Bookish bookish (1)

the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

BOOK ZERO Day 1 Writers have boring lives. That is a given. If they had interesting lives, they would be busy living their interesting lives instead of hammering away at the keyboard. Yep, that is how it is.

Her insights are bla as always, bla in a sleepy way that goes with the sleepiness of her life. The sleepiness of this generic Saturday morning. In a generic city, in a generic time. She is one of seven billion, give or take some. An ant on some planet hurling thru space. She has her laptop, so much she knows. She watches her fingertops push down the black squares of the laptop, she is not quite sure why the S has lost the upper curve of its inscript, does she really use that many S’s? Maybe the laptop company fabricated a defect S-button. Yup, that must be it.

Her day went uneventful, she went to two different malls, she took the Canada Line and the Skytrain, she watched the people on the trains and in the malls, she tried to be discreet, you have to stare discreetly, you can stare at the accessories, shoes, bikes, purses, suitcases, as a writer you are always looking for inspiration. Whatever inspiration is. One per cent, apparently, the antidote to ninety-nine percent of human sweat.

She has three paragraphs already, 216 words, this is the start of her new book, one of many. She tends to write about five books per year, she never lands a publishing deal. Despair is what characterizes her writing, the moldy reek of utter desperation. Writers gotta be published, apparently, apparently.

Day 2

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the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

She ponders. She looks at the grey women, they are all grey-ish, not age-wise, but attire-wise.

Grey sweats, grey T-shirts. The hair up-kempt, they must be the Oregon-class, the Eugene-class.

Or something, something, something.

Seems, her writing is off today, off, before it even started. She is wide awake since 4 in the morning, she had a coffee in the coffee shop on Arbutus, they were still putting the chairs out, she went downtown, she went uptown, she waited in front of the library of the art school, until she could finally get in and start to type. Yup, writing, writing, these are her reflections on writing. Others have done this before, better - much, much better. Voices of authority. She ponders, hers is no voice of authority, not yet, not yet. Landing a publishing contract, that will give yer authority. Or maybe not. Who knows, ah, who knows? She has 417 words, this text should have 100 000 words, to fit nicely into the book-to-be-published category. Genre is not that important, nah, length is what makes for a good read, a publishable read.

People in the library talk, the ocean-factory is reluctantly majestic. A book cart roars in the back, someone laughs in a hissingish manner. The day is pretty grey, a grey and overcast Monday morning. Grey in a happy way. Grey-ness in August, well, much better than heat in August.

Freshness, coldness, and the sun coming up behind the clouds. 510 words - FIVE ONE OH. She ponders if she should cut this text up, in order to make it more palpable. Ah, her writing, ah, her shitty writing. Full of whining, full of hate towards the field. She trained as a visual artist, supposedly, how can you possibly become a good writer, when you come from the world of forms and shapes and lines?

She ponders, are writers who went through rigorous writing training better, worse? The Bennington-crowd, the Columbia-crowd? A black bird flutters by, in the sky, against the stark

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the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

white, that is illuminated by the light of the sun behind the clouds. Her writing is non-concise, too inaccurate. Stabs at reality, in a hit-and-miss fashion. Precise wordings, so elusive, elusive, elusive. She has 639 words, great, she ponders, if she can describe her writingish day-ins and day-outs for 300 pages, who would read this, who, who? There has to be a car chase, something borderline 007-ish, love, S-E-X, the like, the like. Antagonists en masse, protagonists en masse.

There has to be a message, political or other. Any message should do. A moral high-ground or a moral low-gound, whichever, whichever. Either corrupt the youth or teach ‘em something. And at least make it grammatically correct, at least, at least, at the very, very least. Stay away from repetitions, stop counting all these words. Join a writing group, writers roam the world in hordes.

She ponders, where is the next Meet-Up-meeting? How many more days to Nano-Month, ah, writing, ah, writing.

She hacks her sentences into fragments, while she kind of ogles the scary person, who laughs and talks to himself, he is pretty heavyset, he left the library, relief sets in. 797 words, ten in the morning, the sound of the AC, deafening, ah, deafening.

Day 3 She is not quite sure what to write about, is not quite sure she has something to say something to type. She is one of many, writers that stare at their keyboards, their monitors, in tiny rooms, in tiny rooms of their own. Yup, Virginia, maybe that is not enough. 863 words, ah, some more, ah, some more. Better to take this laptop down to the desolate coffee shop on Arbutus, where the reluctant lunch crowd will make yer sing at yer monitor, where cars of all the right colours whoosh by, where Jazz and Country will make you motion to and fro. This is the week before Labour Day thus only tradesmen and Japanese ladies will be there, the school crowd will squirm

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the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

around come September Fourth. We have 941 already, 100 000 divided by one thousand makes one hundred, yup, repeat this one hundred times and you too can be a published author, you too have something to e-submit, you too can be e-rejected like the rest of ’em. Never stop trying, they say, never stop trying. Sisyphus didn’t, now, neither should you. 997, yay, ah, yay. 1002.

BOOK ONE September 5 Writer Number One: In the computer lab, a view of the black and white photo of a woman, the one with the elongated neck, Modigliani in black and white, her keyboard, the women chatting in the back. Writing, ah, writing. She will wing it somehow, she will be the next writerly superstar. Where there is a will…

The women talk and talk, earnestly, she cannot decipher what they are saying, she can just hear the tone of their voices, against the typing at the other computer, against the roar of the AC. Life is boring and dull, that comes with the day-ins and day-outs of a writer, yup, typing away in obscurity, dull, dull, dull, she feels so very lightheaded, she had breakfast, she walked over the Cambie bridge, she did seven and a half minutes on the stationary bike in the Y, exercise, fuel, this all is way too tiring, she did not sleep enough, she has a writing group meetup in the afternoon. She could drive home, but then she has to come here gain, in the afternoon. Better to just stay here, why use up gas. Then again, she left two lights on at home, because her original intent was to go back home after coffee and banana bread. Her path changes constantly, she is way too occupied with the task of producing marketable stuff, books, printings, films. She sucks at all her creative endeavours, comes with the territory of trying to fabricate something that has 4

the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

not been here before. Something borderline unique, unique enough but not too unique. Two women walk by the elongated-neck-woman pic, the one that seems to observe her from afar.

Her back hurts, and it will hurt more in the afternoon, what with all this sitting in front of the monitor.

Writer Number Two: Living in NYC is fun. Not that he sold any of his scripts, nope, he lives in this sublet on twentyfirst, has a chocolate chip cookie sandwich every evening at ten, the one in Billy’s Café, a raspberry yoghurt from Gristedes at eleven thirty. His routine is all about writing, he takes the subway everywhere, mainly to stare at people, to observe them. He makes sure that people do not yell at him, the woman with stringy hair was way too scary. “Do you have a staring problem?” She could have lashed out at him in her rage. So now he makes sure that he observes people without being too overt. You have to pace yourself when you observe, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, switch to the next one. October in New York, pretty nice, he will run out of money by the end of the month, he will head back to Vancity, but as long as he is here, he will make the best of it, scribble down thirty pages longhand, he will transcribe that when he is back home.

Writer Number Three: She is still working on the oversized crepe, the too tall waiter talks to her in Dutch, only to switch to English when he notices that she does not understand. He is just as tall as the one who brought her crepe, but he seems much more friendly. Amsterdam is fun, seems everywhere is fun, if you are a writer. An unpublished one, you do not make money, but you have still places to go, challenges to meet, mountains to climb. Metaphorically. The sugar sprinkles on the pancake 5

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nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

melt in, the lemon tang is pretty good, the espresso is a tad too strong. She will have to go to the embassy later on, she needs some documents, this is what she does, she either writes or she goes to different government agencies, Dutch ones, Canadian ones. She does not know anybody in this city, which is good, good for writing, good for peace of mind. She is a loner anyways, a howling Steppenwolf. People are annoying, they interfere with your work. The task at hand is writing, gotta do what the muse wants yer 2 do. Socializing is highly overrated; she is done with that, now she has to pen her masterpiece. Yup, that is how it is, that is how it is.

Writer Number Four: She ponders, she now has three protagonists, one in Vancouver, one in Amsterdam, one in New York City, one is male, the other two are both female, she only specified the date for the New York character, October, at least that is how she remembers it. She does not really know how to mush all of this together, well, they are all writers, one uses a computer, two do the longhandish stuff, maybe a storyboard would help. Or little figurines, toy soldiers, she can then strategically move them around, around the plot, on a board. How to physically construct a story arc, especially if you are more of a wordsmith then a storysmith. Story, shmory. She is hungry, exhausted, writing does that to yer, the physicality of picking at these keys is getting to her. She should name her characters, characters are not mere numbers, they have to resemble real human beings, even if they are only fictional.

September 7 She tried to be part of the Creative Writing Club in the Community College, somehow that did not work out, she chickened out. Not because it was not good, the problem was more that she did not have a pen to fill out the hand-out and that she did not really understand the logistics.

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2013

Besides, some of the participants just wanted a social life, others wanted to have an incentive to write. Nobody wanted a shortcut to author stardom, the goals were way too modest. If you want to be a writer, you just gotta sit down at a keyboard, that is all. Besides, constructive criticism, who needs that. Criticism is never constructive, it is always destructive. It is good if you want to be a professional literary critic or an English teacher, but if you want to write, you just gotta do it. You somehow have to figure out how to iron out the glitches in your writing, how to make antagonist A fight against protagonist B, in perfect harmony, with perfect timing, the cadences have to be logically right, literature is an art form, something like that, something of that kind.

She is now sitting in the library of the community college, a group of students on a tour stream in, up the grey stairs, the woman in glasses at the information desk is still explaining stuff to the person in turquoise blue. Writer here ponders how to convey the fact that she is writer number four, the aforementioned Writer Number Four. The first three writers that she wrote about in the intro, well, they are fictional, the New Yorky one, the Vancouvery one and the Amsterdamy one, number four, Writer Number Four, to be precise is nobody else but Yours Truly. She ponders, somehow this is getting way too convoluted, she hates story arcs that are not tight enough, that have all these holes, where nothing really makes sense. She ponders, maybe all stories have these very clear holes, these fragmented realities with all its inconsistencies, all its unreal glitches. The only reality is the here and now, period, yep, period.

September 9 She is once more in the writing center/computer place of the community center, it is Friday afternoon and pretty sticky in here, seems, everyone wants to feed their homework to the machines, people are lining up at the printer, it is way too sticky in here. She just has to file away

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2013

at the plot, ever so slightly, she has to invent subtexts, there has to be an inner logic and any logic will do, should do. She could let her three writers be part of an online writer’s co-op, some kind of multinational overarching writers’ workshop, much more superior to Iowa’s and definitely less expensive. She ponders, that is one way to push the story.

She is hungry, thirsty, her parking will expire in fifteen minutes, she is distracted by the two chatter boxes next to her, besides, they are much more interesting than this stupid keyboard. He has curly hair and no socks, she has black and blond hair, they are talking and talking and talking and talking.

September 27 She has a cappuccino, she thinks about her book project, she will fly to Zurich the next day. No working on the book, life still goes on, even for writers. Besides, she is a so very unpublished writer, an obscure author, one of many. This sucks.

BOOK TWO Writing, ah, writing. She is once more in the library of the community college, it is pretty loud here, people upstairs, a woman in a billabong shirt at the other computer station. The computer stations in this place are in fours, they are all around a table. Which is ok, at least it is not as sticky here as it is in the big writing place. Then again, it is much louder. Outside, overcast, overcast. End of September overcast. She has about 3000 words, she ponders, should she start to query agents already. Query first, then type this up. Be prolific, talk before you think. She ponders, her absolutes are just that, weird absolutes that will definitely not take her from A to B. Ah, shooting yourself in the foot, what is wrong with that? Besides, someone will proofread this, edit the mageebies out of this. Make sure that all the little letters sing in perfect harmony, they 8

the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

should be aligned in perfect unison, march as perfect soldiers, in perfect rows. She ponders, she used up her allotment of the word PERFECT for the whole book, so it seems, so it seems.

Day 4 A Monday morn’ somewhere in Vancity, so rainy, so rainy, so utterly utterly rainy. In the community college, a woman in purple, a young man in grey, blue, flipping through an equally grey-blue book, talking with the grey leathery person in beige grey, about the book, their class, the stuff that is on the monitor. They talk silently, hushed, their conversation as unobtrusive as their clothes, this is how males win, they are quieter, they fly under the radar, you can call it professional if you will. Author here ponders, should she hint at gender studies, does she even want to, is it not way too rainy, way too overcast to search 4 subject matters, subtexts, plotlines, someone coughs, the words catapult, slightly, slightly. Writing is a calling, a calling. Against the days of 2013, scripts to cement posterity, something like that, something of that kind. She ponders, she disordered her words, her chapters, she headlines this all wrong, her grammar could be off, ah, not that oh not that. The sing sang of the language, people russeling in, this library, this library, green floor, green outside, overcast overcast overcast. Overcast. Overcast overcast overcast overcast. She has to physically stop herself from repeating the same words, there is no mantra, no ohm, the moments move forward forwars. Moments in time, something like that something like that. An ever so slight requiem for the song and the songstress, the woman in purple moves forward, her black hair against the keyboard, someone walks by outside inside inside. Inside. 2895 words, many more to go, so many more to go. The clouds in the sky like roundish sculptures, she feels pangs of a cold, hintingly, haltingly. Kabooms behind her, the silent whispers against the monitor, the library sings, sings. Ah, sings sings repeatedly. Her metaphors could be off, they always are, always are. Fifty words to three thou. Walk in the mall, 9

the writers

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

a coconut crunch in the quaint bakery in the quaint part of town, this day, ah this day. Thirty more words, silently, ah, ever so silently. She uses too much pathos, too many grandiose gestures, your lingo should be quaint and subdued, like the manual for a washing machine. 3005and we’re outta here, outta here.

Still Day 4 Once again in the library of the Community College, it is now sunny outside, a woman in striped shirt explains stuff to another student who is younger and wears glasses. A woman all in yellow at another computer, she looks like a yellow bear. Outside, the sky is pretty blue now, blue sprinkled with white-ish clouds. It is nice to write your master-piece in here, all the commotion in this busy place translates into busy typing, into fashioning a book without even trying. Author here ponders, she will never be the kind of writer that does her work, her texts according to a pre-conceived master-plan, she will always be the artist who sits at the workstation and starts plinking away, be it painting drawing, writing. The medium itself dictates where you have to go, seems, Marshall Mac Luhan was right after all. Someone coughs, a woman in glasses and a fuzzy-blue sweater sits at the other station. Write and write and write and write. Author here ponders, she started this out by writing about three different writers, she kind of let go of that storyline, she now morphed this text back into describing her own surroundings, her own days.

