trees with picky things. firs, christmas trees. She can google it once she starts typing this up. It is hot here. As said before. A mountain with snow on it. In august. She loses her train of thought, because the woman on the loud speaker interrupted her announcing to look out for something called the pyramid waterfall. Lots of photographing, beauty, she ponders how come sight A trumps sight B. But, hey, she discussed that before. She gets very akeen @ recycling ideas. Very good @ questioning her choice of words. Not quite knowing if there is a term like akeen. Probably not. Probably not. The discussion here was about recycling, paper, that kind of stuff. She writes, the trees are crying. -----------------------------------------it is still so very hot here. the train slowly makes its way towards, well, east. she should vie for moving around, motioning thru this place. Physical exertion, non-existent. Stagnation, so very existent. she writes, writes, writes. She. --------------------------------it is so very beautiful here, peaceful, quiet, here in the lookout wagon, moving through the greenery, seeing the clouds above her. This wagon has a domed roof, glass, windows up above her, around her, she can see nature, clouds, sky, sun, reflections, the train moves towards ontario. But she must still be in bc. it is still monday, it will take until thursday. ----------------------------------------------------writing, writing, she gets slightly tired. Of sitting around, chatting, basically lounging. But, hey, she gets a lot of writing done. she is now in valemount. nice, nice. but somehow she wonders how people can live in places like this. Then again, Vancouver is pretty sleepy, too. The hustle

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and bustle of urban centers is where itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s @. Or not. At this time of the day- and there again, she lost her train of thought. Heavy editing might catch some of these glibs and glitches in her writing, might and could iron them out. -------------------------------------------It is hot up here but she does not really feel like moving. Maybe she should not let her stuff alone. ----------------------------------------------------so she moves around, walks thru the wagons, she should brush her teeth, change her T-shirt. Ah, maybe tomorrow. Maybe she should stay away from an endless discussion of personal hygiene. ---------------------------------------------------------she is kind of feeling like buying chips or cookies. But maybe that is not what she should do. she should just write and write and write. Her novel, her piece of literary shit. No author, no writer should ever use this kind of self-deprecating lingo. She looks @ the trees, up @ the mountain, the river flowing down thru the valley, making its way from place A to place B, throwing up white, white foam. she writes, writes, writes. she should walk to and fro, she definitely needs the exercise. The people here leave. Did she shoo them away? What with her constant, feverish writing. Is she freaking people out? Left, right and center? Nah. It is nice here, cooler than in the dome car! she should go back to her place, look after her stuff. --------------------------

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she now is going by this beautiful lake called moose lake. The surface of it is just like glass, very still, very emerald green. At least that is how the lady on the overhead described it. Apparently it is very deep, 300 ft, and a certain mineral makes for the color. ----------------------------------------------------------And now it is mountain time, no more pacific time. Advancing one hour. Not that she has a watch. And she does not know how to change the time on her cell phone. Technology, ah, technology. --------------------------------------------jaspers is nearing. she had 2 cookies that were extremely potent, 150 calories each. Together with the fatty ham and cheese sandwich, the nonexisting exercise, the 3 pieces of bread, the cream in tea and coffee, she is looking @ omgwd, omgwd, weight gain. she tries to catch herself from using slangy, skittish, silly, infantile lingo. There is an art to using just the right amount of pop-culture lingo mixed with just the right amount of serious lingo. In a place where scholastic language does street. The prob. is the right mix. One can discuss whether using “prob.” or “problem” with further the text. No one can teach that. It is only hit and miss. Only doing this writing “stuff” again and again and again. And then some more. -------------------------------------------After Jaspers. That is what she should name this part of her trip. Yep, there is the Before Jaspers part, there is the after Jaspers part. Jaspers was very touristy, very, well, touristy. And she fell right into a tourist trap. Happily. 21

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She looks out @ the trees, @ a mini-lake, more trees, a meadow, trees, bushes, water. she writes, writes, writes. -------------------------------------outside there is water, that looks like a moor, ghosty, with very weird bushes every now and then. That look like drowning something. creatures in the water holding their disturbed stick-like extremities up as the last yelps of existence before being gulped up by the abyss swooshed into oblivion. she looks out the window. seems, poetic musings are the strong point of the play with language. But will that pay the rent? Is there a market for that. Another ghost like seascape is in front of the train window, for seconds, only to disappear. Like a swamp, like a moor, appearing, disappearing. Like moments in our conscience. Like snapshots of danger, like short inklings of unrestedness, of utter uneasiness. She is getting grounded in being transient, she is settling in into her hobo - jack london - jack kerouaci existence. No home, no home. For the next month or even longer this will be her reality. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d better get used to it. In order to be grounded, in order to be comfortable in her skin. She writes herself into believing that she can cope. With disorientation, dislocation. Maybe, she will even relinquish this state. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hope. --------------------------------------------------------The train stops, bushes blow in the wind, this is not super-hot vancouver any more. Not the prairies either. Should be Alberta, though. alberta, manitoba, ontario. Finally, she will get out @ union station. Take the subway to college and hotel-hunt on Yonge. Take a shower. But, until

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then she is on this train. Looking out. She just brought one sweater on this trip. And it is really cold now. Packing the right stuff is not her forte. Apparently. ------------------------------------------it is near to the night. It is raining outside. she misses something. equilibrium. peacefulness. the idea of groundedness. Could be the illusion of groundedness. Motioning thru space while sitting perfectly still. the train will move her. two more days and she will take the subway everywhere. In Toronto. She’s going east, going east. She is oh so dislocated. feels slightly nauseated. Too many feelings. Way too many feelings. She looks out @ the sprinklings of rain. She feels unreal, not quite here. Everything is uneasy. Her writing, her nauseated state. Even her unrelenting, unstoppable whining. Whining the day into the night. That is what tedium does to yer. ---------------------------------------------------------it is another morning here on the train. prairies, prairies, prairies. flat, flat land. somewhere in the middle of saskatchewan. After saskatoon. she writes, she writes. she is sitting in the dome car, Should be tuesday. outside prairies, flat, flat land do the horizon. it is green now, she saw this place when it was february, snow. ------------------------------she is still sitting here in the dome car. getting near 2 winnipeg. the sun is up, shining thru the glass, bugging her slightly. claustrophobia is not full blown yet, only an inkling of “claustered in”, not yet phobia. inside, inside. she can see the outside, feels stale. There is a silo, actually two silos in front of her. train, train, grey roofs of the wagons. she feels exhausted, too hot. greenery outside. She has 2 move around.

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------------------------------------------she is not quite sure what time it is, sometime noonish, the sun pours in, warms up this place, makes her quiver. Tedium plays her by the throat, sitting still while being jerked around by the train. For some reason the road is so much bumpier here than it was in british columbia and she remembers the same phenomenon happening last time she used this train. Maybe it is just the change in driving this metal sausage thru the land. She should try to find out who fabricated this piece of machinery, accumulate some more data. -------------------------------------------------the train is standing still in some green meadow. she feels slightly bored, annoyance sets in. she looks out @ the sky overwhelming the green land, dramatic cloud upon cloud. Then again, there is a muted feel, one can see, can sense, can decipher that there is not enough humidity in the air to make the contours, the contrasts crisper. She remembers a documentary about Dutch painting which postulated that Vermeer and Rembrandt painted @ a time when there was something called “Dutch light”, “Dutch air” and the idea was that @ that time there was much more humidity in the air, which made everything appear crisp and fresh and clear. Contrasts were sharp and contours were well-defined. The idea is that Holland now does not have that amount of water surface, the land is reclaimed from the water, so there is much more (artificially produced) land surface than it used to be some 200 years ago. And the idea is that the effect of that is that the sky, the colors of everything are more muted and less dramatic than it used to be 200 years ago. And then there was discussion and any number of scholars that posited that “Dutch light” is only a myth and they cemented their reasoning with several facts. Anyhow, the light here is muted and blah, and saskatchewan does not have water surface, maybe it does, she could look it

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up on the map, she might write total nonsense here, but @ this time she does not really care. All the conversations in this train circle around the surface of this land anyways, which is triggered by the bits of knowledge and data that the womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice on the overhead dispenses. It must be our mutual strangeness here, we are transients moving thru this land, trying to make sense of the facts, the data. She watches her pen crackle across the paper leaving traces of cognition, she tries to document what is going on. On the other hand, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather fly away from the here and now, discuss stuff very alien from her concrete surroundings, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather descend and/or ascend to different realities, that is what literature should supposedly do, take you on a magic carpet ride. One day, one day she will be a scholar, she will postulate this, posit that, but @ this time she just watches her pen while it takes her wherever it feels like. Insanity is so very palpable @ this time, her utter feel of helplessness, aggravated and exasperated by the having to sit still in this place, by having to wait, wait, wait. Somehow she is getting a tad too pissed off. Even the beautiful sights outside do not help. Nature @ its best, fascinating, mesmerizing, it still leaves her slightly cold. icy. Empty. Not good. Not good @ all. Only the ever present feel of suspended frustration, exhaustion from sitting stagnant, still. Atrophy hurts your limbs, makes them ache. Melville awaits. A bird flies by. ------------------------------------------------------A white truck with a CN-sign stands still near the trucks. A man in a hard hat and orange overcoat steps out of it. MELVILLE.

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--------------------------------------------------it is later in the day. she knows that the train is now in manitoba. she is sitting down here in the cold department below the upper floor of the domed wagon. outside the pretty yellowish prairie swooshes by. She writes, writes. Her note book is lying on the pale blue table with the dark-pink checkers on it ready for chess. Each of these tables has two chess board patterns on it. She is wondering where the chess figures are. Outside sky, outside greenery swooshing by. Some very disintegrating farmhouses swoosh by. yellow fields. No mountains. Just plain fields. No mountains. Just plain fields, some green and the over-powering sky, sparely sprinkled with clouds. lamps above her head. she inscribes her letters. To halt the here and now. To scatter the moments onto the paper. To break down the movements into something static. She used to draw image after image to create motion, now she is doing the reverse, trying to solidify motion, into one image, into page after page, as part of this notebook. This is what animators do on hiatus. animators without animation. She is slightly annoyed, not polite any more. This place is slightly getting to her. It shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. She tries to count the hours, the days she spent on this train. Somehow she lost count. It is Tuesday, she started on Sunday evening. She will be in Toronto Thursday. Her cell phone is down. At this point writing is the only thing that matters. --------------------------------------------------------Outside a yellow stripe. Which is interrupted the moment she documents it. black cables go up and down. The woman on the overhead gives out free info, which she cannot really follow because the trainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s noise rumbles too loudly. For some reason she is utterly grouchy. Which is

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just weird. The sitting down in one place, the lack of movement is forcefully doing her in. sleeping might help. food. water. the like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------it would be good if she knew what time it is. Afternoonish, august 4ish. tuesday-ish. somewhere in manitoba, rushing towards winnipegish. the train is going way too fast, totally fragmenting the flow of her words, making them quiver and zig-zag around. She has to slow down her writing, pressing the ink into the paper. she halts her writing, staring out @ the meadows and forests. A yellow school-bus, a red tow truck. tuesday marches forward, the train shoots forward, toronto bound. She ponders, how many more times she can reiterate this, describing what she sees, what she feels. She will do it, has to do it all thru the months to come. Somehow writing found her, somehow she subscribes to the notion that this is her destiny. Scribbling semi-insightful sentences on blue lines on white paper. Not so much insights, more waves of whatever comes to mind. Her eyes are the camera, her body motions forward on the train, slicing thru space, her ears register the constantly changing sounds. Somehow this translates into the words that pour down onto the paper, all these signs, all these words. Truth be told, she is balancing near to insanity, but, hey, never, never too near. But certainly, @ this time she is so utterly near the fine line between reality and fiction. Outside trees whoosh by, green, yellow, sky, cables; birds fly by, very fast, very determined, very black, clouds feather through the sky, light white on light blue. ------------------------------------------

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she feels so very dislocated, asks total strangers stupid questions, plays up the bumbling tourist, tries 2 figure out where 2 go here in Winnipeg in these 3 hours that she is here. Well, @ least she has a tea and a piece of shifty cake, a place to write, write, write. --------------------------------------back in the train, still in the station in winnipeg waiting to leave, ontario here i come. Winnipeg was so very fun, she had an extremely interesting conversation with 2 strangers, she tends to bond easily on trips, which has its good sides, its bad sides, but, basically she is learning so much, the train is slowly leaving the station. she writes fast, still trying to use the overhead light, she does not have a pillow anymore, someone took it, she writes, writes, writes. She can see the very fascinating Winnipegian bridge, she wants her pillow, she has to still brush her teeth, but does not want to leave to leave this place, there, the nice hostess brought her a pillow, calm down, calm down. The moon is in the sky, behind white clouds that checker the black sky. Actually it looks like a slight grey on dark pitch black background texture. Words cannot really describe this but, hey, we can always, always try. Lights in the distance, reflections in the window glasses, she writes, writes, writes. to solidify the passing of these her moments, these her moments that she shares with all these strangers on this train. the light went out, could be, should be that she can call it a night. The words have to wait, ever so reluctantly. --------------------------------------------------------------she feels that writing in the dark is a pretty weird undertaking, but she is doing it anyways! To a certain degree @ least! While red lights flicker over her writing disrupting the dark, smushing

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the quietness into oblivion. Whatever that means. whatever that means. As long as it sounds poetic, it might as well do. Might as well, might as well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------and today is wednesday. she thinks. she thinks. trees fly by her, she ponders how to describe the colour. green it is alright, but there should be a lot of words to describe the tone. Multisomething might do. The green changes constantly. The shade, the light. The texture of the foliage. The feathery surrounding of those particular stems should have the propensity to make her write the right words. She is hungry, all she had today was a teeny, tiny muffin, @ least that is how it seems in retrospective. ---------------------------------------------she should eat something, could eat something. ----------------------------she is just kind of dozing off, with her eyes wide open, looking out the window, daydreaming, becoming one with nature, she has to pull herself out of this trance like state, resolutely grip the black ball pen that says OXFORD SUITES on it and start pen her All-Canadian Master-piece. She writes, writes, writes. The words start flowing, slightly hiccupping, but nonetheless, quantity over quality, quantity breeds quality. she has to finish a certain amount of pages, each and every day, if she wants to get anywhere in this business, this writing/publishing/garnering readers business, if she wants to be marketable, competitive, but, truth be told, to be good enough on her own terms, to appease herself. She writes, writes, writes. Outside the leaves are blowing in the wind, outside the sky is magnificent. She writes, writes. There is a small lake outside, a church,

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she tries to find her rhythm for writing, but notices that the words seem to stall, all the conversations she had all day are kind of disturbing her writing, she has to become more quiet, more subdued, more observant to be able to write, she has to watch the world swooshing by outside the train window, she has to make the shapes and forms of this world penetrate her vision to make her write. She has to let the ever changing environment from her words, she has to gaze up @ the clouds, she has to throw a glance @ the green-white, funny-looking container in the distance. The train is not moving, @ this time she watches her pen motion over the paper, she feels still slightly hungry, she descends into social awkwardness, which is good, which is good, she needs the concentration to muster writing these pages, buckle down, soldier, and write. People are talking, slightly on the gossipy side, she did this, she did that, someone laughs, children talk childrenish. She feels exhausted, her innerts dried up like grapes lying in the sun to turn into raisins. Metaphors are clashing violently against realities, she is still so very much a non-writer. She glimpses over @ animation, animation being the holy grail, writing being the second choice. animation is the bride, writing is the bridesmaid. That is how it is. -----------------------------------------------------------------a creek, how beautiful, flowers, distraught benches, grass moving in the wind, upright soldiers like firs, firs like upright soldiers, all kinds of greens, dark ones versus light ones, green that is more white than green, pale-ish, everything sings slightly in the breeze. More than breeze, more slight winds making all these upright lines move, constant, constant motion. Like a symphony with little flickering, glistening lights, short thunders, motioning and moving, again and again. Everything is quiet, beautiful, but more like the quiet before the storm. The wait for Toronto. Where she has to find her way. Where adventure will start, grasp her by the throat, toss her around, tumble her in the wind. A train shudders by. Cables and powerlines move by. There is 30

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music behind her, sounds, there are two “91” signs passing her by. There is the end of the page, the small blue Hilroy sign. She is tired, maybe. People march by, resolutely, with baby-sacks, people with responsibilities more grave than scribbling little lines on paper. She, however, forever, writes, writes, writes. ------------------------------------------------------------For some very weird reason the small caféteria in the train is closed. It must be its off-time, it happens to coincide with her “being hungry” time. She is now coming to the conclusion that maybe staying put in one place in this train is better, non-moving, staying in your seat, trying not to get antsy. Looking outside of the window, writing some more. Relinquishing peace. Meditating. Happens to be that she is a stoic non-meditator, deeply biased towards the nonmaterial world. Something like that. She could heap some more words about herself onto the page, some more soul-searching, self-analytical, well, crap. She looks out the window, tries to figure out how to describe what she sees. All the constantly changing images. The world that flies by. How can you possibly describe something time-based? How can you describe time. The motion of your hand. The change of position of your hand. Oh, Eadweard Muybridge. How could people write in the age of non-cinema? Everything, everything changed with the advent of the moving image. Her writing is so strongly, so absolutely slanted by cinema, film, animation, by watching ever changing images within the confines, the frame of a monitor. She has to somehow skedaddle into film studies, hey, once an animator, always an animator. An animator that writes. An out-of-work animator. Courting the second-best, the lesser cousin of animation: Writing. But she said that before. Writing that comes to a standstill.

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Ah, she should brush her teeth. Have a cookie. Walk around this place. Sleep. Admire the view. Be happier. Feel blissful. Smile to herself. Go insane. Ah, why not? Why NOT! -----------------------------------------------------------------There are still some pages left in this note book. She had purchased 3 note-books, just in case. Luckily she did not need them all, there are still two notebooks left to be filled. She will not fill them until tomorrow @ 9:30. Which is the time she is supposed 2 reach Union Station. If everything works out fine. --------------------------------the train rolls into another station. So it seems. At least it is so very slowly rolling forward, speeding up a little, slowing down a little. A very exacting choreography of little steely wheels over the rails. Leaves flicker in the wind, firs look majestic. -------------------------------------------------------------------she writes a little bit. is slightly hungry. wishing for some food. Does not really like what is offered here. Muffins, Cookies, sandwiches, now this place she is @ is called penhurst or something, a freight train passes her by. The train slurps very, very, very slowly, incrementally towards Toronto. There is grass outside, water outside. There are words waiting to be written, but there is nothing happening. She feels boredom sipping into her mind, boggling it, the mind, that is, what a cheesy joke, writing is stalling just as much as this long and winding trip from vancitay to toronto, tedium is making her gasp with boredom, exasperated, clunky, slightly disoriented. water is outside, greenery is outside, the train gains momentum, gains speed, approaches east a little faster. trees pass her by, green triangle after green triangle after green

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triangle. There are white bulbs of fluff in the sky, there are trees, there is her stalling consciousness, trying to make a mark, trying to escape, trying to bullshit a tad less. Some people should never hold a pen in their hands. Never. She seems to be one of those. Writing is a chore, a stab @ trying to get better. And if she dies, @ least she will die trying. That, supposedly, is better than pure, solid stagnation. Killing the moments, the minutes of her life on this planet. Drive further, east bound train. ------------------------------------------------------------------She ponders what time it is. Everyone is quiet. Which is kind of unsettling. Somehow she feels dislocated, disoriented. As she said before. Everyone around her is either reading, listening or talking. She seems to be the only one writing away. She feels self conscious, but not too much. If push comes to shove, writing feverishly keeps her busy. Outside trees, longer trees, taller trees, whiter trees. sunlight behind the trees. Deafening boredom. water outside, greenery, evening seems to come nearer. There are grey clouds in front of the train. She is pondering, if the train will be in sudbury tonight. If she can walk some, get a bite to eat. She writes, writes, writes. Could there be anything more boring than writing. Tomorrow @ this time she will be in Tee dot, showered, pizza-pizza fed, happy. Tomorrow @ this time. Let this train ride end. That seems to be the theme of this part of her notes. No scholarly treatise, no insights, only whining par excellence. Word upon word upon word. Hinging into each other, galloping forwards. Feverishly. Obsessively. Relentlessly. Like this very train. --------------------------------------------------------there are still stories waiting to be told, words to be smushed into each other, language to be played with. She ponders if it makes sense that she arranges and rearranges words, at random, 33

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instead of arranging and rearranging tactile units, bricks, mosaic parts, puppets under the camera. And does it even matter? Products might vary, might be better, might be worse, but in the end process rules. The journey should be, ever so slightly, fun. Cheers to that. -------------------------------------------------------------the train is still moving towards toronto. she is still sitting here, slightly bored, feeling slightly hungry, slightly exhausted from sitting around, somehow listless, more like a listless undercurrent burping somewhere in the underbelly of her feelings, she feels like barfing because of her so very, very cheesy choice of words. Nothing seems to work, eloquence is so very, very rusty. --------------------------she feels like she should write some more. It is kind of difficult, so she fishes out her glasses and starts writing and fragments her sentences @ will. She tries to figure out whether writing is really what she should do. She bored this very nice lady incessantly going on about the advantages and disadvantages of documenting oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s travels with a camera versus using text to describe the visual. This is what she does these days going on and on about image versus word as means of halting the moments and documenting them, smushing all oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observations into a text. She is sitting here in this extremely chilly room, scribbling ever so feverishly, which might not be that good, because none of her sentences are well-laid out, well-thought-thru. She looks up @ the Watch Your Step sign with the exclamation mark and the French translation below it, she writes, writes, writes. It is getting chillier by the minute. She should probably stop and call it a night. She can still write in her seat with the light up above her seat. That should be possible. There is nothing to say anymore. Anyways, she will have ample time in toronto to pen all her 34

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observations. What good is it anyways to observe more of this nasty train ride, which kind of nasties her out, freaks her ever so slightly out what with its constant unrealness, its unnerving car sounds, its brooding weirdness. She can go on and on making up more words to describe this, but there is no writing available that will replicate the yellow line in the red and blue checkered pattern on the table before her. She came to the other little room where there are spirited discussions going on about politics, which is not necessarily that good 4 her writing because it kind of interrupts her flow of thought and cuts into her train of thought because of her wish to listen in and write @ the same time. -------------------------------------------------------------and now it is another morning, thursday, august, the sixth, here in 2009, she is approaching toronto, she saw the meteor in a city in ontario in the middle of the night, a fascinating rock with a fence around it, she hears the hollering of the siren of the train, she writes, she writes. she needs some breakfast, she sees the field outside, everything is so fresh, so beautiful, so green, so utterly, chest-knottingly scary. ontario, yours to discover! ------------------------------------she has to hold herself straight, waltz in, face the day, should not be that tough, should be very tough. -----------------------------------------------------she sits in the starbucks below the bay on bloor street. she has a meeting or something, she is waiting 4 her friend but she is not quite sure if she is waiting in the right place. she is kind of tired and does not know if she is waiting in the right place, probably not. It is kind of tough to 35

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write while feeling that the starbucks people might ask her 2 get something 2 drink or 2 eat. She cannot just sit here, write and drink their samples. -------------------------------------------------------------------and now she is in the little café which is part of her “days inn” hotel, she has a very, very beautiful café cup, a very beautiful cake, everything seems very beautiful, so she writes, the air conditioner, though, is way too blowy, somehow it smells like pot here, too, which is weird, this place is as far removed from pot culture as humanly possible. She is definitely disoriented, but, hey, her black pen is in her hand, is moving over the page, leaving trace after trace after trace. She is slightly discontented, slightly content, very content. She ran her writing by two people, one totally thumbs up, one categorically thumbs down. Very, very good input, i am producing stuff that attracts yay-sayers, attracts nay-sayers. This can only be good, only be good. A literary agent might be good, why not, why not. What to do, what to do? She has to wait until one editor reads it, which might take quite a long time. Until, maybe, X-mas. With literary agents it should be easier, they can take her stuff and show it to 10 publishing houses @ a time. She has to do some research, instead of writing away here. Maybe she just likes the self-importance she feels when having a meeting with an agent. She is kind of weary, tired of the weird look on people’s faces when she tells them that she writes. Basically, all these idiots are patronizing her, looking @ her with a face that says “What would you possibly have to say”. She has 2 find an agent, an agent. instead of writing away, day-in, day-out. Actually, the woman @ the next table is talking about her real-estate agent, not her manuscript promoting agent. But, hey, a manuscript is a piece of real estate. An 8 x 11 x 4 inch little box with 300 pages of paper therein. No one can live in it, but it takes some space. Any space is not real estate, is it? She tries to make the case, that even something as small as a little box is real estate. But that might not be true, real estate does not 36

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move, an object like a box is mobile, can be picked up and brought to different places. Ah, this all has to do with categorization, definition. Her tea is getting cold. She did not like all the bullshitty conversations, she had to listen to on the train, the people there were much too conservative. Bordering on racism. She hates herself for not picking a fight. She should have told people off, left and right and center. Where is your spine, where is your spine? Trash talk has to be shot down. -----------------------------------------------------------------------she should walk around a tad, she should use the fitness center in the hotel, she should sleep. She only had 4 hours of sleep, which cannot be good. Her body is revolting, making her feel utterly uneasy, chilled out, freaked out. ---------------------------------------------------------------she should check her email, she should do the laundry. She should do this, do that. Move around, write somewhere else. Somewhere more inspiring than this place. this place here is way too sterile and sanitized, has no umpff. Ah, if nothing else works, there are always platitudes to bridge the gap between literature and trash. It is just too chilly here, way too chilly. She has an appointment in an hour, so she should just write some more, and then stop, abruptly. Sounds like a plan. That is how we roll. Omgwd, Toronto does not seem to bring out the best in her, she is just surrounded by too many metrosexuals. Here. She should write in the subway on the other hand of the street, the Pita Way, the Peach Garden. Anywhere but here. Her lingo just is as chilly as the cold air that assaults her right chin, the bla of her surroundings. She is so very tired, she needs Zâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, she does, does, does. She is just way too off her rocker, dislocated, sleepless, cold, with a weird concoction in front of her, some milky peppermint tea that is ice-cold now. She just 37

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needs sleep, pure and simple. Sleep more than anything. She is so very, very tired. And her right shoulder hurts, to boot. ---------------------------She ponders if she should take this notebook and dump it back in the hotel or if she should just shlepp it with herself wherever she goes. What to do, what to do? She can see the 680 NEWALL NEWS - RADIO sign next to her, green with white letters, shiny. People walk by, fast. In skirts, in pink blouses. She feels exhausted, out of words. there is not much more to say. How tired can one person be. How annoyed can one person be? Too much negativity, this her book is nothing but spit and vomit. Straddling incompetence. On some thursday-ish day here in summer of 2009. While she is writing, writing, writing. Scribbling the day away. Yep, scribbling the days away. While totally losing her mind. Nice. -----------------------------------------------she is sitting in the mc donald on the other side of the street, on yonge, it is a quarter to twelve in the morning, well, approximately, she writes away, she has the wrong pen, the blue pen, she usually prefers the black pen, but maybe â&#x20AC;&#x153;spicingâ&#x20AC;? it up will forge her prose onto a higher level, whatever that is. she knows, it is august seven, she is supposed to meet a lady @ 12 in the lobby, but there is still time, still time. She bought black socks, because her grey expensive socks with the curly swivels on them had holes, well, one sock had the whole back of the heel peeking out of the hole. She changed her sock right here in mc donalds, she loves this place, it is very transient, people are on the go, on the go. Ah, adventure. everyone hauls a suit-case. Nice. She still has to go to the bank, get money from the atm, somehow she spent 200 bucks and she has no clue for what. She had basically nothing but junk on the train, well, she remembered the sushi 38

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bar on queen west or king west cost money, now she remembers buying clothes. She should kind of keep track of her expenses, how tough can that be. It helps to write down what you do, what you do exactly. She is running late, if she still wants to go to the bank and skedaddle to the hotel lobby. So, hey, notebook, this is it 4 now. take care. Mommy is on her way. thru toronto, in august of 09. ------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in the lobby, it is now 5 after 12, last time she checked, she writes away, one more time. she is sitting in club monaco in the lingerie department and writing away. She has to guard her friend’s belongings while she tries on stuff. This is such a nice place what with music playing, nice décor, lots and lots and lots of underwear. That are supposedly too tight 4 her, but she could try something on. The very beautiful sales lady said that their sizes go up to 36 and she is a size 40, so obviously that would not work. Maybe after some more dieting, some more exercise, some swimming, some kayaking, some sitting in a store and writing instead of constantly munching. Writing as weight loss therapy. “i will survive” is singing, this place is very female, no guys here, this is so very different from europe, where girls usually take their boy-friends with them 2 buy undies. At least that is how it seemed 2 the author. ---------------------------------------------she is sitting in this little caféteria here in Little Italy in Toronto. And she writes. She is exhausted. Too much shopping! she bought a book that is called “You Know You’re A Writer.” it is blue and kind of stifles her writing. She looks @ it but does not get inspired to write. Somehow purchasing this book makes her not find words. She halts her writing, feels that if 39

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there is any doubt that she is a writer thenâ&#x20AC;Ś she is not a writer. She writes, that alone makes her a writer. Given that she is an unpublished writer one could argue that she is a lesser writer. An unsuccessful writer. A writer sans readers. But she still is a writer, because this is what she does, day-in, day-out. Word after word, after word. Writing that does not end. That has to be typed up. She should go 2 the internet cafĂŠ on Yonge and type this up. Or she should just continue 2 write this. Her peppermint tea is getting cold. Would be nice if she knew what time it is. ------------------------------------------------------some more words. some more words. It is so very nice here. She ponders if that is a good enough subject matter. She cannot just praise niceness. Writing the inscription of toothpaste would be more exhilarating. People come in, she could describe them. She could describe the teapot on the wooden table, the sugar shaker, her glasses, the black glasses case. This moment, this moment. Her blue-grey shoes, the green plant. She could describe her longing. But she does not long. Not anymore. No longing. She is 54, maybe she is becoming asexual. A neutral being. Well, maybe not. She just does not feel like longing and she does not see any lust object around. No one to even remotely fancy. People around her do not even enter her radar, they are either too young or too old. And really ugly. A couple about her age is sitting outside, they bore each other to hell. And boy, are they ugly. She should write some more. this is such a nice place. Such a NICE place. And this is all that comes to mind. Her tea is cold now, its surface reflects the lights of the ceiling. She will finally drink it, cold or not.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------she is now back in the hotel. After a long walk from Little Italy up College Street or College Avenue, anyways, all to this little coffee shop in the “Days Inn”. the name is coffee zone internet café, she is having peppermint tea and a small piece of marble cake. she starts writing, she has until 10. then she will go up to her room. She is slightly annoyed, because she cannot see the big clock on the wall from her seat here, she has to stand up and walk around the plant to see it and the plant whipped into her face while the woman behind the bar was watching her. Oh, no, we are clumsy. Outside a streetcar goes by, taxis are parked. A woman in a light blue shirt walks by. 2 other women walk by. She should still walk and investigate the neighbourhood instead of sitting here and writing away. the pen puts letter after letter on the paper. tourists walk by. Someone with a sweater that says Kansas comes out of a car. People get into a taxi. Women walk by. She feels like walking too. Stop writing, stop writing. Stop the pen. -------------------------------she sits in her hotel bed and writes, while watching “friends”. It is 12:11, after midnight, it is too chilly here, so she turns the air conditioner off. ------------------------------------she pushes her chair towards the window and starts writing. What a great place 2 write. What a great place. So much 2 see and so very much 2 describe. At this constantly motioning corner of Yonge and College. Cars, people, big building. The city, the city. ---------------------------41

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she made it now to this chair @ the table here @ the foot of a screeching elevator. There are colours crying out for description, sights 2 be documented. Stark, dramatic architectural lines, this blue table she writes on. It has a very distressed surface, as if someone poked @ it with a screwdriver or a potato peeler, there are all these little holes in the blue surface, very uneven, very irregularly sprinkled over the blue, there are lines in the blue, a matte shine, a matte reflection of light. Words cannot describe what she sees, they never can, somehow, somewhere she should learn how to take pictures, professionally. Hers is still the disposable camera, click, click. Music is here, very loud, mixing against the elevator-screeching, the forceful tap-tap of a fast-paced heel clicking lady in black dress-pants, bell-bottomed dress pants, short elegant hair. She writes, writes, writes. Why not? Why not. The table feels sticky, glues her hands, her arms 2 it 4 a split-second. People are lining up in the Richtree Restaurant, fruit, saturday brunch. She writes, writes, writes. Somehow, sometime she should get back 2 the hotel and do laundry. Ah, she can always do laundry, once she is back in Vancitay, the here and now has to be relinquished, explored. She should take the subway and go 2 the ‘burbs, but she’d rather write, write, write. Besides, there is so much more 2 see here in downtown. She has 2 write, write, write. Obsessively, extensively. ---------------------------------------------she knows there is a little interactive media center somewhere 2 be explored, she has the address in her hotelroom-drawer, she has to coordinate the numbers on the map, B2 or A2, try to figure out how to get there. She should stare @ other people’s animations, but she knows for a fact that she will only wallow in her pain as an unsuccessful animator. Animators that go nowhere, end up on the streets. Penniless, homeless. Like Ryan Larkin. Maybe it is just an urban myth, an

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animator myth. An artist myth. The penniless starving artist. Usually male. Unkempt, with too much facial hair. Somehow older, nearer to mid-life crisis. Not in a red convertible, no funky shades on his nose. But mid-life crisis nonetheless. She ponders, if her observations, her postulations make even sense. She could go on and on about what makes for a good artist, in her mind a Suburban house-wife is in the best position of anyone to put her time and effort into her art, the muse courts her relentlessly. Someone pays the bills. Like the Medici would foot the bill for the court jesters. Court-painter, court animator. Relentlessly validating the status quo. Ah, Toronto, so very, very far from Vancouver. So very, very, very far from reality. -------------------------------------------------------A woman in a pink T-shirt walks by, more salmon-pink than hot pink, the ubiquitous white i-pod ear-thingies hanging from her ears like long ear rings, longer than her black mane that whips from side to side. An utterly big woman walks by, click and clattering her heels, clutching her purse. Another woman walks by, her heels make the same noise, must be the sandals, the staccato that denotes the foot trying to hold on to the piece of wood and leather of the foot piece, the sandal, that clunks down on the linoleum. She is tired, out written, she should stop. Her chest is in knots, her right middle-finger and ringfinger is clamping up, cramping-up. Especially the little finger is held in this unnatural position, resting on the paper, giving support to the blue ball-pen. So she writes her days away. In the here and now, in toronto, august of two thousand and nine.

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---------------------------------------------------------She is pondering, if she should make her way 2 Bloor Street, 2 the extremely expensive chocolate store. Where one piece of chocolate costs 3 bucks. Ah, that is living. Must be the feel of wasting money. Luxury, What is that? The music is playing, she is out-written. Enough, enough already. --------------------------------she sits down and starts writing. ------------------------------------------------------------she changes her place and moves to this so very overpriced tea-coffee shoppe, the same one where she complained about the rip-off last time she was in town only to be told by one of the locals that this is the going rate. She doubts it though, because this place is a chain and it seems that they charge more in expensive neighbourhoods. She will investigate. Some chain stores are like that, each and every franchise store is independent and can thus charge whatever they feel like. A fly sat on her cookie, she throws it out. So she just has her peppermint tea. She writes, she writes. It is 25 minutes past 10, she has to be in bathurst street @ 4:30. So she has lots and lots of time 2 kill. She should be back in the hotel @ two, take a shower and make her way to bathurst. At this time she should just sit here and write. This neighbourhood is super expensive, which means that one could only speculate who lives here. It is weird, one always thinks that something fishy is going on where too much money is there, stories of corruption, embezzlement, human rights violations, golden cage scenarios, sex and violence, your middle of the road cradle robber, sex for money transaction, all with a scandalous undertone, a romanticized but @ the same time

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salacious flair. Eurotrash meeting old money, in this case old money means “old money” here in the “colonies”. She had a discussion with a black history guy, who accused her of stuff. She told him off and he laughed. But really, she should have said “to you people we all look alike”. The nerve of the guy, speculating on her back-ground based on her skin color. Huh, i will show him. She should waltz back and enlighten him, but she is pretty sure that she made her point. So did he. She writes, she writes. Slightly philosophical, but more dabs @ philosophy. Nothing is pure, no more black and white. Just grey shadows, all in-between, all shades and tones of grey. And this pen, blue, unpretentious, writing, writing and writing some more. Her tea is getting cold, she feels empty. She does not take clear stands, everything is grey. She does not revolt, does not smush her fist on the table. No stand, no stand. Only insignificant words, that even each other out. -----------------------------------------------------this funny place is her office, her office changes constantly, she wonders thru the streets, all these streets in her existence, she takes notes and notes and some more notes, it will take her another two years of her life to type this up, she will roam in her P-J’s around her place, laptop in hand, from the kitchen 2 the couch and back, scratching her unkempt hair, shooing away the flees. Yes, that is what we are, an eccentric catwoman, an eccentric cat woman. Yep, that very one. And in between long laps in the Olympic Pool @ UBC. Why not. Why not? -------------------------------------------------

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she still writes, but her hand totally stiffens up. There is a bike hanging from the lamp post on the street across from her. Obviously, oh so obviously, that is not how it really is, but that is how she wants to describe it. More because that is how it looks visually, lines in black in grey surroundings, the lighter grey of the street, the vertical darker black of the lamp post, the round lines of the wheels with the diagonals in them, in clear mathematical increments, the whole lamp post leaning towards the background, slightly askew, like the tower of pisa, but sideways. More side-ways, over-the-top sideways. She writes, writes, while her tea chills, while the silvery clock marches forward in time, while people move around her, children play, she writes, writes, writes. She observes her pen moving, fabricating new letters while it goes. She wonders if the gender of a pen is feminine or masculine, she opts for describing “Da Pen” as “it”, bla-ish, neutral. No stand, no stand. the woman @ the other table fixes her hair, gesticulates with her hands in the air. The author mimicks that, starts playing with her ponytail. We are all “monkey-see, monkey-do” creatures. Maybe that is what makes us go, this slightly alienated urban environment, our slightly alienated urban existence. While the Jazz music plays on, while women in little black dresses flock in, while a sturdy guy in a yellow golf-shirt and checkered Bermudas celebrates white suburbia while playing with his glasses, his spectacles. Quite a spectacle. quite a spectacle. She notices how very biased she is, the only creatures, who are fair game in her description of humanity are white guys of European descent. Ugly white guys of European descent. All middle-aged. She will analyze why that is, she knows why that is. But, hey, she writes, writes, writes. Why not? Why not.

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These are all sketches, lines on paper, this is her notebook where observations are amassed, scribbled down, for eternity, where the ever-fluent moments are solidified into something static, something permanent. ------------------------------------------somehow she courts “better” words, somehow she is on a roll. Two weeks, give or take some, do that to you. Writing constantly makes you into a writer whether you like it or not. It is all in the elbow-grease, in this case in the finger-grease. In this case, in the right bones and joints of her right hand, in the part between fingers and wrist. Carpal, carpal. needs rest. And thus she stops. -------------------------------she finds herself once more in the starbucks on the second floor in indigo on bay and bloor. Once more, once more. she has been here so many times, on each trip to toronto. this time she looks out @ the book store, usually she looks towards the counter. she has to hunt down her friend, whom she has not seen in 40 years, she could meet her here. reunion, reunion. she should do laundry, maybe have lunch. She should still have her last piece of toast, in the little weird fridge in her hotel room. the one she brought from Vancitay, the one she bought in the arbutus safeway. It was one of many slices in a “texas” white bread-loaf, she lived happily on it on the 4-day train ride. Yep, brought that piece of bread cross-country. The chocolate pieces she just had, were flown in from Zurich, her glasses are made in China. Whatever happened 2 “consume local”? “100-mile-diet”, well, good luck with that.

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She ponders that she is not really into that kind of “celebration of local”, it does not make sense, it has colonial, christian, missionary, white-supremacy, white-guilt undertones. At least to her. It has “back-to-nature” romanticized undertones. At least to her. It has anti-feminist undertones. At least to her. Yep, blame it on the Man. Always on the MAN. Then again, men are cute. Especially very white, very “the man”-like males. Very exotic. – Her female gaze! ----------------------------------------------------she should type this out, right here, in this city, there are numerous internet cafés on Yonge, they charge 3 $ per hour, she could instantly put this on scribd, @ least she could email it 2 herself. Is kind of like blogging, but not really. Like facebook, but not really. Cyber documenting. Each and every minute. Documenting the news while it unfolds. My life, my life. moments wasted in coffee shops. A flaneuse. One of so many. In this city, in all our cities. In any urban environment. In schools, libraries, and, yeah, coffee shops. Somewhere in the public realm, very near to private realm. She ponders. The times of “realm”- writing are over. Who cares about Herbert Marcuse? Oh, so yesterday. She liked the description of “Bruno”. : “Borat is so 2006”. Everything changes. She feels slightly uneasy putting her stuff on scribd. Then again, everyone does it. It is not really different from her 5 blogs, her You Tube account. The only dif. is that her stuff on scribd seems 2 attract more readers. Supposedly, because Simon and Schuster, MTV are somehow involved. She likes scribd, it is so easily accessible, it is very much good 4 writers like her. She can write

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whatever she wants, however she wants. She can spell the words, however it pleases her. She can write “theater” and “theatre” in the same sentence. She can write “paris” and “Paris”. She can chose to forego capitalization @ the beginning of a sentence, she can make up words @ random, she can be as temperamentful and as conservative in punctuation as she feels, she can write art school in one word or in two words, she can mix languages, she can fly as free as a bird. No red ink putting her in line, no one there 2 inhibit her genius. No one 2 scold her for describing herself as “genius”. One genius of many. Genius among geniuses. Yep, that is our reality. Here, in august 2009. And they say, technology sucks. Nope, it’s great. Great 4 her. Writing away here, while “Diane Ross” seconds that emotion. She knows she will never write about world hunger or wold peace. Hers is the banal, the accessible, the here and now. Diss it, if you want. As if I care. as if i care. --------------------------------------------------------------people still walk by, it becomes pretty crowded here on mid-saturday in downtown toronto, while jack johnson sings, people talk loudly, in different languages, she writes, writes, writes, still writes. She could get a laptop, but she’d rather use the one back home. The one she left there longing 4 her. She should leave this place and make her way. Back hotel. Back home. What stands 4 home these days. She started this trip on sunday, it is saturday now. 7 days, 7 days. And 150 pages of written stuff, words, words, words, obsessively, excessively. reluctantly. Ever so reluctantly. While the coffee brews, the tea slowly mixes with the hot water. While time marches forward, marches her by. Obsessively, relentlessly, reluctantly. The inscription on the black backpack of the kid in front of the milk-station reads “europe bound”. It is the logo of the back pack company. 49

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People laugh, talk. And she writes and writes and writes. As said b4, obsessively, relentlessly and, last not least, reluctantly. She will now finally stop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------her words do not quite fall in place, the cadences are slightly off, either too short or too long, the pauses collapse, but, at a certain point, she does not really care, because she has to keep on trying. That is how the story goes, the stereotype goes. The one about the hunched over poet, in this stupid little tea place, with her glasses in front of her, watching the people waltz by, trying to forge her way into the pantheon of literary greats. Well, good luck with that. keep on truckinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, keep on trying. she has to stop. this. halt the black pen. Finally. ---------------------------------------------------------------Before she gets utterly, completely, irreversibly insane. somewhere here in midtown toronto, somewhere here in 2009. Before she falls 2 the ground and utterly

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completely disintegrates. Obsessively, relentlessly, reluctantly. While she spasms on the ground. Yep, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d better stop b4 that happens. A walk on sunny bay street might help, and her sanity might just return. Ah, why not? ----------------------------------------------------------------------another day. Another day. to play with words. in august of 2009. she writes and writes. watches her tea get cold. ah, next project: watch paint dry. she can describe it, in 500 pages, she can make it as dramatic and as boring as she feels like. There are no boring subject matters, only boring, well, blank. Insert your own message, boring readers, boring writers, boring times, whatever. and what is wrong with boring? Boring rocks, man. rocks, woman. she is tired, exhausted, she started this journey a week ago, give or take some, she could count the exact time, but @ this point, she does not really care, she lives on planet tourist, happily, she is a globetrotter par excellence, her reality is skewed, she talks 2 herself, laughs 2 herself, no, she

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is not herself, even doing laundry does not help. she is different, taller, smaller, dumber, smarter, she is someone else. a transient, a traveller, mingling slightly with others, reluctantly. A sight seeing bus drives by, red, without ceiling, double deckerish, it has the white inscription: “this is an official sightseeing bus”. Duh. Double Duh. She ponders if using the oh so very technical term “duh” will make her book less marketable, more marketable, something in between. in the end she has to self-publish or use scribd. so either publish as a book or in cyber. as hard copy, as cyber copy. On-line. she has to check the laundry, she has to do this, do that. she eats too much these days, she writes, writes, she looks out @ HASTY MATKET and Pita Way. Her days smush together, she writes, writes, writes. down and out in, in, in, she does not even remember where she is. down and out, on earth. so much is clear. so much seems to be true. she writes and writes and writes. -------------------------------------------she will now go up at the “guest laundry room” and start folding her clothes. Ah, fun. ---------------she plunks herself onto this seat in second cup, she has another peppermint tea with much too much cream in it, she has another chocolate chunk cookie, this cannot be good, much, much too much sugar and grease in her arteries, she can feel them clog up, while she writes, she is losing her mind, she does not know where she is, oh, dislocation, dislocation. Well, @ least she can still write. She ponders, if she should go down 2 boston (she is not quite sure if boston is down or up, but this being canada and boston being the us, one assumes that it is down) and hunt down her 52

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editor, bug him, pester him, make a spectacle out of herself, so that he will publish her book. She is not even sure if mit-press is even the “venue” that she wants to “show” in, she’d rather be distributed by a very commercial publisher. simon and schuster, penguin, harper collins. Academic presses, well, they publish 4 academia. And she knows, that her bullshit is so very non-academic. It is poetry, poetry in prose-form. It is a straight line, no ups, no downs, actually, that is how it overlaps with academic writing. Research based writing is boring, her writing is boring. No ups, no downs, a solid straight line. Nope, we don’t do perfect story arcs, not yet, not now and maybe never. We just smush forward, linguistically. She looks up @ the column in front of her, distressed light brown, brown with a tint of purple, beige lines, colored glass inlets. Goes perfectly with the Jazz music, with people talking. A coffee-house atmosphere, if there ever was one. Where inspiration stomps rampant, where everyone is a poet. This is where writers live, kids of well-to-do people, who still rely on daddy’s money @ age 70. Something of that kind. She should really get a literary agent, so that she is @ least a writer with a purpose. A writer with deadlines. Like a plumber. A contractor. Plumber sounds even better than contractor. Ah, she writes, writes, writes. And writes some more. While Yonge Street happens, while music happens. While somebody coughs and disrupts the idyllic setting with the discords of his ailment. She ponders, whether she is waxing far too poetically, far too cheezily, whether she finally succumbs to the stereotype of the pathetic poet, the chi-chi of an artist. She writes, writes, writes.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------she ponders, if she really likes this her lonely genius state, writing here behind a brown column, a brown vase. She is not a monk. The guy on the other side fell asleep over his textbook, he is barefoot. Yep, tough 2 be a lonely genius. And pretty lonely 2. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do lonely, but, hey, we can muster genius. how hard can it be? How hard can it be? Repetition makes literature, Looking @ the Golden Arches sign on the other side of Yonge breeds poetry. In a very subversive, comical, funny way. In a post-capitalist, post-consumerist, post-post-post, reluctantly, halting way. she writes and writes and writes. why not? why not? the page comes slowly 2 an end, the tea is cold, writing should be stopped. For now. For NoW. ------------------------------------------------------today is the weirdest sunday in the history of sundays. nothing feels like sunday. but suddenly she remembers that it is sunday. Ah, such a non-sunday. it is 4 in the afternoon, it starts 2 sink in that it is sunday. well, @ least she can write. down here in the subway station @ college. still in toronto, still in august of 09. Oh, well. ------------------------------------------she sits in the skyway near union station. People are streaming in from a Blue Jays game. she suddenly saw herself in this massive sea of humanity ( now there is a so often used term ), she 54

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would like to know what the score is, then again, what does she really know ‘bout baseball? has 2 do with hot dogs, innings and babe ruth. Or mickey mantle. well, definitely hot dogs. take me out 2 the ball game, one-two-three sth., something. Ah, baseball. and the clothing is blue – blue jays. she ponders if it is good 2 admit to her baseball-ignorance. well, she can sing “take me out 2 the ballgame” and that is all we need. It is utterly sticky here, she should go back 2 the hotel and have a shower. but that would be overkill. she’d rather write, write, write. ----------------------------------------------------she has a tea in the loungey place in union station, well, more sports bar than lounge, with donut and coffee place, she has a tea and takes it to the beer place, it seems there is no distinction, she does not really feel like writing here, it seems, her notebook will have beer stains and she hates that. ------------------------she found a cleaner place, but there is too loud a music on the overhead, she should leave. ------------------------------she finally found a nice place, in the waiting hall @ union station, she could describe it, but does not really feel like it, she is way too hot, her tea is somewhere under her bench, she is slightly exhausted, totally exhausted. People walk by, walk by her. She ponders, whether what she writes here is a journal, travelogue, diary, if it is good enough or way, way too bad. As if it really matters, as if it really, really matters. She is still alive, she has ink in her pen, what really matters? 55

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--------------------------------------------------------------life is good! So very, very good. Knock on wood. ----------------------------she should now make her way to bathurst. bathurst, bathurst, bathurst. If you repeat words long enough, often enough, they sound profound. Hopefully. -------------------------------------------------she can see the RBC sign from here, on the other side of Yonge. In front of her sugar, fat, macademia nut cookie, tea with ample amounts of cream therein. Enough to clutter the arteries, not enough 2 do her in. “nothin’s gonna change my world” sings the so very white guy on the overhead, something with “universe”, well, if you do poetry make sure 2 allude to the “world”, the “universe”, “million suns” to show, hey, it’s not just ‘bout me, use absolutes like “nothing”, talk ‘bout change. She ponders if using the term “she” automatically puts her prose on a lesser level, is it insignificant, what “she” has 2 say? Depends on who reads this. target-audience, where art thou? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------sipping peppermint tea on yonge, having a white chocolate macademia nut cookie on a pistachio coloured, pistachio rimmed plate, a plate that is way 2 big 4 the lowly cookie seems 2 be a very feminine undertaking, very far removed from what the construction worker guy in pale blue shirt, work boots, paint splattered dark blue pants, white hard hat with several inscriptions, who had a barbecue-pizza in pizza, pizza and was in line before her, does. Or maybe not. She has her pen and her notebook, she does not get paid as of yet, she is definitely lower on the food-chain. 56

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She is trotting 2 work here in the coffee shop, the construction kid is trotting towards the construction site. She assembles words, that is just as good as assembling tactile units. In the end there will be a new entity made out of smaller units. That is how it is. She could mention that she said that before, but why is it really that bad, to repeat stuff? Why? Oh, why? the singer sings about “You,” sounds like something about love, about longing, about “boy meets girl”. “boy meets girl” is always good. Why not? That is how we got 2 seven billion here. Twirling up and down the milky way. she is not in love @ this moment, apparently she is way 2 old. The “Bus Boat Company” bus, boat floats by, red maned woman holding a microphone half her size in her hand, making a spectacle out of herself that leaves the “spectacle” of the city lesser, bashful, blushing. She is now sitting near the window that goes down 2 the floor, it is 5 past 1, the monday-midday crowd walks by, incessantly. She has more than enough fodder 4 writing, she is shutting down, 2 many stimuli. She concentrates on a hint of a tooth-ache, on her perpetual state of pissed-offness, on the fiery red convertible outside. Well, more a wanna-be convertible, the car that could not quite. On the other side of the street the number 468, twice. She concentrates on that, against the motion something still, the non-moving against the moving. she watches her pen. Always her pen. Leaving lines and dots on the paper, slightly cursive, slightly demented. Ah, always demented. Why not? 57

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-------------------------------------------she ponders if she wrote enough, if she should make her way back 2 the hotel, take a shower, get ready 4 her meeting. Might as well, might as well. Yonge will still be here, the busy street, all thru the day, all thru the seasons. There will be lots 2 see, lots 2 write about, there has been, there will be. the words will fly on the page, automatically. --------------------------------------------------------------------------she is once more in the tim horton down here in college park, she made a total mess what with cream and tea bag, she tries to write without touching the messy, sticky parts of the table, tries to hold her elbow more near to the note book, well, @ least it is cool here, outside it is a sauna, people are walking to and fro, to the subway, to the streets upstairs, she can see the checkouts of the super market, which she does not know the name of, she writes, writes, writes. she has too much sugar these days, cherry cheese danish, white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, tea, cheesepizza, hm, not that healthy, and 2 pieces of chocolate , freshly flown in from zurich, the saleslady assured her. Ah, refined sugar. Keeps us happy and healthy. Healthy in a happy way. White powder. Unsnorted. Available everywhere. Yep, legal substance. She watches people walk by. Purposeful, resolute steps, everyone has 2 be somewhere. Not her. She still has half an hour to kill. Until her next meeting. She has to skedaddle back 2 the hotel, then head out again and take the subway 2 bloor and then transfer 2 another subway and go 2 bathhurst. Fascinating. 58

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she did laundry, today, again, she swam in the hotel pool. this place is like a resort, it even has spa service. Right here in the city. Ah, fascinating. she could catch a movie too, bruno, maybe, but she has 2 go 2 NYC tomorrow. So Bruno has 2 wait. She likes the hotel, it is very busy, pretty cheap, affordable, people flock in from all over the world, new zealand, germany, brazil. there is a psychiatrists’ convention going on, and that is all she has to say 4 now. It is 5:00 o’clock, today is august 10, in 09, in toronto. It is very busy here, loud, all kinds of languages are spoken around her, simultaneously, she feels an inkling of a toothache. She tries not 2 concentrate on it. She should use the fitness center in the hotel, it does not have an exercise bike though, doesn’t have an elliptical trainer. Suddenly she misses kits, the fitness center, her 6:00 o’clock workout. She is so far away from her regular fitness routine, she substituted it with lots and lots of sugar and grease. That cannot be good. Cannot be that good. Could it? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she still feels like writing some more, is kind of addictive, this constant scratching of messages in ball pen on paper. She is talkative, just like the two women who staccato their voices against each other, constantly, relentlessly. she knows she has 2 stop, but, hey, it seems kind of impossible. What could be more fun than sitting here and writing. S-E-X has nothing on this, is so, well, yesterday.

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people walk by, it is busy, it is summer, the sun shines (not that she can see it here), she writes, writes, writes. and writes some more. stop da inque. Till 2 morrow. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is now on the train, she feels slightly hungry, but she thinks that she should wait. -------------------------------she actually made her way 2 the cafĂŠ train but it was closing to be reopened on the US-side. She is not that aware of the view which is ever changing and luscious and beautiful, she is more occupied by looking thru her stuff, filling out the customs declaration, going over her hotel-bill. Housekeeping stuff. She had an interesting conversation with some kid from newmarket, which made her think about politics, about a lot of issues. the talk got interrupted because they had 2 go 2 different wagons, which might as well be. One cannot really solve all the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s probs. on a train, can one? Maybe, this is where world peace is produced, on trains. Smushing ideas against each other, challenging each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s belief-systems. Instead of ghettoizing into our own comfortable teams. -----------------------------------------------------the train is now approaching niagara falls. Kind of slowly. It is now stopping, standing still. The train window is much smaller than the window of the Canadian, the train from vancouver 2 toronto. this is more a commuter train, passenger train, it is more modern though, it has outlets near the seat, she could use a laptop, recharge her phone. The charger is in her bag above her, though, in the baggage shelf. 60

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she writes, writes, writes. she does not have a watch, she is kind of freezing, she is pissed off @ the guy in the other seat who talks into his blackberry and says nothing but bullshit. Jeez, how idiotic can one person be? Some people are just idiots. Hey, can happen 2 the best of us. ----------------------------------------------she writes 2 keep herself occupied. Kind of tough, though, there is not much happening, only a burly custom officer, making sure that everyone here is going 2 nyc. Well, actually he says New York, because the train will stop in upstate and the final destination is penn station. She cannot believe the psycho-babble the guy in the seat near the other window is dispensing, nothing but bullshit. He is giving shitty advice in a monotone slow voice, an idiotic sigmund freud. She could just punch him. Who talks like that, man? Woman. Can you stop giving life advice into your phone? The guy is dispensing life-advice, in a very stupid way. She is not happy. Next time she will bring ear phones to tune idiots like that out. Finally, his conversation is over. But, no, now he calls someone else. ------------------------------------------------------------she is now in niagara falls. apparently there is a canadian side and a us side. --------------------------------she should observe, but she’d rather write. she has so much 2 say. she could describe the yellow “sevenson” truck-like thingies, the ‘boxcar” thingies. she is kind of getting atuned 2 the different train thingies of this world. subways, trams, trains, boxes with wheels.

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she is not that much in2 flying thingies, hates them, with a vengeance. -------------------------------------------------------writing, writing. she should be getting used 2 doing the keyboard, this constant scribbling is slightly unnerving. She will have 2 transcribe this eventually, type, type, type. Mope around the house in her p-j.s, unkempt, unwashed, with glasses on her nose, a ball pen in her “ponytail meets chignon upswept hairdo”, with bad acne. Well, the acne is actually non-existent, she just tried 2 take a stab @ describing the bluestocking-ish stereotype of a writer. a female writer. Ugly librarian versus sexy librarian. Ah, stereotypes. Have something 2 do with spinster-hood and other stereotypes. She will analyze that in depth, at another time, @ this time she is just hungry. Now it is time 4 border control. She has her stuff ready, she looks @ the red light “IT-Restroom other end” the “It” is part of “EXIT”, actually a diagonal overhead cuts diagonally over it. ------------------------------------------------she is still @ the border, she would like 2 use the bath room which is too filthy in this wagon, she has 2 go 2 the other wagon 2 use the “facilities”, but she might have to stay here in her seat, because the passport guy said, he might want 2 talk with her again. this can take 4ever, her bladder does not like it. one bit. she is hungry 2, she should have put some junkfood in2 her Lululemon bag, chips and Yoga, ah, nice combination. Lululemon, yoga-giant, pringles, chipsgiant. she ponders if she can discuss different brand names in her book-to-be here or if that is against copyright or something. Who knows, who will ever know. 62

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she writes, she writes. Over are the hobo times, so she heard. She can see the white and black tags on the light yellow freight train outside. The color scheme is very elegant, especially 4 graffiti. Very New York. --------------------------------------------------Ah, she seems 2 be full of bullshit, this trip is getting 2 her, having no - she interrupted her flow of words, because the custom officer came back and she had a long conversation with him, she felt kind of important, but kind of skewed her data, she had totally forgotten that she was in portland in spring and, yeah, she kind of feels uneasy talking 2 men in uniform, then again, they have a uniform, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather write more serious, innuendo-less prose, innuendo is just so yesterday, pc, p.c. she is happy now, full tummy, a kosher hot dog, tea with cream, mustard, entenmann cake (not from the end of the aisle), she kind of likes it here in the old u.s. of a.. Buffalo, but not much 2 see. Outskirts. She should look out, instead of blabbering away 2 her notebook. She should be like a sponge, not be the sponge that splashes liquid out. The train toots its horn, so very Choo-choo-ish, she is so very happy. nostalgic, back in simpler, better times. In a less wrinkly time. Ah. How did she ever end up with a pen in her hand, each word she draws on the page is another nail in her animator career coffin, her artist career coffin. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how it is. And the train honks its horn, all thru up-state new york. --------------------------------------she feels kind of sick, but tries to combat that with tea and chocolate chip cookies, which she has here outside somewhere between Syracuse and Albany. Outside, because of, well, maybe, 63

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because, outside is interesting, outside, because she sits here in the cafĂŠ wagon where she can look outside. She is kind of baffled by her choice of words, ever so often. -----------------------------------------------------------------For some reason, the train stopped in-between syracuse, and, maybe, albany. She had chocolate chip cookies and tea with cream in the cafĂŠ wagon. She had a very interesting conversation with a computer science, computer engineering student. She ponders how much she knows about artificial intelligence, code writing and the like. Apparently, she does know zip, zilch, she knows how to use some programs, which button 2 push, that is about it, but she is fascinated by people who can figure out how 2 develop programs that can observe reality, try to deduce the gist of it, and accumulate data and then make it replicate reality. It being a tool like a computer. She is not quite sure how this relates 2 what she does, after all she observes what goes on around her, gleans something from it and then spits out new versions of the same thing. As an animator she observes motion, then tries to replicate that. she looks out the window, the train has started on its way 2 nyc again, she writes, writes, writes. Slightly incoherent, slightly coherent. She presses her pen into the notebook, blue letter after blue letter. she wonders what good there is in documenting all her moments, what good is it for, what is the purpose? Who can profit from it? Who can benefit from it? She could just sit near a beach and humm. Isaac Newton said: I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care what the world thinks, I feel like a kid playing with colored glass @ the beach, or maybe he said colored marbles. she watches a grey silvery car drive by, parallel to the train. She forgot about her isaac newton anecdote, somehow her mind wanders off, registers all these noises, the to and fro of the train, the sounds and sights. She feels slightly nauseated, slightly apprehensive. She is sick of 64

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travelling, it is now 10 days that she wanders around, dislocatedly. Worried, without grounding. The only thing keeping her sane is this pen that smushes over the page. Keeps her occupied, keeps her grounded. Keeps her in the slight realm of sanity, lets her make the right decisions, not the wrong ones. Makes her labour under the illusion of contained order, contained knowing her way around. Makes her grasp certainty while she knows that only uncertainty seems 2 be a constant. She is utterly transient, utterly dislocated. And aggressively so. homesickly so. So very, very homesickly so. She misses her side of the bed, back, back in vancitay. In summer of 2009. Fonda, NY. ----------------------------------------------still the page is waiting 4 her input. She has to write some more. she should avoid talking 2 strangers. she should be afraid to talk 2 strangers. Even kids know: “Don’t talk 2 strangers”. It is not good, no good @ all. She should only write, write, write. Look out @ the houses that pass by the train window, listen to the music of the train horn. And this is Amsterdam, NY. The train stops. She feels nauseated. She should start sleeping. Or not. She would like 2 walk. It is tiresome 2 be on this train 4 ever. Next stop, schenecdati, schenectaty, who knows, how 2 spell that, she loves 2 say the word schenecdaty, is there a more fascinating word than that? Outskirts of Amsterdam, NY. Well, new amsterdam is profoundly more impressive. ------------------------------------------schenectady county. So that is how you write that. --------------------------------------------------------------65

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the train moved thru albany, night is slowly setting in. she can see the reflection of her glasses shadowed in on the paper, she can look @ the shadow of her hand mixing with her hand with the black ballpen. Outside dusk, dusk, metal structures, bridges, outside foresty trees holding 2gether, the reflection of the laptop monitor in the window, a screen saver, a model. The voice of the honking train, her own sigh. she writes, trying 2 override the constant rumpling of da train. She is sickly worried, utterly disoriented. Like always. Like always. ---------------------------------------------------some more poetry, some more poetry. why not? she should eat something. Chips. Hey, who needs clear arteries? Clear arteries are for the birds. We will all die, be cold and icy in a grave. But till then, bring out the chips! Why not? Could this train skedaddle any more from side 2 side? -----------------she feels slightly chilly, exhausted from stagnation, not necessarily in a physical way, she is pissed off by clogging sinks in the washrooms, the train is stopping in hudson. Hudson, New York, Hudson, New York. She feels she should be doing something else but writing, but, hey, writing keeps her happy, disrupts the disorderly chaos within her soul. Hey, it is nighttime on a train in hudson, new york, why not shoot 4 grandiose gestures of linguistic cheesiness. ------------------------------------------Chips would be nice, the crackling and munching disjointing of the crackling sharp edges of the chips in her mouth would keep her chummily amused and entertained. Why not? why Not? 66

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she ponders if she can ever escapade her writing in real time, real life this temperamentfully, words are not paint that can be arranged and rearranged willy-nilly. words are good soldiers that have to march in order, painstakingly conservative, within clear borders. Then again, language is like music, like dance. It better be. ----------------------------------------------------------she finally had her potato-chips, 220 calories of it or maybe much more, these are usually serving size amounts, her fingers are slightly greasy, but not 2 yucky, @ this point she does not really care that much anymore about discomfort, hygiene, dissheveledness versus shevelledness, she is slightly scared, scared of all these strangers, here in a strange country, here where she is so utterly, - well, utterly something, something. Her words are just not there, her writing is so very automatic, a robot could do this. Write on, write on! Or die. Huh, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a thought. -------------------------------------she is not the only writer on this train, there are other poets bitten by the muse, they write, write, write away. Slightly shevelled, purely disshelved. Trying 2 forge the disgusted disorientedness onto the paper. At least that is what she is doing. While Poughkeepsie passes her by, while penn station is waving from afar. While the train rattles on. -----------------------------------------------

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the train ride comes 2 an end. penn station, here i come. ------------------------------------------------------------i am very happy 2 be here. New York, New York! And ever so slightly scared 2 the bones. Ah, comes with the territory. -------------------Lots of Graffiti under the bridges, nearing penn station, nearing penn station, all thru the pitchdark night, rail tracks screaming under the wheels, lights move by fast, will be in @ any minute. and she finished the page. How nice! How so very nice. -----------------------------------she is in the hotel, very overpriced, nice though, new york is very hot, she had a very nice walk around her old “digs”, it is after midnight and, hey, she is so very wide awake, all she did all day long is sit in the train, chuck, chucking away, she should @ least take a shower, unpack her stuff, smush dislocation in2 location. watch seinfeld, friends or married with children. Especially the latter, intellectually challenging ad nauseum. But, hey, who wouldn’t love “married with children” or “mwc”? Life is fun, a tad, but she definitely feels homesick . --------------------------------------------------------------------she is very back in nyc, stands here in the midst of manhattan, corner of W28th. and 7th, writes, writes. this city is so very loud, a fruit fly flies over her notebook, she writes, writes. feels kind of subtly idiotic. Ah, why not? Why not!