She went to metrotown, had a too-sugary cinnabon, a tea, orange pekoe, she looked through the reference books in chapters, the ones about writing and publishing and writers’ markets. She looked at art books, at over sized taschen books, there was one so very nice one, 365 days in new york city, it was heavy, had lots of photos, had short texts, one-liners. A PowerPoint presentation in book form, a tactile PowerPoint. Post-media, her prof. used that term, make of it whatever you want. “You cannot print from a laptop” says the green librarian to the green student, they are 10

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nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

both green because they are wearing green. Ah, writing, author here ponders, her words are inaccurate, always, so very always. The melody of the words, not nice, not good, not yet, not yet.

She ponders, maybe she should have been part of the Word Construct club, she needs critics, critics. Writing as rambling that will not cut it, nope, it won’t. Won’t, won’t. The clouds in the sky, monstrous, majestic majestic.

A happy day in this library, people walking by, outside, author here ponders, she has everything here that she needs to fashion a master-piece, you know, inspiration is 4 da birds, just gotta write, type, type. Put in the time, the work, until your middle finger hurts, until your back goes numb, 3441 words already, she has to will this forward, forward. Two months to Nano-month, for her every month is Nano-month.

And Still Day 4 It is now so very afternoonish in this library, lots of noise, business, halted hecticness. A woman writing, another one watching her. Author tried to edit her writing, it has all these holes, all these weird inconsistencies, the story is all over the place, and the long green grasses outside swerve in the wind. A man in beige, another one in black, a woman in purple. Author here watches her typing, her fingers pushing the black keys, motioning around all over the black squares with the white letters, the meanings in her text are not tight enough, she started out writing about three writers, she kind of changed her course, she now dabbles in autobiographical mumbo-jumbo.

Which should make this less-relatable, you cannot make a movie out of this. What if everyone of us seven billion would suddenly describe daily endeavours, what would be the consequences be?

She ponders, seven billion, huh. Not all of them are adults, babies can’t write. Not all of them are literate, not all of them want to write. Hmm, whoever would chose writing as profession, there

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nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

are no pension plans, no dental plans. You are on your own, you have to convince a publisher that you have something to say, that what you write is good. Well, good luck with that, good luck with that.

The community college roars in grey, seems everywhere she looks is grey. The SAMSUNG sign on the monitor, the blue, pointy light, the blue pen in the hand of the woman in blue. Ok, so there is a lot of blue here too, the woman at the other computer has a Classic Chinese language textbook, she herself is Chinese, how do you spell EASY CREDIT? Author ponders, she has nothing to say anymore, her back hurts, so do her fingers. She wishes she could still write about the writer in Amsterdam and about the writer in New York, she would feel as if she is in those places, fictional characters in far–away places, anything but a descript of the Lower Mainland.

Vancouver is so predictable, no exoticism here. Tried and true, yep, tried and true. How do you spell YAWN? Well, at least we have next to 4000, keep on typing keep on typing.

A Day In Amsterdam She definitely likes it here, and she will stay here as long as she can. As long as her money will take her. Her writing is working out great, just living here is inspiration enough.

A Day in NYC Everything is great here.

Back in Vancouver Boy, does she suck @ constructing a storyline. There is no storyline and if there is, it is way too fragmented. A plot, a non-plot. Fiction in non-narrative, what does that even mean? There are clear guidelines about constructing a story-arc, if you do not adhere to them, everything rolls 12

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2013

outta whack, becomes way 2 confusing. And you cannot really rescue the sentences by using @ instead of at, 2 instead of two.

The printer makes weird noises, someone laughs. We have 4000 words here, pretty good, huh.

She could take a walk around the golf-meadow, maybe the muse will catch up with her, inspiration ah inspiration. It is way too stuffy in here anyways. And 4005 it is.

And We Are Still Here It is three and fifty-five minutes, five to four. Outside nice sunshine, in here, the inability to leave. It is as if she is glued to this computer, chained to it. She is obsessed with typing, with throwing her words into the machine. Nowadays, you do not need a Kerouacian scroll, nowadays, you can feed 100 0000 words to a machine, there are all those mammoth-novelwriters, the ones that win the 3-day-novel-writing contest, the ones that make it to the finish-line of nano-month in one day. The ones with strong backs and no carpal tunnel , the marathon writers, yep, those ones, those ones. Prolific writers, the ones who have no lives. Whose lives is typing and writing. Day-in-day-out.

Still, Still Late afternoon, the woman in orange-ish brown coughs. She looks unkempt, that is a good look for a student. Makes you look intellectual. Author ponders, her quasi-remarks are way too flat.

One word should feed upon the next or upon the preceding, for that matter. Her lingo should dance eloquently, in perfect pirouettes. We need some right cadences here. Hmm, she will never make it as an artist, all the training in the world will not substitute for mastering of the craft. Just typing, just the physical tapping at these keys, that will propel the lingo forward. Gotta die trying. Something like that, something of that kind.

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nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

She is exhausted, the utter exhaustion of the hapless scribe is suffocating her. The good-looking woman jabbers away, laughs, shrieks. It is nice to write in this place, the library in the community college is perpetually entertaining. So much to see, so much to hear. It is cold, though and it is becoming dreary outside. We don’t have a plot, we do not need a plot. Just enough words, just enough words. Author here looks around, up at the chairs on the second floor.

She remembers when this library was brand-new, four five years ago, she made a presentation about this place for her drawing class in art school. The prof. liked it, mainly because he used to teach in this place.

We have 4400 words, type away, type away. Make it to 5000, then Save, then Spellcheck. How did writers do their stuff before MS-Word? Well, they probably refrained from using words like STUFF, they courted eloquence instead. She looks up at the clouds outside, beauty, ah, beauty.

She catches herself watching and admiring the little animation on the monitor, the one where the pencil keeps on scribbling in the open book. The pages turn constantly, magic, magic.

Entertaining images, we live in an overstimulated visual world. Too much to see, too much for our own good. That must be what makes us jump from thought to thought, attention spans are super short, ah, Armageddon is near. She has 4482, needs only 500 more. Something like that, something of that kind. She is hungry, thirsty, sitting in the same place for hours on end, that cannot be good, cannot be good. People have come and gone, nobody in her right mind writes a novel in one sitting. A non-novel, she started out so well, her first sentences, ah, pretty good, but, somewhere along the way it all went downhill. Start your book strong, teeter down in the middle and elevate the pace next to the finish-line. Writing as marathon run, yup, why not why not?

Still Writing

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2013

This computer has a mind of its own, it refuses to save the text, author here ponders, what is it with all these machines, each of them has its own idiosyncrasies. She has 14 pages already, not bad, not bad. She has something to show for her day, apart from her trek to the mall, apart from her time on the stationary bike. Some more words that are non-needed, some more, some more.

Writing as profession, this better be good, better be good. A woman takes a pic of the garden outside, this place is so busy, so very, very busy. Everyone is working away, a man just watches what is going on outside. Resting between reading spurts. A woman in white walks by. 300 words, 300, 300. To make it to 5000. She will stop at 75 000, she abandoned her goal of 100 000 words. 50 000 is not long enough, and 100 000 is too long. 75 thou, a nice compromise.

She has to do her homework assignment for the website design class, it is due tomorrow. She forgot her usb-stick, she has to wing it before class. Not that she knows what she is doing in that class, the prof. whooshes through the material, she has no clue which buttons to push in order to make the machine do what it should do. If you teach programming, you should go x-tra slow.

The prof. seems to expect us to grasp the dry material intuitively. Well, he will not get a good review from her, she will fail the class, there is nothing we can do, nothing and nada and zilch, zip. 200 words, she is dying here, writing is not her thing, not anybody’s thing, not anybody’s shtick. This place is way too chilly, someone sneezes, someone coughs. Writing, ah, writing, the day passes her by, passes her by. The sky is back to slight overcast, cottonbally, with thinning baby blue flecks. The woman in the leather jacket takes off the jacket, clappers around with her pencil case. A man in black and white walks by, happily. Only 70 words, to be outta here, to be outta here. Two years ago she took a class on the history of theater in this place, she had to drop it mid-term, because of a trip to Toronto. It was a very good class though, it stopped at Shakespeare, the rest of the history is taught in spring. The teacher was adorable, by far the best 15

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she ever had. Super great, anyhoo, we have 5000, outta here and outta here. 5009 4 u, for you.

5016, 5017.

Maybe Day 5 She is back in her old alma mater, she ponders if alma maters are not all old, if you call it old alma mater, you kind of double-describe something. It is twelve-thirty, she parked her car in a place where she can only park for one hour, she has to make sure not to forget. Most parking spaces on the island are three-hour spaces, this one is a one-hour space. Yep, this is what we write about in this book, the banal, the mundane, the every-day. It is more interesting than car chases, intrigue, the like, the like. Everybody can relate to mundane stuffi-muffi. Or maybe not, after all my every-days are not like your every-days. Discrepancy of every-days. She is still reeling from submitting her books to the Vancouver art book fair, they kinda suck, the woman who accepted them will judge, so will the people who are at the art fair. She is not happy that she had to label her book with her name, she wanted it to be obscure, anonymous. The famed ANONYMOUS, a book by ANONYMOUS. Remember that? She knows that her art book is of highly debatable merit, it is not even a real book. It does not have a spine, it is basically a folder with papers in it. There are books like that, TASCHEN or this other publisher that starts with a P, they make books like that. Unconventional books. There was a magazine with a hole in it, designed by Zaha Hadid. Well, you can do that if you are Zaha Hadid, but if you are not, your deconstructed stuff is so yesterday. She ponders, ponders, ponders, that is what she does mainly these days. Kind of weird, you always ponder, you cannot really write a book about how you ponder. Writing sucks, so it seems, so it seems. 5329 words, ah well, ah well. The quest for a subject matter, yep, that might be a good enough subject matter. She will have her website design class in the evening, but until then she still has time to pen bits and pieces of this book. Kaboom, 16

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that is its tentative name, nobody knows why, especially the author has no clue how the book got to its name. Yep, these days the words hold her in its fangs, they make up their minds how to fashion the story. The author is not in control anymore, she is on autopilot, the language, the typing machine, the circumstances that is what unfolds the story. Slightly weird, slightly strange.

And we type and type and type and type here, word after word after word. Short stabs at spellcheck and then the go-ahead to spit out more of the same. And the grammar is so off, the pronoun does not go with the noun, she really needs a grammar consultant to whoosh this together, maybe the Chicago Manual of Style will help, the APA Manual. The problem is that both those manuals are very tough to decipher, she ponders what the British equivalent would be, Australian, New Zeelandian. And we write we write we write we write. We write. 5544, 5546.

Day Something This is definitely not good. If you lose count of the days that you describe in your texts, if you mush up the chronology, if you mix up the characters, if you use the wrong kind of syntax, the wrong kind of grammar, well, then you better have a damn’ good marketing team. All these gitsches, all these gitsches. Well, maybe a tad of them are endearing, make the piece unique, give it its flavour that distinguishes it from the next written piece, but once it is disastrous, then, well, then it does not cut it. A table without legs, a car without wheels, that is a tad too dysfunctional.

Books, ah, books. Author here types fast, a woman in a blue, foamy top, a man who reads his texts with an open mouth. And we type, ah, type, outside the sun, in here the quiet noise of the library in the community college. A pleasant morning, one that ratter-tas forward. Whatever that means, whatever that means. Oh, btw, 5717, 5718.

Day Whatever

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2013

Not that good, not that good. Ah, didn’t they tell you there will be days like this. Today nothing works writing wise. She went to the community college, she typed up about 300 words, very good ones, deep ones, eloquent ones, they all got lost in the cloud. She thought she saved them, but afterwards she tried and tried, they were nowhere to be found. She must have pushed the wrong button, all her work got deleted. It was something about how to order your thoughts when writing, how to departmentalize everything in neat boxes, in chapters, how to title your chapters, how to use the right headings. And then there were other discussions about the target audience of this book, very self-reflexive discussions. Ah well, it all got lost. What can you do? You cannot document everything, not your thoughts, not your moments. Most documentations are constructs anyways, every photograph depends on the angle of the person who snaps the pic. So it seems, so it seems.

She is now in the art school, it is noonish, not quite, not quite. Her back is acting up, maybe the half hour on the stationery bike in the Y and the half hour trek over the Cambie bridge were too much for her aching joints. Anyhoo, let us write, write. A jeansy blue woman next to her, the sounds of plastic bags behind her, a voice of a woman. She has 5962, good, ah, good, good. Run, run, make it to 6000, save it, save it. We can always go back and iron out the glitsches later on.

She ponders, she used that sentence in the text that got lost, something about “ironing out”, which sounds more poetic than “editing”. Anyhoo, sixty-ten- yay and yay and yay and yay and yay.

Still September She is back in the art school, this is the keyboard that is filthy and rusty. Well, not rusty in the literal sense, more like tough to maneuver. All the keys are so hard to push down, which is very

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different from most laptops. And it is not even like an old-fashioned typewriter, it is just a total piece of shit. Quintessential junk. But, hey, you can look at the ocean factory, the monitor is nice, so there. If you use the nice computers, you just stare at the wall. Anyhoo, she still has an hour to kill, she will then listen to a person talking about social media. And later on, someone will talk about his art practice. Which is not very interesting, he just times a slide projector to show slides.

Woopdidoo.

She went downtown, she took the Canada Line to Oakridge, took her car and came to Granville Island. Her days as a writer, go all over town, plant yourself in front of a computer and type and type. Ah, this better be good, better be good. 6203, 6204. Six Two Oh Five. Ok, that is inaccurate, if you need four words to write out a number, you obviously garner four increments.

She ponders, she will miss Big Bang Theory for this, hopefully the social media guy is entertaining. The one that will give a lecture on social media. That one, ah, that one. She feels sick, nausea reluctant, she needs some food, some tea. An orange, a peach. Author ponders, she lost weight, she just bought a pair of Jeans from the Gap, for the first time since, well, ever.

Yoohoo. 6298, 6299.

Which Day Once again, in the writing place in the community center, she notices that she has not written since Thursday, it is Monday now, she is battling a cold. Her throat, her throat. Kind of weird, it does not seem that long since she has written, maybe she is making a mistake, maybe she saved her writing in another file. Seems, as if she has written on Friday, all of Friday. The weekend, well, other stuff happened, but Friday, she is drawing a blank here. In retrospect, it seems as if she typed all day, apparently not, apparently not. The computer doesn’t lie, now, does it?