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--------------------------------------short snaps of midtown, putting the notebook on the orange “chelsea-now” receptacle, near 2 an open trash can with blue trash in it, near 2 a bus shelter thingie with a kiddie-beach ad. this city is way too hot. here in august, here in mid-morning. here writing my days away. while bikes roll by, while life never stops. while words descend on moi. -------------------------------------------------------she sits down here in this majestic lobby of something, sparely lit, but reasonably cool, lots of people, everything is yellow, orange, ocher, light reflections all over, big round chandeliers, two, contained in 2 giant cylinders. she writes, writes, writes. not that good, not that bad. demarking the moments of her time. her camera is this pen, this book. sketching away her life. Like a war reporter, but no one gets killed. Maybe far away from here as a result of the access and opulence that abounds here. But could be just an accusation that opulence always garners. All thru history. the “fall of rome” element. she writes, writes, writes. she suddenly ended up in any-mall-usa, she plunks herself on the next chair she can find, starts writing. there is not much 2 see here, a generic clothes meets shoes store, big, generic, annoying. music, fast, not too loud, not too muted, providing the beat needed 2 not reflect and consume, consume. Buy some shit, why not, write some shit, why not? nyc is getting 2 her, wallowing around macy’s, madison garden, around and within this sea of humanity grapples @ her nerve strings, plays harp with them. pling, pling. writing keeps her grounded, supposedly. If that is what you’re shooting 4. If insanity is not so much more becoming, so utterly normal. Seems like it, yep,

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seems like it. she writes, writes, writes. Demarking, what is the city, like so many b4 her, so many after her. Where would writers, filmmakers be without cities? Ah, nowhere. The motion keeps the pen moving, fast-paced, good, bad and sometimes 4 a split-second brilliantly. When the diver rests in mid air, before the descent, where the one split-second of pause is there before the swooping motion, build-up, quiver in perfect stillness, sweeping, galloping move. Ah, 2 be an artist. What a fruitless, breadless profession. What an absolute disaster she stumbled into, upon. What slight, suspended fun. Always yearning 4 more. Always trying. ---------------------------------------------------------------she stands here in the manhattan mall, a very big white JC Penney sign on red in front of her, escalators going up, down, she having a birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view. there is a grand opening going on, wolfgang puck, omgd, in person pitching his book, smiling, signing autographs, posing, talking 2 fans. She ponders if this is what it takes 2 make a buck in selling a book, she does not want part of it. Other people do not have 2 succumb 2 public humiliation 2 sell their services. A plumber does not have 2 pose and smile in order 2 charge 4 repairing a toilet. It is not fair. Why is writing a book, even a cookbook, a performance? She writes, but she does not want 2 make a spectacle out of herself. Or does she? All the world is a stage. Is that an absolute? Like 2 plus 2 equals 4? Well, anyways, she enjoys being a spectator here, free performance, stuff 2 write about. And that is all that counts. On a sunny august morning here in new york. ---------------------------------------------------------she seems 2 be mesmerized by the performance of the cookbook signing, she has ample fodder 4 observing and documenting, she feels like a filmmaker documenting different scenes of this city, that she can then, later on, edit, cut, assemble and reassemble. This is why she likes this, lots of 70

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people, her birds view, motioning of the escalators, ascent, descent, all thru 3 differing stocks, the decadence of celebrity culture, that elevates boiling an egg into something 2 be contested or lauded, something as prosaic as boiling water, this is why this country is so fat, or is it? Well, @ the very least, consumer culture can ignite a very complex discourse, keeps cultural theorists, sociologists in work, at work, provides ample amounts of so very questionable phenomena of human behavior waiting to be discussed. She should stop, there is just so much she can glean from this. Only so much 2 write about. At this point she is getting hungry. ---------------------------------------------------she sits down in this so very busy McDonaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, has a tea, a cheeseburger, she garnered a very quiet, very solitary table in pistachio green, where she can observe, the interior of the fast-food joint, the street, she is sitting near a window that goes down to the floor, this is the perfect place 2 write the next all-canadian novel, but she does not do novels, hers is the click-clack of the photographer, the state of the image-assemblist. With words, with words. Hunched over she sits here, it is half past 12, she still has until 5 when she will be back in the hotel, she has a meeting @ six. she writes, writes, she can see half of a sabretto-umbrella, crumpled, blue-yellow-white, very new york. A building goes up near her, to her left, construction, construction. Thick nyaccent, yelled by this person 2 her right. ny-accent, new jersey accent, who knows? she is not from here, sounds all the same 2 her. she writes anyways, not so very happily, silently, reluctantly. there is nothing 2 observe, new york is new york, she feels the tinge of a tooth-ache in the lower left part of her mouth. she writes, writes, writes. Like so many days before, like so many days hereafter.

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-----------------------------------------------------she should count her pages, like this she is floating in mid-air, without a certain amount of pages written on oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agenda to be produced, without any requirement of a certain number of words, writing seems to be tough, too free-flowing, much 2 free-flowing. If this would be a painting, there would be a frame into which a certain amount of paint should be splashed. she smiles, she might not be the visual artist that she once was, but the principle is the same, seems 2 be the same. This is a self-portrait, a self-portrait in book form. But it is also an account of the city, of this moment in time, of the spectacle that grasps her, molds her, swallows her forcefully and spits her out, that kind of thing. It is about the dots and sprinkles of life, the gasps in between, it is about longing without lust, or, with ample amounts of lust. All-encompassing, well, something. Something of that kind, that trickles away from the pen of the animator, the animator that never was, the one, that was left behind. That has to stumble around using clunky words instead of the elegant rhythm of lines, shapes and forms, eloquence halted stallingly, fragmented into one thousand and one pieces. Something of that kind, something definitely of that kind. She should finish her tea, make her way 2 the brooklyn museum. Why not? why not. ---------------------------------------------------she is in the subway making her way 2 the brooklyn museum. she will watch color instead of words, visuals instead of language. She will look around uncertainly. Once that she is there. if she can find her way thru this subway maze. -------------------------------------

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a struggling, non-emerging artist, stagnating happily 4 the last 10/12 years. that is what she is. one of many, so many like her. on her way 2 the brooklyn museum, the person 2 her left has flipflops, so does the one 2 her right. summer, summer, summer. hot plus ever so slightly humid. so body-bogglingly humid. the subway wagon screeches thru. -------------------------------------she ponders if the “failure element” is the one that she relishes, relinquishes most about her artist status, she is not even quite sure if she should go back 2 art school for her 3 last credits, if she’d not rather be the perpetual art student, the one who stagnated, paused, 30 seconds from the finish line, the one who never sprinted thru, the one who wallows in the loneliness of the long distance runner, the one who is romanticized, unsung, the one who sits on the bench in front of the colorful mosaic announcing “eastern parkway-brooklyn museum”. That one. ------------------------------she sits outside in the lobby of the brooklyn museum. she has not started yet. there is a line in the washroom or so it seems from here. it is cold, teachers, camp leaders shoo their underlings, be quiet, be quiet. this is, after all, a museum. Bow, bow to the institution. Respect the dominance of white men. Yep, that 2. especially that. And euro-centrism prevails. Pericles, sophocles, my ass. She chuckles, maybe, only maybe, she should scratch this from her prose. Hey, but why? Why indeed. She smiles, words are her harpoons that will bring down dominance. Male dominance, white dominance. If someone should dominate, why not her. Ah, a dirty job, but someone has 2 do it. If not by force, than with words. Slowly undermining, chiselling away @ the rock of the establishment. Whoever that might be. ---------------------------------73

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she sits down in the top floor of the brooklyn museum, in a nice, very comfy, very victorian chair, it is colourful here, there is a silent film going on, there are children sitting here, watching the film, she writes, the cafĂŠ downstairs is way 2 overpriced, she does not like the exhibitions. Her stuff is way, way, way better. So is her writing! She is just one disgruntled, successless artist. Shooed away by curators. Which might, of course, change. Then she will happily change teams, teams of the unsuccessful, failureful artist to team of sparkling, art stars. Yeah, why not? We can do it all. We should be able to do it all. --------------------------------------------------this the fifth floor of the brooklyn museum is fantastic. the total opposite of her first impression. Very, very impressible. just fantastic. ---------------------------------------she could live here. She should live here. ---------------------------------------------she sits down here, is so very happy. She is surrounded by beauty and if she had the energy, she would walk around and explore all there is to see. But her back is giving out, her legs are too, her knees are aching. Thus, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather sit here and write. Contemplate, something like that. 10 years ago she thought, she was a painter, then she thought, she was an animator. Now, she writes. Not that good, but still. Still something. A poet that feels that the visual art world spat her out and did not let her join its ranks. All these words made the paint on her brush dry. All that theory threw her 2 the wolves. Made her ask 4 forgiveness that she ever thought that she can paint and draw. All the theory made her leave the studio, run 4 her life. Now she is merely a

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lowly spectator, sitting around in museums and documenting what she sees, praising, lauding, dismissing. Using all, all these useless, useless words. -----------------------------------------------------she sits down in the part where sadegh tirafkanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image is left behind her, behind her to the left. She feels like crying. The image really moves her, and the thing is, that she takes one look @ that image and knows exactly what it is about, for her it is heart wrenching, she very, very much feels like the maker of that image. Maybe it is better that no one else here understands it, she can retain her composure, she has to. It has been a long time, that she was this emotionally impressed by an artwork and she is not quite sure if she likes it. If she shoots 4 crying, usually she prefers happy, slap-sticky, up-art. fun-stuff. This however is serious, pulls @ her very essence as an artist and as a non-artist alike. it is getting late, she has 2 leave 4 the hotel. Maybe another day she will find herself here again. ---------------------------------------------she is utterly impressed, well, was impressed, she is heading home, home where hotel is. There is a breeze, coming up, relief from the heat. The subway station in front, marble benches around with tiny, uneven granite particles therein, sparrows hopping, cars whooshing by on eastern parkway, someone laughs out loud. Another bobbing sparrow, one of many. life, life is oh so good. And someone laughs out loud again. ----------------------------------------------------------------

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and now another thought, kind of at a bad time, in the motioning subway wagon, manhattan bound, too much noise, too freaky, anyhow, tirafkan’s image was so potent because it represents, exemplifies old meeting young, the struggle of trying 2 reconcile old practices with new ways, so it is actually a universal theme and the only reason why it had such an impact on her is because the image of the historical part coincides with her history, historical iranian history. What she thinks her background is, even though the images were battle scenes, soldiers, thus, hey, not “herstorical” imagery. Anyhoo, the train whooshes on, pretty fast, much 2 fast. --------------------------------------------------she semi-reluctantly picks up her pen, is not quite sure if this is the right table, sitting here under too much light, the paper being too illuminated, too bright, far too bright. Outside there is slight over-cast, actually the sky is dirtyish grey, the small fleck she can make out from here. Slight reluctant drizzle sprinkled down while she made her way from the hotel to the starbucks on the corner of 23rd and 8th. 23rd street, 8th. Avenue. it is thursday, in august of 09. this is the place where she put down word after word in april of 08, more than a year ago, more than 15 months ago, to be exact. She counts and recounts on her fingers, she glances shortly @ the “Brussels” inscription on the pink sweater of the woman in front of the window. she ponders how funny, weird it is 2 sit here, look out @ her old digs or more so the locales she described in her last “book”, the manuscript that she just recently typed out in one big swoop and sent out 2 a publisher in boston. She is following in her own foot-steps, revisiting, revisiting. But somehow her view from here is slightly skewed, she must be sitting too near to the wall. she can see the new york sports clubs sign, @ least part of it. The Breadstix Café is there, the “new Venus Restaurant”. “Earth 76

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Cleaner”, “New London Pharmacy”, the “Boston Market”. The “starbucks” sign. But it is not really like that, there are heads in front of all those scripts, all those inscriptions, there is a column, part of a muted, frosty glass partition, there are posters on the window glass, there are door handles, silvery ones, obstructing the view. The “exit” sign is unobstructed, so is the type on the back of the beige starbucks napkin. She can see the real food. simply delicious logo twice, if one can call it a logo. She looks down @ her pen producing thin perfect, slightly right-leaning letters, in dark blue sprinkled with purple, on the blue lines of the notebook page. The blue of the letters is so much darker than the blue lines, the line, the horizontal is more like the sky, innocent, the letters are forceful. She got distracted by people-watching, she still has to document the black bike leaning against the railing of the scaffolding outside. she will go back 2 the hotel, she will write more later on. she has all day until five in the afternoon. she will just look thru what she just wrote, try to find glitches and glibs. -----------------------------------------------------------------------she sits in the subway, wondering to where this train takes her, apparently nyu, because the station is New York University. No one leaves, apparently no classes. Too soon, in the year, in the day. she can only guess. tries 2 decipher what is going on. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits down here in the mc donald’s that faces “one new york plaza”. It is sometime between eight and nine in the morning, it is in the beginning of august, some day between 10th. and 20th., it is still 2009. all her concrete data are getting kind of screwed up, skewered, she deduces that dislocation overrides her concrete sense of reality, supersedes sense of self, bypassing groundedness. She is in this very palpable state of flux, where nothing is utterly real, but not yet 77

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surreal yet, decidedly non-surreal. She tries to stay lucid, forces herself to interpret the sounds and sights around her, categorize them according 2 her experiences. She tries 2 smush the unknown smack amidst the known, she tries 2 stay on top of things, she has 2 separate fact from fiction. Her tea is so very real, if she drinks it now hot out of the cup, her tongue will burn. The amass of yellow cabs outside demark New York. Very much so. She ponders, how come the cabs have an orange tint, the same that is on the outside of her Mc Café cup. Orangely shaded. The cup that is, not the cabs. Cups, cabs, She plays with words, what else can she do. There are no prospects waiting on the horizon as a stellar animator, a stellar gallery artist. Or an art teacher. All the traditional routes of art-making are closed to her, she cannot penetrate “da aht wirled”. She has 2 find her own way, thus she scribbles lettas. She likes it, well, kind of. Keeps her busy, well, keeps her, so very maybe, grounded. keeps her on this side of the fence, the border ‘tween sanity and insanity. She can take glimpses over the fence, we all can. we are all stumbling near the fine line between normalcy and, well, 4 the lack of a better term, abnormalcy, but, as long as we hold ourselves straight, shoulders back, breasts poking out @ the world, we should do just fine. So she thinks, in her very superficial, very visceral way of reasoning. the tea should be lukish by now, drinkable. Ah, why not, she will give it A rest, write later on. there are ample amounts of time 2 write this. Loads of it. “Take a seat from history” says the inscription on the bus outside, the man beside her pummels his blackberry. A cabdriver in a tight white T-shirt with his breasts poking out leaves his cab, bumbly, reluctantly, motioning forward, while looking backward(s). Hey, seems, once an animator, always an animator. Seems, all she ever learned, she learned from martin, this is how

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everyone should think, deduce all our endeavours into squish, roll, something, something. This is why she did not succeed in animation, she vaguely, so very barely remembers even the most elementary postulations of animation theory. Applied animation theory. @ one time she will go back 2 animation skool, master walk-cycles, get the increments right. Instead of weasling her way thru. Trying 2 mask her utter incompetence with arrogance. She didn’t think of herself as too arrogant, but one of her teachers called her that. So, hey, maybe he was right. She still tries 2 figure out, what went wrong in animation. Something did, obviously. But, who cares? She cares. She looks outside, tells herself to calm down. There is soooo very much 2 see, the woman with the ample bosom in a green wool jacket that accentuates her figure. she writes and writes and writes some more. --------------------------------------------------------she changed her seat, walked up 2 the 200 seat area of the Mc D’s, sits, so that she can see all the people streaming in from the staten island ferry. “the new jerusalem”, she wonders which films and songs eternalize and celebrate the arbutus line, #16. she is a writer, is it her job 2 put granville island on the map? Well, she sure has written a lot about south building, north building, art schoolish stuff. She will put it 2gether, detangle her e-mail mess, make “it” into a coherent entity”. Something, something “the new jerusalem”. She has 2 figure out how much it takes 2 take the ferry. Or she should skedaddle 2 the guggenheim. Where all self-respecting tourists congregate. Tourist, Shmurist. -------------------------------------------------------------

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now she is sitting down in the staten island ferry terminal, writing away. There is a lot 2 see, but 2 her everything seems grey. Must be the overcast, the grey floor, her so very greyly tinted attitude of utter homelessness, not in the sense of being non-sheltered, more in the deep knowledge of her utter ungrounded ness, swivelling around in uncertainty, not having anything 2 do except 4 putting blue letters into notebooks and there is really no financial compensation in sight, her endeavour is just a hobby, whatever that means, a craft, something she does with her right hand, while holding the notebook with her left hand, smushed down on her knees, sitting on the bench. the ferry is coming in, people flock 2 it. Staten Island, should be New Jersey. Or jersey as one native called it. she writes, writes, writes. a little. she is hungry, but wants 2 lose weight. she’ll wait till noon. To gorge something down. the woman is having a pinkish frappuccino. ------------------------------------------------------------------and now she sits outside facing the statue of liberty, which she can’t see from here, with parts of the Staten Island Ferry letters behind her, on a derelictish bench, with drizzle coming down every 3 minutes, with pigeons and starlings around, with the orange grey ferry coming in. This place is desolate, slightly off. skyscrapers glistening reluctantly to her right, a green and lavender-purpleshirted person walking by on the lower platform, a helicopter slurping thru the air. It is cold, breezily, she writes and writes and writes while gazing @ the birdshit on the ground being visually interrupted by crumpled grey napkins, by beige cigarette butts in the slits between the “floor tiles”. pigeons walk her by, to her left, to her right. water is dark and dirty, polluted ever so slightly. ah, she writes. why not? why not? why not, indeed. 80

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Today is the 13th, should she be worried? Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather not. --------------------------------------------------------she is sitting down here in the lobby of the American Museum of the Indian or the Museum of the American Indian which is free. She has not started yet, is looking 4 the rest room. The tiles are white-grey, kind of textured, longish. that is the only way, she can describe it. she feels uneasy about walking thru a place that acknowledges colonization in a blatant way. Is this place celebrating the injustice that was done, is it apologetic? She will see, but she has no high hopes. There are all these fatally blatant disconnects in the American Psyche. But in the end, she will not, cannot take sides, take a stand. Somehow she is much, much too in between, with weird alliances 2 very conflicting sides. She lives here, in north america, so she is automatically part of the problem, never part of the solution. And the pen moves on, fast-paced, relentlessly. The security guards are discussing loudly, she canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand a word. Word. -----------------------------------------------------------------she sits down in the hsbc place, it is wet outside, the world goes by, she is taking shelter here until the rain gives way 4 more sunny weather, more happy weather. she is sitting in front of a world map, she is looking thru it, oh, my, her geography is so way off. When did that happen? She used to be so good with maps. Oh, well. ---------------------------------------------------another day. Another day. back in the same old coffee shop, this time she changed her place here, her chair is facing the wall, why not, why not? she writes away. There are writers, readers, sleepers, coffee drinkers around here, all smushed into close proximity into this tiny-ish

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starbucks on 23rd and 8th. she writes away, cannot really see her pen, her writing that good, the shade is wrong, the light, back lit, it is more difficult than usual, maybe she will use better lingo, maybe not, hey, it is worth a try. writing, writing, she minisculily coffeestained the page, she writes, writes, writes. Apparently, this is where writers congregate, flock 2, this neighbourhood, in the chelsea hotel which is next to her hotel writers like dylan thomas and o’henry lived, and wrote. arthur miller, thomas wolfe. Why did they stay in hotels? Did they write because they stayed in this specific hotel? she could ponder about that but it does not really matter that much. Not in this world, there are definately more pressing issues than what makes someone write, what stifles writing. At the very core, a pen makes you write, sitting in class to produce a piece of writing, that makes you write. The mere existence of the written word makes you write. Teachers make you write, our bookcentric society makes you write. Book burning makes you write, the shooting down of the spoken word makes you write. Something like that. Always something like that. An empty notebook gasping 4 ink makes you write, makes you write, makes you write, coffee, music, this dark beige orange table-top make you right, its circle, made 4 only one person, it makes you, the generic you, write a little bit. Yeah, guess, that is how the cookie, that cookie, crumbles. -------------------------------------------------------------today laundry has 2 be done, it is friday already, she is now “on the road” 4 near 2 two weeks, she is getting comfortable in her transient skin. Could be that she is getting a tad 2 comfy, how will she go back to her routine-ish life once she is back in vancitay. will she miss this? Of course she will, ah, she must, she very much must. 82

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---------------------she sits here in the starbucks that seems 2 be nearer 2 the laundromat, the one where her dirty clothes are @ this very moment swirled around, yeah, wirled around, very asymmetrically, evermotioning, but contained in one space, where pauses, cadences, repetitions interrupt cycle after cycle, like music, a reluctant symphony and, hey, last not least, animation. Always animation, ALways ANimaTion. Her tea is getting cold, too pepperminty, the chocolate madeleines are waiting 2 be devoured, crunched. friday in new york city, sun shining, yellow-orange cab waiting in the street, people talking and laptopping, midmorning, the sun not too hot as of yet, people holding hands, oh, so very yesterday. she is alone in da big citi, hey, loving and cherishing every minute. The laundromat is waiting, crying out for her. For her alone. --------------------------------------------------------------------she is waiting 4 the C-train, which seems 2 take 4-ever. Oh, there it is, no, it is the E-train. Not good, not good. C-train, come, come. Where are yer? well, @ least she is on page 6 already, 17 pages should be enuf 4 the next 11 days. (per day). she is finally on the C-train, writing, fast-paced, rolling, up-town. Chuck-a-chuck. She thinks that that constitutes trainish noise, then again, might not be. she is happy, which is not enough emotion or action 4 reasonably o.k. prose. 2 blah, way, way 2 blah. 2 blah, 2 blah, 2 blah.

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but she said dat alreadi. -------------------------she sits here in rockefeller center. it is way too hot, just a slow, very reluctant breeze is blowing. It is so very much peoplefull, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather hunch over and look @ her pen putting letters on paper, letters that are slightly bowing 2 the right, so very, very many of them. She still has one more hour, she came here as fast as she could, so very rushed, only 2 realize that the black clock in her hotel room was an hour early. So she huffed and puffed, rushed only 2, well, she said that already. it is hot, but she said that one already too. Maybe she should peoplewatch, but, hey, they look all alike. The usual: One nose, 2 eyes, one mouth, 2 ears, some hair, and variations thereof. They bend, when they sit, they walk with 2 feet. They use language 2 communicate. See one, see them all. Wow, is it hot here. so very very hot. -----------------------------------------------------she sits down in this very cold shoe slash handbag store, they have glasses here, too. She is not quite sure if it is o.k. to just sit here and write, but no one has shoed her away. Shood her out of the shoe store. This place is slightly beautiful, reluctantly upscale, old-money up-scale, so is the music. Old-money up-scale with filigran lines, golden, in the chandelier, not golden, golden, golden with a brown tint. elegant wealthy with an understatement, non-chalance, entitlement.

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She should write the J. Peterman catalogue, she seems 2 have a knack 4 that. Comes from animating. So, she thinks. Today, she motioned all over chelsea, schlepped herself from gallery 2 gallery. The visual arts biz seems 2 be very tough, all these people were very, well, unhelpful. The submitting process seems 2 laborious. Much 2 laborious. Much, much 2 laborious. Proposals, CV’s, all of that shit. Writing seems more fun. Shoes, shoes. -------------------------------------------------------she sits down in fendi, after waltzing thru versace, thru cartier, thru a church. she writes, writes. there is time 2 kill, so she writes so very fast ….. and …. STOP. ---------------------------------------------she stands here writing on 5th. avenue, in front of wempe. why not, why not? she has 2 do something, while waiting. kill da thyme, kill da thyme. she feels slightly overwhelmed here, within these overpriced places. snubbed, always snubbed. she writes so very fast. it is hot, there should be a chair here. she missed a line, missed a line. Pucci, De Beers, Bottega Veneta. on the other side, she writes, writes, writes. ----------------------------------------------------------and once more, once more back, back here in the little, so very small starbucks on 23rd., looking out @ the day, the happy morning sun bathing life on 23rd, on 8th. everywhere she looks she can see the light flecks and reflections, she can see the rim of the table beside her glisten, she can see

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the hardly visible shadow of her hand, she is sitting here writing her notes, demarking her existence on this planet, in darkish blue letters with a reluctant hint of purple, slightly leaning 2 the right, soldiers she puts on the pale blue lines of the pages in her notebook. she numbers the pages, 17 should be what has 2 be filled today, yesterday she stopped @ 10, that is not good, that is not the spirit that built the west. Nosirree. nosirreeh, bob. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sprinkle stabs of Americana over this prose, while a scruffy, brown-black dog wallows by, with a black-red leash sticking out diagonally from its neck, to be meeting the hands of its owner. must be a dogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life. Outside, she can see the gap sign, the NYSC sign, she writes, writes, writes some more. Silently the pages fill, maybe, hopefully she will be finished @ noon. Her work day will be over, she will be free to go over to pursue whatever she feels like. In august, on the 15th., here in new york city. Outside, a lot of yellow, a string with yellow beads, cab upon cab upon cab. Behind her, starbucks coffee bags lined up meticulously on the shelf, a rusty red with metallic glimmer, silver appliques thereon. She ponders whether it is feasible 2 write and write, sans remuneration, sans remuneration. Is what she writes, shitty, when compared 2 the stuff that is printed, orderly in black letters on white-beige paper, bound 2gether, like the book in the hands of the man with the red-purple-blue checkered shirt to her right. Is this shitty writing, good writing, eloquence par excellence? Is self-doubt and self-affirmation a subject matter? A good enough subject matter, a shitty one? Is the language she uses a good enough one? Can it even be bent into poetic waxing? Is it malleable enough? Is it oversaturated with terms borrowed from the moving image, from radio, tv? from internet? Where do we stand in this very now, in this 86

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moment, that marches on each and every second, in our utterly time-based existence? And what makes her the voice of, well, the voice of any group of individuals? Is it only her voice? Obviously it is. But any writer puts just his, her individual spin on the clay of words, that is used, is formed, is plunked down on the white pages swallowing them. The one lowly poet. And is there an alliance of the proverbial white writer from European descent, yes, that one? The “man”, who is guilty of all of society’s ills? That one. She ponders @ who does the finger pointing, who, at the very core, has something 2 gain from that kind of finger pointing. She does not really care, who writes what, who reads what. Her mission is pure and simple, she will write, she will type, distribute and publish it, whether 4 pay or sans pay, the reason being that she feels that everyone should contribute 2 our shared cultural production. Something like that, something very much like that. All the spinozas, all the saadis of this world are predominately male, that cannot be good, should not be good. All the philosophers she studies in school, are male, the female ones just talk about issues pertaining to “female” issues, whatever that is. Maybe it is just the prob. with the curriculum selection, only female authors that talk about female issues are selected. And is there even a difference between female and male issues? She could talk about this in detail, but, hey, she does not really feel like utter whining. There is more 2 life, positivity is more fun than negativity. The music on the overhead, people flocking in, the noise of the coffee beans that are scooped up behind the counter, like the noise of gravel coming down the shoot, the conversation, the voices of the 3 women 2 her right, 23rd happening outside, car after car waiting patiently @ the red light, only 2 swoop forward after the light change.

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She writes, writes, writes, becomes so very serious, feels her chest becoming knotted up, fresh air, fresh air, gasping, moving limbs and legs, motioning forward, it would help, interrupt this very insanity, this incessant, fruit-less writing. this is definitely enough 4 now, 8 pages are filled, nine are waiting for her input, still. SToP 4 now. stop it already. ------------------------------------------------------------------Some other place, some other place would be good. Should be good. Better than putting down word after word in one big whoosh, while her eyes start 2 ache, while her right shoulder starts to ache, ache, ache. That is where the movement of her right hand originates from, she painfully becomes aware of that. This is not even carpal tunnel syndrome, it is mere overuse, too many repetitions of the same, in too short a time-period, pauses can make her prose benefit, make it better. But then again, then again, there is something 2 be said 4 this state of insanity, where thought upon thought is accumulated, in delirium, without being drunk, word catapulting upon word. while a slow saturday morning is happening here in new york city. ------------------------------------------------she just plunked herself on the nearest bench in the subway station, starts writing, starts writing. this is 14th street, maybe union station, maybe not. Or union place, union station was the one in toronto. All these random names mush into one, so many days on the road. Someone annoys her with his preaching, she is interrupted in her thought flow. She can see the green light @ the end of the black tunnel, she will leave.

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another bench, in front of a fruit-stand, chips, chocolate stand, she remembers this bench from last year, she used to sit here and pen her prose, near the steps to the Uptown A C E, the steps that go down to the train-tracks. She is following in her own footsteps, rewriting her own herstory. She is even using the same cell-phone. A woman starts speaking Spanish 2 her, which is really funny, it happens a lot, she must have been Spanish in another life. Yep, hasta la vista, baby, that is about the amount of Spanish she knows, even arnold must know more. she writes and writes and writes. this is a nice place, people walking by, looking kind of lost in the tunnel. It is interesting now, usually there are more people, the space changes with the influx of people. The static, still space gets visually skewed by the motion of the creatures moving thru. The movement against the static. The total standing still of the space, the consistent motion of all those 2 legged beings. The juxtaposition of static and motion. That one, yeah, that one. she is happy, page 12 has be filled. Ah, 12 down, 5 more to go. Her hand hurts, fingers cramp up, but hey, what the heck. Even her wrist tingles. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------She walks down 7th Avenue, stops in front of a Duane reade, starts writing, bike, dog, people, the pave-ment looks dotted, grey and black, grey background, black dots, she writes and writes and writes. keeps her busy, ever so slightly. she should walk home, home where the hotel is. She should write some more. Like a freak. A weirdo. A tourist. Huh, they are all strange. it is summer, they, us, descend on the hot city. Like flocks and flocks of geese. And page 13 is filling up. Hooray.

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the shadow on the white building is breath-taking. -------------------------------------------she sits down in this deli, feels very born and bred new-yorkish, she is having a roasted-turkey sandwich, actually, it is a roasted veggie sandwich, she has not started eating yet, it is midmorning, who has roasted veggies @ this time of the day. it should be clenched in grease, usually there are tons and tons of oil, any oil, when veggies are roasted. Glistening. She ponders, if o’henry would have used exaggerations like “tons and tons”. O’henry, he lived in the chelsey hotel, he wrote. Her hotel is next 2 that hotel, she writes. She ponders, how to keep the narrative flowing, her narrative. Is consistency good, is fragmentation good? Is gesticulating to herself good? Good 4 business? Should she unwash, unkemp? To be more like a poet? A poet-know-it? A know-it poet? Ah, a gifted limerick writer. A silly, silly goose. the day marches on, ever so force-fully. Her veggie-sandwich is waiting 2 be devoured. people walk by, fast, fast, fast. resolute steps, everyone seems to have purpose, a goal, that kind of thing. people motioning thru nyc, on car, on foot. She watches and puts down letters, forcefully. Her hand hurts, her shoulder acts up, but what the heck. Words have 2 be put down, yes, yes, yes. A sight-seeing bus, one of many. Music playing, something, oh, so very something. Coffee cups, two, with people attached. A cell phone, nestled against an ear. Sneakers, black ones, 3 pairs. In one family, maybe bought in bulk. Sandals. The woman of the family is the only sandal wearer.

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Ah, she writes, ah, she writes. While talking 2 herself. Oh, sanity, who needs thou? All these nonsensical musings have to be pinned down on paper, have to, have to. Her whole right lower arm is cramping, the muscles are atrophizing. Who knows, if this is the right use of words. It is now. No one owns this English language, it is one of many. She can use it @ random, assemble and reassemble it as she pleases. Cut thru it, let the flow of people on the street, on 7th. Avenue determine the flow of her words. To the left and to the right. She stumbles ever so happily 2 the end of the 17th. page. homestretch, homestretch, ah, HOMestretch. Yep, writing is a sport, so very physical, making 4 aching joints and aching eyes. here, in nyc, in some august, definitely in 2009. ------------------------------------------------------she starts, fast, fast, all these letters onto the paper, while the music is playing fast, she tries 2 figure out how many words per minute can she produce, how fast, how fast, how so very fast. Speed is integral, important, then again, the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;importantâ&#x20AC;? is not the right term, but she has 2 rush on. It is 8 in the morning, she has 2 finish her ratio of 17 pages by noon, that is what she vowed 2 herself, 17 pages, her self-inflicted ratio, the self-inflicted wound of the poet, bleeding in broad daylight, stripping in front of the world. While the world watches, here, this is what i do, laugh all you want, cry all you want. If she was a plumber the only gage of her work would be the functionality of the water closet, the plumbing either works or not, in writing it is not that simple. Or maybe, more simpler, simpler, the only deterrents for the end consumer would be total incoherence, using different languages in the same paragraph, making the words run from left to right in a script that is supposed 2 go from right 2 left, punctuation that fragments the sentences, orthography that gallops inconsistently over the page. Page 17 after page 53, books

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that have pop-ups, books that have bombs in them. That explode when they are opened. Books that start talking, books that are all loose-leaf and are pinned on the wall, waving, swaying in the wind, being moved by the breeze produced by every passer-by, the air-stream, the motion that a person walking by makes. In short, writing that does not comply to traditional, conventional rules. And it is, of course, implicit that convention is so very random. She ponders, if she made her point, if she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, if she illustrated her thoughts appropriately, if she is able to distill the gist of her ideas, her findings, eloquently. If she can shape the clay of the language according 2 her wishes, or whether the words of this so very foreign lingo clunk and screech rustily, whether she can use the language as good as a native speaker could. Can she master the music, is she able 2 orchestrate the cadences, the pauses in the very right order, perfectly, harmoniously? How can one even use a language appropriately, language is so very fleeting, so utterly time based. It moves forward, each word is annihilated by the next, in the written word, @ least, one can do the trip over and over again, one can read the same sentence one hundred times. Actually, the same goes for the spoken word, repeat the same sounds again, again, again. And the point is? She smiles, her findings gallop into different directions, which is very much what she is shooting 4 here. She wants 2 throw inklings out, she wants the reader to start 2 develop her or his own ideas, she just states her findings, so very half-bakedly, so that the reader aka the end consumer can further these ideas, challenge them, reject them, but ultimately find something new. Hers is not the concrete world, but not the abstract one either. It is somewhere in the middle, intertwined.

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The starbucks today is desolate, as desolate as it can be 4 this very busy starbucks. She writes, writes. Writes, writes, writes. --------------------------------------------------------------------she has 6 pages already, there are 11 more waiting 2 be filled, she could write larger letters, she could do this, do that. Make bolder statements or vye 4 timid understatements. She should walk up to FIT, look @ the gallery-exhibit. Clothes might inspire her, fashion, fashion, fashion. The bike standing outside might inspire her, the same bike that was there yesterday. A trip on the subway might make her write, might order the conflicting chatting inside of her mind, the chattering, the fragmented lingo. And the coffee mill goes on and on. Outside the “Earth CLEANER”, “earth” is in green neon, “cleaner” in red neon. She looks @ the coffee packages, all 21 of them, she points her fingers @ them and starts counting, she just counts the ones in the front rows on the shelves. The people here must think she is nuts, but this being new york city, being nuts comes with the territory. How much nuttiness is acceptable, how much blah-ness is acceptable? Today, today. It is sunday, she came here on tuesday evening. She has seen 2 or 3 museums, done laundry, windowshopped. She went to the threading place, changed her hotel-room. Checked her e-mail, walked the streets, frequented coffee houses, got lost in the subway. She took cold showers, only to be heated up again by the firy weather, the humidity, the staleness. She got shelter from the heat in all the shoe stores of this city. Shoe-stores rock, they are filled with benches and chairs. So that the customers can sit down and over-heated passer-by’s.

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She can see the “Venus” script of the “new venus restaurant”, a red-silvery bus passes in front of it, for a split-second the “venus” vanishes. she had yoghurt, each and every day, the kind she does not get @ home. She admires the 7 kinds of milano cookies, this city has to offer. She admires the golden, handwriting-like name-pendants that people wear here. She loves the open garbage-cans of new york city. The marble loaf in starbucks, and, last not least, the black and white cookie. She still has to check out the “Strand” and so many bags all over town invite her to do so. She should run around town with a medium brown bag, she should write, write, write. she could do laundry, she could do this and that. And …, yep, write some more, some more. she misses love, physical contact. She ponders, if she should write this, x-rated is not her forte. So this is as risqué as we are shooting 4 here. Then again, love-stuff is always, AlwaYs fun. She smiles, not naughty, more nice. Then again, naughty is more up her alley. good girls go 2 heaven, bad girls go 2 amsterdam. And if they are afraid to fly, new amsterdam will do. she writes and writes and writes. One day she will go to Boston, the T-shirt inscription of the guy near the milk-counter who split-secondly haulted, said Boston University. Made her remember that that is where she should definitely go. To talk 2 her editor, who is not her editor yet. But who encouraged her to send her first manuscript to him. And now, that she is penning manuscript numero tres, she should muster the courage to @ least ask, if the 312 pages did arrive from Vancitay, if he got them. She could email, but going there in person would be so much more fun. She would go 2 Little Italy, to Mike’s Café, and, finally, have a chocolate-chip ricotta cannelloni.

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The one she did not have last time. Now that she is 40 pounds later, one cannelloni would not kill her. People plunk in, plunk out, like waves near the beach, that come in, go out, quietly, silently, noninterrupted. Sunday in new york city, in a sun-drenched starbucks on 23rd., this one, this one. She writes, writes, writes. And writes some more. While the singer sings her song, while the girl in the asymmetrical black dress looks this way, to the ground. While she, the author, cherishes her loneliness, her uninterruptedness. While she cherishes her ability to hold this pen and make it move over the page, leaving all these traces of thoughts, of short, short ideas. While she cherishes her aching right arm, that attests to her involvement with the world, her intellect. Women philosophers, there are way too little numbers of us. Move over, Spinoza, here come the girls. She ponders if this kind of battle-cry will make the cut, if she can even take the plunge from, from, from what? If she writes, she is a writer. If she animates, she is an animator. If she keeps plucking @ her job long enough, she should be able to establish herself as a, well, whatever. It would help, to know what you want to succeed @. And then pursue that, forcefully. At this time, she continues 2 dabble, in writing, in animating, in gallery art. It comes with the territory. Emily Carr does that 2 you, does it 2 all of us. Did it to Douglas Coupland. Each school on the planet produces a certain kind of outcome. If you know that, you just have to make it work 4 you. A woman in blue harem pants comes in, black top. She writes, writes, â&#x20AC;Ś and writes some more. page fifteen, page fifteen.

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not much more 2 put down, she can happily go back 2 the hotel, plunk this her notebook into the right drawer on the bottom and then go then go about her merry ways. Her neck is stiffening up, so is her arm. She needs respite, fast-paced writing in the morning, and then rest, rest, rest. It is like sprinting, training 4 the olympics, physical exertion, than rest. The same here, energetic writing, then rest, then house-keeping. Recharging of the batteries, flaneusing. Roaming the streets of the Upper East side for info. Walking meticulously, in small increments. With aching joints, locked knees. During wind and sunshine. Day and night. Especially night. And there it is: page 17. She numbers all these pages, on the right side, with a curl around the number. Looks like a copy-right sign. She then rereads everything, spellchecks and puts a checkmark on the top of the page, once it is cleared 4 typing. Yep, everything has a system, systematic ordering of the language. She is becoming professional, maybe so, ever so slightly. Bumbling, self doubting, 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. But, hey, forward moving, none-the less. That is how it should be. And the page comes to an end. FiNallY. --------------------------she sits in the early morning train, bound 4 boston, adventure, adventure. the train is way 2 overpriced, very boring, but, hey, well ventilated. And that should suffice. she writes, writes, writes. All these letters should, could keep her grounded. At this time there is nothing 2 see except 4 this very blue interior, blue with a hint more towards grey-turquoise, a color that signals basically bad color choice, a very businessy color 4 some reason, generic in its ugliness. Maybe because any business will go, will do, if conducted inside an interior like this, it furthers the â&#x20AC;&#x153;let`s get out of hereâ&#x20AC;? effectâ&#x20AC;?,let us do some kind of action and any action will do.

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She ponders. A little bit. A tad. writing, and hey, always pondering. She ponders on. About what the dif. between pondering and thinking there might be. The tunnel is over, outside glances of light and landscape. she writes, writes, writes. At this time this is what makes her combat dislocation, the view @ new york city is breathtaking. Very brown-beige though, she noticed this weird, way too muted light before. amsterdam has it, so does new amsterdam. the light is way 2 muted, 2 dull 4 a city with this kind of cache. No colour 4 a city this colourful, no colour @ all. Hey, mayor bloomberg, how come? Her feet hurt from all the walking, all sunday, all yesterday. central park sound-stage. times square, grand central, macy’s penn station. and central, central park. She, the perpetual student. She chuckles, wanted to pen “perpetual tourist”, but somehow ended up with “perpetual student”. Freudian? Maybe, Could be. “tourist” is such a tacky term, “student”, on the other hand, so very good. One is a seeker of knowledge, a perpetual researcher, exercising, muscling the brain, the other one, well, tours. Whatever that means. Hops from place 2 place, camera in hand. 2 much disposable income, but not enough. Outside new york is still happening, or maybe connecticut already. Would help if she had @ least the most rudimentary inkling of geography. Could help, should help. She writes, writes. Very pleasant, serious, non-nonsensical conversations abound. All around her. In the business-blue train 2 boston. she is slightly tired, slightly blasé. Too many cities, too many, so very temporary shelters. 2 many, far too many. Aching legs do not help either, more the right leg down to the foot. 97

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She now succumbs to describing medical conditions, instead of the here and now. she writes, writes, writes. Longs 4 home. Sings the “Buble” song to herself. The one ‘bout dislocation, paris and rome. She is now @ a point where being transient seems 2 be the reality, a weird, so very strange, so all-encompassing, so utterly blah reality. So very, very boring. No more adventures 4 her. Security, stability, that is where it’s at. She could start idle conversations with her neighbour, luckily she’s sleeping. Thus the author can just happily listen to the voices in her head, yep, those ones. The right ones, the best ones. From where she is sitting, she can see @ least 3 persons typing away @ their laptops, which is so much more convenient than her system of first scribbling, than transcribing. Easier on the hands, the hand. The right hand. Oh, well. she writes and writes and writes. page 6, water outside. This train makes very funny, clunky noises, the vancitay-toronto one did not do that, neither did the one between toronto and new york. Must be the make of the car. She should figure that out, she likes that kind of knowledge. She feels annoyed. Not quite sure @ what, though. she writes and writes and writes some more. Stamford, connecticut. she should sleep. Everyone around her seems 2. It is a monday morning, did the weekend get 2 all these people. Her weekend was pretty trying, way 2 stressful 4 her aching joints. Weekends seem 2 be big business here, everyone rushes from one repetitive useless activity 2 the next. Ah, @ this point she morphs into the skeptic, the so very jaded tourist. The disapproving stranger, the colonist scoffing @ the natives. Ah, back on the prairies, we do it the right way. She ponders if being more clear in her writing would be better than, well, unclarity. New Haven next, new haven, connecticut. she writes and writes and writes. Insignificant observations, 98

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immortalized, smushed, pinned down onto the paper. Combatting her aching joints, the cluttering of the train, the foliage, that flies by. All the utter dislocation that slowly does her in. ---------------------------------and some more writing. Not that anything has happened 2 interrupt the generiquity, the monotony of this very train ride. A tram ride that yells “boredom”. Without cadences, pauses, hick-ups. Sans strong swerving lines. Only slight motioning from left 2 right, right 2 left, over and over and over. As much entertainment as watching paint dry. Sleep would do her good, sleep till boston south park? boston south something. South station it should be, it could be. The train is doing her in, making her vanish into stupor, lets her glide into oblivion. Nothing new will happen if you sleep. You’ll not miss anything. Well, supposedly, that is. And the words march on, the train rolls to boston. On august 17, in 2009. new haven is near, the train finally stops. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------the train stops in new haven, she changes her seat, the train starts. is rolling towards providence, she writes, writes, writes. she is pondering if there is a discount card that entitles her to unlimited travel on the train. Kind of like a Europass. A Railpass. Something like that. She sat in a different seat, a seat near the window. The young kid came back, said that this was his seat, she didn’t know that, offered 2 leave, he said “don’t worry” and left, now she feels awkward. Oh, well, so she is the little old lady who disturbs and inconveniences everyone especially the youngens. Not a role she likes. A role of utter incompetence, fragility, utter burden. Not a king, a kaiser. To quote seinfeld. Ah, seinfeldian discourse. Yep, that one.

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She should really start to shoot 4 scholarship. Instead of slapstick. she’s hungry, should go to the café. No writing anymore. No writing. None. On august 17, 09. For now. While connecticut flies by the window, while massachusetts happens. -----------------------------------------------------------------she now has a cheese danish, warmed up, a tea with18% cream in the café-wagon. somehow this place is so much happier than the sterile, unfriendly, sanitized seating place, huh, food does that 2 you. people here are chattering away, eating, drinking, and, in her case, writing. ah, why not? Why not, indeed. somewhere ‘tween new haven and providence. u.s. of a., august 09. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------there is a place here called new london. Definitely the london that never made it. Beautiful, though. Very much so. Great, very, very impressive bridge. fascinating. she writes while munching away on her cheese danish. ah, why not, why not. she writes, writes, writes. while trees pass her by. Those ones. That ones. and she writes some more. to finally somehow ground herself. ----------------------------------------------------------------------she takes out her pen, is trying 2 pen some more lines, some more lines will do. So now she knows that she should stay put, in her seat, not waddle around. She does not know, how this works here, she never took this train b4. The cheese danish in her stomach is acting up, she should have had cinnamon danish. Some bread, maybe. muffins, this stuff is making her sick. So very, very sick. Not good. Not good @ all. Must have been the ratatouille omelette, or the empanada, or the wine the day b4. Or the ben and jerry cherry garcia. she should opt for simple, 100

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simple whole grain breads and H2O. That would quell her stomach upset. She ponders, ponders, ponders. And writes. Why not? Why not. Why not, indeed. -----------------------------------------------------she is apprehensive, in a good way, a very optimistic, slatheringly happy way. her notebook is coming 2 an end, she will purchase one in boston, in cambridge. she does not know the time, she wishes she had a tooth brush. What with all the sugar glaze on the danish. she writes way 2 much 窶話out the specifities of her body, it only demarks, denotes her discomfort with this constant change of physical orientation, the perpetual transience, the ever-changing motion, movement. All, all thru north america all thru summer, all thru two thousand and nine. ------------------------------------------------------------she is definitely in the wrong place. 4 some weird reason, she left the train one station b4 she had 2, now she has to wait here 4 1 hour, until 12:50. It is now not even 12. well, at least it is cool here, the sun though is shining on her paper, her table. She wonders, if she should have another danish, raspberry this time. It is lunch-time anyways, she will need a dentist after this trip. 2 take away all the sugar damage. -----------------------------------------------------------------------it is 11:50 a.m. So this is as much as she will see from boston. The out-skirts, the outskirts, a teacup with peppermint and cream, an entenmann danish with raspberries. Ah, fun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------she can look down @ the tracks, down @ all the people, all the persons trickeling in 2 wait 4 the train. Should be the one going 2 penn station. She had way too much sugar glaze that is caritating 101

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her teeth as she speaks. The train is actually bound 4 D.C., but thru nyc., maybe thru grand central. This is nice, she really wants 2 become an expert on trains and train-stations maybe that will be her next book, sponsored by amtrack and via rail. Brought 2 you by tourism boston. Something, something, something like that. madonna, singing, i want 2 take yu there, was controversial @ the time. That time, so very long ago. ah, light years, yeah, light years ago. she feels herself aging. why not? Why NoT. Why not, indeed. the commuter-regional train stops in a place called hyde-park station. she is pretty sure that she paid way, way too much. 5 bucks 4 a freakinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; commuter tic. That doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make sense. the guy just jibbed her, sensed the touristy greenish halo. Or, just thought that she is 2 idiotic, she should go 2 south station and take it from there. Anyways, she will go 2 boston, in2 boston, and then find mit. Somehow. somehow. Hey, but HOw? she was here last april, everything went oh so great @ that time. totally hoki-Dori. this time, however. Not that good. not that bad either. Over priced. With too much sucre. Oh, well, ah, well. even her lingo is too sugary. the conductor snapped her tic, perforated it. So, maybe, was da rite price. Oh well, ah well. Well, indeed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------the weather here in boston seems soooo much nicer, @ least here in the train. Seems the heat wave is over or something. Or Some Thing. Anyhoo, boston, here i come. actually, she is in Boston already, but it sounds nicer, more dramatic. Ok, maybe, south station, here i come. in august, on the seventeenth of august, in 09, here i come, boston, massachusetts, cambridge,

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massachusetts. So far, so good. the sun is shining, life is good, her pen has ink. And that is ALL we need. at this time. ------------------------------------------------------life is not good, she is not that happy, does not know x-actli how 2 get 2 the cannoli place, Ah, shucks. --------------------------------------------------she sits here in the cosi-cafĂŠ, it is two oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock, she has finished what she came here to do, so, now she could either rush home or sightsee. Given that she has aching feet, legs, knees, staying put here is as much fun as she can, well, get from this. Walking thru boston, walking thru cambridge, seems like lots and lots of fun, but she did that last year. At this time sitting here seems 2 be just great. Outside MIT-Kendall station, well, actually it is One Cambridge Center. she writes and writes and writes. this is page 18, more than her usual page portion. portion of pages. Ha, ha. HA. ----------------------------------------------------now she sits here in one cambridge center. On the other side of the street is mit-press, a very insignificant, very small and indiscript building. she checked it out, even knows where the office of her editor is. but she does not really feel like waltzing in there and making a spectacle of herself. she has to do it. thru the proper channels, the proper way. She cannot just barge in there. Well, actually, she could, very politely. the prob. is that she feels she would ruin her prospects 4 publishing. And maybe that is really what she wants. Whoever publishes her stuff, will start

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changing her commas, apostrophes. Even one comma would be way, way too much. everything has to be original, in the very, very original version. She writes, she writes. She picked the word “original” from the woman talking in2 her cell phone. She used it and it fit into the author’s text. Yeah, funny, huh? The author does not really want 2 leave, she would like to talk 2 that person. Ah, whatever, she will. ------------------------------------------------------------------nothing ventured, nothing gained. but what about the proper way, the proper follow-up to a manuscript-submission? that one, yep, that one. How does one go over this publishing biz? Who knows? Who really knows dat? She’d better email. seems betta. or not. Who knows? Ah, no one. No one ever Does. ---------------------------------------------------------what she finds interesting, is, that MIT press is so very small, well, obviously an editor just needs a chair to sit on and read. Simon and Schuster is sooo much bigger. Monstrous. On the avenue of the americas. Or something. she is pissed off. to make something distributed seems way, way too tuf. -------------------------------------------------------------------------she’d rather focus on producing stuff. -----------------------------------------

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she has 2 catch her train back 2 nyc. or she should go 2 little italy. And have a cannoli. Two guys @ the other table talk neuroscience. Of course. It is not brain surgery. Ah, dendrites. Dendrites, dEnDrites. Yep, those. Those indeed. Indeedy. Life sucks. Especially, if you are no neuroscientist. Not yet, that is. very interesting buildings, very hot sun, very boston. 4 oh 5, on dewey square. in front of south station. Nice, nice, nice. So very. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits here and writes. Hopefully none of the birds will poop on her. This is a nice urban park in boston, still pretty hot, glances of shade, beige-brown benches, trees, tree shadows, nice and nice and nice. So she writes, she has 2 wait till 7, because the cheaper train goes then. So very weird, she has 2 kill 2-3 hours to save 30 bucks. And she might spend 30 bucks. Maybe she should have left. This excursion to boston cost her 200 bucks. Too much, way 2 much. Or not? Or yes? @ this time of the day her writing just goes utterly downhill. Too hot, she is watching the shadow of the tip of her pen merging with the emerging script. Ah, writing. Birds peep and chirp, she writes, writes, writes. if she could only find the cannoli place. Then life would be perfect. But she still feels suspendedly homesick. transient and apprehensive. and way, way too hot. shade would be good, AC would be even greater. she writes and writes and writes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------she should check out the sip-cafĂŠ.

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Could they have cannoli? With ricotta and chocolate chips? Ready 2 load and clog, those old arteries of hers. -------------------------------------------------------she sits in a nicely cold, chilled bank of america building. In front of two monstrous paintings. she took her shoes off. she kills time. she writes. had enough of this writing biz. Maybe she should sing. 4 her keep. why not, why not, indeed. writing, huh. is that what she has stumbled down 2? poetry, huh. No one pays a poet, no one ever does. Well, she feels like a poet laureate. better than a nobel laureate. she ponders, what x-aktli is a laureate? something, something. obviously not someone who fills pages of unsuspecting paper with the words “something, something.” or maybe that is just how it should roll. Who knows? who will ever know? tuf 2 be a philosopher queen. in august, in 09, here in boston, @ a quarter to five. -----------------------------------------------------------------and now she is sitting in south station and is awaiting the all aboard sign, the clearance for boarding. This is what people do here, they sit and wait 4 the boarding announcements, they gather on all these green chairs, in front of the green tables and wait for the visual announcements on the big south station train info board. She walked around downtown, over the bridges, ah, was fun, so very interesting. it is 6:05 PM, her train will leave @ 6:40. so she writes, writes and writes some more. boston was real fun, 2 xpensive, though. 200 bucks, not good, not good. Too expensive 4 a day trip. She can just move ‘round nyc, there is so very, very much to see. she definitely does not need 2 venture out, her

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subway pass is good 4 two weeks. and she writes, writes, writes. her face in her left hand, her right hand scribbling. While people watching. The sun behind the window of the station, au bon pain in front of her. She should get some H2O, dehydration, dehydration. she repeats word after word, that should stand in for good writing. 4 some sort of poetry. she writes and writes and, as said b4, writes some more. While people rush to catch the train, while a woman with a white hair bow and green glistening, shimmering earrings plunks herself into the green chair with the holes in the back, on the seat. -----------------------------------------------------------------------in the night, coming back from boston, the train chuckles around, something chirps all the time. It is not night yet, still light, but there is yellow-orange dusk light out there, every now and then flooding the interior of this place, chirping, orange. this is coach class now, less expensive, supposedly. it is so much nicer. At least she thinks it is nicer, 60 bucks nicer, or 30 bucks nicer. She should have bought the return tic, figured out how that works. what a mistake, happens, when one writes 2 much, travels 2 much. Is utterly dislocated, too much, too much, too much, wayyy too much. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is slightly hungry, should be, maybe, make her way 2 the cafĂŠ wagon. but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather stay put here, write her musings, play with words, throw them up in the air and catch them with the paper. kingston, rhode island, was the last stop, kind of reminiscent of kingston, ontario. she writes, writes. night happens outside, not yet, though, still wanting and wavering. Still stumbling in flecks of daylight. she writes a tad, to keep the ghosts @ bay. to demark her days on

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this planet, 2 denounce oblivion. Why not, why not, why not. Her tummy is voicing dissent, stomach ache sets in. Too much junk or too little. Maybe unwashed grapes. -------------------------------------------------------------------new london, once again, so very beautiful, sprinkles of light behind a lake, glistening in the dark. wonderland, Wonderland. ---------------------------------back in new york city. finally. -------------------------------------------------------------------------it is night. she will walk down penn station, down from 33rd. to 23rd., to the hotel next to the hotel, where poets lived, she will get yoghurt whips, she will finally, finally sleep. In the bed, not in the train. she might even watch frasier. she feels @ home, here in nyc, on august 17, in 09. the city has her back, she missed this city, the city, yes, it missed her. Well, probably not, but it sounds good. --------------------------------------------------------------------------so now she is sitting in the laundromat. it is 9:37. the fan blows into her face. she is balancing her brand new note book awkwardly, while writing. what really frazzles her, is the super-sized line spacing in this red note-book. she will smush less letters onto the 8 Â˝ x 11 page, actually it is a 8 Â˝ x 10.5 paged note book. and it says wide-ruled right there on the cover. Yeah, yeah, buyer beware. She feels jibbed anyways, somehow she got a raw deal. The same with the detergenttravel packs in the morning, they were 4 hand washing, not 4 laundry. So, this is how one gets 108

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into consumer advocacy. Ralph Nader was pissed off while studying @ princeton, he chose consumer advocacy as his career path. She ponders about what her career-path will be. Somehow she got utterly sidelined when starting 2 study art. By lots of forces. But, first and foremost by the forces that believe that females should play second fiddle 2 men. Yep, those ones. Those ones. Those ones, indeedy. The ones that use terms like “indeedy”. To signal to the world that: “ok, i am in2 feminism, but not to the extent that I will threaten the male power-base seriously, the status quo will and should be upheld, everything has 2 stay the same. islam, christianity, judaism, stay calm, sleep tight, we will not rock the boat. she ponders a little bit, but does not feel inclined 2 wax more ‘bout “the bigger issues”. At this point “smaller issues” will do just fine, will and must and should suffice. she reads thru what she just wrote, thinks about whether her alluding 2 religions was necessary. Better not touch religion, just don’t touch it. You know, what with judgement day and all. At this point, she should cram 4 heaven, not 4 hell. At age 54, how much time is really left. We should get into the “clean up your act” biz. she ponders if she should become a cultural theorist. her friend did, so she thinks she could do that, too. Wing it somehow. Somewhere. Aren’t we all cultural theorists? She does not like the term, she likes the “theory” part, trying 2 distil what the gist of this “ism” is, how it compares 2 that “ism”. The prob. is that she is never really sure what the main dogmas are, what exactly is structuralism? She ponders a tad. while writing, while philosophizing, while waiting 4 the laundry cycle to end. While the AC blows her face! Relentlessly. 109

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--------------------------------------------------------------------it is 6 after 10, the laundry is washed and is now in the dryer, laundry-machine 13 to dryer # 6, she has to wait 40 minutes. 40 minutes of her life. that she will put letters on a page. Laundromat philosophies. While watching clothes spin around. While listening 2 the subway train pass by underneath, while 8th. is in full swing, while the AC sings. she ponders if she should be more specific, less specific, should she spell out what AC means. what if her work will be in the pantheon of world literature, yep, that one. She should become friends with …. Yep, with those. she sits down on the steps of a building in a side-street and starts writing. she thinks that her jeans might get dirty, but reminds herself that she is doing laundry anyways and her jeans are already dirty. Does the little starling that she can see from here worry ‘bout the dust from the pavement? No, or maybe it does. She notices that she does not know much ‘bout starlings, is not even quite sure if this bird is called “starlings”, is not even quite sure if this bird is called “starling”. She could name it anything. Bird A as different from Bird B. Bird A flies 2 the other side of the street. Something she will never be able to do. Ah, look another bird A. And dog C walks by. She should name the garbage bags too, bag 1, bag 2, bag 3. She should move around this city, inventing names, inventing her own li’l language. she should do this, do that. Should, would, could. Or NOT. she is losing it, ever so slightly. Gesticulating to herself should constitute the next phase. Who would pay 4 her incarceration? They don’t lock up tourists, do they? Let them roam free, they’ll leave anyways. Let them be the prob. of their home countries. Obviously, they were pretty dysfunctional to start with, that’s why they are shipped out to do something called sightseeing. And pay 4 it. They are basically bums, roaming the streets, certified by the maps in

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their hands. Dispensing money @ will, little green pieces of paper, which they randomly confuse. Whoever knows the dif. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;tween a 100-dollar bill and a 1-dollar bill? The whole system of the U.S. of A. is based on that. Yep. she is onto something here, but it is way too hot, this adam smith here has 2 move. she stands up and uses the stone column as her table. this is her office and a very good one. A breeze is blowing, there is a tree beside her, a man in a suit walks by. So, what do we have here: the location, good 4 writing, a flat surface on the column ( the column has a flat surface, in square-form ), we have inspiration, 8th street, we have the author, the producer, we have the potential consumer, the guy walking by and observing her. He looked more businesslike, so he seemed more like mr. middleman, the one who could distribute her stuff. he was tall, white, serious. and a guy. If you are a woman, choose a male agent, if you are a guy, choose a female agent. That is how that works. Or not. The guy came back, actually he was looking 4 an address, aha, so that is why he was observing, he is looking 4 a street number. Taking off his sunglasses, putting them on again. She ponders, she has to contact her editor, the onus is on her to take the initiative. If she would sell real-estate, she would put her stuff â&#x20AC;&#x153;on the marketâ&#x20AC;?, she would advertise it. She cannot just stand here and wait, where it goes. She does not want to be discovered, she is no model. just a stupid writer. Writers are not stupid, are they? They are now. she writes and writes and writes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------Aha, the guy is an insurance adjuster. A woman in crutches comes out of a taxi, she talks, he takes notes on a clipboard. She really would like to know what is happening here. She tries 2 111

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eavesdrop, but knows that the guy has business attire, so he is on a professional mission. He could be a doctor, she tells him her stories, he listens, aha, aha, nods, takes notes. Her laundry should be done by now. Back 2 the laundromat. ----------------------------------------------------------she sits in the lobby of the chelsea hotel. Apparently it inspires writers. at this point she is pissed off, because this pen of hers does not have enuf good ink, the ink flows haltingly and stallingly. she does not have a table. She has to press extra hard. The tools don’t work, nothing works. It is like a plumber with a rusty wrench. Can’t perform. It’s not performance anxiety per se, it is performance inability. The pen doesn’t have ink, thus, no writing. If it has a tad ink, she can still write, but each letter is a struggle. Makes her right hand tire easily. Not enuf lite, not good. 2 much lite, not good either. Ah. Or better yet, aargh. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------she only has 3 more pages 2 produce, which is fine by her, it is way too hot anyways. the train is rolling in. she sits down in the subway train, on the glistening light-blue bench. this is bleeker street. Or, maybe, bleecher street. next is astor place. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is much cooler here in the big starbucks on astor street. she is sitting @ a communal table, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. For starters, it seems 2 be the coldest table here, on the other side she is afraid that someone will suddenly bump her peppermint tea over. And we can’t have that, because the author is keenly, so very keenly aware that her writing is invaluable 112

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4 humanity, it should have posterity. she is not quite sure if what she writes here makes any sense, mainly, because she is too busy eavesdropping on all 3 conversations that are going on around her. But she’d rather concentrate on the voices in her own head, so that she can finish her musings in an acceptably coherent way. page 16 is finished, only page 17 is waiting 4 her input. her tea is slightly hot still, she is tired. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------some words, some words, any will do. there is way 2 much drama going on @ this table, she cannot hear herself think. Her tea is getting cold. the chocolate madeleines were 2 sweet. she writes, writes, writes. the page is ever so slowly coming 2 an end. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting down in this beautiful place, it is called “sweet revenge”, has the right mix of decadence and disjointedness, she ordered a lot of grease, grease, grease, cream on everything, well, @ least she does not go 4 the alcohol part, everything is overpriced, which is ok, the mc Donald express did not have a bathroom and peeing is paramount. the food is x-tremely good. @ least the espresso is. She did not get the cupcake, maybe the waiting woman did not hear her. so she just writes and writes. and writes some more. she’ll come back here again.

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for some reason she did not get her cupcake, which is really weird. So she ponders whether 2 ask 4 it or take it as a lucky coincidence. She drinks the cream or is it milk, because she feels that she has a right for her clogged arteries, she writes, writes, writes, the cream makes her barf, vomit, nauseates the hell out of her. Somehow, this place intimidates her, all sit-down places do, except for Mc D’s, Tim Hortons, Starbucks. This place is too young 4 her too, she is the only oldie here. and she writes, ah, what a freak, what an utter freak. there is musique going on, loud, beatful, people are chattering. she is not quite sure if it is o.k., ay o.k. to mention the names of the places she goes to, she came 2 this neighbourhood because she was looking for the knitting store meets café, that one. she did not find it, but this place is even nicer. she ponders, what else 2 write about. Is there something 2 say. Is there? Is there? Of course, there is. there must be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------now she had an ice-cream, a pink raspberry sorbet, maybe she will just die and disintegrate from all this sugar, all these amounts of fat. But, hey, it is fun and it is fun 2 write ‘bout that. writing, huh, well, @ least there is so much 2 write about. She finished her ice cream-sorbetto-thingie, maybe she should leave, luckily people left, ice-cream in hand. she needs this table 4 writing, 4 penning seminal, oh, so seminal works. And, as far as she knows, all her works are seminal, hey, we just do seminal. Why not? why not? Yep, why not indeed. Some fleck on her T-shirt is bugging her. Ah, paranoia! It is highly underrated. and now she will walk some more. Thru this very city. Angsty near 2 blissful. Well, more angsty.

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on august something, something, in 09, happily, anxious, and, hey, still alive. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is once more inside the starbucks on 8th, sharply near 2 the corner of 23rd. writing, writing. morning has set in, forcefully. the night before she had 2 much food, whine, 2 much overheated discussions. Too much of a fiery rain storm, thunder rolling, rain pouring down. Way too many sitcoms in the middle of the night. the city is getting to her, but she is taking it in strides. is settling in her touristy ways, is getting dangerously comfy in her transient ways. she carved out her daily routine, writing, writing. she has no fitness center here, her days are too non-structured, way too non-structured. way, way too non-structured. -----------------------------------------------------------------nice music here, very melodious with the right fragment of non-kiltered slight off-ness, a chorus like not quite identifiable element that makes this song eerily familiar, well positioned in musical tradition that reminds her of her youth, actually it is bruce springsteen singing “girls in their summer clothes”, she ponders whether the accusation of misogyny would hold true in discussing this song or is it just a glorification, a celebration of, well, girls. In her mind, it is definitely the latter. girls should like boys and vice versa. where would we be if that wasn’t true. we would not be hurling around on this planet with 7 billion inhabitants. she feels slightly blasé, slightly underslept, totally overwhelmed. And very happy 2 be alive, thankful for 5th. Avenue and the hustle and bustle of midtown manhattan. where she will head now. if she doesn’t get lost in the subway. she usually does.

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her writing annoys her. haults, stops, only 2 start up again. Like the motor of a rusty mustang. maybe a rusty ferrari. she feels way 2 nauseated, an ambulance whooshes by, outside on 8th. -------------------------------------------------------------------she came down here to the first dunkin donuts on varick, she took the subway down 2 spring and ended up here, some more sugar, some more fluid, some more watching her pen scratch away over the paper. apparently, so very very supposedly, america runs on dunkins. what kind of assertment is that? and is it true? just a ditty, a slogan. she is kind of off-kilter and she hates the greasy taste of the “munchkins” she is having here. Something must have burnt them, how come these taste weird and strange. she writes but still thinks about other things, which is not so very good 4 writing, is it? Her hand moves over the page, automatically, so very automatically. Letters, words are put down, to combat the railing uneasiness of, well, of what really? Her jet-lagged out-of-rest ness, the jet-lag sans jet. She just slept 3-4 hours in the night, not enuf to recharge her batteries, the jitter is inside of her, not really showing. Outside varick happens, the mini-poster on varick reads “REAL LATTES - REAL EASY TO ORDER” and 2 orangey push signs. she writes, writes, the wall in front of her, humongous dunkin donut letters, all over the wall, in orange, in red, muted. she will move, move on, move on. -----------------------------------------------------she is once more in the train to boston, on the train 2 boston. this better be good. this time around she will definitely muster the courage 2 talk to her editor, even if she makes a fool out of herself. what could possibly happen? embarrassment? we can take that standing up. she will definitely

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not get a heart attack or stroke, heart attack and stroke, he will definitely not be physically violent. will not attack her with guard dogs. Chances are, he is a soft-spoken academic, happy about the interruption in his otherwise routine day. Something 2 tell the grandchildren about. Obviously he must have seen it all in his 30 years of editing, over eager â&#x20AC;&#x153;newbiesâ&#x20AC;? are a dime a dozen. Besides, she is a writer, they are all @ the border of artist and logical pragmatist. If you chase 2 put your words up 4 print, chances are you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really shy back from the potential rejection. An audience, huh? Someone asked her if she is in art school to garner an audience. No, i want 2 be compensated. audience, huh? she could care less 4 the audience, because there will be 50 nay-sayers and 50 yay-sayers. for every 50 nay-sayers there are 50 yay-sayers. something like that. wow, is it chilly here in this car. this train. this wagon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------funny, how this happens. the train stopped on the tracks, there was a power outage outside of the new york tunnel, the train reversed back into Penn. The speaker on the overhead announced that she is free to leave, so that is what she did. Got a full refund. So now she is standing in the post office, looking out @ penn station, writing this. the train must be going now towards boston, she is so very happy that she is back in the city. where the sun is shining, where new york city is happening. besides, she has 155 bucks back in her pocket. That is even more fun. who needs sitting in a train for 8 hours, 4 to boston, 4 back. she will email the editor, eventually, eventually. manjana, hey, manjana. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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the carvings on the ceiling of this post office are exquisite, neither rain, nor snow! such a beautiful, impressive building. Very nice, oh, so very nice. Done well, new amsterdam! Not bad, not bad @ all. aretha franklin will sing in madison square garden, so it says on da otha side of da STreet. ---------------------------------------------------------------actually, it is â&#x20AC;&#x153;neither snow nor rain, etcetera, etcetera, re phrase, yep, Re-phrase! sorry! --------------------------------------------and now, she is in FIT waiting 4 the show of isabel toledo 2 open, her papers are dishevelling, she should have bought a more sturdy note-book. she does not want 2 lose any paper, there will be no chronological order, if the loose leaves fly all over new york city. what will happen to this, it canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have holes, should not have holes. The narrative is so very thin as is. No aggravation needed. None. -------------------------------------------------------------------she sits in the little yoghurt shop on 8th. , looking out @ the clearview cinemas on the other side of the street. it is after noon, she saw the isabel toledo show, was so very likeble, so is the yo fruit shop here. the music is nice, the dĂŠcor is nice, the day is sunny, she had a fashion hot dog and an original frozen yoghurt. life is good, she feels bad that she so very overreacted when discussing art. no overreacting, only polite stating of differing opinions, polite discourse. then again, it is an art 2 solemnly disagree, a total art form. ah, interpersonal behavior, tough, tough, tough. writing is so much easier, drawing 2. Oh, well.