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2013

Someone sneezes, it is way too rainy outside. Saturday, that was the day that she went to the grad school information meeting, Sunday, that was the day, that brunch happened, the mall, Costco, Thursday, two lectures, so, what happened on Friday, a day missing, a day missing. This is what throws you off, the balance, the out-of-whackness. Friday she wrote her stuff, didn’t she didn’t she? Well, not according to her entry, according to yahoo and scribd, she did not work on this on Friday. The missing day, huh. Weird, strange, this is how dementia starts. Her days in the writing place, her words staccato her days. Reluctantly, ever so confusingly. She has her parking slip, she can park in that spot till noon. What happened on Friday, what, ah, what? She had 6500 words, nice, but still what is it with Friday? You have to be obsessive if you are a writer, OCD-ing about minute stuffio-muffio, that is how word-slinging happens. Great works of art, whatever they are, whatever they are. A woman of letters, ah, this better be good, better be good. She ponders, the woman to her right in red, she still reads up on public art, on something called the public art registry. Artists, shmartists. And once more, what happened to Friday? Saturday and Sunday is accounted for, but Friday, a big hole. No writing according to google, yahoo, scribd, the like, did she just vegetate on the green couch, in some big-bang-induced stupor, and if she did, does she try to block it out? Maybe, we need a logbook here, like Amundsen did at the north pole, or south pole, the expedition in writerland, gotta account for all your seconds, all your minutes. We are constructing the next all- well, not American, all- something novel here, we are building still another masterpiece, one of many, one of many. A woman in a yellow leggingish outfit, a woman in pink and black, the happenings in the sticky computer room, where words flow into the ,monitor, bad ones good ones ugly ones, the like and the like and the like and the like. On the radio in the morning, a discussion about spoiler alerts, some prof. from Syracuse, was interesting, a tad and a tad a tad and a tad and a tad. Her writing, her writing. She paid for four

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2013

hours in this place, she can propel this forward, forcefully and forcefully. The writing of a master piece, so it seems so it seems. There is no genre, this is genre masterpiece. It has to be, has to be, we have to will this forward, we need a place in the pantheon, she has to show something for all her days on this planet. A nobel prize in literature, something, ah, something. A trinket outta Stockholm, yep, why not and why not? Just type just type just type. And just type. Adventures of fashion girl, now here is a title for her upcoming comic book, a graphic novel, she ponders, it smells like pancakes here, like pancakes here. She should go to the langara word construct reading and writing club, if she could just figure out how to upload her stuff, if she just knew when the meetings are. It still smells like pancakes, hmm, mmmh. Her words her words her words and her words. Fifty more and 7000 it is it is.

October one, last year at this time she was in new york, she ponders what she can make out of this, how is that possibly relevant to this her writing.

She looks funny, a shawl, a toque, she tries to outdo the cold, before it throws her down to the ground. 7016, yay, whiffs of pancake pancake. Rainy Day, After All, It Is Vancouver back in the art school, sitting at the wrong computer, the one that refuses to capitalize the words at the beginnings of a sentence, the one that is outta whack outta whack. she did not sit at the first one, because she knew that it does not work properly, she sat down at the second one, which does not work either. the person in black looked up at her, apparently he thought that she wants to crowd him, nope, the computer does not work, we prefer to have as much space between strangers as humanly possible. besides, the other computer has weird puddles around it, weird ones, strange ones. and we type here type here, this better be good, better be good. 129 words already, achievement against the clock, she hates to be a writer and if push comes to shove she

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ain’t one. if you are unpublished, than, dear Sir, Lady, whatever, then you suck. automatically, ever so automatically.

Day Who Knows Back in the library, she is still battling her cold, she slept for one day straight, that should cure it all cure it all. Today, we’re right back on the horse, half an hour on stationary bike, half an hour over the Cambie bridge, the only thing left are the persistent coughs and the headstuffiness. But it gets worse if you do not move, you have to have a life, the blood has to circulate, the like and the like. At least we do not have fever anymore, thus, just gotta write gotta write. In the back of the library, next to an animator, she types and types and types and types. She bought a termmembership for the leeway, that is the studio space in the art school, she can use the library and the studio, what with 30 other people. She ponders, is the word PEOPLE used correctly, maybe not, maybe not. Her writing, ah, her writing. It is October four, in one month National Novel Writing Month will start. So she will either finish this text and then start another one or she will just write one longer treatise right up to December. Writing, ah, writing. Reflections on writing, this better be good, better be good.

She ponders, there is not enough inspiration here. The only things she sees from here are the Copyright Guidelines on the wall, she can listen in to her own typing, some metal is moving in the back, two clackles, two clickety-clacks. Someone coughs so very very silently, something smells like dog-poo. Her days in front of the monitor, the beige book on the scanner, the one with the prints therein, her writing, ah, her writing. 7483 words, still gotta write on write on. We will stop this insanity at 75 000, abruptly, abruptly. She can go to the opening in Chinatown, after all she is one of the artists. But, hey, she feels way too sick here, an opening is like anyopening, you

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feel awkward, just like everybody else, communal awkwardness, yay, who needs that, who and who? 7544 words and still writing still writing.

The two gorgeous women talk about their colds, so, it seems, everyone gets a debilitating cold, even if you are extremely good-looking. Her insights are worth sharing with the world, they are spot-on, spot-on. We don’t need a plot here, plots are for the birds, trust me trust me. 7603, drive this forward to 8000, then you can leave, 8000 is enuf and enuf. Some words, some words. Then it is time to catch the bus over the bridge, go to the dingy cakeshop, then take the train back to the mall. These are her days, very ordered, that kind of structure will make for a good piece of prose. Or at least for a certain wordcount. The person next to her is a so very meticulous animator, his m.o. is the opposite of hers, turtle wins over hare, everytime, anytime. Or maybe there should be the right succession of fast work and slow work, yup, that must be it, should be it. And we type on and type on and type on and type on. Still 300 words, she looks up at the grey-matte-silvery thingies on the low ceiling, the ones that have slits therein, they could be anything, heaters, lights, who knows and who knows. All these appliancey things look so much alike, who knows what they are supposed to do, maybe they are mere decorations. And we type here and type here and type here.

The community college provides much more fodder for writing, this library is stiltedly stalling, it is stagnating, no happenings whatsoever, the quiet desperation of the starving artist. That is the main characteristic of this art school library, seems as if all art school libraries the world over have this museumlike quality. The smell of the antiquariat. Of lives wasted, of art products that might never fly off. Anyhoo, let us type let us type. 150 words, should be doable, doable.

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At the bottom of page 23, she categorizes her words in increments, who cares what the words are about. Meaning, shmeaning. And still some more, still some more. 7900, she ponders, when did she start this? What made her once more start up a book, what possesses her to type this up. The sheer mechanics of typing, the physicality, writing as bloodsport. 7937, her fingers are clamming up, especially the right middle-finger. She sneezes, sneezes away. Fifty words, that is all we need here all we need here. Forty words fast and fast. The apple on the monitor, the Library 13 sticker.

The sparkly mouse, the matte key-board. The PRINT LAYOUT VIEW inscript below the interface, the rushing forward, in utter numbness, six more words, write on run on. 8001, yay and yay and yay. False gushings of achievement, relentlessly and reluctantly. Save and spellcheck spellcheck.

Day, Day There is no reason really to start each writing with a chronologically correct title, this is not a real journal, it is merely a play on the journal theme. A non-journal. Something like that something of that kind.

The morning in the art school library smacks of desolation i.e. desperation, some librarians staring at their monitors, she ponders, this is not the right place to be a librarian. It seems way too quiet, too slow. You want to work in a place where there is lots and lots of traffic, like in the library in the community college. But, who knows, maybe this place is better, after all, there is rush-hour traffic and non-rush-hour traffic. So to speak, so to speak. She has an hour or so to kill, she will get her art book at eleven, the one that she gave to the Vancouver Art Book Fair, the one that either sold or did not. Everyone is supposed to get their stuff back or their money, either today or tomorrow. Yup, that is how it works how it works. She has 8200 words, roll this forward

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to 9000, fast and fast and fast. Btw, it is somewhere in October, the date is irrelevant, gone are the days, when she used to meticulously put down the accurate year, the accurate day. Nowadays, she just mentions the month, the season, summer, winter, after a while on this planet it is all the same all the same. A writer’s day never changes, it is all about putting down words, one letter at a time, one letter at a time. Nobody will read this anyways, except if she starts peddling her works to the highest bidder. There was someone in the art book fair, who gave a workshop, he was of the opinion that you have to be proactive, market your stuff agressively, no one will find your stuff in your attic. So, in her case that means emailing editors, publishers, the like and the like. She has written ten or so books in the last five years, she has to peddle her wares, peddle her wares. She kind of sees it like having her wares in a lined basket, one with fresh-baked muffins, or one with eggs therein. Books as muffins, something like that, something like that. Marketing of words, ah, this better be good better be good.

She still has the remnances of her cold, the coughs, she forgot about lozenges, they are lying somewhere at home, on the kitchen counter, intelligent, huh, intelligent. She can go up to her studio, check in at least, at least. Yup, why not and why not. 8462, a woman in sweats next to her, black hoodie, hair in dreadlocks, she is very pretty though, grunge and beauty and youth, a fashion icon in grunge. Some people can pull that off, easily, ever so easily. Author ponders, in her case that does not work out, though, looking like a slob works only if you are blessed by the gods, only then, ah, only then. The rest of us mortals, well, we’ve gotta take a bath every now and then every now and then. 6539, 6500. Words and words, make that 8000 and something.

Maybe, she can march this forward to ten thousand, fast and fast and fast and fast and fast.

A Little Later

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So, ran around the island a tad, chatted, checked in at the studio, she still has to kill some more time, apparently she missed Word On The Street because of the artbookfair, she wanted to ask the lady she ran into about it, last year or two years ago, author here was a Friend of The Library, which was a lot of fun, the volunteering, she definitely should do that again. Anyhoo, gotta type, gotta type, gotta type. Writing yourself into the pantheon, fast and fast. Oh, btw, the house shut down is still going on, but, hey, that is a US matter, this is a Vancouver story after all, so it seems, so it seems. Maybe she can nab a publisher here in town, though that did not work out five years ago, how will it work out this time around, given that the publishing industry has more problems, less problems, seems that all through history the “books are dead, long live the books” meme is a constant, a constant. She is not quite sure what MEME means, it sounds ugly, ugly.

8744, 8755. She should have a tea, good for her sore throat, her ah so sore throat. And save, and spellcheck, spellcheck, spellcheck, spellcheck. 8786, this better be good better be good. She ponders, maybe, she should find a book and put it next to the monitor, maybe, even more than one, in order to make this look as if she writes something scholastically, maybe she should wear glasses, dark-brimmed ones, maybe she should be a guy. Men sound more authoratitive, apparently, ah, apparently. Maybe, her narrator should be male, than this would sell should sell.

Eight and eight and five and five, typing and typing and typing and typing. Woman next to her looking at botanical pics, now, cartoony pics, nice and nice and nice and nice and nice. All these people ask the librarian stuff, they must all be foundation students. She was a foundation student once, there is a poster of the Vancouver school of decorative and applied arts in the back, it is from 1927 & 1928, the “&” is used twice, maybe it was the “@” of those times, who knows and who knows and who knows and who knows. 8955, type and type, march this forward, forward, forward, forward, forward. Fast and fast and fast and fast. 8872, 8875, 8877. A group of students

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flood this place, apparently some tour or some workshop is about to start to start. Three more words, 9000, yay and yay and yay and yay.

Rainy Day Well, not that rainy. More overcasty, waiting to rain. Rain-apprehensive. In the community college, she still can use this place for one more week, then her time here is over. Her website design class will come to an end, thus she will not be able to log in. She can use the computer as a guest, but that is always such a hassle. You have to pester the librarians and they do not appreciate it. Except if she goes to a different place every day, she can make that part of the narrative for this her text. The writer roaming the city, a man is bringing his daughter to the childcare place, a yellow security guard on a bike, and we type we type. She is falling asleep here, not much sleep today, too much roaming around already. A walk to the teashop, a drive to the mall, a drive to the coffee shop, all this all this. A wash load, a dryer load, and now, type 1000 words, so fast, so fast, so fast, so fast. So fast. The songs of the words, reluctant rhythms, reluctant. Alice Munro will get the lit nobel prize this year, just announced, ah, just announced. A man outside, a woman near the window. The librarians cluttering, a phone ringingish.

In between, facebook, yahoo, what is happening around the world. Her world. Weird, huh, you try to decipher ppls’ lives by scanning their chat-histories. Intrusive, intrusive. Her social life is online, her realities are just like that. Nobody answers phone calls anyways, so you have to use your computer. And she is not a texter, she does not even know how to. So, she tries to communicate via yahoo, which is so out-dated, it seems, it seems. A man in red, a woman in blue. This computer is weird, the monitor too dark, anyhoo, keep on typing a-typing. The blue monitor in the distance, the one with a balloon thereon. Outside a reluctant sun, two grey persons

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talking. Her days at the computer, she types, she types. Once again the red guy, red with black inscripts. Someone sneezes, twice, thrice. And once more. Wow, five sneezes. This library, silent, quiet, stagnating before the storm. Her book, her book. A woman reading, while playing with her mouth. And we type here and type here. Fashioning a lit career that never is never was never will be. No literary price for her, none, and nada and zilch. People will give yer awards if it suits their schemes, if you write mere grocerylists you are not even on the radar. You language will not make it not make it. Your mechanical typings, those ones, ah those ones those ones. 9500, write on, write on.

A woman outside, another one. She is too tired to describe them, they are all numbers anyways.

Barely recognizable, they move around, author here notices their movements, their silhouettes.

What matters are her words against the machine, her words that cannot make it, will not make it.

That are way too off today, way to, way to. Her poetic songs are horrible horrible. Noplot, still no plot. The struggle with the words, the words that are way too elusive, way to, way to. She feels like strangling this stupid machine, the one that is full of bullshitty words. Of words that klimper and whimper around. 400 words, write on write on. Today is October ten, twenty-one days to Nano. 400 words, then we are outta here and outta here. It is nine oh three, we have 600 words already, an inkling of achievement, if you type they will come. The words that is, the words that is. She ponders, she is not growing as a writer, it is all downhill from here all downhill from here.

The idea that you grow as a writer, that you become better with each word, ah, wishful thinking, so very much, so very much. 300, only 300. The sun is coming out from behind the clouds, the light is deafeningly flooding the typing machine. Her fingers throw long shadows onto the black squares, the clouds over the sun, the light becomes muffled. Coughs and coughs, the day marches forward, 300 words is all we need and all we need here.

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Top of page 29, she can see the 28, this is what her life has come to, describing the monitor, ever so clumsily ever so clumsily. She used to be a good writer, but nowadays she fills the pages with dribble utter dribble. 9766, the animationy icon on the monitor, the pen, the book. 9777, write on and type on. Thirteen minutes after nine, the green grass outside, bathed by the sun, her typing, her constant typing. Her left shoulder hurting a tad, a tad. And still another sneeze, a cough, the clicking of different stuff. A woman making noise with her breath, there are so many weird sounds in this place. Everyone coughs and sneezes, or they talk, so many weird and subtle sounds. Outside the grass, slowly motioning, slowly and slowly. 9854, still writing and writing.

The woman at the other computer writing and sniffling, stop sniffling, this is so annoying ah so annoying. Author here ponders, maybe sitting at the kitchen table to write is better better. Here the swerve of the one grass outside, too many weird and strange distractions, this cannot be good cannot be good. 9911, still writing, still writing. Outside the new buildings of the college, brownish, blackish, white-ish. Seems that ell the colours are slightly off, as if the maker of the building was not quite sure what to do. None of the colors have a bold enough statement, they are all wannabes. Which might go with the vague statements of the college itself, nothing strong enough to rock the boat, education as unobtrusive gesture, something like that, something of that kind. You can read a lot from the building itself, what kind of citizens does it want to shape.

Numbers or trendsetters, this place sure wants to build non-troublemakers, so it seems, so it seems. Author ponders, her deep insights are off, well, who cares, who cares and who cares and who cares. 10041, yay, we are outta here and outta here. Btw, buildings do not construct people, her thesis has holes, holes. Back to the drawing board, gotta articulate this stronger better clearer.

Later

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Later the same day. Huh. In the library in the art school. Lots of people behind author here, she types, she writes. Had a chat with a colleague, a former colleague. Those chats are always trying, because she was asked about what she is working on. Actually nothing, you cannot really tell people that you are working on an unpublished masterpiece or that you are working on your weight loss or that you will wait here until the lecture at four. You are not that happy if everybody knows what a geek you really are. The main objective in life is to not let on what a nerd you are. Gotta be selfconscious if you are in the arts, so it seems so it seems.

She feels kinda sick, kinda nauseated. We have 10 211 words, not bad, not bad. Not that bad, that is. Huh. She ponders, she did not compartmentalize her text congruently. Whatever that means.

She looks up at the COPYRIGHT GUIDELINES, she types and types. Listens in to the pretty librarian talk, wonders what else to write. Her days her days. She still has to kill time until the lecture, still has to kill time until lunchtime. Her eating is very controlled these days, she lost 25 pounds already. Which is good, good for agility. Not that good for wrinkle-less-ness, you definitely look shrivelled up. But you can move faster, so you have to choose between beauty and athleticism. Do you want to be pretty or do you want to march through the world? It might be better to be able to move, even if you are uglier than you were when you weighed more. Yup, most people look better with extra fat, Catherine Deneuve posited that after a certain age women have to choose between body and face and Catherine Deneuve can’t be wrong. 10 386, write on and write on and write on and write on.

Author here feels pretty sick, she should go for a walk, it is exhausting to sit chained to a computer, to type, to type. She is hungry, annoyed, she feels her cold coming back. Writing, huh.

Typing, typing, typing, typing. She is not quite sure if she chaptered this text correctly, apparently you have to have chapters that are all about the same length. You cannot really have a 30

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book that has chapters which are very disparate, except if you want to claim artistic intentions. A book that has two chapters, one chapter that is two pages long, and another chapter that is 3000 pages long. Kind of weird, huh. But, hey, if shooting for weird is your thing, then by all means, go ahead. And we type and we type and we type and we type. Typing as performance art, in the art school, yuh. It is 1:26, on October 10, in 2013, on Granville Island in Vancouver, Canada.

She checked out the website of the Frankfurt Book Fair, one thing is clear, she is not represented there. She is a writer now for five years, she is pretty serious, but, hey, if you are unpublished, you are unpublished. That is how is, that is how it is. 10 608, great, ah, great, great, great, great.

Make sure that you repeat as many words as you can get away with, that is how you fill the page, at random, at random. 10 643, 10 645. Surf the web, look for inspiration, write on and write on and write on and write on and write on and write on.

Day, Day Another day in writerland, it is exactly nine in the morning, the Friday before columbusday or Canadian thanksgiving, whichever categorization you prefer. The room here is sticky, but you wouldn’t know sitting here, it is just this stale air that greets you at the door, but once you are in here you get used to it, because you do not seem to know any better anymore. A metaphor for our existence as creatures on this planet? Well, maybe if you are so inclined. Anyhoo, typing, typing, in the desolate computerroom in the college, hardly anyone is in here, one can see the DASANIscript in neon from here. The place feels open, and airy, not claustrophobic. After all, the walls are mainly glass, well two of them are, so there is the illusion of open space, openness, the feel of business, of sitting in transit, this is the place which makes you go somewhere, to see the world, to conquer the world. Seems, this place is so much better for writing than the seat in the

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library, seems that the place where you write dictates its words to you. So it is, so it is. We have next to eleven thousand words here, not quite, not quite, not quite, not quite.

Saturday Twelve and forty-eight in the community college writing place, she types and types. Pondering why, why should one keep on working on a piece that lacks a discernable narrative? That is basically a rehashing of other better works. Her own journal from 2008 was so much better, writing was new then, exiting, now, on the other hand it is nothing but same old same old. Every artist has just so many masterpieces in her, after a while it is only repetition repetition repetition.

A woman in grey, the top of a man with not much hair. People in this place, anyhoo, we have 10 984, not bad and not bad and not bad and not bad. At this speed we will finish this come x-mas, but not before not before. Slow and steady, that is how the hare wins the race. Yup and why not and why not and why not? 11 027, yay and yay and yaya and yayy.

Today And to think that she did not write for about five days or so. She constantly was thinking about this but apparently she has not penned a single word. Somehow you get utterly delusional but, hey, the facts are clear, there were no journal entries in the last days. Weird, huh, ah so very strange. Apparently author here has lead her life without noticing that she did not write a lick.

The realities of the writer and the words mush together, there are no clear borders ‘tween fact and fiction anymore. She baked the turkey, what with Canadian Thanksgiving, she had company over, she went to the gym, she had her last website making class, which was fun, and she can still use this computer here in this college. Apparently no one noticed that her class is finished, yay.

Hopefully her computer access will not be discontinued for the whole semester. We can pen our 32

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masterpiece after all, after all. She still gets emails from the word construct group, they are doing their critique thingie, she should have done that too, some constructive criticism never hurt anybody. The whiff of the yoghurt of the woman at the other station, slightly sweet, slightly foul.

And we type here and type here and type here and type here. October sixteen in 2013, in Vancouver, Canada. Ten thirty or so in the morning, some more words and some more words. 11 300, type on and type on and type on and type on and type on. Until your fingers hurt, until you keel over, over. 11 305, for now and for now and for now and for now. It is ten and seventeen, all theses numbers are so very confusing. They are just that, numbers, they are never really accurate, never ever.

The buzz of the college on a Wednesday, the scholarly busyness, the librarian in the distance, the one who is here since the beginning of time. Must be nice to be a college librarian, better than to be an unpublished writer. Society values you which can not be said for writers sans books. Poets that no one listens to, singers whose songs are only good for the bathtub. Shower-singers, yup, that is life that is life. She ponders, there is a certain romanticized hint to failure, though it is kinda vexing, kinda stifling. The whiffs of failure, strangling yer, ever so slightly, ever so strongly. Anyhoo, write on and write on. You can call this a writing project, that should fly, ah, fly. 11 464, yay and yay.

Later In front of the telly, some more words and then some. The news, though it is the news in nyc, so it is the five o’clock stuff, it is three hours sooner there on the east coast. Anyhoo, let us type and still type. 500 words, that is all we need here, 500 to make it down to 12 thou. Author ponders, she should drive down to the coffee shop on arbutus, there is always something to see, something

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to write about. Earlier in the morning, she sat in the fashion store downtown trying to fashion a story aptly named THE FASHIONSTORE. Though, while she was sitting there, the salespeople were annoying her, ogling her, they kind of killed the story. Anyhoo, we only need 400 words more. Two to 11 600.

Typing typing. There is nothing more boring, you just watch your fingers pressing down the various squares. Nothing to describe here, she ponders if she should write a bit about ten finger typing versus choose and pick typing. A good writer should be able to liven up any subject matter. On the telly, an ad about apples, now a car ad. Watching tv while penning your master piece. And we write and write and write and write. Some talk about mayor Bloomberg, it is funny, some talk about Oreo cookies. She tries to follow the pix news while typing away, typing away. We still need 300 words, then we’re outta here outta here. 11 715, 11 717. Words, numbers, hyphens, anything will do. Just propel this text forward, forward. Writing as a chore a chore a chore a chore a chore.

Still A Day Fog over Vancouver, tough to drive, the nine-a-clock-crowd streaming into the coffee shop, the woman in black and grey wavy shawl cutting in line, talking about Jason and catching the ferry, the hecticness and now the sudden silence at the computer, the one lowly plant as companion, the haste of throwing the words at the machine, the short click clacks that come out of nowhere, something far away, maybe a construction site, hammering, some songs by a bird, all of these sounds are embellished by the utter silence surrounding the typer. The sounds of the typing though, the ones that dictate the text to her. surreal writing that is how it always is. The book that does not go anywhere, that stalls and stalls and stalls and stalls. She has 131 words already, 900

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more and she will have done a day’s work. Speak to the machine, then go out and find a publisher, somehow, somewhere. Writing as profession, not what we chose to do, the words found us, yup, let us go with that story, sounds nice and nice and nice and nice. Fog over Vancouver, kind of weird and strange for October, mid-october, anyhoo. let us type and type and type. The fridge starts its songs, against her words, she has 214, write on and write on and write on and write on. The loneliness of the writer when typing, the short discussions with the machine, the typing the typing. The marching forward, the machine that awaits all of these words, she needs a plot, a narrative, a story here. antagonist protagonist, it is just her against this weird machine, the words that are not coming, not as of yet, not good enough, huh, never ever good enough. The language dgwalks down its pre-described paths, that is how it always is, there is just so much you can do with words, just so much, just so much. She did not read the news as of yet, she listens to the bird singing once or twice, she will go out again when the fog lets up, she will run all over this city to find a story, a story worth telling. There are 8 million stories in the naked city, nope, it was not this city, but it might as well be anycity. The hustle and bustle will make her sing her songs to the machine, hopefully and hopefully. Come November, national novel writing month will set in, she ponders if she will just keep on writing this text or if she will start a new text. Logistics of writing, you have to strategize your wordcount, meticulously, meticulously. It is all a numbers game so it seems so it seems. 454 words for today, not bad, nor bad not bad. not bad not bad. Not bad. 470. Save it ah save it save it.

Maybe Later The fog has lifted, though the sun is undecided whether to come out in full bloom or whether to hide behind the clouds. Author here ponders, there are only so many sentences to describe the weather and others have done it so much better before. Everything and anything worth saying 35

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has been said before. It has all been done, all been done. Well, with that attitude you will never go anywhere, nobody can have that kind of fatalistic attitude and go somewhere. Learn from the bird, it sings its songs, could care less if some other bird has sung the same tune before. Any moment is unique, yep that is how it is in a nutshell. Platitudes on an octobery foggy day in Vancouver, fast typed words, for moments for moments. Forced poeticness, she should go down to the studio she rented at the art school. For October and November and all thru December. She should use that place, after all we paid 400 bucks here. Make that 350. 647 words, keep on typing keep on typing. The bird again outside, maybe if is a different bird. 669 words, still typing still typing. The fridge stopped its singsong, abruptly, the light from above reflects on the keyboard, in rings, in rings. Outside, the fog changed its mind, outside the raindrops on the veranda-ish gate. She is not good at describing the concrete, that is what we have photos for, and why should we recreate something anyways. why not live your life instead of fashioning stories, non-stories. 735 words, gotta type gotta type. Obsessively obsessively. Pathological writing, this cannot be good, cannot be healthy. Especially if we cannot sell all of these words, gotta take this show on the road, gotta pound the pavement, gotta chase readers aggressively aggressively.

Writings have to find readers, that is how it is how it is. She ponders, there will be a writers’ conference in surrey, maybe she will go there, peddle her goods, talk to agents, try to win them over with her non-existing charm, yup, why not and why not and why not. Salesmanship, saleswomanship, marketing. And we type some and type some and type some and type some.

844 and 845 it is it is it is. 855. 150 more and we are outta here outta here. Can then join the living, find respite from the dullness of writing, go for a run, move, move. Why does one have to be chained to a computer in order to write, there must be better ways to document one’s words, walking around and dictating, there are ways to write, that are way more natural, more conducive

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to the flow of words, to the fluidity of language. The music of language. Anyhoo, type on, type on, you are there. almost ah almost. 947, you can stop at 1000, easily, ah, easily. Later on, you can copy this, paste it, something like that, something of that kind. Later on you can edit it, or let somebody edit it, if you participated in the wordconstruct group at the college there would be ten critics who would scribble their edits in the margins of your writings. Anyhoo, we have 1008, time to stop, time to rejoin the living, time to enter life and life.

Still a Tad Later She still should type some more, this is not at 13 000 words as of yet, the problem lies in that she did not produce enough words the day before. You cannot write this fragmented, gotta produce the right amount of words. Each and every day each and every day. Until you keel over, these are the rules for writing, so it seems so it seems. The secrets of the trade, self-imposed rules, writing as sport, an athletic endeavour, a marathon run. Gotta train every day, that is how it is how it is.

Type on and type on. Later on, you can have cheese cake, but at this point you have to push the words forward and forward. how tough can it be, how tough and how tough. The bird is chirping again, this is how you go insane, ever so slightly, ever so slightly. The struggle against the language, this calls for hard liquor in the morning, well, maybe, cheesecake could do the trick, just as well just as well. 55 words, fast and fast and fast. author here types some, watches the little number icon, this cannot be good for poetic waxing, you have to wordconstruct not just heap the letters on, mechanically, mechanically. Her back hurts, the rummaging between the shoulder blades, a certain stiffness, coolness, as if you put vapo-rub on, ah, just type on type on, thru the finish line, 13 008, yay, the rest of the words will come later and later. Stop for now, ah stop this for now.