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the day splashes by, outside, and here inside. she writes and writes and writes. next, the whitney, maybe. Mingling with the tourists, with the rest of them. she could not make it 2 boston, has 2 email first. besides, who wants to sit in the train forever. Too static, much too much, too much. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------sitting in the whitney on the 5th. floor, having a dance video projected behind her, listening 2 the quivering music, sol de witt, black, white, slight color, air exemplified by music, motion, a woman playing with blond locks while reading, she writes, writes, turns out the woman has straight brown hair, she just guesses and second guesses, confusion is setting in, overarching her touristy existence, floor 2 and 3 have still to be explored, after that, outside, outside, hotness, sun, anti-claustrophobia. music, music, zig-zacking of sounds, clear black lines of sound against white background. ---------------------------------------------------------------so she sits in the stairway @ the whitney and wonders why her knees hurt this much. -------------------------------------------she locked thru the whitney, oh, well, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s o.k, she might still look thru the guggs and the moma, but basically she is slightly out-museumed @ this very point. nice, black leather bench here, stone in the back of her, she just writes and writes and writes some more. it is tiring here, somehow this place is way too cold. all the curating in the world cannot work against that.

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------page 16 already, Yippieh. writing as a chore, so very mechanical, with hunched over body, hand holding her head, while the black pen puts letter upon letter on the blue lines. is there anything more 2 see, is there? blasĂŠness sets in, grips her by the throat, makes her gasp 4 some more air. cell-phone rings, loudly. right elbow scrunches against stone, full of grit and black pea-like shapes in it, black-eyed peas inside of the granite. she writes, while madison avenue is bathing in the sun. cabs move to one side, people to the other, so much commotion and, once again, she writes, writes, writes, fastpaced, rushing towards the end of her very, very last page, the one that should finish up this very day. that gallops over todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s requirement of written, makes her startle 2 look @ the white flecks in the black, textured floor, that reminds her that tomorrow, she can start anew, should start, then halt, quiver, pause and rush another 17 pages down into this notebook. yeah, yeah, why not? why not, indeed. why Not, InDeed. -----------------------------------her mint tea in front of her, a hot breeze dances around her, pops in and out, outside of the cafĂŠ in the whitney, on a silvery chair, very, very silvery, shining, glistening in a solid matter, the street is happening above, madison avenue/ east 75th. street, a tall building, a roundish building. sweeping cars over the street, stopping only to throw themselves forward, the Red Exit sign up on the wall, red letters on grey-white background, her plastic plate, so very shiny on the brown tray with the rhombus pattern and the straight lines therein. she can touch her lonely state, that

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she kind of cherishes and non-cherishes, the wind blows up the corner of her notebook, the corner of the paper napkin. this was more fun than boston, maybe, especially the 155 bucks back in her pocket. The nonanxiety she feels, the safe-ness of her non-talk with the editor. Her sudden shyness when marketing her writing. Her all-encompassing knowledge of her glitches, the sudden halts in her writing. ------------------------------------------------------------------today seems 2 be august 20st. 09, that is. she hasn’t written anything yet. Except e-mailing, facebooking, but does that count? she did laundry, again. it is so hot, she goes thru lots of laundry. It is not ocd, nope, not that. it is just da heat, the one that makes the li’l old chinese lady fan herself with the light-pink fan, that one, she is sitting down here on a subway-bench. and now she is on the F-train, let’s see where it goes. downtown, methinks. let’s see. let us see. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is not quite sure if lugging her passport all around town is the sensible things 2 do. Wow, what a loud drilling machine. Hot, hot, hot. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits down in this pretty cool, cool as in reasonably chilly starbucks on, some street here, could be spring, broadway, prince, maybe the neighbourhood is tribeca, maybe not, she ponders if tribeca had its heyday, if greenwich village had its, if they are both adjacent, if she cares. real estate agents care ‘bout dat, not her. she just moves around ever so slowly, like a snail in blisters. A tired snail. Ah, tuf 2 be da tourist. Tuf, tuf, tuf. 121

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------she thinks she should number her pages, so that she can whoosh thru her allotment of required writing and be out of here, she still has a hint of headache which hit her out of nowhere, which is still lingering on. she is basically a non-headachey person, knock on wood, she writes, writes, writes. ---------------------------------------------------page 4 already, one could say that is pretty good. she writes, writes, oh, so very fast, hardly looks up. this should go fast, letters, letters, letters. this will be her day of mammoth-output, all these words here, put down for manuscript numero 3. she could call this â&#x20AC;&#x153;masterpiece 3â&#x20AC;?, because everything written is a masterpiece. Hers more than others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------she ponders what time it is, she feels under pressure. feels like yelling out, like strangling calmness, collectedness. Too many people, too much noise. Too much heat, way, way 2 much heat. what global warming? this global warming? the one in the starbucks here in nyc? that one? she fills the pages with random words, sequentially arranged, randomly pushed via coherence. she writes a tad and then some more. ------------------------------------------------------------------it is 1:47 or something, she is sitting down here in the subway train, having her legs spread straight on the pale blue bench, looking @ the person with the 3 hula-hoops, pink, dark-blue, yellow, more blue-blue , only darker. she is in a brooklyn bridge bound train of a number, she

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forgot, the woman on the overhead reminds her, that it is 6. she lacks human contact, thus she is losing it. In this so very hot city. Losing it is fun, if you can contain it. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------every, every day she drives all over the city and writes 17 pages. usually in the subway. she prefers that 2 da bus. buses are 4 the birds. she can have that back home. she writes and writes and writes. page 6 finished. -----------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in the bowery, in a side-street-café, more actually, a main street café, what she means is that she is sitting here outside, having an iced spanish latte that was supposed 2 be sweet, it was not, she put sugar in it and some liquid that was either sugar syrup or lemon juice. she writes fast, page 7 is half full. she could go 2 the new museum again, she can see it from here. she could listen in on the talk about residencies. she will do that. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------it is around 3 o’clock, she is sitting on a black, pretty ratty stairway, well @ least it is in the shade, it is actually pretty artistic meets bohemian, she ponders if artistic always equals bohemian. she writes, writes, writes. there is a H.F. HEWITT REALTY on the other side, she writes. people start talking on the street, about a mermaid dress, she writes and writes and writes. people start talking on the street, about a mermaid dress, she writes and writes and writes. ponders, if repeating the phrase “she writes” can substitute 4 narrative. Ah, why not. she just needs a publisher, then she can publish a book with the very same phrase, that goes on and on for 123

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312 pages. what difference does it really make. “she writes” equals self-portrait. looking @ herself , describing what she does. Well, obviously she will never see herself, only part of her chest and then downwards. She’ll never see the back of her neck. but, hey, she can watch her pen glide over this paper. and state the obvious. pigeons flutter by, someone asks her 4 the direction to st. marks place. -------------------------------------------------and here she stands in front of a wall, writing about the black glistening garbage bags, 3 of them, different heights, the fascinating, amazing wall, with the golden 300, the red and orange bricks, vertical, horizontal. the colors of this very city, anycity. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------another day here in the city, sitting here under the loudspeaker dispensing very fast-paced, shirley bassey-ish singing of a woman who knows her way, her direction, very, so very opposite of her state, her situation is so very random, arbitrary, on one hand she still wants 2 hit the guggs, the moma, but there still is the weekend, which could be spent going to the dia-beacon, but, somehow, somehow she is just utterly bored, bored out of her mind because of the utter structure-lessness, she would rather have a purpose, that is why she devours this her daily writing regiment, it gives her the illusion that she has one certain chore, a certain so very repetitive task, a mission, a raison d’etre, a reason 4 being. she does not like bouncing around, aimlessly, who does? Certain rituals keep insanity @ bay, smolder sanity upon us. She misses her very structured movements, motions in the kits fitness center, the exercise bike in the third row from

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the right. In the back corner to the left. It is nice to know where you have to be @ a certain time of the day, come rain or shine. Hey, @ least the bike needs you. she ponders, if all this incremental cutting up of the day is paramount. It is, it is. Somehow, somewhere. she can see the “The” of the “the breadstix café” script on the other side of 8th, she can see part of, actually, she can’t any more, a grey truck is blocking the view. ambulance noise motions thru, coming thru loud and clear, 4 a split second, than it is gone. the city, The City. suspended, nice, halting. the disinterested sing-song of the counter person with the happy baby face of youth. The two persons telling their life stories to each other, fast paced. Ah, fast paced, the heat of the city. And another song start, that rhythmicizes her through and through, while still having longwinded stretches of longingly whining notes of country, yelling along in a strangely Southern familiarity of gentility, cowboy-integrity. That is not exactly the term that describes what she means, but she does not really care how she solidifies her state here as outsider with the illusion of insider, the sceptic immigrant in each and every one of us, the rejection of being a non-stranger, wherever we might live. The tang of the female songsinger cuts thru, acoustically, mixing with the new york accent of the woman with purple eyeliner, a typical new-england face, not blond enough, though. Instead of blondness, intellect will do. Suffice 4 the moment. Her observations stumble behind reality, always, always behind. --------------------------------------------------------------

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she is sitting down here in penn station, she is having a yoghurt with something that is crumbled into little pieces, some kind of smushed 2gether granola cookie, broken up into 1-inchy, uneven pieces. She ponders, what holds the granola pieces together, spit? there are little red-aubergine colored grapes too, haltedly glistening balls. there were two strawberry slices, more slivers than slices, the whole concoction was ‘bout 6 bucks, way, way too x-pensive. There was no price-tag, she suspects that the saleslady in the orange T-shirt just plain hated her, blamed her 4 snottiness, which is her perfect right ( the author’s ). All she said, was, one napkin is more than enuf, that is not even what she said, she just took one napkin and gave her back the 5 super-fluous napkins. Seems, that lots of people in this town do not like that attitude. They morally righteously disapprove of her moral righteousness. something like that. the yoghurt, though, is fantastic, the best she ever had. Sour. So very great. makes you want 2 eat yoghurt all day long. All your life. Tastes like real yoghurt, not that preservativy stuff. She suspects that someone just whipped up a big batch of yoghurt and then dispensed it into small containers. It is just great. Should she compliment the chef? The snotty one? Nah. she ponders, whether she should sit here all day long and do her writing. She did not go 2 princeton, billy’s bakery, the guggs, moma or the strand, this forsaken yoghurt-place in the deli meets kiosk down here in penn station will be her poet’s café, there is so much 2 see, if she can take her eyes away from her fast-inscribing pen-thingie here, the one that has a golden inscription on it that she cannot see, because her finger clutch it. she writes and writes and writes. in front of her there is a beige-textured frame on the wall, a text, some pic’s, some nostalgic info about some place, the stab @ constructing history in this very new country. Well, new in position to european “settlement”, colonization, imperialism. Yep, that one.

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she writes and writes and writes. Hunched over, fast. The freezing compartments behind her noise this place out. She is sitting on a high chair, as if this is a bar. The bartenders are behind her, though, behind the counter. She is thirsty, but is not quite sure, if she really needs overpriced H2O. ----------------------------------------------------------------it is 11:11 p.m, her grey-black nokia phone says so. she punches the little star-button, the blue monitor lits up, she can make out the numbers, in the upper right corner. she writes, writes, writes. somehow she suddenly feels a cold gripping her, swine flu? she should leave this place, motion on, thru this very city. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you ever stand still, the city does not like it. The city dictates what you should do, the space, the people, the heat, the whiff of B.O. of the person walking past her. Yuck. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather describe pleasant stuff, and the most pleasant aspect of the city, any city is the constant movement, the second-long pauses and then the fast motions, energy that might just spin around its center without any clear outcome, but spinning nonetheless. spinning 4 spinningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake. -------------------------------------------------------------------she stands here, outside of penn station, in a back-alley kind of place, near the entrance, office depot truck in front of her, pigeon on the ground, people roll in their baggage, white, pink, black. Someone smokes. She would like to lean on the over-sized flower pot, but it has a fence around it. She leans, anyways, it is actually comfy. she writes fast, fast, fast. 127

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she has 2 move on. other scenes are waiting. other snapshots, other colors. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits outside here, on the steps of the post office, facing madison square garden, penn station. Actually madison square, an over-sized britney spears poster. It is way too hot here, hardly anyone is sitting here, @ this time of the day. a breeze is there anyways, flopping up the pages of her note book. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she stands near a flower pot, a manhole, someone throws something behind her into the garbage can, making a plomping sound, cardboard hitting metal, card-board shooting down into the crater of the garbage can, hitting other cardboard, cans, a hollow sound erupts. she is now once more standing in the post-office, writing away. She disapproves of the post office not turning down the lamps during day-time, she will complain. She should. Who is the sustainability officer of New York? Hmm, hmm indeed. moving on, 2 another writing place. Another poetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cafĂŠ. Another pace that will inspire her, has to inspire her. Inspiration or bust. Tuf 2 be a poet. Especially a non-paid one. Underpaid, not-yet paid. There will be a reward, eventually. A monetary one. she remembers the discussion two days ago about artists and money. It wore her out. She looks @ the billboard about pancreatic cancer. we will all die. Supposedly. But first she has to put down eleven more pages. Make that nine. Counting while putting down words is confusing. All these little increments. Of language, of space and time. she is confused, disjointed,

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dislocated. And happily so, very happily so. While the heat beats her up, awashes her, grapples and grasps her. what is the time, what is the time? ---------------------------------------------------------she ended up in this mc donald’s here near penn station, having a large hot tea with cream and a hamburger. this is her poet’s café, though she doubts that poetry and fast food go together. will she be able to write “good stuff” here, in this environment? Does she need less neon, less tiles? More texture. Less sanitized, mass produced stuffi-muffi? Does this place imply that we use terms of the kind of “stuffi-muffi”? “stuffi-muffi” stuffi-muffi? Does she have 2 internalize certain very white, anti-suburban biases? what exactly constitutes her identity? If push comes to shove, it is the identity of the scientist, the wide-eyed observer. Who waltzes easily between identity A, identity B, etcetera, etcetera. In the same way one would navigate between different floors of a building. drink your tea, smile. she ponders what exactly 2 write about. the world around her? all these strangers, she all hates equally. All these so very ugly people. The alienation that permeates this place. The ugly décor, the heat. Pissed-offness sets in, grips her by the throat. Her inability 2 pen “good stuff”. Or, in other words, well-distributed stuff. she will write, all day long, extensively, she will type it out and send it out. She has produced 500 pages over the last 1 ½ years. that has to get her somewhere, the effort in itself should make her work fool proof. Prolificness in itself has 2 pay off. Quantity over quality, quantity begets quality. courts quality, coquettes quality. Charms quality. The sheer effort shows the want, the need to succeed. The Sisyphean rolling of the stone, up-hill, uphill. mastery will, should, has 2 finally set in.

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she might not be good @ anything, but she sure has stamina. she is, oh, so very comfortable with the loneliness of the long-distance runner. As long as she has a pen, with ink in it, a note-book in front of her, a horizontal surface, actually two: chair + table, as long as that is, the world is a-ok. she picks up her tea, writes some more. and more and more and more. And, then, some more. -------------------------------------------------------she looks up @ the ceiling above her, silvery, mirrored, one can see the beings moving, below, distortedly, shorter. There are mirrors behind her, there are red, blue, turquoise, grey with white dots, tiles on the ground. The tiles are mostly small squares, with blue rectangles in between. Now that she focusses on the tiles, she can see unkiltered ness, un-evenness. The tile-people did not waste tiles, they used what they had, made it look geometrically correct while it is not. Symmetrical while being asymmetrical. Sanitized while being filthy. appearance over substance. she could write extensively about that, wallow into “ugly-american”, “anti-consumerism”, “antiindustrial” mumbo-jumbo. And she sure will make a point, by using the term “mumbo-jumbo”. She might write a dissertation full of “stuffi-muffi” and “mumbo-jumbo”. She might as well play into the stereotype of the dumb, distressed, prozac-popping suburban housewife. The Uber-idiot. The insignificant girl. Somehow she feels that that is not what she feels like doing. She has a head on her shoulder, she will use it. she has a pen in her hand and, damn right, she will use it. she will write herself out of this mess. She will put letters down, if it kills her. she ponders what ignited this sudden “rebel without a cause”, “rebel with a cause” outburst. Could be the boredom, the dislocation, the disjunctedness. Maybe, it is only that a spartacus, a jean d’arc figure, that kind of hero, anti-hero makes us feel that we are not numbers, we matter, 130

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we have impact. We are not little insignificant numbers @ the mercy of, well, heat, corporations, some overriding power. That throws us to and fro on this so very short ride on this planet. she does not know, anything, anymore. her synapses are overheated, refuse 2 fire. She stagnates, stagnates in dislocation. this utter sense of fragmentation. Her status quo of fragmentation. that she will still take with her 2 belgium, 2 holland. 2 denmark. come september. The Mc Donald’s is crowding up. Lunch, lunch, lunch. in august, in 2009, in new york city. ----------------------------------------------------------------------she hasn’t written in 2 days, somehow her routine got scarily rusty. She cannot really see the lines of this fresh note book, but that might be the printing of the notebook, not her. it is not me, it’s you - it’s you, not me. people walk around nyc wearing that kind of T-shirt, that inscription. relationship stuff, may be. She has a coffee, a marble loaf, she has put laundry into machine # 13 in the laundromat near the “blue” club, she writes, writes, here in starbucks on 8th, @ the corner of 23rd. tomorrow, she will catch a train back to toronto, tomorrow this table will be desolate. No one any more 2 write the praise of the new venus restaurant, its orange lights, no one 2 have marble loaf and tall mild coffee, no one 2 stare @ the “real food, simply delicious” poster with type of differing intensity, no one 2 document this place 4 posterity. she will take her pen to other places and that is it. music sings, country boy something, muff-ly white dog walks out. Ah, the breakfast crowd, yep, that one. sing-song of the counter-person, very lovely, pink glasses of the woman with the two children. tomorrow, new york city, i’ll miss you. miss your buildings. Who misses a place? It is only mortar, bricks and glass, rolling rubber, some steel. A certain smell, a certain heat. water

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from the clouds, music from the overhead, 8 million stories in the naked city. it is her pen fleeting over this paper, the silver spiral on the left of the page. Yep, she writes, reluctantly, forgefully. Forgingly, forging forwardly. --------------------------------------------------------------outside there are once more the very, so very distinct lines of the black bicycle, with blue lock chain, with red trimmings. there is once more the glistening glue on the beige table, the dried glue, that makes you think they are waterdrops. there are the coffee bags on the shelves, to her left, to her front, diagonally. there is her pen, the black one, thin, with a cup. there is her last day in the city. Other cities will do, can they? What distinguishes this very one, its crassness, its brashness? The roar of the train underground? the city, that city, this city. The strangers, who acknowledge and meet 4 a slit second. The lovers she left behind, the real one, the imaginary ones. His breath, short whiff of smell, her inability 2 have him here, the fading recollection of him. girls always like boys, even here in Chelsea. somehow, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather write on buildings, not on breathing, warm creatures. sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather describe inanimate objects, her laundry twirling in the sud. strangers in a strange land, strangeness exemplified. in a strange language, so very far from home. Luckily, so very, very far from home. ulysses, joyce stayed in dublin. mordechai richter, songs about montrĂŠal. she travels so very far away, to write, to write, to write. she ponders if girls write differently from boys? Nope. Never. never, never, never. bob dylan, very fast, she knows all the words. Ah, poets. Poets these days.

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project manager in striped shirt, still taking notes, laundry should be done by now. she has 2 still count the pages, the coffee is icy. The french guy talks to the cell-phone, the music is going on and on and on. Laughter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------she sits here in the french patisserie, kind of awkwardly, she has a glistening, too light, far too light peppermint tea on the coffee table/ rectangular box/ chastity chess; she has two macaroons on a doily, she writes, writes, writes. Somehow this place seems feminine, doily-ish, the flowers on the walls, it is a girlie atmosphere, but so many guys are around here, she can only hear male voices, loud, resolute, aggressive, the tea does not slow down the guys, they take their position in the universe, no matter what. entitlement, entitlement? where do you sell it? which shop on the upper eastside? Ah, 2 weeks of nyc, she talks and breathes new yorkish. didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take long, it never does. she will talk antwerpish in 2 weeks, she will be rotterdam, born and bred. How do you write â&#x20AC;&#x153;chameleonâ&#x20AC;?? --------------------------------------------------------------------the doily-macaroons are finished, tasted divine, the silver-tray glistens, she could have tons of and tons of that stuff. divine, divine. She can hold a tea-cup, while pushing her right pinky-finger into the air, she can write, she must be a poet. she changed seats, 3 times in this place, the music on the overhead is classic, but forceful, the light @ this table is not enough.

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she should write on romance, about it, on quiver, on trembling. she should smile 2 herself while wanting 4 him. remembering him. she chokes, she will never ever have him. She will die alone. She falls 4 everything that moves. She got that sentence out of a comic-book, in comix manhattan, midtown comics. She frequents comix stores these days, that sell comix with an x. That make her write literature, that make her reach 4 beautiful words. she has another French macaroon, she gets a lot of info from the beautiful woman behind the counter, she writes, she writes. There is an article on the wall about the macaroons in this store, she has to stand there and start writing about that. she writes, writes, writes. feels awkward, can see the reflection of the ceiling fan in the silver tray. she writes and writes and writes. She tends to make conversation with total strangers, guardedly, she feels that she should not do that, but her innate curiosity, her very happy, childish inquisitiveness takes over, each and every time. she knows she has an accent, a halting, nushly voice, she knows she is not thin enough, not beautiful enough. She would be mortified if someone asks her “where are you from” and it would reflect oh so badly on her hometown. She would bring amassment to the pips back home. So that is why she never became an ambassador, she would start WWIII. Everyone would think that the people from back home are nerds and kooks and geeks. They are not. She ponders that every society, in the whole world, has cool types and then, well, then there are the geeks. Have you ever read “tonio kroeger?” You should. she ponders why she has this very stern acknowledgement of geekiness, it is masked under this domesticity/ housewifey exterior. But, in the end, she is still da geek. Worked 4 bill gates, so, how bad can it really be.

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Non-geeks wear more make-up, are thinner, have better haircuts, wear purple T-shirts. The woman @ her table should qualify as a non-geek, she has a shawl, she has a cappuccino, and a croissant. the author is taking notes, this is how non-geeks behave. they sip elegantly, they do not smush liquid all over their clothes. They behave lady-like, do not burp and vomit, not always. The author ponders, she should qualify as elegant, exotic, exquisite. She definitely has the right pedigree: A Persian Cat. Somehow, on the way, she utterly blew it. How can you blow it with a name like hers. Apparently you can. That takes real mastery. She means that sarcastically. Well, style is not everything, it is the only thing. Grace, you either have it or you don’t. Elaine in seinfeld. Well, @ least, the author has brown hair. A brunette. Though, a rather reluctant one, with grey streaks. not enough eyeliner, not enuf mascara. too washed-up. Way too blah. Tough 2 be elegant these days. She always simmers her accent up and down, according 2 situation. She should be able 2 become exquisite, dammit. she should be a poet/ animator, damn it. A well-paid one. At some time, some time indeed. And, page 17 is up, we’re out of here. My job here is done. On 2 the laundromat, on 2 penn station, on to the t-shirt shop on spring street. on and on and on. Maybe the guggenheim too, maybe, maybe. So very, very, very maybe. Internet café, lunch, so much 2 do. On this her last day in new york city. While time is standing still, should stand still, while her chest is knotting up. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------135

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she, she. she. once more- same café- same pen- same view- same write, write, write routine. penn station was out of tics, she’ll leave on wednesday. thus, one more day, one more day, silently, quietly, in new york city. being part of the fabric of this city, 4 one, one more day. It splashes over her, rolls her around, takes her with her, in its suds. ----------------------------------------------------------------she still, so very reluctantly, sits here, puts this pen 2 paper, housekeeping, she looks thru her writing, “manually” spellchecks, numbers, counts, organizes. Does not use a computer, does not have a computer. her laptop rots @ home, her MO is 2 yesterday, too long-windedly, too much trying to improve on writing by physically stretching out her writing stints, by going from place to place, the motioning, the tapping, the stomping of feet, the waving of arms, the wind in her face, all that physical alignment and realignment in itself should and will automatically translate into the perfect choice of words. Maybe it just makes 4 a very mobile, fluid text, a choice of words, that never takes a stand, contours that are scribbled, negated and reinforced, like a drawing that has wavery contours instead of dark, contrasting, bold outlines. A vermeer more than a keith haring. she ponders. she should stop self-analyzing her writing. If she was a plumber, would she constantly reflect on which wrench 2 use? Actually she would. From watching tradespersons she knows how they constantly reflect, change tools, reassess the situation @ hand, solve a concrete problem. At least, she can freeflow, build castles in the sky, aesthetics seem to be the only authority she has 2 satisfy. Which might be far too open, if there are no clear parameters, clear requirements, she can do whatever she wants. Which might be too inhibiting, which might result in endless 136

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repetitions. Just like her days are repetitions, sun goes up, sun comes down. She lugs her body around, with her, day-in, day-out, thru this world. but this starbucks is never the same, never the same, every second is different, our moments are not carbon-copies of each other. Deja-vu, well, always a tad different “vu”. she looks out @ the red “cleaner” neony script, a beige dog walks by, some burnt smell whiffs thru the air. outside, outside, outside, 23rd. is moving by. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------once more in the macarone/macaroon place, once more peppermint tea, once more macaroon, and little chocolate cups with cream in them, whipped, sprinkled. Everything has sprinkles here, beige-brown dusts, there is the swooping light of the fan reflecting in the silver tray, there are silently glistening dots in tea and cup, there is her pen motioning fast, under the gun, there are the same players as yesterday, only differing costumes, differing mise-en-scene, differing, different, so very different dialogue. More alienation, more coldness. On a still hot day in new york city, tedium is grasping us by our throats. While the fan bubbles over the tray. she writes, writes, writes, wishes 4 images that could conjure up, would replicate the pale blue, white and beige of the cotton T-shirts, her own pink one. the fan bubbles on, all over the silver tray. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------some more writing, she had way too much fat, all this cream was just like a big fat blob sickening her from inside her body, mushing up from all those intestines inside of her, she can feel the non-fluid ness of the static grease, she definitely feels sick, to her stomach, she will move, move, to combat the toxic effect of stale grease. She will brush her teeth, she will be more

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careful with eating, she will deliberate about what she puts into her body. she does not want to be done in by too many fat molecules, too much sugar, too much alcohol. She will preserve her sanity, somehow, somehow. While moving, while motioning thru this city. U2 sings, somehow, sunday, bloody sunday, people are dying in the streets 4 ideas, that poets put into their minds. people with pens in their hands, the ones who make up injustice that is not there. Agitators, agents provocateurs. People who write “calls 2 actions”. How can you really write a “call 4 action?” You have 2 be well-fed in order to try to hold a pen, in order to take a stab @ accurate analysis of a situation. she is 54, history, herstory posits, supposedly that the young are idealists, the old are realists. Whether there is a shred, even a shred of truth to this, is so very debatable. Ah, everything, everything is. At a very basic level, she wants and wishes 4 the embrace of a lover, the very near, sheer proximity of another body, preferably disrobed. Some random exchange of body fluids. But maybe not, maybe not. Maybe it is more fun 2 sit here and peoplewatch. And wall watch, silvertray-watch, ceiling-fan watch, beige sunglasses matching with beige-brown purse watch. Watching is always fun, registrating what she sees with her pen. Taking pictures with silveryblack little boxes, a camera with a moving “shooting eye” might take more accurate representations of reality than all these her clumsy words. She feels like a court stenographer, except for that she transcribes every-thing, every thing, every minute little thing. Which is exhausting the fuck, the fuck out of her. People talk fast, in Italian, in Russian, poinedly, she writes and writes, while the ceiling fan brushes, insanity is so very palpable. Time to implode, explode, stop time 2 take the laundry out of the machine, the dryer, back in the laundromat on

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23rd. Red lights, and green ones flush in the camera in the hands of other people here. She definitely has to stop. Before going too insane. And the focus, the stress is on “too”, “too much” insanity. Seems like insanity is a given, goes hand in hand with dislocation. With her automatic closing of her eyes, the suspended weariness of the tourist. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she ponders, she wrote @ two different places already, 14 pages or so are done, one starbucks, one macaroon place, 15 bucks down the drain. she writes, writes, and writes. Some more, some more. While the music plays, the dishes clap. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits down here on the steps in a side-street. she can watch the beige fleck, diagonal, a leaf, trotten on by a black shoe, a dog walks by, looks @ her, a cigarette-butt, beige and white, a red car, an impressive wall, grey with grey, checkered, textured squares, 3-dimensional, throwing shadows upon each other. The wind blows a silver curl a tad further on the pavement. Writing makes her happy, annoys her. Annoys her so very, very much. Dislocation, ah, dislocation. Too many languages and no location. but her pen moves and that is what counts. Leaf moves slightly, fly squirrels around, feet pass her by. Someone says 3 or four words, thick New York accent. And time passes her by. Ambulance, loud music. augustish, and still somewhere, sometime in Zero Nine. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------some words, some more words are needed. not that many, though. 139

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she feels like a contractor without contracts. No one pays her per word. Not yet - not yet. Writers should be unionized, like plumbers. They are free-lancers, too, though. she has 2 figure that out, the market place, the oh so fucking market place. The Victory plumbing and heating inc. people in pale blue T-shirts put their stuff in their white van, throw keys @ each other, get ready to move. While eating pretzels. she writes and writes and writes. ponders about starting a writers’ union. she is no “starter”, she will just merge comfortably in2 something already started. Then she will make sure to be the square block in the round peg. that will do, yep, that should do. she feels like pizza, luscious, so very new yorky, utterly greasy pizza, yellow with white blobs of ricotta or bottoncini. bottocini, arividerci. she feels deserted, but happy. wheels wheel by, on this side of the street, on that side of the street, car carenes down to 9th, bike with helmet wearer in red short skirt, dark-blue van follows. Her days, her days, here in nyc, written away, written away. One buck per word, please, please, one buck per word. 2 make her feel whole, accomplished, maybe, maybe accredited. Well, @ least the pen has ink, so much, so much, so much ink. So utter, utter ink. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------4 some reason she ended up in billy’s or benny’s cupcake place, she is having the wrong kind of frosting, the wrong kind of seat, the wrong tea, the right music, though, once more U2 bloody sunday song, or is it something else, nope, once more, sunday, bloody sunday, a sign, nope, she is and will never be superstitious, she watches her pen motion, so very fast, the red table top is out of this world, whitely distressed, a red and white checkered table cloth pattern, but totally different, a red and white checkered table cloth pattern, but totally different, same theme, but, distressed lino, a two-part table top, her writing annoys her, her right hand, cramping up, page 20

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is marching forward, she watches the 20 with the black, slightly distressed kringle, crinkle around it. “this one goes out 2 the one i left behind, fire” she misses home, so very, very much, people talk, she notices the blue @ the bottom of the page, the notebook, the note-book, cupcake, garishly neither light green nor light blue, sprinkles, bigger than most, the page, the page, the page. Ah, comfortable insanity, so very, very much. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------it is first thing in the morning, penn station, august 26/ 09, she is sitting here in between her bags, three of them, filled 2 the brim with utterly useless stuff, that she had 2 lug all through eight th. , while losing them, letting ‘em fall, but it is as if these 3 bags make her into a person, render her important, some importance, that only space can bestow upon you, she looks @ her “bestowed” space, hey, move away, wide load coming thru here, and then there is always her constantly writing pen, yep, she is important, is someone, which is exasperated by the sceptic look of the woman in pink shirt, as long as she writes, she might be immune against sudden assaults, don’t kill me, i can write my name. she ponders about the term “people of the book”, does that mean that you are immune from persecution, are books little documents that reiterate our place in a hierarchy, she smells weird smells, she feels strange. but, hey, she has all this stuff, which wild animal can hack in2 her and tear her 2 pieces? Don’t get eaten by WILD Animals. The allencompassing, way too sweat, overpowering, too heavy smell is from the perfume of the paleblue suited woman 2 her right, the author can hardly breathe. She feels a hint of her toothache in her left underbite, she was toothacheless all through new york, 15 days long, now that she feels slightly weird, slightly anxious, her tooth-ache is back, could be that is a revolt against familiarity, home versus excitement, new york has the breath of potential pulsating all thru its veins, @ least for her. The state of transience was omnipresent, especially 4 her, she does not 141

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hold a map or tour-book in her left hand, no omnipresently clicking camera, she is serious, more here to stay, to pander her wares, to do business, to grasp some money. that is why she runs after publishers, editors, hey, fabticate what I write, my ideas are here 4 sale. she ponders if that makes her a sell-out, will she simmer down, lubricate, water down her thoughts? boston, springfield, berlin, new haven, passengers are called. Who knew there was a berlin in the U.S.? she writes and writes and writes. Slow, very recognizable classical music. burlington, charlotte, north carolina, philadelphia, baltimore. she writes, she writes, she writes. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------so she picks up the pen, da pen, still in new york, in the train, by water, vista, bridges, highway, built walls, concrete all around, some green, skyline, her utter sense of trappedness, the sting of sardinelike existence, the stop in the middle of nowhere, with rocks and greenery, chain link fence, white orientation stone, she writes, writes and writes some more. pondering, ‘bout what the conductor said, comment ‘bout the “romantic part, romantic segment of the cruise, meaning the beautiful two young people, exemplifying classical boy meets girl situation, the boy smiled. The conductor said: this needs an origami expert to the family in front of her, an antibureaucracy remark from someone whose whole livelihood comes from oiling the weels of that same bureaucracy. But, actually, that is not what interests her, she tries 2 explain 2 herself the remark, he threw @ her. “second part of the ticket, lower part is for citizenship and immigration” thus she deduces that with a name like “khosrowshahi” she is automatically “the foreign kid” or FES from the seventies show. Huh, 2 you people we all look alike. If she could only milk that, 142