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Day Foggy, ah, foggy. Weird how it was not foggy anymore outside of the coffee shop on arbutus, but it is definitely foggy here all around the community college. The outside of the library here, milky milky. The librarians, the man in purple and green. Stuff to describe describe. The loudness of her typing, so this is her job now, getting up, taking a shower, putting on your work clothes and off to the nextest computer it is. At least 1000 words per day, you write it and they will come. There are people who read, still, there are libraries like this that make their living off people like author here. A book is just a long grocery list, it has a spine and maybe 300 000 words. Or 100 000, each of us on this planet should have a story to tell. There are literary courses the world over, they might as well read her stuff. Ok, so she is no nobel laureate and chances are she never will be. You know, what they say, the lesser writers get the nobels, the better ones are snubbed. Given that she never got a nobel prize, especially not one in literature, she must be one of the better writers, she got snubbed. She is not even published but that is beyond the point here.

She stares down on the keyboard, this keyboard is so very different from the one at home. At home the each letter is situated in the exact middle of the key, here the letter is put into the upper left corner of the key. And there is a glimmer of light, a reflection on eack key. A yellow white line, yup, that is how it is how it is. Outside, a person with a light hat walking thru the milkiness, inside here, the writer tapping away, hammering away. Okay, let us call it typing away. We have 13 and a half, not quite and not quite and not quite. She should go to other places too, to write and to write. She did not take the car today, what with all the fog. She is thus not bound to make it to the parking place in time, she can roam this city freely. Well, all in one zone, after all it is not the weekend. Her bus pass is a one zone pass,. Only on weekends it can be used in all three zones. That is how it is how it is. 33443, type on and write on,write on. 13 453, boredom sets in, 38

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the sheer annoyance with her job, her non-job as a writer. She ponders, this monitor is way too dark, she should change to another one that is easier to the eyes. You always have to negotiate where you sit, how is the lighting, that kind of stuff. Same holds true if you write long hand, what is paramount is never the subject matter but always the situation of your tools. Does the pen have enough ink, does the notepad have enough paper left in it. The logistics of writing, that is what makes or breaks the story. Yup, that is how it is how it is.

Outside the silhouette of the tree against the milky background, inside of here, desolation, cold quietness. Her words and her words and her words, all of her words. All 13 591 of them, waiting for the 70 000 more of them. Ah, this better be good better be good better be good. She ponders, one day she will give interviews about writing, she will grant interviews. Well, obviously we are not there yet, our interview-granting days are way in the future. What will she wear, what shoes?

Boots should be good, suede boots, that should go with the interview-granting status of an auteur.

Yup, why not and why not and why not, why not. Or she might conduct her interviews on skype, that seems to be the format stuff is done these days. Anyhoo, let us still type, let us still type here.

13 707, her breast gets knotted up, that always happens when writing. Her right middle finger is acting up, already already. The booboos of a writer, the left shoulder that is acting up. She forces herself to sit straight, do not sit hunched over when penning your master piece. A scribe, a scribe, a not-so-modest scribe. 13 762, great ah great, great, great.

Later Still some more words and still some more words. Around 300, so that we make it down to 14 000. To have pangs of accomplishment, the slow but steady moving forward. A book that has 75 000 words, once we are there we will stop, will start to market this, sell it to an agent. Ah, gone

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are the days when you would contact the acquisition editor of a publishing house, nowadays there have to be middle women, middle men. Maybe that is because so many people can type up a book, all you need is a computer and you can even use one at a place like this, in the local library, in the local college. A writingish place for free, you just come here and type up your next masterpiece in your spare time. Well, if you live in a place where there are free access computers in the public realm. Then again, she had to pay to use this place, she had to take a course, the one where she arguably did not learn anything. She is still html-non-the-wiser, she still does not know how to write code. She will never be a website designer, if push comes to shove she just wanted to be part of the wordconstruct club in this college. But then, she did not even join that one, she did not want her work to be criticized by every tom and harry. Or Melissa or Jessica.

Nobody should criticize her work, you cannot become a writer if people are constantly picking at your work. As a writer, you just gotta write, sink or swim or more like swim or sink. Something like that and we have 14 thou, yay and yaya and yayy and yay.

Sunny Day Watching a sit-com while the sun is shining outside, anything in order to bring the wordcount up to 15 thousand. The story that has to be told, the lot of a writer, the words against the machine.

While another machine is showing an ad for a Tuscan chicken sandwich, the one with tomato and squirly lettuce, all of this only to march forward to an ad for a cooking school somewhere far away in boston. Watching the telly while penning a master piece, ah, this better be good, better be good. author feels as if she is rewriting the same sentence over and over again, she has to fashion more than one characters for this book. other writers, other artists. musicians maybe, actors dancers. Scientists, bus drivers, any gig is worth describing in detail. Any gig, any nongig. Any human endeavour, to be precise. On the telly, robin, the newswoman in the back of a 40

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taxi, in a décolletéed cocktail dress, one with a silvery glittery rim, pretty pretty. Now, the gang in the bar, Ted singing, do you know the name of the show? Mm, how I met your mother, outside a sunny October day, nice change from all the fog that blanketed the lower mainland for ages ages. 14 270, you can do this do this. 15 000 on October 23, what to do once November one rolls around, start a novel for nanomonth or keep on typing this up. The dilemmas of the unpublished writer, dillemmae, dilemmata. Words, ah, words, so fickle, so fickle. An ad for a Motorola smart phone, a dog, an ad for a pretzel bun, whatever that is. They have pretzel buns in zurich, maybe this is the same idea. Sure looks like the buns you can get in front of the globus to sit in the park, eat it there, while people walk by, while pigeons are at your feet. She rambles around, we still need more words here, more words here. Her back, hunched over, cramping up, the blood cannot circulate that good if you sit contorted, contorted. The contortions of a writer, the physical weirdness, that strangeness has to somehow force the words forward forward, the sentences forward. 14 425, write and write and write and write and write. Talk about penguins at a bar, on the telly the telly the telly. Writing ah writing, hard liquor will make you write better better words. Or makes you develop the moxy to hurl your substandard words out into the world, and they are all substandard substandard. Watching an Amica ad while writing, maybe that will not garner enough of a readership, it depends on who your target audience is, so it seems so it seems so it seems so it seems so it seems. Maybe she should give writing lessons, maybe she should have been part of the “word construct” group at Langara. The one that she dropped out of, the one that still sends her e-mails because she signed up at the beginning of the semester. Weird, huh, she finished her class already, but she still gets e-mails, she still can use the computer in the library there . She is in the system for the whole four months, so it seems, so it seems. September all thru December, anyhoo, write on and write on and write on and write on and write on and

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write on and write on. fill the page, use as many words as possible to describe stuff. Short and concise, nah, so yesterday yesterday.

Now, king of queens, funnily laughtracking ahead. An ad for an insurance company, music and a seducing voice, and we are back to king o’queens. carrie and her boss, doug coming in, a picture of the statue of liberty in the back. Actually just the head of the statue, in blue and grey slash purple, and we type and type and type and type and type. 14 719, that is it for now and now.

Day in October Yeah, we know they are all days in October, but, hey this is as good a title for today’s journal entry as any. If this is a journal, that is. It is the morning in the community college, she vied for the sticky writing center, a young pretty lady let her go first when entering the room, making author here feel old. The girl had a Denver U SWEATSHIRT ON, WAS somehow mixed-raced, author here ponders if that is the correct term, anyhoo, the young woman obviously was just being friendly, but, hey, it still stings, stinks. Old in what way? Old as in over the hill. Old as in cannot see well cannot hear well cannot walk well, all of the above, well, we can still type and type and type and type here. The reflections on the keyboard are deafening, she has to lean forward in order to decipher the keys, but whatever she does, part of the keyboard is bathed in light, tough to write ah tough to write here. We need optimal writing situations, we need that need that. In order to write good stuff good stuff. 14 920, she could change her space here, move to a better computer, one that will make her write a master piece a master piece. One that will make her chose just the right elements of the language, one that is conducive to penning seminal stuff, seminal stuffi-muffi. One that will awaken the inner genius, her inner genius. She ponders where is the locus of genius, in the tip of your chin or the tip of your nose? Her observations are

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forced funny, stand-up-comedienness is definitely not in her future. She might as well just write long passages, she might as well still try to make it as a visual artist. As an animator, perhaps and perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. 15 oh forty-seven, yeay and yaya and yay and yay. 15 054, her writing her writing. She leans forward, so that she can evade the glaring of the keyboard, but, still, whatever she does, there is always a row of letters that is bathed in glare, it is very tough to type like this. A man with a HELLO BROOKLYN shirt comes in, he sports a pissed-off face, leaves with his pissed-off face. A woman in red and white stripes, a face like a mouse, a hairdo like a mouse. Mousy in a cute way, not in a grey way. A mouse with red glasses and blond hair to the back, anyhoo, keep typing and typing. 15 160, this better be good better be good.

She played around with the computer, e-mailed facebooked, cyberstalking, who does what when.

If push comes to stuff, she is so very uninterested in other people’s lives, she is much more interested in her own writing, in her own ah so very shitty writing, her words are never ever good enough, nobody’s are, nobody’s can be. Ane sentence we utter has holes, nobody can pen the perfect sentence. Perfect writing, an oxymoron if there ever was one. In this writing center, two persons are awaiting a free computer, they both are wearing black, author ponders, maybe she should leave this computer, she feels whoozy and ah so hungry anyways, anyways, it is near to noon, her car is parked in a place that it should not be, gotta leave gotta leave and gotta leave.

15302, not as much as she wanted to produce, but that is how it is, writers block is alive and well, alive and well.

Back @ Home So, maybe it is ok to change the way she orders her quasi-journal-entries here. She used to title all her entries with some variation on the date-theme, she would not really say the correct date,

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but write something like ANOTHER DAY, just in order to signal that this is a new sub-chapter.

She is not quite sure if she still likes it like that, she’d rather change to different mini-titles, kind of random nonsensical titles. Where does it say that you have to be consistent in a piece of writing, after all you can always do the ARTISTIC LICENSE thingie, make the prose a tad lively, mix it up a little. Change the rules as you go. Anyhoo, on the telly, king of queens, laughtracks, the like the like. Loud ads, for cars, for food.

The everyday the everyday Well, her everydays are all these moments at the computer, she marches through nasty rain, she does her short exercise routine, only to find herself in the computer room in the community college, only to fire up the machine, only to sink her words into this very machine. A woman coughs throatily, a person types haltingly, the AC roars miffedly, a short pang is heard every two seconds. Author here ponders, must be some machine that somebody forgot to turn off. It is so very annoying, like a leaking faucet in the night, author here starts concentrating on that noise, she can hardly type and hardly type. Outside once more fog, in the distance, one cannot see the outside that good from inside here, you have to stare through different glass walls, weird, ah so very very strange. This writing place has a glass wall, and then the whole library has a glass wall, so you are separated by two glass walls from the outside, anyhoo, keep on typing and typing and typing. This place is desolate here, most people are in class now, they will stream in in exactly one hour. This school has its classes in 55-minute-blocks, it is really like school in here, not really like college, which is eerily weird, though eerily comforting. You never ever grow up in here, you still should have a lunchbox, this is a springboard to adulthood, but more like a holding-backish adulthood. This is where life is regimented, where the numbers are taught how to behave, so that society functions ah functions. No space for freelance writers, now, is there is 44

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there? The words flow onto the page, so reluctantly ever reluctantly. Author ponders, her words do not really make sense, if anything, she is more than willing to type her thoughts, fast, fast, fast and faster. A hooded person in black motions in, behind her, he sits back in the outer seat, could be a he, could be a she. Is actually a she, in purple in black. 15 804, write on and write on and write on and write on. Save this, for posterity, notions of moments in 2013.

LATER A TAD New persons are flocking in, a woman with beige-ish clothing beige-ish face beige-ish hair, everything beige, a woman in white and black, two persons talking in the back, one person coughing shortly, loudly. The rolling of a chair, let us still type and type, author’s tea is near to ice-cold with reluctant pinges of peppermint therein. Her writing sucks, there is nothing to describe here, nothing nada zilch and zip. Type on type on, she has next to 16 000, in the end this has to have 75000 words, then we will stop and then we will stop. There are better words, plots that have you sitting on the edge of your chair, author ponders if this her text is like that. The woman in black and white stands up, makes her way to the printer, stands next to the printer which spits its papers slowly snoringly. Ah the computer room in the community college, people talking and printing and typing. This is where her masterpiece is penned, one letter at a time and one word at a time. Woman in black and white leaves, puts on her shawl, opens her bag puts something in there, the sounds of the zipper, she logs out, pushes the rolling chair forward, leaves resolutely, resolutely. Two coughs in the back, still talking and talking. We have 16099 by now, great ah great and great and great. Author ponders, still gotta sign up 4 nano month, this will be her fourth year of writing that, participating, participating. She only won once, only made it to 50 000 once. Ah that happens happens. And 16 100 we have ah we have. Lots of persons stream in, annoying annoying. They are all ugly so ugly.

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Still Another Day Sitting at home and typing away while the telly is singing its songs. Author here just got two erejections for her text, for this text to be precise. Today it is Saturday, seems that the two agents did their work on Saturday, sending out their rejections over the weekend. One of them actually just wrote that she does not accept new clients and that author here should query one of her colleagues at the same agency. Ah, tomato, tomahto. The other one did not write a form letter, apparently that is a good sign, a personalized rejection. Author here thanked them both, it is nice when they answer. Publishing is such a fickle business, so it seems, so it seems. Just gotta write, just gotta type on. Would help if your writing is good, but then again any writing will do, should do. Ah, the profoundness of grocerylists, after all it is still writing, still writing. Where does literature start and where does it end? What constitutes poetry, ah, questions ah questions. On the telly a talk about doner kababs, the death of the inventor of doner kabab sandwiches, a chef talking about that there is no inventor of doner kababs, that it is an old recipe anyways. Now football or soccer, whatever your inclination is, outside the weather is pretty nice, not really a good thing to sit in a room and type, would be much nicer to take a trip downtown, petula clark is always right, always, always, always. 16 374, does she really have to propel this up to17 000?

What would the life of a published author be like, does she really need fame or/and fortune. Her writing her writing ah her writing. She trained as a visual artist, should she really jump ship as of yet? Painting, drawing, animating, that is what we should do here and do here. Writing, ah, so boring so boring. Besides, writing should be about something worth mentioning, it is highly debatable if the plight of an unpublished writer is even worth its ink. On the telly, a design engineer in Singapore who works for Dyson, the whole show is a BBC show about Singapore. It is very interesting, before there was a show called 100 women which debated whether 46

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motherhood interferes with women’s career success. Yup, the telly is always interesting, can’t really afford to leave the couch. 16 534, ah words and words and words and words and words.

Ah A Sunny Day Yup, a sunny so very sunny day in late October. A Sunday to boot. The mall full of people the Y full of people, the bus and the train full of people. Now the songs of the telly, on the weekends there is always a big bang marathon. Authors weight is not what it should be, it was two pounds less two weeks ago which is not good not good. She had a smaller lunch than usual, she should go for a run. Anything to battle those two pounds gained. You got to be vigilant, two pounds will morph to twenty pounds overnight. She ponders, maybe she should write a book ‘bout dieting, you’ve got a built-in-target-audience already. We could call it DIETING, plain and simple. Then somebody will sue her because she or he used the title already and then we will settle out of court. For billions. Yup, that should work, why not and why not? 16 697. Write on write on and write on. March on, run, put one foot before the next. On the telly a cnn woman, blondish, brown-eyedish, a very pleasant face, a pleasant voice, she talks about sports. She is not on that often, she must be the weeklend sub when everybody is vacationing in the Hamptons. Anyhoo, type on type on. Now, the moose lady, she talks about the face of obamacare, and we type and type and type. 16 773, it is all about the obama care girl, the mona lisa of health care. A clip from friends, the episode where joey models for a VD ad, anyhoo, now it is NEWSROOM, once again sports. 16 812, write on and write on and write on. Force this forward to 17 thou. Outside still sunny sunny sunnyweather, writer here ponders if she should go down to the coffee shop on arbutus, type this up there type this up there. 16 850, ah, only need 150 more, then the allotment for this day will be done, done. Just mechanical typing, on the telly a pink woman who looks exactly like jen from the office talks about merkel and obama and spying. On another note, in 47

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Italy mount Aetna has erupted, author ponders, that is not the one near Pompeii and Herculaneum, now is it, nope, that must be mount Vesuvius. Now stuff about the worlds series whatever that is, guessing from the pictures it has to do with baseball, yup, the super bowl is in February or so and it has to do with that elliptical ball. Author here ponders, sports broadcasting seems not to be in her future. An apple ad, an ad for a cholesterol medicine. 16 977. Just type and and type on. A dog in black and white in an orange sleeping bag, a man in an orange sweater, a marriage agency ad, either e-harmony or something match, match dot com, the woman with too much make up talks about the cardinals, St. Louis Cardinals, now a baseball game, highlights from it. And we have 17 034 here, outta here ah outta here. Spell-check save and save and save and save and save.

Halloween On the telly, king of queens, the episode where doug’s parents want to make doug sign a living will. Author here has seen it lots of times, all the songs of all the sitcoms are the music that propels her writing forward. The music in the back, the sounds that keep the writer company. The words that snatter around on the idiotbox, the background music that every writer needs. Silence total silence, not that conducive 2 writing.

Halloween it is, the mall was full of signs at the entrances of shops, either inviting trick or treaters or discouraging them. And they were all printed in black letters on orange paper, regardless of the message. There were some lowly costume persons, only one of them being a kid. One woman had a cat make-up, which clashed with her non-costumy outfit. Anyhoo, author here bought two, no, three bags of candy, mainly because someone else had three bags of candies in his hand. Seems, bags of candies come in threes. One had 25 treats, the other two had 30 each.

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Seems that the red candies are more enticing, author ponders, how she will hold out against the temptation of eating them herself. The plastic Tupperware with all the candies is standing near the door, we will not eat even one here. Type on and type on and type on and type on. 17 300 words ah great and ah great and ah great and ah great and ah great. 17 311, for now and for now and for now and for now and for now and for now and for now. 17 333 it is it is.

A DAY IN NOVEMBER one month of writing for national novel writing month, finally she hit 50 018 on the eve of november 29, actually november 28 in the evening to be precise. And now that that is over we can once more start this book up again.

LAST DAY IN NOVEMBER And we could still feed some words to this machine here. while the journalist is talking on the telly, in a small window, nest to a bigger window that shows some protests, the ones that he is talking about. this is bbc, he has a british accent, that is what makes what he says have more clout. More clout to a non-UK accent that is. now he is fullscreen, apparently they ran out of footage of the protests. He is kind of chubby. Young and chubby.

Now the helicopter in Glasgow that fell on a pub.

We have 17 490 words here, still writing a-writing. tomorrow there is a pizza lunch in new west for the nanowrimo persons, it is called tgio meaning thank god it is over. 17 519, well this book here is far from over.

Day in December

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Ah well, some boring day in front of the computer. Author here had a slice of pizza, a piece of pizza. She ponders if the term slice is better than the term slice, depends on what kind of writer you are. From an artistic standpoint that is. Yup, art, her field, her non-field. Sitting here in the University of British Columbia, on the third floor, she got a guest pass in order to use the computer here. She is kind of playing with the idea to go back to school, she always is when she is in this place.

Later in the Day Author here had to leave her space in front of the computer, mainly because it was the computer next to the tabloid-sized scanner, a student needed to use it. Now she is sitti9ng still in the fine arts department, the sticker on the monitor reads FINEARTS-7. There is no space between fine and arts. It is twelve and fifty-eight, author here makes too much noise with her typing. This library is pretty quiet and the keyboard is rattling exceptionally loud. There is talking in the distance, mostly female talking. But in here, there is studious contemplating more so than loudish typing.

She has not much to say, not exactly good if you are a writer. Not exactly good, if your story lacks, well, a story. If you keel over with boredom because, hey, your profession of choice is, well, boring. You are the bored writer of boring stories. Who sits in a generic university library and writes up generic texts. You know, the ones that will not make it into Hollywood, the ones that do not trANSLATE WELL TO FILM. THE texts that will quiver a tad and then ebb away, all those words that will not make it into the pantheon of world lit. Words that are uttered only to be forgotten, that are typed up mechanically only to make the writer happy, a vocation that has no use, her words are not the ones that will move mountains, not even rocks, she is not the

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dramaturge that writes so that viewers storm out of the theater with ar ed flag, she is the writer who puts on chap stick, that listens in to her own typing, that is more like a handyman, a handywoman, that types up stuff, every li’l word that flows into her mind. We listen to the voices in our heads, yessirree, yessirree. A woman in hunters and a lululemon bag, a red coffee cup near the other computer. There is much to see here, so much to describe. This is a better place to write your next amazingish novel, a better place than the room with the telly, after all, this is a library, so many books here, each of them a labour of love. Each of them was classified as worth publishing by some publishing house, maybe her words will be good too, once she writes them in here. She has 490 words already, on this December ninth here in 2013. A woman is wearing green shoes, another one is wearing pink laces. The man at the other computer coughs, he has long hair, does that make an artist out of him, automatically, automatically? Yup, this is the fine arts department of the university, there are posters on the grey columns, one is by an artist that she knows. He went to her art school, his work was loved by the powers that make artists out of numbers. The powers that give out prizes, yup, those ones, those ones.

Novemberday On the telly, a james bond film, an old one. sean connery when he was young. Outside, chilliness, overcast, but no rain. Ten in the morning exactly. The telly is pretty fruitful today, first guys and dolls with sinatra and brando, a movie from 1955. And now this, author here still does not know which one of the 007’s it is. thunderball. Some of the credits are harpooned, at least one that is. ah, old Hollywood, both guys and dolls and thunderball have those black bulks at the bottom and the top denoting that it is an old movie. Which basically makes for the allure.

A Morning In January

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No writing has happened for a long time, her writing chops are utterly rusty, if chops can be rusty that is. a new year, a new day. outside, reluctant rain, in here, the typewriter, the words that are waiting to be put down. maybe we should just save this, maybe this is all the writing that will be done for today. A so very very very short allotment of words, ah, that will do it should do it could do it will do it.

Evening Yep, might as well write again. an evening in January, in the new year, while the telly is singing its songs, while there is no reason for going out, it is a tad too late now, safeway is still open, so is starbucks, but gotta take the car, so we might as well stay put here and feed some of these words to the machine in order to make it into writerland. What is a writer? Is it enuf to type, to be able to type, to be able to push the SAVE button, to spin a longwinded yarn, to bypass publication and furthermore, what really constitutes publication. Nowadays you can make your words hover in the cloud, sail away online, so what if you do not get money for your efforts, so you are merely a hobbyist, in the same way that people do embroideries or knit sweaters that nobody wears. The process is paramount, the endeavour of typing, that should be enough, should be enough. on the telly, George strombo whatever, once more rob ford, yup, the saga still goes on.

Wow, a Day in March Wow, haven’t written in ages. And the year was marching me by here, snow, rain, snow again. a reluctant spring in the making. The telly blares, an old navy commercial, the one with the woman from parks and recreation, the one with the pants for 15 bucks and the free t-shirt. author knows about the free t-shirt, has seen it in the morning at the old navy in metrotown. Ah, these days, the 52

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roaming through malls, by shopwindows, these are her days her days. oversized Victoria secret models walking towards you, the sea of people wafting all over you. take it in, write about it in the night. while the telly sings, while there is no plot, while you are holding a conversation, all the time typing ah typing. She laughs nervously to herself, the software is weird, the first letter of the sentence stays uncapitalized, short short short. Her writing her writing.

ANOTHER Day, still Gotta feed some more words to the machine. She is now sitting in this coffeeshop in itzehoe, it is ten in the morning, she came here on the train out of hamburg. Has this pass that makes it free to use the train, you can take the train as much as you want within a certain time frame. Outside of the coffeeshop, rain, coldness, the muckiness of a late winterish day, grey grey grey. Two women near the window, talking, chattering the day away. author writes longhand, she digs into the crumbly piece of cake with one hand, writes with the other. which is pretty annoying. Most of her writing is done in Vancouver, but this her short stint in hamburg gives her ample fodder for her story, her nonstory. It is all about writing, it does not really make any difference where you write. just put down words, watch your hands make marks on the paper. watch the typing, hope for a story that will crystallize, well, if a story is really what you are shooting for here.

Day 5 or something Still another day, a Sunday in march, today daylight savings time started out. and author’s diet, we are a tad too hungry here.

Sunday Evening

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She will stay here in this small city outside of hamburg, one night is not that expensive, one night in the hotel. The coffee shop is still open, it will close at six. she came here on the train, it was kind of before the big rush hour commuterish influx. Housewives are sipping coffee or tea, kaffee klatshing away. this place has pretty good bakery goods, though the bakery on the other side of the street seems to be better, it definitely is more expensive. Kind of weird how both these bakeries are located in the same street, maybe they belong to the same person. Author here writes longhand, that is what she does when travelling. Writing has to be upheld, a certain amount of words keeps her nonexistent writer career going. one day, ah, one day. we too will be published, yep, why not, ah why not. she ponders, it does not really help, that she jumps around in her writing, the locales are off, the timeline is off. maybe one could call it artistic, the confusion might mask as a stab at creativity, creative license, something of that kind. Anyhoo, she watches the women chatting near the window, she puts down the letters, she stares out at the rain. Itzehoe on a rainy grey day in late spring, she feels slight pangs, slight tinges of dislocation. but maybe this is good for writing, writers should have a feel of detachment, of being committed to the crafting of sentences, of words, there should be no distraction, no trivial life, you just have to live to write to write. then and only then will you get somewhere. If you write enough words per day, chances are, there will be something worth reading in there somewhere, somehow.

Sunday, Sunday On the telly, a news story about the 52 weeks 52 job project. Hmm, pretty interesting. She types here and types here. so this is the first day-light savings day of the year, it is not everywhere, Buenos Aires does not have the daylight savings time switch, at least not on the same date as the pips in the northern hemisphere. Author ponders, seems it is different in different places on this planet.

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SUNDAY STILL Ah, what to write about what to write about. the plane that is lost, the Malaysian one, it is not found yet. author ponders, should she write about current events, is that what writers do? her writing here is pretty off, it is all over the place, she feeds her words to the machine, sits hunched over, on the telly, the closing credits of KOJAK. Now, columbo. Columbo it is.

So still another day Just writing just writing. evening in Vancouver, weird, what with the change in daylight. day is night night is day, up is down down is up. well that is a tad exaggerated but it still holds true, a tad a tad. on the telly, jeopardy, alex trebeck asking someone about her edible garden. The garden with strawberries, something of that kind something of that kind. Let us write let us write.

Author here ponders, will this be one of those texts, one of those for the ages. One of those that will be remembered for years to come. The one that sits smack in worldlit, right smack in there. she has a mere 19 433 words as of yet, even though she started out last October. And it is march here already.

A Day in Itzehoe Once more in the coffee shop in the sleepy city outside of hamburg. Or maybe not so sleepy, maybe this her characterization of this lovely place is way to derogative. Which city wants to be called sleepy? Anyhoo, outside rain, in here a slow slow day. calm and calm and calm and calm.

The right space, ah, the right place to pen a story, to pen a text. Anyword will do, has to do. you can fashion quiet songs and fast songs, here the paper is a blank canvas, inviting the writer’s input. Outside the rain is pouring, some lowly individuals rushing through, gasping for shelter

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from the rain. It is around ten, not morning not noon. The inbetween, the time to have a coffee, but nobody comes in. it is way too rainy. Two women near the window talking, a bored waitress in the back. author here would prefer a tad more commotion in this place, something to make her write. some rhythms that will translate into her typing. She schlepped the laptop all the way from hamburg, it is so much easier to type all of this up, one does not have to transcribe the longhand text later on, which is always such an undertaking. Easier to type, easier to type. The women speak german, author knows german, but she writes in english. Read into that whatever you want. 19 688 words, write on write on write on write on. author ponders, should she have one of those swiss role slices, you know, should she dive into the one second on the lips, one eternity on the hips thingie. Maybe not, we can do without the sweet stuff. stick to the chamomile tea, it is calming soothing, maybe a tad too soothing for a writer. The women chat away, laugh out, chat some more. one of them is very pretty, the other one is exceptionally homely. Opposites attract, or something like that, something of that kind. One of them is around thirty, the other one maybe fifty. One wears jeans and a t-shirt, the other one a yellow dress. Author ponders, whether describing these two is enough fodder for an interesting text. They both are having cappuccino, one of them is putting sugar in, is stirring the fluid. Author types, while trying to watch them without staring too much. The waitress is very pretty too, young, with a really bored face. A brown and white uniform. The curtain near the window is grey and flowery. Goes with the greyness of the rain outside, the greyness of the street. A fashion store on the other side of the street, the sign says “fashion in-fashion out”, whatever that means. A woman in green unlocks the door, the place is open for business. And we write here write here write here. The chamomile tea is cold now, no more wafts of steam, author is way too bored to write something worth reading. There must be more interesting stuff to write about than the goings-on in a bored coffee

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shop in a bored town. How do you even describe boredom. How do you find excitement in boredom? ah, just soldier on, fashion the words, type them up and type them up. 19 994 words, some more and 20 000 it is it is. Yay, ah, yay.