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she knows that for her an emphasis on “foreignness” would work, she has 2 work on her exotic persona. More mascara, heavier eye-make-up, starker accent, black silk blouse and black crepe skirt, better yet: your typical middle-of-the-road “breakfast in tiffany’s” attire. Yonkers, isn’t that where, hey, Kawasaki. ----------------------she is sitting in the café train, she’d rather listen in to the conversation, but, hey, she has 2 write, write, write, spilling the milk all over herself, squirting it out, over her jeans, the grey-ish dotted table, the blue seat she is sitting on. she still has 2 write. A lot, that is. she should write, write, write some more. Look 4 a literary agent, she writes and writes and writes. she listens in to the guy talk going on, how much money one makes 4 what amount of time @ the salt mill, she likes that, she wishes she got paid. she puts in all this work, all this unpaid, unpaid work, without ever seeing a nickel or a dime in return. she has 2 leave her obnoxiously comfy suburban hausfrau existence @ one time. Whatever made her in2 a hausfrau? She does not own a spotless home, she has an utterly spotted house. Spotted owls, spotted houses. She could find an intelligent connexion, but she is way, way too tired. She eats way too much, way, way too much. she wanted actually cookies, but the cookie selling people person was having his breakfast, so she skipped cookies. Two pieces of cake in the morning should do her in anyways, one yellow pound cake, entenmanns, one marble-loaf cake, starbucks. Let them eat cake. if she only could fabricate that somehow into something witty, but @ this time of the game, wit is so very much, so very, very beyond her. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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she ponders about her life, the utter transience, on train after train after train. Listening in2 conversations that are equally fleeting, hearing all these flecks of talk, languages, lingos, that she can hardly understand, she writes and writes and writes. While green flows by, while cars fly by, while she is way past yonkers and poughkeepsie, while she is not in schenectady as of yet. While the world happens, somewhere on a metal thingie, somewhere between new york and toronto. That is where she writes, opening her eyes, looking around, in astonishment, documenting, documenting. Using words like “thingie” that might finally do her in. but her name might just rescue her, she is not from here. she is foreign enuf. Always foreign enough. she can bend the rules, she can adhere 2 the rules. And “this stop is poughkeepsie” Poughkeepsie, puekeepsy. She has no clue how 2 write that. Dat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------rencliff, rencliff. she is falling half asleep, the train sings its lullaby. so many persons waiting here, all kinds of colors, blue, yellow, red, so many, many summer clothes, all these people waiting, water on the other side of the train, children waiving, Rhinecliff, NY. she writes and writes and writes. And then some more. At one time she will find a solid narrative, but not now, not now. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting here, trying 2 figure out how to do more cost-efficient travelling. transport, food and shelter, way, way 2 expensive. Way, way too. she starts doing da math. Hmm, more

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expenses than income. Ah, accounting. Checks and balances, cheques and balances. She counts all the fingers of her hands. chex plus balance. Balance-act. she writes, writes. while combatting suspended nausea. slight, slight vomit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------some more text, onto the paper, she writes, while having a tad 2 much junk food, a hot dog with tea, now she still has the tea left in here, wants cookies, somehow writing is stalling, way too much, way 2 much. she writes, while the train is way too quivery, more like shockingly throwing her around, writing is silently 2 trying like this. She did 2 much lite conversation, and she is steering away from serious conversations. she wants cookies with her tea, she wants 2 take a picture of the yellow truck with red and black, she writes, has her cookies, her tea, she has a mag about new york by rail in front of her, she puts down letter after letter, kind of reluctantly, though. words are accumulating, not that good though, they are slightly stalling. she is not quite sure, if she is hogging this place, the place near the window has too many greasy stains, though, is just way 2 juicy 2 sit on. she ponders if her analysis of the banal will ever get her somewhere. words are not like sounds that you mix and match 2 make it into a song, a symphony. Words have meaning, they are not just little pieces to accumulate in order to create a new unit, a novel entity. Because, @ a very basic level, that is how she sees writing, like putting smaller pieces together, the small parts of a jig-jug puzzle. she knows that it is, well, maybe, jig-saw puzzle, somehow all this commotion is taking her 2 a place of weird, toned down triviality, she has to read something good, write something good. she has to walk some, eat less junk, she had tons and tons of sugar, she is holding the entenmannâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cookie box in her left hand, has to figure out the sugar content of 145

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what she just had, she has 2 write and write and write. page 19 is done for today, this might be enuf 4 2day. The train stops, a train whooshes by, cars move, a blue sign that says Travel Info Call 511. she writes and writes and writes. The Airconditioner is deafening, loud, cracky, industrial, she writes and writes. This is where poetry is made, somewhere here on the road. this is where intelligence should start, somehow, somewhere. Where words hould, could, maybe would morph, ever so haltingly, ever so reluctantly into something flowingly, some aesthetically pleasing, not that jarring piece. With a beginning, an end. Always a beginning, always an end. Reluctantly, jarringly, so very silently. So very, very overwhelmingly. She can sense the mild heat of the cooling tea against her left arm, still holding the residue of the heat. she writes and writes and writes. Sleepiness sets in, boredom is omnipresent. The day on the train, from penn station to union station, transience par excellence, the overhead crackles, someone jitters the plasticky package of a sandwich, yellow, glistening. She wrote 2 many words already, so many, many words. ------------------------------------------------------------------she ponders a tad. this is not her starbucks on 8th. and 23rd., not that one, no, not any more. a totally different city, lettieri in toronto. that is a different coffee/tea-shop, the one on bathurst. no striving yuppies here, lots and lots of people past the prime of their lives. ted kennedy has died, he was not very old. the author has a banana bread, moist, a weird yellowish concoction, supposedly peppermint tea in a glass, tea plus cream. she writes anyways, cars outside on bathurst, passing by her. she is not facing the street, actually she is, she is facing bloor, but she is facing bathurst too. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a corner cafĂŠ, busy intersection/corner. she feels sick, flu symptoms. she is not happy, she must have caught it on the train. The person in front of her was

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definitely sick, snizzles. She ponders what the word is, it is not snizzles, it is something else. Avril Lavigne is singing, this place is way too depressing. “Isn’t someone gonna find me?”, she is getting sicker by the second. she has 2 find a happier place than this, it feels like a retirement place in here. The old woman stares @ her. Creeps her out. Luckily now she stares @ the street. The author writes, feeling weird. The woman with her stare scares the hell out of her, a guy saying “what’s happening” comes in, brings back normalcy, flirts with the counter person. The scary woman left, joined the passers-by; joined the living. she seemed to prefer to act normally, walks happily thru the street instead of people-scaring. A red street-car goes by, that is what the trams are called in this city. radio talks, talks, she is so puzzled by the green plastic on the glasswindow. For the longest time she thought there was a fake, 70’ish turf/lawn on the street, took her 4ever 2 realize it is just plastic saran wrappy “foil” on the window. she writes and writes and writes. Counts the pages. She has to produce 17 pages, she misses New York. New York seemed like a happer city, people seem to get along there, here people ghettoize. Multiculturalism versus Melting pot, who knows, who knows. One could, would debate pros and cons, ad nauseum, what really matters is this her pen. Her editor just snubbed her, he never answered her email. Maybe he is on vacation, far away from the internet. on an island in the south pacific. Yep, that must be it, that must be it. What would possess anyone not 2 answer her email for 7 days. Seven long, long days. Maybe she was too chummy. Maybe being more on the deferential side would be better. Who knows, who really knows. She opts 4 chummy, he must be ‘bout her age, give or take some. Thus being chummy is nice, a breath of fresh air. Then again, there are hierarchies. Someone has the power to make and break her career. She can always opt for putting her stuff online, where every comma, every apostrophe would stay intact.

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She ponders, feels sick, cold, she writes, but writing is only a chore. Like window-washing, like waiting on tables. Like bricklaying. Always like bricklaying. Bricks to house, words to book. she writes and she writes and she writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits on a bench near the earth sciences centre of U of T, it is a tad too chilly and the wind blows the paper of her note-book up, now it stops and just whispers @ the edge of the paper, she writes away, writes, writes, writes away. she is not quite sure if this is the best place or the best time, school will start in september, kids and parents, kids and parents. there is not much to describe here, nothing moves, only her pen. Only reddish buildings, only nothingness. A woman walks by, beautifully, forcefully. It is too hot here. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll leave. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits in a cafĂŠ, another one, another of so many b4, so many still to come. This place is reluctantly busy, she had a cheese bagel, actually a plain bagel with cream cheese therein. Plain cream cheese. Plain, plain, plain. vanilla in a store with 177 flavors. That is how we roll. that, that, that. she writes, tries 2 staccato this by pauses, by repetitions. She could move away from here, to the edge of the chair, but her cold inhibits her movement, she is still, way 2 still. Stagnating, feeling the tingle of the cold all thru her legs. This cannot be good. In the middle of nowhere, far away, so very far away from home, with a stuffed face, stuffed nose, stuffed everything. And it will only go downhill from here. That is what will do her in, eventually, the prediction of worse days

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2 come. She needs 2 be quarantined. She is utterly, utterly sick. She writes and writes. And this, and that, and then there is always the other. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------She moved, felt that this is what she was supposed to do. What with politeness, asking people for a space. she rambles. She could explain what was meant. But why? It is better to just write on, describe the tea-cup, beige, brown, curly, steam like, the perfect, perfect design. The most accurate tea-cup design on this whole bloody trip. In the bagel stop/starbucks near U of T. Especially the bagel stop with the perfect teacup design, the perfect image. And it stands perfectly 2, mixes with the beige-brown horizontal lines on the table. Her world is oh so perfect, bliss, oh, bliss. Maybe the cold will quiver and go away, after all, instead of eliminating her from the face of this planet. Would be nice 2 know the time here, nice, nice, nice. must be 3 thirtygive or take some. some minutes, some days, some gazillions of years. Woman, pink sandals, ruby-red nail polish. pink plus red clashes. Whereas on her side, everything matches, sunglasses, purse, teacup, starbucks bag, other bag. She ponders, if the starbucks bag belonged 2 somebody else, how utterly unhygienic. She writes and writes, exhaustedly, page twelve-ey. writes and writes and writes. some more, some more and still some more. Spat out by society, she has no other function on this planet than to write. Write and write and write. Everyone hates poets, everyone, everyone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------page 13 is halfway thru, only 4 more pages, 3 Â˝, 3 and a quarter. who will ever read this? What if no one ever reads this? What and what and what. pink sandals, red nail polish, yellow lights,

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two of them, the red EXIT sign glistening. A woman sings on the overhead, no one, no one listens. and no one ever will. No one, never, ever. absolutes should do, should hiccup her prose, adamantly, regressively. She scuffs smilingly, she has no clue, what “regressive” means, she just liked how the consonants rhythmisized against the ones before. the two a’s in “adamant”, the long ee, the shorter i, the music, the music, the sounds that flow rhythmically. Literature should be taught in music class, @ julliard. architecture has 2 be taught @ juilliard. That kind of stuff. The rhythms, the rhythms of this world. This very, very world. Fragments of sentences speed thru her, her pen is out of ink, so now she uses her “RBC Asset Management” one. the other one was an “Oxford Suites” one, this one is an rbc asset management one. Obviously these are the tools that will build, will be tomorrow’s drawings. Animations and comix books, always, always. A guy stood too close 2 her, she got scared. she scares easily these days, she always runs after deadlines, after scribbling down her stuff, as fast as she can. She is very territorial about her writing, what if someone bumps into her and the white-yellowpale chamomile tea will spill all over the note-book. Her piece will be spoiled, the master-master, master piece. she ponders, ‘bout stuff. Another school-year will star, one day her writing will be taught to young people like these. Her stuff has to be in the canon of world-literature. Damn-it. Has to, has to, has to. All poets are men, not this one, not this one. In the end it doesn’t even matter if she can write or not, she just feels that it is unfair that we do not have enuf women writers, enuf, enuf, enough. 150

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well, obviously, it should be good writing, but, hey, it is never ever ever ever good enough. how can it be? august, 09 ish, toronto, ontario. somewhere on this very, very planet. And page 17 is over - fi â&#x20AC;&#x201C; nal â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ly. music still plays, college and st. george still happening, outside, outside. Exhaustedness sets in, sets in, sets in. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is once more sitting in the second cup on yonge. she is having a macadamia nut cookie with white chocolate chunks therein. so she thinks. so it seems. 2 much fat, way too much sugar. Her tea had too many teabags therein, she complained to the stupid saleswoman in pale-blue twinset. Both sales women were pure idiots, both obnoxiously female. The guy though was nice. They always are. A skateboard rolls by, someone laughs loudly. Pink woman walks by, orange cab. she writes and writes and writes. Another friday straddled 2 a pen. letter after letter. While the peppermint whiff and the heat make her drunk, happy, contended. Another orange, orange cab. toronto days, here as a tourist, hotel-room A, hotel room B, hotel room C. A pen, a pen. A note book. A note book. Always, always a note book. she numbers the pages. she should go back to the hotel, sleep. she feels the exhaustion of this trip grip her by the throat. there is no energy left to hold a pen, there are all these remnances of the stark fever, she had in the night. If she sleeps now, she has to wake up @ 6. Sleeping will combat this cold, will eliminate all the microbes out of her body. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------rain is setting in on yonge street. she ponders how many more texts she can write about street corners, a woman in black with yellow plastic bag, black type thereon. she can write, she should

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write. How will this world of reluctant poetry keep her grounded, how is it good for the body, the system, to hold a black and white ball pen that says Days Hotel, that has a black cap with black thingie sticking out and move it, move it, motion it over the pale-blue lines, all to the right of the red vertical line? Is this why she is put here on the planet to scribble this down, all of this down? Is scribbling not a derogative term? Did tolstoy scribble? how come his describing of war and peace is better than her account of her beige-brown sunglasses that reflect all of yonge street? she writes, writes, writes, tries to vehemently ignore the glimpse of a headache in the left side of her forehead, she tries 2 write all over her sleepiness, her stuffed, stuffed inerts. She should rest, but sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather write. She has 2 write, write, write. A walk, a brisk one will wake her up, become fresh, fresh again. ------------------------------------------------------------------she writes under the gun, the air here is stale, it is 2:15 on a friday, in toronto in 2009. always in 2009. -------------------------------------------------------she is sitting here in the underpass writing away, having a stale donut, a tea with cream but no sugar, @ some time in the future she will grow up and buy fruit, make fruit and vegetables part of a healthy diet instead of the heaping amounts of sugar and grease she seems to need for sustenance these days. toronto is walking towards its friday evening shushing in2 the night, people are meeting up with each other, going to and fro, this is a very busy, very transient place, the table has something sticky on it that juckily sticks to her naked elbow, she changes to this other table, the so very welcoming non-stickiness, the so fresh, cold surface of the table against her skin, the polished stone, the reflection of the ceiling lights, two dots, that are kind of one, a 152

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baby mosquito, the singer very loud and forceful, the sax playing, a person in yellow comparing notes, in the far, she is not the only one, who makes this place her studio slash research lab, this is where dissertations are written, a woman elegantly steps around on black high heels, in her flowing dress, this is where life starts and ends. Outside, in the courtyard, fountains, four, white diagonal spears like ship masts, waiting 4 the sail, like flag poles, she writes, so very, very fast. Still page 8, still page 8. nine she should still produce, before the day is over, she never scoffs @ these random increments she pushed upon herself, pink woman walks by. she writes, she writes. And writes some more. Production in overdrive and god only knows why. what good will come out of this, what good can ever come out of this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------another monday morning. she hasn’t put pen to paper for three days, her wrist is rusty, she watches the air conditioner blow @ the soiled paper napkin, she feels dislocated, more annoyed than dislocated, looking out @ the tour bus and the cattle that is amassing in front of it, doesn’t really help. Calling people cattle doesn’t seem 2 be very seemingly, tourists are humans too, after all, she herself is some kind of tourist. Her seeping anti-tourist aversion is fucking weird, given that she is on the road now for near to a month. Today is august 31st, she left home on august second. It doesn’t seem that long, but it sure is. A month. To her it seems so much shorter, like 3 or 4 days of dislocation. She does not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. It makes her feel more comfy in her skin. She writes and writes and writes. She is not so very happy about her rejection letter, she got it yesterday, e-mail rejection. Her third manuscript rejection. but she writes anyways. Let them reject until the cows come home. If it makes them happy. Them, they. They. Versus her. The 153

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powerful, almighty against her, the little nobody. Big, small. She still has her pen, she will still write. She should still write. Back sliding in2 the saddle. That kind of thing. 17 pages. Each and every day. Why not? why NOt. toronto happens outside, busy, cold. Reluctantly sunny. Maybe, only maybe, dislocated. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------she walked very fast, briskly, to yorkville, plummets herself on the chair, has a peppermint tea with a tad too much cream. She still can feel her cold, iciness around her ears, she writes, she writes, she writes. fast, pressed, she wants to get this over with. Till ten. She cannot see the clock from here, but she knows there is one on the wall, behind the counter, around the corner, she remembers it to be up there. the lettieri here is slightly weird, so very different from the one on bathurst. Reluctantly snobbish, forcefully snobbish. Not snobbish enough. Without the ease of old money, more with the wish and want for old money. that is yorkville 4 u. she is not quite sure if this is where she wants 2 take her prose now, far, far away from describing the concrete, the real, the light-dots on the wire of her note-book, the sparrow on the ground, the reflections in her sunglasses, the lights, the lights, the lights. the black and white stripes of the woman with the daughter, both equally @ unease. she writes and writes and writes. Writes some more, repeats words, fills the pages and that is all that counts. What time is it, what time is it? Ten more pages to go. In less than an hour. This better be good. The tea is hot, this should give her inspiration. The warmth inside of her chest might very well translate into good, well-articulated words. She is holding the tea-glass in her left hand, takes hearty sips, holds it against her chin, puts it down, all while watching her right hand moving the pen, while dark blue letters appear on the page. Outside yorkville is happening, ever so

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reluctantly. this is such a weird part of toronto, not busy enough, not sleepy enough. A bee is all over her, now moves to the woman behind the counter. she writes and writes and writes. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------the fashionistas @ the other table are busy planning their fashion emporium, a boutique in the making, an an haute-couture place, anything, anything. They seem a good match, serious, professionals, equals. Their collaboration will go somewhere, there is mutual respect, two against the world, this could go somewhere. She writes, writes. Her pen over the paper, what kind of profession is this? Too lonely, too awkward, too interferingly with the rest of her life. Tremendous satisfaction, but no rewards. Three rejection letters already, and tons more to come. Hands brittle with carpal tunnel, chest in knots. How much longer does she have to fill the occupation-blank with housewife? she could put down animator, god knows there are enuf animations floating around in cyberspace. made by her. she writes, she writes, she writes. page ten, page ten. finally. and still seven more to go. That is how many letters per page? She could write longer letters, more space between the words, convoluted sentences, anything, anything, to fill the page. she could recount love, lust, she could sprinkle this stuff with blood. sex and violence. shock, drama. Not a perfect non-arching storyarc. A perfect line, no arc, no arc. A narrative without hiccups, smoldering away, silently, quietly, humming. Maybe whistling. Quiet, soothing. That is what we are shooting for here. Boredom. Silenzio. Yep, that kind of stuff. that kind of stuff. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------five more pages, she has to return the esprit-blouse, walk down to eaton-center, without the receipt. She has to walk back to the hotel, looks out @ the person walking by in green. Pale 155

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grass-green. Trucks, trucks. Mostly garbage trucks. she writes, writes. there is not much to describe, not enough interest. This neighbourhood is far too homogenized. She definitely is biased, feels resentment. And the sparrow comes hopping into this cafﾃｩ again. she writes, writes, writes. People here are ugly, somehow she should vye for a place more conducive to her writing. but, but, she wants to get this over with, wants to put down her four remaining pages. She could write about all those bananas on the counter, why do they have so many, so many bananas in a coffee shop? It is not a juice-bar, it makes smoothies, but still. these are her observations. She should skedaddle back scholarly writing, if she has 2 bore people, she might as well really bore them. Bore the hell out of them. Writing 窶話out art, now what could be more boring? More eschewing life out of stagnation? She ponders. A tad. Always just a tad. That is what u do, when you ponder. Never ever overponder. A tad is just enuf. To fill the pages, to make the reader turn the page. She should be a filmmaker, in a theater people just stay put. They have paid up front, if it becomes too boring, they can bombard each other with popcorn. Make-out. Kill each other. Whatever pleases them. she writes and writes and writes. All through this summer here in 2009. Letters, words, numerous ones. Not necessarily good ones. Rejected ones. She should scout 4 a literary agent, that might help. Writes, writes, writes. Her tea is pretty cold now, lukey. she writes, she writes. Hunched over, pen in hand. The white pen with the RBC letters on it, the blue, yellow logo that is partially coveed by her fingers. she writes, writes, write. 156

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this is her office, she feels sick to her stomach. She mechanically heaps on letters onto the page, any letters will do. She is not choosy â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bout content, long gone are the days of fighting 4 meaning. These are more scribbles, more doodles. That might work out, that might not. That can fall into place. Or not. Who knows? Whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ever know. page 17 is finally coming to an end, hooray, hooray. Women in paisley smile @ each other, too girlie, 2 girlie, the lemon yellow tea is cold, icy, chilled. the page is finished and that is all that matters. On august 31 in 2009. in a city far away from home. here in toronto. ------------------------------------------------it is ten to ten, maybe seven to, she is exhausted, today is a crazy, so very busy day, and it will get only worse, no time to write, only some so very short notes have 2 do, the world will not come 2 an end, if 17 pages are non-produced, relax, relax. once more coffee shop, once more peppermint tea, once more, once more. moments of her life, somewhere between art and animation, architecture and animation, she writes, she writes. somehow under the gun, somewhere under the gun. outside yonge happens, carlton happens. College happens. she does not really know the street name, busy-any-street. Cars, persons. Split seconds to move by, in2 her field of vision andâ&#x20AC;Ś out. Once an animator, always an animator. This is how i think, this is how i think. she writes, while tea wobbles, while concrete mixer torpedoes by. While this, while that. All these the moments of her life. september, september, two, some two thousand and nine. ninish. To write and write. Sentence fragments splashed over the page, only words, only, only words. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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she tells herself 2 calm down, she can make up 4 her non-writing over the weekend. saturday, sunday, somewhere in antwerp, somewhere in the air. somewhere, somewhere, somehow. Why not, why not? Why not, indeed. her prose collapses under the weight of mediocracy. Why not, why not, why not? Why not, indeed. Get the words out of the system, your system, any system. Who needs coherence? Anymore. No one. No one. who needs literature? No one. No one? She writes. A tad, a tad. A little tad. --------------------------------------------------------------she now sits in the lobby of the hotel, yes, in that lobby. writing a tad, writing a tad. still some funny words, some more funny words. More than a camera, less than a camera. more than a laptop, less than a laptop. When images are superseded by words, when language topples the visual. she writes and writes and writes. no camera 4 her, no cell phone, no laptop. Still kicking it old skool. Still and still and still. hecticness grasps her by the throat. ----------------------------------------------------------------------once more in the hotel lobby, looking up @ the escalator, once more, pen in hand, writing, writing. her shoes make her feet feel claustrophobic, she writes, writes. words splashed over the page, reluctantly. she has to go to the bank, over the street, way over to the other side of yonge. Many places she has 2 be @, but at this time haulted stagnation seems to be more fun. More still standing, more reflective. moments in time, still points within the rapid whoosh of this september 158

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three, of this 2009, of this toronto. Her days in utter dislocation and more, so much more to come. More amsterdam, more antwerp. cities sprinkled over this planet, her moving, motioning. Her in utter transience, only a pen to demark stillness, for a moment, only 4 a moment. Always only for a moment. Woman walks up the escalator, between green plants, to left, to right. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------two more pages, rapidly, while sitting here, while peppermint tea happens, reluctantly, while carlton, yonge, college whooshes by, rapidly. she sits elevated, looks about one meter or so down @ the street, the elevation that furthers superiority, instantly, but does not make you float in the clouds, removed. Words splatter after meaning, reluctantly, forcefully. She paints with words, the canvas this tiny note-book, the strokes of her paintbrush orderly, meticulously, in the right increments, blue lines, blue lines. hierographs developed over thousands, millions of years. she ponders, she should know about the origin of writing, the timeline, history, herstory, facts, data, numbers, accuracy, always accuracy. Hers is more like playing with the tools, too infantile, maybe, could be. Prose in the morning, still cold, still reluctantly crumpeling into place, falling, stumbling, hiccupping. The man in the blue shirt pours cream into the coffeepot, silvery, chrome and black. The woman in dark red and flip-flops thanks, thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits in this stale hotel room, a little bit bored, she writes in her notebook that is spread over the weird reluctantly rainbowed bedcover, she writes, writes, writes, while looking up @ the painting that mirrors the rainbow colors of the bed spread, the muted miro-ish explosion of paint,

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happily, thoughtfully, dismissively. she uses random words, like sprinkles of colors, like so many, many bold strokes. Outside the window gleams in filth and distrust, this her shelter marriages hope and despair. staleness is everywhere, she should leave, get out, fresh air, fresh air. honks of cars, rattling of streetcars, subway down in the gutter. the city, the city, the city. this city, anycity. Makes you write, makes the words fly to you. and onto this very page. blue letters, blue, blue letters. ----------------------------------------------------------------------a very friday, still here, still in toronto. this is book # 5, she is not that prolific anymore. 5 notebooks in one month. she ponders if her output should be higher, lower, what would be the right amount of words to achieve optimum quality. she ponders if that can be gaged, on a pie chart, on a graph meticulously outlaid, how much ink, letters, how high the literary value? she writes, writes. tim hortons, corner of yonge and college, coffee, donut, september, september. she could, she should sprinkle this with the right amount of allusions 2 S-E-X, physical longing, want 4 proximity less than the regulated 110 centimeters, rubbing of skin A against skin B, exchange of bodily fluids. Ah, how utterly romantic. not clinical, not @ all, not @ all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting on Bay Street, overtowered, undertowered by hydro one, people flock to work, someone cleans these black structures, she writes, writes. there is not much to describe, everything is concrete, homogeneity, not enough sprinkles, splashes of colour that should animate the prose.

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moving slowly thru the world, demarking the world word by word, all thru this summer leaning versus fall, all thru, all thru. writing some letters, dotting the sentences, pauses and cadences. Will it sell? Will it be read? who knows, who knows? blue-clad handymen laugh, loudly, no one writes. writing is so not needed, who has time to read? she writes, writes, writes. numbers the pages, writingly, wishes 4 love, maybe. More 4 lust, always more 4 lust. Quiver, release. the pen moves, motions, silently, the roar of the city is deafening enough. To combat the silence in her head, the stagnation. Everything moves, constantly, workers flock in, en masse, into hydro one. the office-tower devours them, only to spit them out @ five. she writes, writes, writes. wishes for a steady position like this, in a corner office, instead of her mobile office, the pen, the note-book. she writes and writes and writes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------and now near the osgoode subway station, clear view of the CN-tower, the canadian opera company behind her, madame butterfly. not yet 9 yet, friday, corner of queen st. west and umiversity. streets, streets, cars, cars, cars. weather fresh, pen inscribing, fast, fast, fast. legs walking by, steps, steps, skateboard. cars and noise. canadian flag, wind, cigarette butts on the ground. something metallic green crumpled, manhole, the subway station spits out all these people. and she writes, happily, reluctantly. yellow bus passes her by. she ponders where to buy a new notebook, this one skedaddles 2 an end. always skedaddling. her words, her words. concrete mixer turns, spits, pauses, moves on. the morning, the morning. ninish, september 4, 2009.

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toronto, corner of queen and university, she writes and writes, bike moves by, slowly, pensively, reluctantly. canada happens, quietly, loudly. she writes, she writes. -----------------------------------------------------------writes, writes and writes some more. --------------------------------------------------------she starts writing in this her 6th. notebook. now this one is very tightly spaced, way, way too tight. she is sitting in holt renfrew, on a purple round sofa, it is somewhere between 12 and 1, noonish, it is sunny outside, it is september five, 09, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be leaving on a jet plane. she is with this monstrous suitcase, she has 4-5 hours to kill. she writes, writes, writes. the belgian waffle was pretty heavy, she writes, writes. is utterly, utterly tired already. jetlagged already, with hurting feet already. A tea would help, always does. always, always. always, always. ALwaYs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in the starbucks in indigoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on bay street, her peppermint tea way too large, venti, triple venti, she writes, still writes, still writes. she still has to kill time, does not know, if she should sightsee, go and see her favourite hunts, if she should go down to college, to the profiterole place, does she really need more grease in her arteries, greasing her arteries, greasing her arteries, does she, does she? red crumpled shopping bag on grey table, very, very red, much too red 4 its indescript owner. she writes and writes, is kind of worried about her tea spilling over her notebook. she is worried, paranoid, she writes and writes. 12 hours in the air, well, good luck with that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------162

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she still writes another page, is wondering whether she should get the overpriced chocolate pieces from the store somewhere outside of this store, in the mall, the ones that are flown in from zurich, those ones, then again, she is going there anyways, how so very chi-chi, doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t she hate flying? she should go 2 the travel section, trying to somehow robust herself, tighten her mental corset, conquer her fears, be bold and courageous, instead of meek and vulnerable, stiff upper lip, stiff, stiff, yesterday she got her upper lip threaded, no hairs, no moustache, no whiskers, she feels her stomach turning, cream, waffles, espressos, too much irritating stuff. slight, suspended fear. fear of heights, fear of heights. nosediving thru the skies, flying like a bird, being somewhere else on the other side of the planet. Motioning thru amsterdam, tomorrow @ this time of the day. Should be cool. She does not think so, she feels lonely and lost. Destitute. Oh, well, ah, well. Tea, tea, tea, the noise of the ice in the drink of the other persons @ the table near 2 her, happy, loud people, youth, youth. flying, ah, she hates 2 fly. Does she, does she? What, are yu a wimp? yes, why? flying, flying, flying, how tuf could it be? everyone flies. so they say, so they say. well, @ least she can write, write, write. saturday, september 5, 2009, still toronto, still north america. still on solid, solid ground. she should check out mountainy, climbingy lit. oh, well, oh well, yeah well. writing is so very confusing, not what she does. not what she does, does, does. too many words, far too many, many words. On the other side of poetry, leaning towards painting. Animating. Galloping briskly over the page, galloping, galloping. All these words, all these shitty, shitty words. --------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting here near the merle norman, behind her the bay-bloor radio, she should eat something like a frittata, whatever that is, she had too much sugary stuff already. she should make her way to the airport. why not, why not. Why NOT? 163

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--------------------------------------------------------she could write there. the sun shines outside. --------------------------------------------she sits in front of this building on bay street, it is kind of weird, a skyscraper that is reluctant to scrape, a sky-scraper that is more brick and mortar, so very elegant, a fine-finished form, and she has no real repertoire of words to describe it. words are not images, they are heaps and tries, they stumble and strut, all of it, all of it. the car honks, she writes, writes, summer, breeze, shade, gusto, the minutes, seconds before take-off. the sky is filled with fighters, all thru yesterday, all thru today. All these air planes, streamlined, all thru the skies. women walk by, in dark glasses, a bum says hi 2 her. air planes in the air, in 4â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, in pairs, all thru this labour day weekend. green leaves, wind, her pen grasping the paper, stumbling jogger motioning by, elegant ladies, two. she writes, writes, writes. solitary white car, weekend on bay street. and she writes and writes. Roaring of air plane, canada post truck, some white, some red, some blue. nausea sets in, reluctantly, relentlessly. loneliness, disgust, wind. Her pen, her pen, her pen. bike, woman in black, shadows of the trees. paper, pen, she writes, way too much. Way, way too much. she hates the air planes, hate, hate. reminds her of war, of bombings. Yep, those ones, those ones. and the wind blows up her note book, edges up, edges down. she sneezes once, twice, this better be good, better be good. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in DOLCE, outside is the little italy fest, o sole mio, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amore, a woman with an accordion, she now is contemplating whether she should still go 2 italy, she is having profiteroles plus espresso, the music, everything is red, red wine â&#x20AC;&#x201C; perfect, perfecto. 164

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------------------------------at this point she is not quite sure what to do. it is around 7 in the afternoon, she brushed her teeth, she sits here and writes. airport, airport. lester pearson. she has her pen in her hand, her white bag in front of her, the one that has a logo like an airplane. she writes, writes. baby cries, it is crammed here with people, she will buy a bagel or something, maybe chewing gum. it is apparently too soon for check-in, the 9 oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock heathrow flight is checking in, the eleven oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock flight will check in later. she feels somehow tired, somehow exhausted. the little italy fest did that to her, the walk up college, the subway and bus ride. she had a fruit cake and H2O. for dinner, in the subway station, on the train, in the hall downstairs, where all the car-rentals are. the light dots reflect in her bag, she will fly, fly. not that she feels woozy, not her, not her. she ponders if she should still stay in amsterdam, or hop on the train to zurich. does she really want adventure? her back hurts, too much walking. 2 much shimmying to the singing of the 3 women in little italy, the pink, white, brunette ones. she writes, she writes. feels slightly lonely, much too lonely. Writing, what kind of profession is that? her back hurts, she whines and complains. Only 10 pages, only 10 pages. she writes as fast as she can, but still, but still. This note book has too many lines, she will write 4ever. Forever and ever and ever. she looks 2 her right, people against the light. silhouettes moving in the hall, against the backdrop of planes. she writes and she writes and she writes. this better be good, better be good. she writes, writes, repeats this, writes, writes, writes. silhouettes move, airport, airport. Tomorrow she will be so very far away from here. She feels lonely and desolate. No one 2 talk to. Thus she writes, writes. a pen, a pen. Is there no lonely business traveller on any of these flights, not good, not good. as stated before: Loneliness, desolation. a pen writing, blue and yellow lights, like arrows ready 2 attack. she hunches too much, misses home, her own bed, 165

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pillow, her seat on the green couch. the couch pillows, mismatched, everything, everything. well, ok, everybody too, why not, why not? she writes and writes and writes. ---------------------------------------------------------12 pages down, kind of good, kind of good. silhouettes darker, mostly with some rolly thing behind them. she writes, writes. Can smell the whiff of pepperoni pizza, she could, should have some. Coffee, bagel. she’ll check in. NOW. she’ll wrestle the lady in blue down, aha, this is how air rage starts. nice, please whisk me away. this is page 13, not a good sign. Nope, not that good, not that good. sanity would do her good, a pizza would be sufficient. Either sanity or pizza. Hopefully both. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is still sitting here @ a green table, outside the airport, the night. she is slightly feeling weird, she should not be, she should get a map of amsterdam, of the benelux countries, she should eat something, she talked too much on the phone, she should love to fly, she should like it, not hate it, she should eat something, she should, should, should. write letter, write an ode to her sunglasses over the green oval table, she should write and write and write. the day moves slowly towards her flight, the scariness @ the end of a perfect day. 12 hours of hell, 12 so very long hours of being shaken thru the air. motioning, motioning. hunger grips her. she is settling here in the waiting hall, she had a bagel with cheese in it, with mustard, cold motclair water. she did not choose her seat, hopefully it will not be the worst seat. the woman did not even ask her “aisle or window”, that’s nice, she will sit sandwiched between two fat men, with bad breath. Who breathe loudly. fun.