An evening On the telly, Seinfeld, the one with the rooster. Laughtracks, deafening, ah, deafening. Author here penned her two pages, we are outta here ah outta here and outta here.

Evening On the telly, family feud. Outside, still some light, this is what is commonly known as dusk. The coffeeshop was singing or something, the so very young woman with the haunted look made her a cinnamon dolce latte, apparently it has 330 calories. Though this one had a lot of whip, the day before the same woman just put a miniscule dollop of whip on author’s drink. It was some kind of mocha, author here drinks herself through all the lattes that that particular coffeeshop offers.

Three different machiatoes, one mocha, one dolce latte. They all are sugary, they all make her wide awake in the evening, she is wide awake until two in the morn’. She sleeps until ten. That is her new daily routine, well, at last she pens two pages each and every day. an ad for applebee’s, a woman talking about fibre myalgia. A woman with a whiny voice pitching a medication. Not good not good. and we write here we write here. 20 214 words. now an ad for a sleeping medication. Big pharma at work. Better not watch the telly, what with all these toxins pitched aggressively. And now, back to family feud. Which is quite a mind numbing show, too. ah, that is why they call it the idiot box. And we write ah we write.

Itzehoe

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Once more the coffeeshop in the small city outside of Hamburg. Still rain, ah, still rain. Ten in the morning, best time to do your writing. author here is becoming one of the regulars, somehow this place is quite conducive to writing. the woman unlocks the door of the boutique on the other side of the street, she is wearing pink and lilac. Violet, different shades of violet. Where does lilac end, where does violet start?

This small city, author should walk through it, she just knows the train station and the street to the coffee shop. there must be more to this place. well, she stayed in the hotel too, but it is more interesting to stay in hamburg and take the train out here. it is good for writing, good for the muse. something should make her write the right words, the words that can be sold. Something like that, something of that kind.

The woman in pink and violet is talking to another woman, one in red sweats. They both sport ponytails, one is blond, the other one is brunette. They are both pretty. Author ponders, is this really worth writing about? Maybe it is worth twittering about, instagraming about, vine-ing about. Author here is more old-school, she only uses a laptop, hardly ever her phone. Pinterest, twitter et. al. is used via computer. Yep, that is how we roll here roll here. foursquare, scribd, issuu. At this point she is writing longhand, with a green pen, in a blue note book. All the colours of the rainbow, something like that, something of that kind. The door of the coffeeshop opens, two teenagers enter, don’t they have school? Maybe not, in germany you can finish school after grade nine, but then you have to be an apprentice, so you have to be at work. They order coffee and pastry, franzbroetchen with butter and jam. Technically a franzbroetchen is a roll, it is somewhere between bread and pastry, a mix between a roll and a danish. Used to be that they only had it in hamburg, but nowadays you can get it as far away as berlin. Author googled it, yep, the things you learn from google. And we write here write here write here.

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Evening 2 On the telly, jon stewart.

Evening 3 still, jon stewart. Funny ah funny funny.

Evening Twelve This is supposed to allude to the fact that it is the twelfth of march. She ponders what exactly do the iden of march mean? Which date is “iden”, what number? Fifteen, maybe. Outside, late late afternoon, not evening as of yet, no darkness, no blackness. Grey and grey and grey and grey.

The street was awash with cars rushing home, the workday is over, the evening and thus rest is near. All the cars hurrying home, author here had a caramel macchiato, lots of foam lots of foam. she left the extra foam in the cup, it was futile to scoop it out with one of those wooden stir sticks. Besides, she has too many lattes these days, she has gained five pounds in the last two months. That has to change has to has to. even going to the gym does not help, the thirty minutes on the stationary, ah those do not waffle against the onslaught of sugar and fat. salads, fruit, ah, the stuff she stays away from. On the telly, an ad, one of many one of many. gotta write gotta type. Recipes to riches, a cooking competition.

This young cook was thrown out, the pretty lady is staying. Anyhoo, we write here write here. outside, definite grey, so near to darkness, only the silhouettes of the trees against the grey blue purple sky. This is what we write about here, this will not cut it, nope, no way no way.

Once More Itzehoe

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Ten o’clock in the morning, once more the coffee shop. a latte, a danish. she types away. outside, not rain yet, inside here two construction workers. The bored waitress who actually smiled at author. There is a certain chumminess, that happens when you write in the same place again and again.

Her green notebook, her green pen. the green ink, the letters that march over the paper, thin tin soldiers that bow to the right. The leaning letters. the two construction workers talking in pretty thick northern tinge. The a’s that are exaggerated, author here likes it, she is originally from these shores, the local dialect feels so familiar. And we write here write here. ah to be a writer, maybe this is what she is born to do. the words that waffle through the air only to make the paper their final home, their resting place. a book, a space where words go to die. something like that something of that kind. She plays with the language in a way that a child plays with marbles. Ah, something like that. outside, the woman who unlocks the door to the “fashion in-fashion out’ store, today it is all yellow. Yellow shirt, yellow skirt, even yellow boots. A canary at work. And we write here write here. nothing to describe here, just utterly banal stuff. the poetics of the everyday, nope, no murder mystery, no spy novel. no love story either. Just the everyday the everyday. The rain, that is reluctant to wet the city, the mid-march day, that is still way too cold, more winter than spring. The sounds of the coffee shop, dishes, some music on the overhead. jazz tones, quiet ones, silent ones. all of this whole world compressed into this tiny little place, the store that makes her write, that dictates its songs to her, short melodies that vanish into oblivion. boredom is so palpable, well, there is a subject matter to describe. The two construction workers leave, two women come in. seems that everybody here waltzes in pairs. They are mostly coffee drinkers, they like to sit and chat. This place is some kind of oasis in the hecticness of the day, respites from work, respites from picking up and dropping off of children.

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Evening Evening Now it is dark outside, the curtains are drawn. She has 21 299 words here. and still writing still writing.

On the telly, once more recipes to riches. It is the same episode which author here saw before, this time from the beginning.

She still has to pen one page in order to fulfill her daily allotment of words. if you write two pages per day, you will have a book in no time. some kind of journaling of her days. on the telly, an ad for a yoghurt, yogo nano. Now an ad for fifa brasil, for the worldcup. An ad for a car, an ad for an apparatus for diabetics. An ad for purex, an ad for a news show. And back to the food show it is.

Now they have to make one hundred pies in three hours.

Lots of meat, lots of potatoes.

Another Morning in Itzehoe Ten in the morning, the coffeeshop, rain outside, the fashion store, all the ingredients of the perfect writerly environment. this day it is the laptop, the ticker tock of the keys, the words on the monitor. Signs of life, inscriptions of the everyday. The story that does not really go anywhere, there is no plot and maybe that is good so. the description of the here, of what is going on in this very space. Little words to describe this, to paint this very place, to make it hover into eternity. if that makes sense if that makes sense. her flowery language is not precise enough, it is too musical and way too vague. Her words are never ever good enough, how do you translate reality into short utterings. A picture would be better, a slight documentary film. The woman near 61

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the fashion store, today it is all black. Black with something shimmery on it. the rain is here, like always, it just is so very omnipresent in these parts of the planet. Ah and we type, write and write and write and write. this time there are three women at the table near the window, chatting away chatting away. the waitress has her hair up, the piece of pie on the table crumbles under the fork.

Author here had enough of writing, for now for now for now for now for now.

And Another Morning Itzehoe at its best, at its worst. Ten exactly, the shoplady with a green outfit, unlocking the door of ``fashion in-fashion out``. near the window, two haggard housewives, which is not quite true, they are more like the cast of the real housewives of whatever suburbian ghetto, too much makeup, too much perfume. Chatting chatting.

The green letters on the white page, slightly tilted to the left. sometimes they tilt to the left, sometimes they tilt to the right.

Outside, the pouring rain, the city in rain. Fat drops on the ``fashion in-fashion out`` sign, the quietness, the silence of the small city life here is deafening, halting, stalling, smothering. But it has its moments of peacefulness, the rain, the sharp silhouettes, the grey, the slight white. a day in the rain of itzehoe, one of many, one of many. author ponders, will this be the space that makes her pen the right amount of words, the right kind of words. the words that will make for a good read or at least a good enough read. The kind that makes yer miss the train stop, subway, metro-north, whatever. The words that will make agents fight, start auctions, one that will hover over the new york times bestseller list, only to descend rapidly, the right kind of words, the right kind of words. the women chat away, one talks, the other listens, waiting patiently for her turn to join the sing song of the conversation. The waitress looks bored, as always as always. nothing 62

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much to see here nothing much to describe here. the rain that is coming down, dictating its songs to the hapless writer. Nope, no writers block here, then again, everything written down has been said before. the problems of the writer, all stories have been told already. all over the world, all through history, herstory. Nothing new under the sun. that is why her writing will not make it, will merely exist in cyberspace. will never ever be feted, no cocktail parties with elegant canapés for her book launch, no artist talk no writer`s talk. No book tour, no talk to empty seats. No clammed up hands, no nervous tics when doing a reading. No book signings, nothing nada zip.

But we always have this imaginary coffee shop here, slightly fictional, slightly nonfictional. Her writing is way too off, way too off. she will take the train back to Hamburg, she will catch the eleven thirty. lunch will be a bag of chips from the vending machine, yay and yay.

And we write and write and write here, against the rain, the boredom, the quiet plicker placker of the early spring day here in northern germany. And still some words and still some words.

An Evening On the telly, Seinfeld, one of the episodes where one can mouth the words, what with the constant repetition of the same episodes. These are her days, watching Seinfeld, writing a tad, going to the gym, and then some more Seinfeld. Not much not much. her daily routines, ah this better be good better be good. she still has this one book to transcribe, it is the grad exhibition piece from 2009. It lies somewhere in the basement, it was supposed to be an accompaniment to a film. Which did not work out, the movie kind of exists on its own on you tube, and it is kind of off. the book has its own life, nothing ever works out the way it was planned. Elaine on the telly, Peterman, it is the suzie and Elaine episode. Laughtracks jumping against each other, the constants of her life. a tv-show, not exactly proust. 22 284 words, gotta write each and every day,

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gotta play the instrument. Practice makes perfect so they say so they say, gotta go through the motions like a dancer like a dancer. That is how writing works, apparently apparently.

Two pages are done and we are outta here outta here outta here outta here.

Well, maybe still some more lines to fill the page.

22 359, for now for now for now for now.

Not Quite Evening Itzehoe once more, the incessant rain, women chatting, a bored waitress. And ten o’clock it is, the “fashion in-fashion out” woman appears, today it is red. author here ponders, maybe she should apply for a job in the quaint boutique. But hey, we do not have a work permit here, and who wants to work for free? Then again, it would keep her busy, can you be an intern in retail?

Maybe she could convince them that this is some kind of art project, after all, she went to art school. Anything can be an art project, living, breathing, eating, it is merely a way to name something. if marcel Duchamp could call a …, well, you know the story.

The day lingers a tad, marches forward robustly, boredom is so palpable, stagnation, the blues of a small city. author here does not like small cities, she is drawn to megacities, metropolises.

What exactly is the plural of metropolis? Anyhoo, others are drawn to nature-y places, definitely not her cup of tea. What with all the bugs, nah, gimme another cup of tea. Writing is not her cup of tea either but hey, who cares who cares?

Day in Mid-March Writing against the sing-songs on the telly, while it is a late afternoon in march, a Sunday, while the machine is waiting for her input. 22 697 words, this story is so very lingering, we started this 64

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late last year, still not that many words. author has taken to polishing off a caramel macchiato each and every day, late in the afternoon, it is not very good for staying thin and fit. But it sure feels good, makes her feel full, apparently that will work against sudden binge-y attacks, the weightloss world is a complicated one. a science, one that has to be explored in detail. Many diet books line her bookshelf, so do fitness-videos, some dvd’s. the quest for the perfect figure, a lifelong obsession. And we write here write here write here.

Itzehoe Take Two Ten in the morning, the coffee shop.

Part Of Rumor back in the art school, at the computer which has its problems, mainly because the sentences are not capitalized automatically at the beginning of the sentence. the same problem is on her laptop at home, though there the first word in a sentence is capitalized sporadically, just however the machine feels like. this computer here in the art school library though has made up its mind, it is very decisive, all the first words are to be non-capitalized. it is ten to seven here in this place, the library is pretty desolate, the same people she ran into when she was a student here are still here. seems nothing ever changes, if push comes to shove, her own art career came to a screeching halt when she graduated. before that there was always the working towards the degree, what followed after was the big awakening. the degree that nobody wants. as an artist you have to make it happen yourself, you are definitely an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur with non-marketable skills. a producer of goods that will not sell easily, that have to be marketed so very shrewdly. yup, there is life after art school, but it is a vast territory with all its little sub territories. anyhoo, we type here type here, this is her second stint in this place today, maybe coming here is good for 65

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her artistic career, it is after all better than vegetating around on the couch, this way there is at least the illusion upheld that we are getting somewhere . her writing is off, the syntax meows, the grammar…, ah, don’t get me started on that. here in the library there are all those style manuals, APA, Chicago, they must be somewhere on the shelf behind her, next to the exhibition catalogs, next to the art school catalogs. grad school, author here ponders if she should once more apply to grad school, get another degree, another one that she does not know what to do with. she has written 333 words already, she had a tall caramel macchiato in the coffee shop on arbutus, outside, the bridge, steam, the bridge looks beautiful at this time of the day, the long long shadows of the impending going down of the sun, at the other computer a woman coughs and types. someone clappers over the floor, the red and black banner is wafting in the wind on the bridge, people are walking by it, cars are driving there. a light near the ocean factory, the spectacular views from this little library seat. ah, this school will move, three years from now, we have only three more years to come here and write down masterpieces. so it is so it is so it is so it is.