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she hates flying, what if we die, what if we all die. shoot thru the atmosphere, stratosphere, grooslysphere. she just makes up words, to combat all these cobwebs. she writes, writes. she will have the worst seat. she writes, writes. writes and writes and writes. will be in amsterdam. B4 long, b4 long. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits in front of the “relax before you fly” bar – island something something, daiquiris, margueritas, pina coladas, fruit smoothies, football, football on the TV, she writes, writes, hopefully this table will not mess up her clean notebook, her beautiful, beautiful notebook, kids play, in red, in orange, kids, kids, she writes writes somehow something good, philosophical, somehow just watching her pen over the notebook, sliverly shadowed, blue horizontally distressed table, silver spine, yellow shining thru the holes. the colors make her write, the shadow, the motion, the yelling in the back, the woman in white. over the pond, over the pond she will fly and… she should stop. Right here – right here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in her dingy hotel room here in amsterdam watching CNN, writing away. it is 3, maybe 4 in the night, she embraces jetlag, the idea of being awake when others sleep, the weirdness, the craziness, the utter strangeness. she listens to someone talking about australia’s economy, she writes, writes, writes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting here in the train bound 4 rotterdam, it is 5:55 in the morning, she cannot sleep but is sleepy nonetheless, she had too many adventures and not enough, she writes, she writes. the

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upholstery on the benches is green, green fake leather, green, very grassy, she had a waffle, a coffee, she should brush her teeth. Adopteer een pup, she can understand that. she likes it here, a tad, a tad. she ponders about her state of dislocation. the train starts. adventure, adventure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is writing, but does not like that the tables are not wide enough. Thus she takes out her shoes, puts her black socks on the green train seat, balances her note book, writes. it is 5 past 6, on a monday, she does not know the name of the station. Somewhere still in amsterdam. people are starting the workweek that is why they are – amsterdam – amstel – all so glum. duivendrecht. how come everyone exudes a quiet air of desperation, don’t they know they live in paradise here. She flew all over the world to get here, to this very green bench, to write, to write. the ceiling is yellow, matches the benches. rotterdam, here i come. she is not quite sure if the sugar in the waffle is good 4 her teeth, obviously it is not, but she does not have her Dutch toothpaste with her. Dutch, Dutch. it is so weird, she kind of understands the language, kind of doesn’t, kind of knows what is going on, kind of doesn’t, everything seems Dutch to her. ---------------------------------------------------------the train stopped in a city, place called “Gouda”. how cool is that? -----------------------a windmill, a windmill. ------------------------------------flatness everywhere, hey, it is holland. the niederlande. netherland. niederlanden. she writes, writes, dislocated, jetlagged. not right here yet. synapses firing, in all directions. it is getting 168

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light, reluctantly. in nyc 6 in the morning meant bright lite, here, on the other hand, 7 is still dusky. she writes and writes and writes some more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------rotterdam is finished, she went thru it from 7 to 9. on, a monday morning in september. this was way too fast, sightseeing in two hours. now she is back on the train to amsterdam, this time plush quarters, intercity, 2nd class. difference of night and day. she writes, writes. horses outside, black, white, rain cows. other animals, sheep, pigs. do they have indian summer here? Here. if push comes to shove, she is from here. not anymore, not anymore. rotterdam was sooo much fun. exciting, interesting. but she still left. to new adventures, for new ones. still to come, more places to explore. the world, the world. train chuckles a tad, she writes and writes and writes. some more and still some more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits here in this coffee shop called “queen” or maybe not, she had too big a pancake, too small an espresso, she wrote one of her postcards, her hands are sticky with maple syrup, she writes, writes, her mind does not really work, her back hurts from too much walking, she can’t stand the thought of loneliness in her hotel room, though, she’d rather be outside, soak up the world, let her pen glide over the paper, she wants to soak up the world, the world. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she knows she should leave this place, she’d rather have a beer though, a glass of wine, but, somehow, she knows she should never ever skedaddle that way, chocolate and coffee are slightly manageable, substance abuse though is another thing. Let the substance (s) be sugar and grease, 169

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something that does not make her stumble into a ditch, let her substance be this pen, the wish and want to talk, to formulate words, let her want be sexual. All the healthy stuff. it is way too sticky here. outside the sun. outside the sun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is not quite sure if sitting here on the steps of the touristy place in amsterdam would translate into good prose, probably not, probably not. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting inside of this giant installation, film, dramatic structures, the only caveat is that she cannot see the page, not enough light. she ended up sitting under a light, starts writing, writing, writing, against the film, against the sound, over her shadow on the paper, fragmented, fragmented. ----------------------------------------she ended up having a mint tea in this super elegant department store, it is water, hot, with fresh mint leaves in it, a bunch, mint thee, she writes, she writes. she feels and is utterly spaced out, not enough sleep, not enough sleep. she is jetlagged, jetlag par excellence. words melt into the paper, too many stimuli, too many, way too many. she writes, writes, writes. waits for normalcy, will it set in, could it, could it? this is where she will write these days, these her days here in amsterdam. here in amsterdam, this place here in amsterdam surrounded by a language she does not understand, she writes, she writes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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it is good to sit here, the words come easily, this place is surrounded by windows, to the floor, outside all around her. amsterdam, amsterdam is happening. Very forcefully, stark but still white. Dutch light, Dutch light, zuidersee, theories about dutch light. Painting. Freshness, the crispness of contours. Black and White like Seinfeld, different colour scheme than the muted side streets, dull and dampened, under a cannabis daze, reluctantly, forcefully hazily. she writes and writes. for posterity, against visuals. anyways, she writes, writes, writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------she is having another tea, to combat dislocation, stress of the unknown. she walked into glass twice today, being by herself seems to get to her, being dislocated, without goal, flimmering thru the air is too tuf, way, way too much on the system. Hers is structure, certainty, uncertainty keeps her disorganized. Makes her walk into glass walls. she has to carve out a clear structure for the days to come. she feels dizzy, bumping her head twice in one day, not good. thus she writes, writes. while watching her tea softly colden, while lights reflect in her sunglasses, while, while, while. she is sleepy, but wants to still wait. So that she can sleep a long sleep, to make up for jetlag. something like that, something like that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in this “international café”, or “international restaurant”, having a peppermint tea in a glass, she can watch the tea seeping from the teabag, she listens to “give me one moment in time”, whitney houston, is there a song better than this one, there isn’t. she looks out the window, watches the very sights of this very city, there are words on the paper that will never ever be able 2 replicate this very moment. the cookie she is having with the tea is too sugar-coated, with some hard maple-tasting frosting, maple-ish, she should read what it is, some caramel-coloured, beige171

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brown hard glaze, she writes and writes, the 4 chinese, kids are leaving, trying to figure out the strange money, one says let me pay the other one says itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine, gestures of this kind are universal, she has not quite figured out the money here, used to be gilders, now it is euros and all these coins that she mixes up, strangeness is what is part of her everyday now, she came here the day before yesterday, so, not 2 days yet, she has to leave tomorrow or thursday, tomorrow or thursday. Conceptions of reality are fleeting, she feels so utterly strange. her tea is getting cold. next time sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather travel with a buddy, @ this time her only buddy is her pen, her notebook, thus she feels lonely, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll die alone, her head still hurts from banging it into the glass-window, how dumb is that, it is not her fault, why do we have to have glass doors anyways, she ponders if they designed those doors too ambivalently, they did. her back hurts, she can hardly walk and hardly sit, this is a very uncomfortable state, an injured tourist, tomorrow she will go to zurich, maybe today, she cannot use her credit card here, well, not do buy train tickets, which is annoying. she wanted to go to antwerp but is not quite sure if that is still in the cards, too expensive, she might as well just stay here in amsterdam, city is city. -----------------------------------------------------------------------antwerp, anvers has to wait. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------walking around amsterdam in awe. today is dinsdag, yesterday was mandag. Or something like that, her dutch is as good as her cantonese, maybe her cantonese is better.

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amsterdam becomes more charming and endearing by the minute, is there anything about this city, that she doesn’t like? not bloody likely. ----------------------------------------something is in her eyes, some dust, or something, some bit of mascara, actually it is just in her left eye, poking @ the cornea. she ponders if the film over her eye is called cornea, probably not, let’s call it eye skin, all names are arbitrary anyways.. For someone who makes her living writing, this is quite a statement. then again, she did not sell any of her words as of yet. she is sitting on a white-brown bench in amsterdam, a school nearby- children’s voices, preschoolish. a ups- truck. Even here, even in amsterdam. there are buildings on the other side of the gracht. looked more like a lake, not just a canal. she walked by a lake. an Amstel-truck, far away, red. a blue car. 2 bikes. another one. Cobbling over the cobbles. she writes. page 15, page 15. somehow this was a good day, good day 4 writing. lots and lots of letters, came out of nada, splattered over the page, time stands still, bikes, a very narrow car, canta xl. she will leave amsterdam eventually, but @ this time she relinquishes every second. Dinsdag, here in amsterdam. weather nice, life good. on september 8, in 2009. she is not quite sure, if it is the 8th, who knows, who knows? all these bikes, these people are like acrobats on them. she could rent one, but, hey, she hasn’t biked since age ten. Maybe, just maybe, she should stick 2 writing. this place is very quiet, not many people-quiet, desolate, but not really, more peaceful, harmonious, children’s voices, innocence, happiness, not too loud, not too quiet, the sound of very busy people. red-car, motor bike, bicycle, another one. Each sounds different, based on how many people are on it, how big the load, they just sound all different. big dog walks by, man in green shirt, smiles @ her. trees, amsterdam. red bike, 3 black bikes. Oh, to bike in amsterdam. how do

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they do it, how do they do it? Man with blue oh-bag walks by. danke vele, danke vele. her dutch is as good as her cantonese, 3 woman walk by, one smiles, green flip-flops with red nail polish. the smiling woman, black t-shirt, black capris, more tight half-calf leggings, she writes, writes. these people seem to like poets, useless beings like her. the trash of the world, good-for-nothings, that scribble, scribble. Well, @ least better than serial killing and cannibalism. just your middleof-the-road ink pusher. Actually 3 persons smiled @ her while she was sitting here writing, maybe it is the view of the black bench with the white in it, that matches her black and white Tshirt. that must be it, that must be it. Especially, because that is how writing looks like, black letters on white surface. a black and white dog comes and lies down next to her. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------she is tired, she walked and walked all thru this city, she is now having a tea in this place that looks exactly like the jelmoli in zurich, tea, peppermint tea, with cream, music sings, she tells herself, that this is a job, too, to write, is that not why we are taught our abds in elementary school. abds, get it, ha, ha, ha. o.k. she stole that from married with chidren, classy work that makes you write profoundly. words are words, they can be anything you want them 2 be. As malleable as metal, as easy to the touch as clay. she writes and writes and writes, walks, watches the world pass her by, writes some more. somewhere she should mention that coffee shops have a different meaning in amsterdam than anywhere else, not that i ever inhaled. she writes and writes, wishes for a body next to her. but, hey, it is too hot, maybe, travelling all alone is better. she can do whatever she feels like, whenever she feels like it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------174

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she sits down in this pancake place- panne- koeken, has a coffee with sugar lumps that are very much like pressed sugar, has a pancake with way too much powdered sugar, yeah. ---------------------------------------------------------she writes, writes, the day is still young. it is noonish already, that is what she does these days. gets drunk, wakes up @ eleven, so nice, so nice. drunken stupor that will really make the words flow. that is what a nice muslim girl should end up doing: getting wasted, roaming thru nighttime amsterdam. she liked it, will do it again today. kind of has the trick out how to get drunk enuf but not too much, not enuf to jump in front of the tram or the omni-present bikes, but still enough to get the buzz in your legs, the ability to talk junk with strangers, but only light-headed junk. At least she was much more sober when compared to the 2 US-guys in the ice-cream place, they were really wasted, slurry speech and all, she on the other hand was the voice of reason. spinoza’s voice. Ah, what did he have on her. did he know how to use a cell phone? which buttons to push? actually neither does she. she ponders what backfries means? she loves this language, stands in book-stores and tries to decipher the text on the books. Languages are fun, language are fun, said the rabbi-in-training from rhode island, who studied 3 different kinds of hebrew, arameic and arabic, who can, in the end, maybe solve what fuckin’ politicians can’t and won’t. she writes, writes, a poet in a coffeeshop in amsterdam, with two super-tall waiters, very hollandaise, this is the tallest nation on the planet and she loves it. Tall guys, hey, is there anything more sweet than that? not a sexist remark @ all, we don’t do sexism here. no reverse sexism 4 you, none.

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she writes, writes. the day flows slowly forward. the words sprinkle on the page, pretty good today, like sugar cubes on brown table, sugar cubes in rectangle form, two. On the other side of the street, a boutique, people walking around among clothes, racks, people walk by in the tiny, narrow street. she writes, writes, writes. september 9, 2009. amsterdam, oh, amsterdam. sometime on a reluctant noon, slight overcast, but not forging enough. 6 TVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s up on the wall, 6, 6. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is talking her pen out, tries to somehow hold herself straight, forge an air of entitlement on her fragile state of mind, tries to package herself as if she knows what she is doing, which is so very weird, who writes @ an eating place like this, a good writer should have @ least a home office, a kitchen table, but nothing ever happens @ a kitchen table, you cannot write @ a kitchen table, can you? She canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, it is easier to get stuff moving onto the page when there is so much happening around her, there is music, a woman with a red juice, maybe tomato, maybe pink grapefruit, people walking by in pant suits, pink ones, yellow ones, all pastel, hard shoes that pump over the hard brown floor, this is what makes her write, good, mediocre, bad, but, hey, it still makes her write, takes the pen out of her hand, puts, forces lines on the page, blue ones, vertical ones, italic ones, dots and commas. pauses, cadences, hicc-ups. the golden-silvery oversized bulb says hi, like copper, like copper. reminiscent of fine cuisine, where people know how to cook. where cooks are one species of people, where aristocrats are served. aristocats. her tea, her tea. white-milky and she writes some more. Like swimming under water, coming up 4 one split second. that kind of flow of words. that kind, that kind, that kind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------176

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some more words, some more words. somehow, out of thin, thin air. gasps of info, that kind of stuff. that very, very stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------she finished her tea, looks around, people-watching, people-watching. evaluates them, smushes them into her little categories. thinks about love, the young pair, 30 years from now. he will cheat on her, even though he doesn’t want to. she will either get over it or frizzle. romance. she misses him. she can’t write anymore. A sandwich woman moves too close 2 her. there is so much more place, space on the other side. Don’t cut your tuna salad sandwich. Do not disturb the poet. The slightly disturbed poet. The very disturbed poet. The poet without book-deal. the poet without any, any future. the poet that cannot even write poetry. that writes prose and calls it poetry. That one, that one. the one that makes up genres. if nothing else works, we might as well reinvent the wheel. the poet without target-audience. the non-white, non-black poet. non-eastern enuf, non-western enuf. the one that cannot be made a token in the spiel of university presses, of publishing houses. The one who writes in english, when she should use azeri. the very, very damned poet. that should jump into the next gracht, jump off a bridge. the bridges here in amsterdam are not steep enough, you can’t commit suicide by a one meter plunge into dirty water. ah, she writes. she is no spinoza, whatever she writes will be classified as housewifey mumbojumbo. if she would be a drunken guy, everyone would clap. if she was a self-hating Iranian girl, her book-royalties would shoot through the roof. If she would write about sexual exploitation, hey, there would be money plenty. But her observations are too banal. She could throw this black de Bijenkorf tablet with the white saucer, the dirty-yellow napkin, the remnance of the pyramidy

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tea bag onto the ground. Rage might put her on the map. Writer’s rage, unpublished writer’s rage. ha ha ha ha. she is pissed off @ this very world. yep, and the words are hibernating, stalling, falling only reluctantly, clumsily into place. she overuses the word “reluctantly” way too much these days. here, on her weird, so very strange journey thru summer and fall of 2009. thru all these coffee shops, no, not all those coffee shops. not yet, not yet. Life is 4 the living and that is that, that is that, that is that. --------------------------------------------------------------------she skedaddles to this different place where she has cappuccino and speculatius and two big chocolates. she will just die from overload of sugar and fat. and in the nite she will press alcohol into the mix too. she is not quite sure about the tipping policy in this place, she is doing it all wrong, there is no tipping jar, so how the fuck do you tip. Give them back the money, isn’t that demeaning. this is way too complicated for her, but, hey, she loves the surface of this table. Is she cheap? Probably. Ah, why not? why not. this is such a fantastic table surface, matt silvery, not real silver, with dots in it, she carrasses it, while the korean or chinese tourists talk, just like back in vancouver. she feels strangely empowered, these are her people. she could be somewhere in richmond. and the rooftops look like something, swiss, orthodox greek, iconography goes wild, good design in chair and table, netherlandish, she writes, writes, writes. again and again and again. fills the pages with fillers. Yeah. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she should skedaddle back to the hotel or find an internet café, she should do laundry in the elegant laundromat, she should have a glass of rose-wine, right here, right now, she should write and write and write. Today her writing is not informed by walking thru the streets of amsterdam, 178

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today all she does is chomp on way too heavy fare, a big pancake, crepe, loads of sugar in her coffee, she had 3 coffees already versus her usual one, then again these 3 are hardly the size of one tall starbucks, if put together, the chocolate was as much as a chocolate bar, maybe her arteries will not clog up after all. At least she is now on page 14, writing away, she might just finish her daily allotment of writing in under time, the marathon won, marathon won. finish line, new record time. so unfair, in sports, swimming, running, biking, only time matters, not form. why does the same not hold true for artsy endeavours, i write 17 pages, as fast as i can, beat that, beat that. all that is said about an artist is “prolific”, probably means “hi-output”. This art-biz of hers is totally fucked-up. Nothing but weird scribbles. while she looks @ the wine bottles behind the counter, very, very neat, very sweet. is it too soon to get wasted. when should she start gulping alcohol. she looks around her, the two elegant women in the back corner are having white wine. should she get food with that? how does that work? Music fast, lots of noise, sounds like ice in an ice hamper, whatever that means, whatever that means. beautiful serious bar-tender woman reads something, people talk, leave. she writes a tad, writes a tad. should look @ the calendar of this place. there is so much more to explore in this city, but she feels that she has seen it all. this is all she needs and wants to say. there must be millions upon millions of amsterdammers who have never seen this particular table, this specific view of the city. How many inhabitants does this city have? what, what, what. it is good that sanity is as palpable as insanity. One can touch it, put it on paper, in words, in words. Disguised as poetry, it will fly, should fly. The only thing that she doesn’t have is the right gender. But, hey, if margaret thatcher can run a country, she can be a philosopher. Philosopher queen, philosopher queen. and she will say whatever she feels like. not what the fuckin’ market dictates. 179

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once back in vancouver, she should start work on “on animation and architecture”. put it on scribd. ask her former prof. to help her. maybe not. she’d rather swim solo, her way, her way. she cannot water down her words. she writes, she writes, behind her music, scarring of the chairs on the funny floor, all these beige, 1-inch thick lines, with spaces in between, so very very weird. page 17, getting to the end, finish-line, finish line, spell check and we are done here. for now, for now, for now. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in the same pancake place that she was in the day before, having exactly the same kind of pancake, coffee, the waiter is just as tall, as loud in his voice, but a much less aggressive person, much more quiet and subtle, she ponders how people can be so much the same and so different, maybe it is the work uniform that binds them together, let’s us lose sight of how individual each and every one of us is, her panne koek has much more powder sugar today, her coffee is getting cold, but first she has to write and write and write, that is her raison d’etre, what keeps her grasping and gripping @ her sanity, in the insanity of being spat out to the other side of the planet, @ least she is not a soldier or something, she is a rich girl with too much time on her hand, or so it seems, or so it seems. in other times, she would be knitting, doing embroidery, having an affair. the affair thingie seems way more appealing, what do you have 2 offer. what are her prospects? she smiles, could go on about this subject matter ad nauseum, amsterdam is very amsterdamish, dutch speaking, hollandse. she will come back to this city, maybe 31 years from now. when she’ll be 86. 31 years ago she was here, so what is another 31 years? she writes and writes and writes. has 2 go back to 180

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the hotel, eventually to get the next note book, coffee is getting cold, so is pancake. panne koek, panne koeken. next time she will put apple on it, the 26 is still half-written, the 6 is perfect, the 2 just has the squirly part, but lacks the horizontal line, a 26 that never really was, thus she writes, thus she writes. letters, words, dots, on september 10, in 2009, in holland, life is so very good, pancake is getting oh so cold, so is her coffee, thus she writes, writes, as fast as she can, as slow as she can, whatever that means. whatever that means, whatever that means. -----------------------------------------------------------------she sits in amsterdam, on a bench, in front of her a gracht, a pretty wide one, it is one or two in the afternoon, it is windy, bikes, motor-cycles whoosh by, holper by, behind her cars, must be a main traffic arterie. she writes, it is still september 10, it is page 10, which means 13 more pages waiting, lusting to be filled. Loud here, all these cars, ebbing and hitting the tide again, she writes, writes. Does the tide mean the low part or the high part, ebb must be the low part, flood the high one, the whole process of ebbing and flooding should be called tiding. Who knows, who really knows. she is sitting here, hunched over, writing. Wearing black lulu lemons, pink T-shirt, black mohair pullover around the neck. hair back, pearl-earrings, glasses in hair. Spiffy. In a very weird reluctant way. Not classic enough, not classy enough. Stylish in a wishful way, in a “good housekeeping” way. Not a vogue way, not a “town and something, something” way. Ah, ah. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she just had the best hering sandwich, haringbrodje ever, the problem is that now her fingers smell slightly like fish and onion and are a tad sticky, she writes anyways, she can wash her hands later. the days hotel pen might absorb the hering smell. nice. she is sitting here on a blue 181

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bench with paint chips coming off, in the middle of amsterdam. a bra store on the other side of the street, 3 mannequins with bras and underwear and some kind of stockings above the knees, without heads all guarding this piazza in amsterdam. there is a black bronze statue too, a guy. So the women statues are slightly disrobed, white skin, dark underwear, the guy is with clothes. she could find something about gender inequality in that. She always can, she always does. sun in amsterdam, too much, too much. 3 or 4 euros left, hmm. Not good. not good @ all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in a side street on a beige-green weather worn bench, the ubiquitous, ever-present arrays of bikes parking in front of her, she writes, writes. picked up a flyer, a card about the klick animation festival, she will not be here anymore, but still. animation rules, will always rule. One day, some day she will be an animator again. A good one, a not so good one. Maybe, a good enuf one. Until then, these letters have to suffice, why not, why not? this is her so very mobile, so very oldskool studio. A note book, a pen. and the world- waiting to be observed. Until animation she might as well be a schrijwe. a shrivje. she found this book “222 shrijves”, well-publicized, prominently displayed in a bookstore in downtown amsterdam, midtown amsterdam, uptown amsterdam. anyways, lots of images of, and portraits and photos, pics of “shrivjes”. another book was called “dichter”. these people here sure seem to like their writers, they are deferential to their writing people. So it seems. And their visual art is phenomenal. vermeer, vermeer. Ah, to be an expat in amsterdam. or an in-pat. any kind of pat. To be here is fun. with herring in her belly, though the herring was kind of slimy and disgusting. Very dishy. Do they cook it, or is it raw? tasted good, though. and, hey, she is from HH, roll moepse, heringsalat. Her tummy feels fine, @ least now she is cutting out all of this heavy cream. it could rain, it is windy. she writes and writes and writes. 182

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--------------------------------------------------------------she has an espresso macchiato, feels very dutch, sits here somewhere which name she doesn’t know, her coffee is too non-sugary, because she let the sugar pipe fall into it, she finds another sugar pipe, not really a pipe, she just means the container of the sugar which is not a bag here but a, well, pipe, a thin paper bag like a little stick, you can easily open it, she loves it, very dutch, the stir sticks here are shorter and fatter, might as well, everything is so much better here in amsterdam, everything, everything, everything. she would like 2 use the facilities, though, but that has 2 wait. she’d rather wait and sit here and soak in all of amsterdam, losing her way, finding her way. everything is great, great, great, pen flows over page 10, how nice, how nice, how so very nice. she has a fringe brochure, a NFF 09 brochure in front of her, these are wellpublicized events, what about animation fests, what about those. they are so much better, so much more important. what is it with our little group, that makes us shy and subdued. aren’t we loud enuf, aren’t we brash enuf? don’t we have what it takes? we do, we do, we do. and that’s that, that’s it, on a september day here in amsterdam with too much sun on her paper. with a little fluffy dog behind her, with her pen scribbling away, scribbling away. with no more money left, none, no cash. well, she’ll go to the bank, no reason to panic. no rush on the bank yet. her atm, her credit card should work here. if not, she has to dance for her keep. dance, jump, dance. write. write and write some more. page 11 crawls to an end, ever so slowly, ever so slowly. she writes, writes. 6 more pages, 6 more pages. aargh. good luck with that. She makes bigger spaces in between all these words. but writes nonetheless, nonetheless. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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she could finish this, write, write. then she will have the evening off, no one will force her to put more sentences down, she’ll be fine until tomorrow morning, then she can take the weekend off, she’ll be on the train to zurich anyways, she’ll just relax, look out the window, day dream, sightsee, trainstation-see. She’ll have to change trains, a lot, the non-stop train, the last one, goes today in the evening. on dondersdag, donersdag, Donnerstag. Thursday-ish. she writes, writes. 5 more pages, 5 more pages. she is going insane here, she can feel it creeping up in her stomach, she will start yelling and keeling over, all the time looking @ the flowerful handbag of the woman outside. she ponders why she does not have a flowerful bag. should she do that, flower herself up. become more girlie, less girlie? What? what? she writes and writes and writes. and writes. -----------------------------------------------------------------------well, danke well to you 2, or “danke vel”. she might go to the fringe festival performances, it is 3 performances for 15 Euro, which is great, is it cash, or Credit card, how does that work, it has Language no problem performances, she looks thru the programme, which is pink and black and white, her biggest prob. is that it is written way too small. she needs new glasses, these her glasses might be seven years old. A tad too old, she has to go to the dentist too. Somehow this is not the stuff, that should fill up the pages of a travelogue, but who cares, who cares, who really cares? 17 pages, each and every day, except for the weekends, this is book # 7 already. she will have a busy year typing this all up, once she is back in vancitay. if she is ever back in vancitay. Maybe she should just expire here, in total strangeness, in oblivion. Who will miss her? Only world literature will, only animation. her art, her art. The muse. tram sprinkles its clirring thru the air, again, again, again. day in amsterdam, sun outside, her pen, her pen. a connexion car outside an “open art fair- utrecht poster” outside. An “open monument & dag” poster, no 184

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“eindhoven/ S” poster though. A “Lily Allen” poster. All these posters, all these days. she writes, writes. she is an artist, somehow, no one publicizes her stuff. she just keeps on truckin’, in oblivion. No one compensates, her, this is non-remunerated art. Which thus equals bad art. She just toils away in her little studio, which is very mobile, only her pen, only her note book. she hates, hates, hates writing. does it anyways, under the gun, under the gun. No foreman yelling @ her, she writes, writes. Letters become words, become sentences. she is pissed off, @ every, everything. why not? why not, why not. so this is, how insanity feels like, knots in her stomach, 1 page and two or three more lines left until her next heart attack, stroke, meltdown. Ah, the life of a poet, nervous breakdowns that fragment her skin, cause wrinkles, make her twitch and frazzle, walk into walls, glass or not, makes her look into a shop window until this guy tells her to “hey, be careful”, because this big steel structure is coming down from above. Ah, the life of a poet, paranoid, insane, happy. And happiness sets in, once page 17 is finished, once everything is read. once this is over, is over, is over. all of this, all of this, all of this. she ponders, if she could get a glass of tap water, for free. Probably not, probably not, probably not. page is finished, life will finally begin. september 10/09, amsterdam, the netherlands. and tram, yes, tram bells its horn. its horn, its horn. this is amsterdam, and she said that before. people outside are leaving, hugging each other. guy in blue shirt is so much taller, when standing up. woman in red skirt leaves, natasha, natasha. she pins together words, music, singer, sensual, well, more quasi-sensual. tones of the instruments, she writes, she writes. woman shakes her hands, as if words are not enuf, and she writes and she 185

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writes and she writes. bike, car, shadows, ah, this never ever ends. Never, never, never. Sun somehow, somehow disappears. motion, music, tummy knots, love, and somehow lust. a tad, a tad. ------------------------------------------------------------------------she is back in the same pancake place where she was in the last two days, make that three, this is her third time, she has the coffee, which must be the best in all of amsterdam, hands down, she writes, writes. there is a book in her bag, it is called 222 shrivjes or something like that, portraits, images of people, male or female, who make their living writing, who look thoughtfully into the distance, who write, write, write. ------------------------------------------------------------------------there is this weird noise going on, air conditioner wise, very loud, very monotonous, again and again, ebbing, flooding, while one consistent theme persists, it is a sound sculpture like no other, sound sculpture, sound-sculpture. the day before she was @ a bridge over one of the grachts, canals, grachten, and there was a blurb about a sound sculpture, either under the bridge or across the bridge, over the bridge by 3 sound artists. she did not hear anything, and canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really describe it, all she really remembers is the green-white-black sign, a typical train sign, diagonals, zebraish, and that was how she remembers the sound sculpture. Ah, art here in amsterdam, the city is awash with all these little studios, very conceptual, very white, very part of the fabric of the city. they are all some kind of indefinable project, with some scholarly treatise 2 follow, some book in the making, some words, some words. she has finished her pancake with apple, cinnamon, powder sugar, she should leave this place. she has written enough. The very tall, very young waiter yells @ her: â&#x20AC;&#x153;was it good, the 186

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pancake?”, she is not quite sure, if he means she should leave. Probably not, he is just some polite kid, who scares the hell out of her. he is just so overly tall, this being the tallest nation in the world. she writes, she writes. she should have another coffee. She does and writes it down. Ah, how fuckin’ weird can you get. Maybe, she should roam the streets, some fresh air, some Mac Bike ride, some fietsen, some Vermeer, some Rijksmuseum. The Stejdelijk is closed or something, she could go to den haag, to Eindhoven, to Utrecht. but she’d rather stay in this very city, write, write, write. Maybe find yesterday’s pub again, have the best beer in the world. again. Maybe one can only have the best beer once, never, never twice. Other people stream in, tourists, a woman in light grass-green. middle grass-green. and she writes, and she writes. words flow, reluctantly, why does she not write like this when back in vancitay? She does, but in a different way. typingish, not with her right hand pushing the pen. pushing da pen, pushing the pen. The 26 to her right is till the same as yesterday, the yellow 6 perfectly intact, the 2 is without the line under it, the horizontal one. The yellow goes perfectly with the deep brown of the wood, both have a warm tint of red. her pen moves swiftly, page 5 is slowly coming to an end. -----------------------------------------------she sits down on this so very odd, so very icy step, the steps to a house maybe, near a blueyellow-green bike, a traffic sign that is tilted like the tower of pisa, a white arrow to the side, on a blue round sign, she sits near Rosmarijnsteeg ( Centrum ), she writes, fast, slightly furious, green moss on the ground, boutique on the other side, spuistraat ( centrum ), a blue sign, round,

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with white lines demarking a bike, in it, the yelling of workers, cleaning crews. she stands up, still writes, writes. ----------------------------------------------------she is sitting in this place near amsterdam centraal, @ a table that is round and has a red and white checkered table cloth, the typical table-cloth that signals this is where food is served, this one has very small checkers, there is a small, very tiny flower pot with forget-me-nots, yellowwhite and brown, probably fake, there is her espresso cup with the too cold, way too cold, lukewarm espresso in it, there is the singer on the overhead that is no madonna, that articulates elevator music, she ponders why some persons make it to superstardom, others @ the corner of the street, there are reasons 4 that, there are reasons for everything, 4 everything. Rationalizations, rationalizations. This place is perfect for penning one of her many master pieces, she now knows that â&#x20AC;&#x153;Koffie verkeerdâ&#x20AC;? means coffee with hot milk and it happens to be 2 Euros and 40, well, mini euros?, euro cents, they have poffertjes here, though, probably, guessing from the luke-warmness of this espresso, not the very best. here @ Smits Koffiebar. Near the tourist bureau in front of Central Station in Amsterdam. She wanted to go to Utrecht, will probably still do it. There is an art fair or something going on there and it is about 10 bucks. 12 Euros. That must be more like 20 bucks. The line-up was way too long, but she now has coins, from purchasing the cold espresso. she writes, writes. she could use the internet, make useless observations, on facebook, but why? she could roll oldskool, talk about her fascinating travels, once she is back with the poor souls, who did not make it to amsterdam. Why brag in real time, when you can wait and embellish in the future.

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she has way too much sugar here and coffee cream, she purchases a tiny espresso, a “small strong coffee” as the translation in the “Smits Koffiebar” menu reads, the translation is in red, how very nice, goes with the red-white table cloth, the small checkers go with the small type on the menu, she can analyze the design of “smits koffie-bar” ad nauseum, she does not really need to go all the way to utrecht to the art fair, she has so much to see and to write about, right here, right here, right here. amsterdam, september, still 2009, still 2009, still 2009. repetition fills the page, the page, the page. aargh, feelings, pangs of dislocation set in, clop against her chest from within, clomp her consciousness into disconsciousness. her writing is arguably temperament-ful, too weird, too strange. Goes with the utter strangeness of this place. she puts her hand on the milky-white espresso cup, it still has ample amounts of beige-brown sugar, molten. sugar on the bottom of the cup, she will chomp it up with the tiny, dark-silver spoon, ah, lunch, ah, lunch. in smits koffiebar, in smits koffie bar. here, here in amsterdam. utterly dislocated, utterly out of sorts. paranoid, weirded out, in a very happy, happy way. near to dementia, to senility, to infirmity. she is lonely, her, feet hurt. she loves it, loves it, loves it. this is the geriatric station of this roaringly touristy place. yes and yes and yes. and NOW: spellcheck. why not, not, not? style is not needed, playing with words is. short notes, cadences, pauses. choreographed happily, slightly, ever so slightly virtuously.

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she is still an animator, she will always be an animator. all i ever learned, i learned from martin. Ah, interschool, animation, fall of 2002. this is what formed her, and not only her. that is where and when she matured into artistry, learned it all, learned it all. if she could only learn how to market what she knows, what she does. she will, eventually. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------she finds her glasses, fishes it out of her beige, strawey purse, the one with the brown straps, she takes it out of the Anne Klein oval box, she ponders, whether she should open the package from the book store, she puts the packaged book near to her note book, she feels so very uneasy, so suddenly. Could be the glasses, could be the glasses. the book is about 222 shrijvers, she took it out, maybe it will inspire her to write better. Oh, well, ah, well. well, well, WELL. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand, speak dutch, but deciphers from the blurb on the back of the book that the female contributor of the book went to the gerrit rietveld academie and, hey, she knows they are legendary in photography. Well, maybe not, but a classmate from surrey, a photographer, came on exchange to gerrit riedveld. she writes and writes and writes. her back is hunched, hunched. from writing. from boredom. from schrievjen. ha, ha, ha. she ponders, if people who read this will think whether she lost it. Ah, naah. Not more than other and not less than others. and that is all we are shooting 4 here on this very planet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------190

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she runs for the train on spor 2a, spor meaning track, she hopes that it goes to amsterdam sloterdijk but she might be wrong, maybe the train will start to leave @ 2:57, not @ 1:57, anyways, she is sitting in this nice part of train, hey, and the train is made by bombardier, she feels so much @ home. Somehow, her feels of dislocation have evaporated, @ this time she is born and bred amsterdam, too bad, that she has to leave first thing in the morning, come 2morrow morning. the train moves, a big bump. ---------------------------------------------------------------she checked, the train goes to amsterdam sloterdijk. she has no clue what that is, where that is, the only thing she knows, is that this seemed to be the cheapest train tour, 3:60 Euro return, maybe even 3:40, probably 3:60, she vaguely remembers putting 3 of the golden coins into the machine. There are machines that only accept credit cards, which is futile if you lack a pinnumber and most north-american credit-cards do, obviously, not have pin numbers. Then there are the machines that accept coins, and then there are the ones that accept paper-bills. which she just deciphers right now, in retrospect. she had hot chocolate with full load of sugar and cream, just to break her bill. Oh well, ah, well. travelling is fun, train moves. she should stop writing, should watch, watch, watch this city, the city. amsterdam, amsterdam. its blue and yellow trains. that match the blue trams with the big windows. squash city, theater group DNA, she walked by them. Great Graffiti here. Fantastic. people who do this 4 free. Just like she writes for free, makes films for free. Puts all her stuff into the world, for free. Into Cyberspace. This is what art for artâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake is all about. A Eureka moment, one of two, one of those. 191

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amsterdam sloterdijk. ------------------------------------------------------------------she sits outside on a black bench in this waiting place in amsterdam sloterdijk. she writes, notices the blue diagonal window-glass thingie, has to still document that the trains here all have the same yellow, but the blues are two kinds, darker, lighter. yep, this has to be documented for posterity. the blue and yellow of the plans for the traintimes are the same yellow and blue, the backlit sign is the same blue, too. she writes, writes. page 17 is coming to an end, she is finishing her writing part for the day. this calls 4 a beer, amstel, heineken, no rose wine for her, for today. she writes, writes. now if she could only figure out where to get the small fries portions, in the ubiquitous red and white, diagonally checkered boxes. everyone who is somebody, has one of those. The real Dutch ones, not the Undutchables, ha, ha, ha! ha, ha and ha, ha. she wrote enuf and she is outta here. until 2morrow, maybe even till next week. the weekend can do without this constant scribbling. her back will thank her, her right hand will relax. Relax. No CPS. no cps. None, none, none. spellcheck, and then we are done here. Amsterdam something, some thing, here we come. I come. Amsterdam Skodelijk, no, Slotelijk. Or something, something, something, 4 Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sakes, stop this constant, constant writing. No insanity here, no more schrivjen. If she gets committed here to the insane asylum who will pay for that? the dutch taxpayer? who paid 4 van goghâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incarceration? she will never be one of those, she has community, she is way too foreign. Anywhere, anywhere. no witch hunt. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; And now, a beer. a beer, beer, beer. 192

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she ponders, how to finish this elegantly. Ta, ta. puhh. ------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting here first thing in the morning in this place called “silber kugel”, she is having a café crème, she is having this “zopf” that she thought would be sweet, but it is actually savory, she notices on a sign above the counter that she could have had a Kaffee – Complet which is 1 x coffee and 1 x gipfeli & broetli, 1 x jam & butter for the same price she paid. this seems to be a before work, before school place, lots of construction workers, people in painters’ clothes, overalls, wonderful, a place of work, or where workers congregate, that is actually what she is, a worker, a pusher of ink, meticulously, though only 17 pages per day, 5 days per day. the reason, why only 17 pages can be produced, is that more than 17 pages seem to be mentally and physically impossible, same with logging weights, loads, bricks, sacks of flour, physically there is only a certain amount of work that can be done within the span of one day. the people which left actually worked for the hdk which supposedly is the art school around the corner. She ponders if she should talk about her location, she now is in zurich, amsterdam is a thing of the past, she came here 3 days ago, lives in a totally different world now. Went all over switzerland, well, basel, bad ragaz, she found her pen again, clasps it, writes, writes. it is getting cold outside, everyone has worker’s pants on, with paint on it, she has to do laundry, but does not as of yet know where there is a laundromat near here, thus she writes, writes. it is 8:10, maybe 9:10, there are 2 very big clocks on the wall, up on the wall, with different times, one hour apart. she writes, fast, not furiously, she writes, writes, writes. this place is quite busy, but so very polite, people mostly come in hordes, work colleagues, but an equal amount of people come in all alone, all by themselves. she writes, she writes. all these people are quietly

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talking, smoking is perhibited, not perhibited. she ponders if there is a word called “perhibited”, must be “prohibited”, she cannot make up words, @ random. her back hurts, she walked too much, a wanderer in the village, she writes, writes, mechanically the letters appear, that is how it should be. this is her office, people talk, she writes, they walk by, she writes, the woman in green moves her arms, gesticulates, the author writes. that is how it is, how it should be. there is music on the overhead, there are people walking by, behind her, on the street, makes her write, write, write. this is what she does, books and books on writing, describing the very process she is involved in, writing on writing. Using words to describe herself, well, more her fingers holding the pen, she, obviously, will never be able to physically observe herself. she writes, writes. the world goes by, walking by: blue pants, white pants. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------she read thru her words, nothing deep, as of yet, only utterly superficial observations, she describes the concrete, the visual, she uses words to document her observations. there are no ideas attached to her observations, no value judgements, no ideologies. no dogmae. though, when reading thru her notes, it occurred to her that this place is a very egalitarian place, manual laborers, non-manual laborers, all in the same place. white- pink- blue collar people, all in the same place. It is not the collars anymore, but, still the people here signal with the attire they are wearing, what they do for a living. the author ponders about her own line of work. what fascinates her is that people here seem to use their pants to signal what they do, blue pants, white pants, with paint splashed thereon. Or not.

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her philosophizing becomes slightly stale, the coffee seems to make her write. she will now go and have a tea, maybe, more intelligent, more robust ideas will emerge. the walk to the next location in itself should help, the flaneusedom, the wind in her face, the fresh air, the reluctant overcast, the very furiously dull overcast, the rattling and roaring of the tram. she writes and writes and writes. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting now in jelmoli, has a mint tea and another piece of zopf, with apricot marmalade, well, she has it not yet, prefers to start writing, looks down @ the cars, the people walking, bird’s view, bird’s view. she ponders, what if, what if, the genre of her writing would be classified as “bored housewife” writing, it could be easily diminished by an attack like that, not critiquing by evaluating the substance, but by shooting the messenger. obviously, her writing has flaws, has merits, too, the main prob. is the jumping from idea to idea, the fragmentation, on the other hand that is exactly, where livelihood is created, where writing mirrors the world we live in, the overstimulation that makes us write, the motion, the ever-changing. the flip-flop. the interest. the essence of life. Time-based medium, time-based medium. what does that even mean. Isn’t everything timebased. If i watch a rock, i myself move thru time. she ponders, ponders. writes, writes. Little ants on the ground, moving, the yellow zebra crossing. zurich, september 09. red car moving thru. 195

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she writes and writes and writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she listens to people talk, she looks @ the street, vans, two, little people, she wonders, if she has to roam to another place, she probably has to Stop writing. STop, stop. -------------------------------------------------------------she now is sitting in spruengli, where she is having a peppermint tea, the lightning here is excruciating on her eyes, she barely can read what she writes, should have found a seat next to the window. her tea is kind of in the way, she put her note-book diagonally which might interfere with her ideas, she has to balance her place here and kind of cannot work freely within all these special constraints, there is one other person who is reading NZZ, while all hell is breaking loose around him, anti-commotion within commotion, like reading amidst a freeway crossing, an oasis within a storm. she writes, writes. reluctantly, forcefully, utterly uncomfortably. she needs 2 hear herself think. or maybe just watching all the different cakes and tarts in the glass-vitrine is enough to make the pen move, the constant gibber-jabber, the motion of the white and black waitresses, the clipper-clapper of the dishes, the fastness and the slowness, all make her write, make her write. words pour onto the page, hey, and in the end, that is all we can ask for. Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it? she fills page after page, thru summer, thru fall, in 2009, here, well, here. words accumulate, like raindrops, slow, fast, reluctantly. weather down rocks, build oceans. well, @ least she does not have low self-esteem. Which artist has? which writer has? None of us can afford to do so. and that is that, that is that. tea in white china cup, some golden mark on cup. she writes, writes, writes.

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--------------------------------------------page 11, @ least we are getting somewhere here. she would have preferred a can of tea, not a can, but in Swiss german it is called “kaennchen” or something, she writes, writes, feels happily weird, definitely strange. here in strange, weird oblivion. she knows she is not good for business, in the old times they would charge higher prices @ “eating rush hour”, first in - first out. maybe they still do. anyways, she writes. Lives on sugary cakes, danishes, tarts, nothing but bready stuff. it is 3 already, not yet time 4 alcohol. Which is another vice she picked up, ah, why just sugar and grease? Cigarettes would be fun 2, we’ll all die anyways. die and die and die. while writing. while writing, while writing. well, @ least her pen moves. that should give her immunity. she writes and writes. fast, slow, while watching the world, the candelabras hanging from the ceiling. 12 pages down, 5 more to go. five more to go, five more to go. she learned to write in this language, german, english came so much later, with a detour in farsi. but maybe azeri is what really shapes her lingo, the language she doesn’t write, she only speaks. Ah, languages. Would help, could help, if one has something to say, stuff 2 say. Instead of just playing with shapes and forms, abstract, so very abstract writing happy to play with the lines, the squirly, whirly scribbles in blue. Always on white, always on white. the reader left, maybe she, the stupidified writer, should do the same. Go 2 the internet café, check her e-mail, go take the tram, go, walk to the zurcher see. Look out @ the lake. Roam thru the niederdorf. Something like that, something like that. dada started here, so they say, so they say. 100 years ago, give some, take some. she still writes and writes and writes. to stop does not seem an option, does it? Does it? 197

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14 pages, 3 more waiting, lusting. yelping out to be filled. with word after word after word. she feels sick, nauseated, with a knot in her chest. yep, that one, that very one. ----------------------------------------------------she sits down here on a bench in this very touristy place in zurich, maybe it is the helm-haus, a fountain is playing, the tram goes by behind her, a church in front of her, maybe it is the one that has chagall windows in it, she is sitting in this house near the bridge, she writes, writes, is tired of writing, two to three pages, that should do it, could do it. the words, the words. she should have gone somewhere else, she just took the train to zurich hardbruecke, to check out the laundromat, she found on the internet. ah, she did not find it, next time around sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll googlemap more precisely. a static map would be better, but she needs glasses. she likes the maps she can stand in front of, they usually have very big letters. not everyone can read small print, tourists are old farts anyways. retirees. she writes and writes. she is bored of zurich, bad ragaz was more interesting. she writes, writes, as she stated before, as she stated before. words plunge onto the page, ever so leluctantly. someone whistles a tune, twice. tram noises by, fountain still puddles away. and she writes. and she writes. misses home. so very much. 198

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well, @ least she has her pen, it has ink, she has paper and page 17 finally arrived. someone smokes, she can smell it and it utterly annoys her. Makes her nauseated, having 5 luxemburglis does not help either. Loud car behind her, fountain, dropping away, people motioning over the bridge, she writes, writes. Limmat, Aussersiehl, Zurich. Neue Zuercher, she writes, writes. Migros, Coop, Spruengli, she writes. ETH, she writes. Techno park, she writes. These are her last days here, on this trip, friday sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be heading home. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------she sits down in the big entrance hall in the eth, tries to get a headstart on her writing, notices that this her notebook is coming to an end, she has to finally rush back to the hotel, more like eventually, rush back, pick up her other notebook, she does not like to fragment these her little fieldtrips, wants to go more with the flow, drift from place to place, until all 17 pages are done, finished, in the can, the box, she writes, writes. ------------------she sits in the library in the eth, on the 5th. floor, she has a pretty busy day, has to go back to the hotel, cancel a reservation, than find the laundromat, but first and foremost she has to write 17 pages, somehow all her programs, all her errands flow together, which is very disconcerning, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather just drift from place to place, that is when the best ideas come, when the writing becomes arguably excellent, excellent by anyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s standards, some kind of universal excellence, the one we should all strive for. And it is not necessarily excellence that comes from putting in a certain amount of time, practice makes perfect, but that is not really it, there is that one perfect

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note, that one perfect curve, a dancer masters when jumping in the air, it is the “give me one moment in time” moment, that one, the split-second glimpse @ genius that all of us, all of us, whatever our vocation, vie for, long for, lust for. that one split-second. she ponders if what she says makes any sense, she remembers sitting in this very room when she had had an accident and split her head open, that must have been some 2 years ago, in may, she was rushed to the university hospital over the street, actually the librarians and the nurses walked her there, it was quite a spectacle, but basically she was very lucky, the doctor said it twice, so when splitting your head on the steps, make always sure you hit the head @ the right angle. then again, maybe she lost it @ that point, who knows, who knows. not a good idea to bump your head, that is what makes you sit around town and write and write and write, pen stuff that could be unreadable, but should be readable, write and write and write. She’ll stop, this notebook is over. Done. ---------------------------------------------------------she sits down in this restaurant in manor, the people who work here never smile and treat her very snobbishly, actually that is not true, some are very nice, she ponders if she should name names, names of businesses, people, locales, if all should stay utter fiction, if there should be reality involved, writing is so very abstract anyways, word upon word, utterings, inklings, translation of reality into guttural sounds thrown out @ the world. she writes, she writes. page 5, she still has to fill 12 pages until 5, when she is heading home to the hotel, “home to the hotel”, ha, ha, and then she has to get ready for a meeting @ 6pm. tough, to be a tourist, it is just 200

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one meeting after the next, one excursion after the next, everything becomes complicated, the hunting down of an appropriate food place, a place to do your laundry, which @ this time seems to be out of reach, she just washes her socks in the sink, waits until friday, when she is back home, it is just too complicated, the detergent, the right coins, the laundromat, @ least 3 things have to be found, next time she will plan this better. the woman behind her makes way too much noise with the dishes, very aggressively, this is definitely not the best place to write, she will take her stuff and find a better place for writing. she found a table that is so much more quiet, now the dish people are finished, she could have stayed @ her place, but they are still starting again, clapping dishes and trays as loud as possible, the noise of glasses, of forks and knives, it is very fast, seems so overly aggressive, would they do the same if these were their own dishes, something might break, something could break. she writes, writes, has her note book on this blue-yellow round table, mosaic of blue and yellow pieces, checkered, bigger blue squares, smaller yellow squares, like dots, inlays into the blue surface, yellow lines, yellow, roundy thing, lighter blue in the edge. she is definitely not accurate enough in her description, somehow this is a mix of italy and sweden, all conveyed by the colors of this very table. Hardly any reflection, the tiles have a self-contained texture. that make her wax poetically, not yet philosophically, that give her ample inspiration for finding words to fill this page, to fill her day, her days. she does not own a watch, maybe she can see the church clock from here, somewhere over the roofs of zurich. she writes, she writes. her tea is so very lukeyish now, lukewarmish, citronish flavor, it looks very pale, like water, she writes, writes, writes. Looks @ her glasses in the table, beige, brown, she can see her own 201

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reflection in the glass, she moves her head, the shadow of her silhouette moves, a person walks by, her reflection too moves in the glass. the little monitor of her sunglasses. there is so much to describe here, she did not even start to meticulously describe the salt shaker, the pepper shaker. both in perfect unison, a pair, a pair, man, woman, white, beige. she remembers a book by one of her profs called “sexpots”. it was all about salt and pepper shakers, she loved it. she was told that her mother used to collect salt and pepper shakers, she never knew about it, she does not even know that it is true. but she definitely likes the idea. she writes, she writes. in this somehow strange city, not so very strange city. she has been to zurich many times, so very many times. she always ends up @ the eth, who wouldn’t, who wouldn’t? this is where einstein went, or did he go to the uni zurich? she ponders, no, must have been the eth, they had a 150 year anniversary of his birth 2 or 3 years ago. Something like that, something like that. she is still hungry, she had this small latte macchiato, a sugary-chocolatey concoction, a caky vanilla-y, vanilla-sauce, hot, concoction, but it is just not enough, she needs something slightly more substantial. More bread-like. and she is basically having hot lemon juice as drink. somehow this makes her puke, @ the very least there is a hint of puke rushing thru her body. Writing makes her sick, sick, sick. she might just collapse here and now. Why not? why not? Ah, dislocation. So very, very palpable. Contorting all your innermost organs. Ah, fun, ah, fun. ----------------------------------------

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she thinks that it is best to get this out of her system, right here, right now. seems too cumbersome to roam thru the city, to find a better place, a newer place. then again, she is feeling sick. so overly, overly sick. pauses are good, very good. bricklayers do it, so should she. so should she. ----------------------------------------------------------------------she sits down in the cafĂŠ spruengli, just like yesterday, this time though she is sitting on the patio, which is not that good an idea, because the people next to her start smoking. thus she finds herself again in the place upstairs, having a himbeertoertchen , peppermint tea, life is good, life is good. she writes, writes, yep, life is tuf. roaming all over the city, from one elegant place to the next, having various kinds of coffee, various kinds of tea, having sugar and fat, sitting around, pushing a pen over paper. Is this how intellectuals live? This intellectual does. a pen, the ability to put down words, that is all we need to be a philosopher queen. Now, if she could only find readers. From her scribd profile, well, let me rephrase that, judging from her scribd stats, she has quite a followship, 6000 readers and counting, in 3 months or less. If each of them read 3 words of hers that is more than enuf. she ponders, she ponders: 7 billion inhabitants on tis our planet, if each reads 3 words of hers, or maybe one word, that would equalâ&#x20AC;Ś.? hmm, do they do cost-analysis in literature class? she is not quite sure, if it could be called cost-analysis, she does not even know what that means, she just walked by the main UBS building on the Bahnhof-strasse and saw the demarcations of different stocks in the window. Obviously there are different ways to describe that, she has no ideas about, no apt knowledge of the workings of the stock market, but somehow she still does not know the difference between trading of commodities and the trading of words. Words if 203

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accumulated in a book, preferably by a man, preferably dead, are purchased. Thus “Mein Kampf” becomes a commodity, so does “War and Peace”. she kind of stops short of heresy, does not talk about the big 3. somehow her philosophical waxing becomes as thin as it possibly can, deep thoughts of hers seem to always stop somewhere in mid-air, congruency ends somewhere. she ponders about what congruency means, she ponders if she should go more after the usual, more traditional way of writing. poetry on one side, scholarly dissertations on the other. Hers is the vague, damp, foggy middle ground, where sanity meets insanity, coherence smiles and says hi to incoherence, intellect melts and embraces non-logical, short, inklings, glimpses @ reality, @ clarity. this day here, in this super elegant, beautiful restaurant, this is where she is still so very blessed with the ability to move this her pen, ever so forcefully, ever so reluctantly. and page 17 is finally coming to an end, the waitress tears up each and every lunch-menu, is this sustainability, she writes, writes. words melt onto the paper, outside zurich, is still happening, a september afternoon, sun is shining and she writes and she writes. Has no clue what time it is, all these light dots are driving her crazy. Ever so slightly, ever so forcefully. this is how writers live, 222 shrivjes, the published ones, the non-published ones, each and every graffiti artist is as valuable as michelangelo, she writes, writes, writes. what else can she do, what else can she really do? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------to sit here and write while zurich happens around her, does not seem to be the most intelligent thing to do. it is kind of chilly on her hair, because she just washed it, there is a slight breeze, she

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is sitting on the black diagonal stump of stone, in the main train station, it is a quarter to nine, she writes, writes. ---------------------------------------------------------------the place she is standing @ now seems to be slightly better, she is standing @ one of four greywhite tables that go to one’s chest, they each have an ashtray, they are supposed to be a table for people standing, having a beer, a coffee. It is too soon in the morning, she is the only one standing here, penning her master-piece, while slow-fast commotion is happening, mostly in front of her, while the overhead announces train related stuff. she has a busy day today, thus not much writing will be done, she has half an hour max, thus she writes, fast, feverishly, but still contained. Like a welder, welding something under pressure while the tide comes in, doing her job with deep seated professionality, motioning in calm under pressure, working fast, but not too fast, but not too fast, non-panicking, trying to measure the amount of adrenaline rushing thru the body. Is adrenaline seated in one’s stomach? that is how it feels, how it feels. page 3 already, not bad, not bad. her zurichdays are slowly coming to an end, she ponders if she should send some post card. might as well, might as well. she reads the sign that says “Exclusiv in Rail City:”, she reads the standing card in front of her: Blueberry Milkshake 2 dl CHF 4.80. she writes, writes. their new york cheese cake is CHF 4.90. she finally realized that this table belongs to the business, the coffee stand behind her. thus she leaves, hurriedly. stands, somewhere else, still writing, still, still writing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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she sits here in her tiny hotel room, actually it is not that tiny, it has all the amenities she could ask for, even too beds, which is annoying, she has to pay for a double room, and for the breakfast too, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d rather have an even smaller room, without breakfast, with a more reasonable fee. she is basically paying for the location, right behind the Bahnhof, she can come here so very easily, @ all times of the day. maybe, she is just an animal of habit, does the tried and true. she always comes to this place, her name is in the computer. she writes, writes. banal observations galloping thru a banal life. she tries to manipulate the note-book so that it has still enuf space on this beige-brown, orangey table, with the small tv on it, with the nivea container, the hair-brush, all her books and brochures, the ones she gathered on this trip, very nice, very sweet, very intelligent books, maybe more intelligent looking, they all have a quiet demeanor of knowledge, who really knows what is in them, but, hey, judging from their covers, they contain good stuff. even this tv seems to be nice, inobtrusive, not 2 brash, not too quiet. More under-stated though than overstated. she writes, writes. fast, fast. she has a meeting @ 10, so there is not much time left 4 writing, she is on page 6 now, the other 11 pages sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pen in the evening. she will eventually catch up, can do, will do. and that is that and that is that. increments of all these moments that constitute her life, her days right here, right now, on this planet. page 6 comes to an end, slowly, forcefully, or something in between. she should turn out the light in the tiny shower room behind her. the one with the blue frosty surroundings. she writes, writes, while zurich is happening outside. somehow removed, but still there. and that is that, that is that. this is september 15, 2009. 206

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( actually the 16th., but who is really counting ). who is, who IS? -----------------------------------it is another day here in zurich. peppermint tea, silberkugel ( the name of the restaurant – diner down the street from her hotel ), she writes, writes. did not write the whole portion yesterday, will likely not be able to write the allotment today. Maybe tomorrow she will be able to make up for the lack of writing on the last two days, she might write in the airport, on the airplane, in montréal, as much as she can, as much as she can. she is exhausted, this trip is finally getting to her, wolfed her down, spat her out, she might miss dislocation, she is getting used to the constant state of dislocation, and it is getting to the point where dislocation is the only reality she knows, she is becoming so used to it, dislocation seems to equal “location”. home will be the strange, the unusual, no more pepper-mint teas in white porcelain cups. arbutus, kerrisdale, she has to get used to speaking English again, the minute she could program her brain for schwyzerduetsch, the switch has to be reversed, again. she ponders, ponders, tries to feel the hotness of the tea to puddle thru her innerst, tries to hack a grip into fluent writing, poetry. yep, she writes, writes, what else can she do, what else could she do? ---------------------------------------------------------------she should go for a fast walk, would do her good, who needs cobwebs, the ever so slight happiness, the buzz that only fresh wind in your face can produce. A shower, water splashing all over your hair. exhaustion is so very deep seated, the last two or three days were just way too much. here, in zurich, in september of 2009. still september, still, still 2009.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------------she is sitting in the zurich airport, not very far from gate 43, which is where she will board for montréal. she is silently hungry, it is after 12. would like to have chewing gum, for the problems with her throat while the plane starts, lands, she writes though, writes, writes. she had misplaced, lost this her bag with the notebook, found it though. Very weird. she has to go to the gate. Ah, writing has to wait, wait. --------------------------------------------------for now, for now. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------sitting still in the airplane, getting readyish, everything is way too cramped, luggage, white pillow, blue ( actually dark blue ) blanket in plastic bag, some ear phones in a tiny, crumpled up plastic-bag, the International Herald Tribune somewhere, purse between her legs, bag with sweater and the red Dutch toothpaste in the baggage department above, she writes, writes, writes. pretty fast, slightly furiously. How long is the flight, who knows, who knows. way too much flying all thru these days, too much train travel too. In the end she lost her note book, found it though, so there is so much more to type, type, type. Swiss Entertainment sign on the back of the chair in front of her, 4 different languages, four different colors. corresponding to the dots on the remote control, she is getting reluctantly, suspendedly antsy. Who wouldn’t? people aren’t ants, sardines, aren’t ants, ants. words catapult upon each other, a baby screams out. cough, the noise of an airplane. this very airplane. getting ready for take-off, one too many all thru this september. constant moving, constand motion. stagnation would be fun for a change, for a change. For a

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change. crumpled plastic in front of her, all facets of the plastic bag, transparent, around the dark blue blanket. Looks like the roof of an elegant skyscraper, all glass, all mix between straight lines and curved lines, all organic and inorganic. she writes, writes, should number this. all the numbering became kind of out of whack. anyhow, some more writing, fast, furious. why not, ah, Why Not. yep, why not? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------holidays seem to be over, which is more than fine, dislocation will be substituted by location, by being utterly grounded, by hanging out around granville island, by taking the arbutus bus, oakridge, ubc, richmond, the kits fitness center @ 6 in the morning, waiting to open. Regular, so very structured days, the end of free flight. she still writes, still writes. gets slightly used to sitting in an airplane, there is nothing to it. nothing. so she writes, thus she writes. against airsickness, why not? why not. words flying onto the page, still ears that are slightly stuffed. flying, flying. drink wagon starts moving by, no time to use the facilities. while pillow scrunched under writing surface, a dark black line on it, inch-long.

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words holper onto the page, not good enuf, not fast enough, not yet eloquent enough. slight hints, rumpling stabs @ demarking the moments in letters and words. No lines yet, no drawings, no photos, no films. not yet, not yet. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------she will read thru these pages later on, prefers not to correct these last pages, maybe sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll modify the system again, re-modify the way that she writes this. This is her third stab @ writing, her third full manuscript, her third book. it is coming to an end, she started this journey on september 2, but she wrote a tad before that too. in anticipation, while getting all settled into travel mode. This long flight to montreal from zurich is nothing compared to the days on the train. when she left vancouver, the city was grasped by a heat wave, not becoming to it, a city not used to that kind of heat. happy to finally make it home, hey, in one piece. better to know what structure each and every day has, better than adventure. The tried and true is so very very much comforting, like an old shoe. Amsterdam, New York City, too much drama. zurich, toronto, rotterdam, she moved thru without feeling grounded. Like free fall, the only constant being her pen moving and motioning over the paper. Telling her stories, making the things, the strangers, the unknown a reality, realities, dressed in letters, in words. she still does not have a camera, all these words have to suffice. She sent home postcards, all those images have to suffice. she can easily google amsterdam, have an image of the gracht near her hotel in amsterdam on her computer monitor. So, for now, writing somehow has a new cache, in our so very visual world, deep in our oversaturation with images. 210

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she writes, writes, somehow it is way too dark here. somehow she could maybe go fish for the light switch, somewhere in this so very cramped airplane seat of hers. she writes, writes. somehow montreal is coming near, the tinyish small airplane on the monitor, she watched it over the isle of man, the irish sea, over norway maybe, over reykjavic, then onto some place @ the periphery of greenland, goetblad, something. must be fascinating to go to those places, apparently iceland is a steal now, after the financial crisis, she saw a doc on that the day before, the night b4, her last nite in her tiny hotel room in zurich. zurich was so utterly beautiful, such a beautiful lady @ night, bridges, the ferris wheel, the limmat, the quiet beauty of that very-city. At night, dark with all those lights, silently beautiful. she ponders, she hardly ever writes galloping out of memory, her words tend to sketch what she sees. Whereas she usually sketches, when drawing, what she doesn’t see. her words are holding on to the very real shapes and forms around her, her animations, her drawings are much more leaning towards the creation of a new reality, more flat, very black versus white, contrast being paramount. in writing she can easily explore more softer cadences, that will then be “flowered” in by furious sweeps, painting in words is extremely virtuous, like playing a fiddle, an accordion. It has that aspect of motion, of moving thru time. stillness is paramount, palpable, very there, here in this airplane, with all these monitors, each and every seat has one, they are sprinkled throughout this plane. she writes, writes. page 11, ah, not that bad, given that this was quite a day. 211

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Leaving back, heading home. her journey is finally bookended, she sat around a lot when leaving, she is sitting still even more now while motioning thru the clouds. and the pen, it writes, writes, writes. plays by its own rules, not that much asking her anymore. she just watches it write, hopping around like a happily unruly child. in the playpen, a pen on the paper, over the paper. too many, many words, ah, way too many. page 12, page 12, page 12. and the airplane roars, roars, st. john is so very nice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------she really would like to know how to push the right button on the remote, to watch the movie with sandra bullock, but, but, she canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t figure out how to do that, thus she might as well write, look @ the tiny plane on the tiny world map on the tiny monitor, might as well write. besides, the food/drink wagon is approaching. ah, the fun of flying. the non-fun. that very one. well, @ least page 13 is coming to an end.@ this time that is all we can ask for. Time to destination: 1:44. and thus she writes, writes, writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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she is very happily back home, fishes out 20 bucks Canadian, out of the hinter-most pocket of this her old and worn purse, plunks herself into the next tim horton, tea, cream, donut. home, sweet home, a donut shop signals that. it is still montréal though, she still has to sit thru the flite back to vancitay. montréal is interesting though, l’aeroport pierre trudeau, there are galleries within the airport, everyone here has a beautiful accent. When they speak english. ah, tres chic. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------this is so very, very weird, kind of like as if europe never happened, some hiccup in between. this is back home, but very strangely so, people talking @ the table next to her, maintenant this, maintenant that, with a québécois accent. she writes, writes. For her it is ten @ night, give or take some, but here it is afternoon, four thirty. she should call people, but does not have enuf money. so she writes, writes. seemed to her that there is a much higher percentage of blackberries circulating here, in this city, in this airport. she writes, fast, fast. is not really here, not really not here. jetlag is gripping her by the throat, makes her look around, so very wide-eyedly. this is a different world, whatever happened to the city where people come @ you on their bikes, from all directions, what happened to the quiet beauty of the mysterious forts and towers of zurich, the lights in the night. To the constant talk in schwyzerduetsch. Weird, strange, to jump from place to place. ------------------------------------------------------------And tonite, her own place, finally, this book waiting to be typed out. 8 notebooks, give some, take some, it will keep her busy. she’ll be typing till x-mas, @ least. this is what she does, she writes, ponders what this is good for, if it is normal. seems to keep her sane though, and that is all that counts. 213

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her travels are over, well, kind of, started out in vancitay, maybe she ends her writing escapades right here, right now, in this rundown tim hortons, somewhere in transit, in the pierre trudeau airport in montrĂŠal, on september 18, in 2009. there is nothing left to say, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how it seems, yep, that is how it really seems. she will finish her tea, pondering, how to end this, eloquently, reluctantly. Thru the window she can see parts of the runway, parts of the city houses in the distance, red lights hanging from the ceiling, funnily, funnily cone-shaped. this is what she has to say, for now and for now and for now. --------------------------------------------------------------------it is time to make her way to gate 2, why not? why not. ending this is something one could do. should do. will do. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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