Once More Her writing her writing. Ten in the morning, the coffee shop, a danish and peppermint tea, the opening of the fashion store, the woman in lime-green. Three women chatting at the table near the window, the waitress making sure that she looks as bored as always, the laptop on the table waiting for author’s input. She did not make it to the first round in the amazon breakout novel contest, she never ever does. Apparently, her writings are not sellable, not readable. Ah, whatever whatever. Maybe there should be more than one main character, more than the character of the writer herself. There should be some action, something more intricate than the different coffee shops all over the world. She ponders, actually she tends to just describe this very coffee shop 66

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here in itzehoe. this is where it is all happening. or non-happening, for that matter. Well, the rain is coming down here, like always, the greyness is waiting to be described. The short flecks of greyish blue between the darker clouds, the morning street of the small city, the reddish cobblestones of the street, the one that is not open to vehicular traffic. In the afternoon it becomes pretty crowdy here, downtown itzehoe, but now, in the morning nothing is really happening outside. quietness, solitude, desolation. The laptop waiting for the words, the three women chatting away. well, one is talking, the other two are listening. In german, well, the talking not the listening. And the words hack down onto the keyboard, somehow reluctantly, somehow awkwardly. The door opens, a man in a dark suit comes in, asks for a coffee to go. He is very young, the suit looks kind of awkwardly way too big. And we write here write here, the words have to be put down, editing has to come later. She ponders, she has not been published as of yet, it is not for lack of trying to land a publishing deal, but it seems that will never happen, thus it is just writing for writing’s sake, who needs an audience, after all it seems to be more of writing as performance art, at the green table here in the coffee shop in itzehoe, on a morning in march, while the rain is coming down outside over the small city. the lowly writer as part of the reality in this place, where some people congregate and talk, this is the perfect space to build some kind of text, some kind of story. Or non-story for that matter. Author here is painfully aware of the lack of narrative, the lack of a fast-paced narrative for that matter. Her story is slow, repetitive, more near to non-fiction. And we write here write here. The peppermint tea is getting cold, the danish is staling up. she has written for one hour, stop, save, spellcheck, spell check.

She will take the train back to hamburg, she will come here again the next day, to write to write. she feels pretty dislocated, but maybe that is good for creativity, for writing. if your life circles

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around finding the right kind of words, you might construct the right ones. it is not for a lack of effort. 23 705 words, ah well ah well. time to wrap this up, time to go back to the train station.

On the Telly An evening in the tv-room, after a coffee macchiato in the coffee shop on arbutus, a woman with a turquoise i-phone, a man and a woman near the window. two men talking over a computer, the coffee is very thick and foamy. Writer here is getting addicted to it, this is her new ritual, a latte after six in the evening, making her stay awake in the night. it is good for writing though, like a fast energy jolt.

Evening, not Quite Still some more words, still some more words. outside there are still specks of daylight, grey, darkish. The last gasps before night sets in, CNN on the telly, the mystery of the Malaysian plane.

Itzehoe Once More She pays for her tea, puts her laptop in her big purse, which is easier to log around than a computer bag, takes her shawl and her toque, her coat, time to catch the train back to Hamburg, her writing for the day is done, done.

Some More Words Let us drive this down to twenty-four thousand, given that she is working on this now for half a year, she does not really have much to show for it. given, that there was the national novel writing month in the way, the fifty thousand words for that, but still this very project is lagging along, that is what happens if there is no discernible deadline, no discernible subject matter. The 68

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story just teeters along, veering off-course, the writing is not structured, which can make for happy mistakes, for nice stumbling on the right kind of words, anyhoo, 24 005 it is, time to wrap this up, it is night now, darkness outside, darkness outside.

Another day back from downtown, she met a friend on the bus, she went to granville island, she used the scanner in the art school library. To scan her submission for the art project in new york city, the one in October. Her submission to the queens museum conference in may was not accepted, neither was her submission to the writing contest. Ah, just gotta submit your stuff, some day it will be accepted. Life as an artist is way too fickle, you have to look at it like some kind of hobby, like watching Seinfeld. Like watching soaps. Like exercising. Like brushing your teeth.

In here it is way too quiet, one can listen in to the quietness. It kind of hums, the typing interrupts the hum. A car outside. maybe it is the sound of the fridge, the silence here is noisy. Something clicks in the wall, something clappers upstairs. Weird, huh. author ponders, she has to fill the dryer with the wet load of clothes, writing should wait. it is still bright outside, it is weird to sit here without the sing-songs of the telly. king of queens should be on, maybe that kind of background music would be good for this her writing. laughtracks make yer write better, so it seems so it seems. And if they do not make you write better, then at least they make you laugh.

Which is good, because we will die anyways. author ponders, maybe she should teach a philosophy course. Deep thoughts, ah deep thoughts. Life is a bitch and then you die. well, if that is not profound philosophy in a nutshell, then what is? Her writing sucks, the problem is that she has her best ideas when she is outside, when she watches the world pass her by, but you cannot really walk through the city while dictating a book, now, can you? the fridge starts roaring, author ponders what to write about. we have 24 348 here, write on and write on and write on and 69

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write on. when she used to write in the library, she would listen to music on the laptop. Somehow this should be possible with this computer too. just gotta figure out which button to push. and save and spellcheck spellcheck. Sinatra sings new york new york, author here finally figured out how to do this, before she watched the seth mc farlane song from the Oscars, funny, huh, and we write here write here, while sinatra is crooning away. yuh, yuh.

Itzehoe, Itzehoe Ten in the morning, the fashion store, the sales lady in brown, with a red hat, and white boots, quite a colourful statement, two women chatting near the window, the waitress, yup, you know the drill. Author listens to sinatra on her ear phones, she actually feels very new yorky here, europe is so exotic if you live in north america, after all, you took the red eye to jump over the pond, everything and anything is possible when you travel, you see the world, listen in to people talking in different languages, have coffee in a coffee shop in itzehoe.

Still some more words She jumps around in this her writing, she still has to feed one page or so to this machine, while sinatra is blurting out his song at the top of his lungs, for some weird reason there is some kind of interference in the song, which is very disconcerting, but well, what can you do, start spreading the news, I am leaving today, she writes and writes while listening to the music, it is much more fun to write while listening to sinatra, music dictates its songs to the writer, that is how poetry is born, something like that, her absolutes are kind of wonky, but who really cares here, as long as we drive this text forward, 24 665, outside still daylight, if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. and once more the song from the beginning, start spreading the news, the page is coming to an end, fast typing, fast typing, I want to wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep, 70

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I’ll make a brand new start of it in ol’ new york, well, the page is coming to an end, we have 24 737 words here, that should do it for today, these little town blues are melting away, something like that, ah, something of that kind, it is up to you, new york, new york.

Writing So, maybe this is her lot, sitting under the staircase and writing, in increments, while sinatra is competing with king of queens on the telly, while the sun shines invitingly glaringly outside, while the dishes accumulate while the laundry is crusting up in the washing machine, all this typing, against all of these noises, the music so very loud, the telly, the light, words have to be put on the paper, smushed into the keyboard, there is no plot and maybe that is ayokay.

Once More Itzehoe The fast walk from the station, all through the rain, and now the coffee shop, the oasis against the downpour. Waitress fashionwoman danish chatting housewives. The usual the usual. This her office, the one that makes her write just so, the right grammar, the right syntax, the right punctuation marks. One day she will be remunerated and if not, then she had a heck of a ride. A slightly boring ride, writing as chore, that is how it has to be. or else, nothing will be gained.

Gotta build something that was not here before, each and every day each and every day. the first page of today is coming to an end, the rain is still on, and we write here write here. today it is all in longhand, tomorrow we will switch.

Afternoon She did not sleep enough, barely three hours, but she has to stay awake, some kind of social obligation in the eve, thus just write, while the telly sings its songs.

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A Little Later On the telly, two and a half men. She has to get ready for the dinner she is invited to, then again it is way too soon. You cannot really sit ready for three hours, gotta wait until it is near to the time when you leave, it is all a big production. Everything has to be rightly calibrated, especially when you are not used to the social thing. If you are more of an outcast writer and once you start writing you have to become an outcast. At least for the minutes that you are sitting at the typing machine. She ponders, whatever happened to the image of a guy in black and white, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, with a zerknautscht hat and a wrinkled-up, smashed-up trench coat, hammering the last story into the type writer, what happened to boozed-up wordsmithing?

She ponders, there are as many writer personas as there are texts, anything will do, as long as the words are fed to the machine. Sinatra once more, against the laughtracks on the telly, start spreading the news I’m leaving today, outside the sun on the greenery, kind of irritating, annoying in its brightness, the music is jagged, fast, if I’ll make it there I’ll make it anywhere, the sound of the trumpet, where did she suddenly get a knack for sinatra, well, now it is cat stevens, yussuf islam, wild wild world, oh baby baby it’s a wild world, anyhoo, she feels slightly nauseated, that happens when you have to type and type and type and type, we have 25 294 here, btw, btw. Today is norooz, lots of emails to and fro, happy new year happy new year.

Itzehoe Itzehoe Today the woman is wearing limegreen, she has black boots, her hair is in spikes. The women near the window are the same that were there the day before, author is getting weary of this constant to and fro, coming here only to write some fast words, this better be good better be good.

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Today Oh very young, such a beautiful song, she put it on an equally beautiful animation, the one that she did in school, it is somewhere on a vhs tape. Anyhoo, we have enough words for today, time to wrap this up, for now ah for now for now.

Once upon an Evening 25 500 words, give some take some. it is a Saturday evening, make that Friday evening. she is back home from the screening of the best of the Ottawa animation festival, it started late but luckily it was over at nine. Some of the films were really good, some totally sucked.

Once Upon A Sunday Sunday lunchtime, actually way after lunch, after the nice brunch with friends near the waterfront, after a stint in the gym, now, a movie on the telly. Before, it was a rerun episode of “who’s the boss”. Outside sparklings of rain, the greenery swiftly waving in the wind, just barely just barely. Figure skating on the telly, jumping, this is not what a writer should write about. there are no firing squads, no thunder, no car chases. Mellowness to be described, the banal, the everyday. Maybe now is finally the time to construct a plot, something more than to describe inanimate objects. The motioning on the telly, the two dancers, the woman talking about them, the suspenseful music. They embrace, applause, applause. Now an ad for a cellphone provider, now an ad for dog food. An ad for worksafe. And back to figure skating it is. The computer makes some noise, sounds like the songs of a creek. Well, technically creeks do not have songs, they do not sing, but maybe it sounds borderline poetic. Author here feels slight nausea, she had a big pancake, strawberries, whip, banana, powdered sugar, she is full full. anyhoo, the skaters

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waiting for the score, two new skaters on the ice, both in blue, he in darker blue, she in lighter blue. the music very classical, where have we heard this one before?

Why Not Itzehoe Ten in the morning, the fashion store opens, the woman in beige. wow, no flamboyant fashion statement, what happened? Ecru, light brown, call it what you want. Beigeish, neutral. A noncolour. author here has brought her laptop, starts typing typing. Her words that will never ever sell, it is as if she just exercises her fingers. she could knit instead, she could draw. Fiddle with beads, line them up to string them on a string. Put little elements together in order to create a bigger entity.

The three women chatting near the window, huh, what a coincidence, seems that these are the same persons that were there last week. And once more, the waitress, a bored expression, this is the coffee shop where everything seems so repetitive. Which is good for writing, the same atmosphere, the coffee cup just so, the so very small rituals that drive the writing forward. in this her coffee shop office, the same table, the same décor. The ubiquitous rain. Now the only thing needed is a good enough plot, because all the small little parameters for writing are in place. somehow the muse will strike, should strike. Author here has 25 909 words, driving this up to 26 thou. The marathon of words, somebody sneezes in the back, loudly again and again. 25 933 words, write on and write on. stop and spellcheck spellcheck.

Still March On the telly, an ad for nutella, now an ad for a beer. Still some more words and still some more words. the greenery outside, the rain, the flickers on the telly. no story ah no story. Just gotta

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soldier on, who really cares that there is no story? Six more words, 26 000 it is it is. write on and write on and write on and write on.

The Coffeeshop in Itzehoe This must be the thirtiest time she is here in the coffee shop. this is her routine, to get up, take the train out of Hamburg, come here, write and go back to hamburg. Works wonders for her writings, though it seems to be a tad out there. the train-passy thing makes it cost nothing, she can use the train for as much as she wants for two months straight. And the small studio apartment in hamburg is rented for two months. So, yuh, this works out pretty well. a certain routine makes you write, though she does not really have a subject matter, nothing to write about except for the lack of subject matter. Which is ok, she just goes through the drill, through the motions, turns up at this writing place slash coffee house each and every day. this is the office she commutes to, she logs in a certain amount of time and hopes for the best. eventually there should crystallize a story, there has to has to. and if not she will die trying. Storylines are overrated anyways, all those fast-paced stories. The everyday is where it is at. And the fashion store woman is there, today in pale orange. she sure has a full closet what with all these different outfits. In all the colours of the rainbow. Today there are four women chatting it up near the window, today it is not raining. Hmm, there are varying circumstances, not all days are carbon copies of each other. there are always slight variations, slight differences. Today we are having a chamomile tea here, and a Danish with strawberries in it. it tastes kind of funny though, too sweet, too fruity. Not the food of a writer, writers are boozehounds and if they are not then their texts are subpar. They have to wrestle with the muse extra hard extra hard.

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Strange weather, the lack of rain makes the place look surreal. The rain kind of brings people together, the bad weather creates a sense of community. It is us against the weather, against the elements something like that, something of that kind.

The waitress seems to be happier than usual, she is wearing nice make-up, not too much and not too little. the right amount of paint, brings out the features in her face. author here keeps on typing typing.

Afternoon It is still pretty bright outside, author here did not go down to the coffee shop, she had too many coffees already, the nice waitress in orange filled up her coffee mug three times at the brunch place in coal harbour. Too much caffeine is not that good, not good at all. besides, she should be able to type this up without extra jolts of caffeine.

Three In The Morning That is when writers find themselves in front of a typewriter, it is a weird time to jot down ideas and thoughts or basically any kind of word buildings. Sentences that are just so, not convoluted enough, not coherent enough. stabs at molding the language just so, one-liners that can stand the pressure of time, one-liners that aspire to be classics, sentences that can survive on twitter. How to distill a complex thought, a multi-layered observation into just the right rhythm of words, how to shove the poetics of the everyday into the right staccato, how to linger the words, how to find the right pauses and how to make a go at a waterfall of words, in short, how to choreograph words just so, that is quite a challenge and maybe being wide awake in the middle of the night will make yer cling to the illusion that you mastered the craft of wordsmithing, even though you very well know that you are just as good as your last sentence, even though you know that the 76

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success of a writer is all about the right word at the right time, all about marketing and distribution, all about happy accidents, all about serendipity. But, hey, the world at three in the morning seems to be so inviting, there are no nay-sayers at three in the morning, it is this lowly quiet room and the sound of the typing machine, where the audience is both spellbound and nonexistent, where there is an applause inherent, you listen in to your own typing, to the manifestation of the words, letter by letter, the sound that each letter makes, when hammered into the keyboard, the small halting and the sucessent flow of keys that are tapped, this is the applause in the quietness of the room, the hammering down onto the keys, the sounds of which has to stand in for the noise of the clapping of hands, the roaring applause, the standing ovations, the weirdness, the strangeness of the undertaking of writing. words are so very very abstract, they are non visual, they cannot compete with film with music with images, with motioning through space in form of dance, they are so very quiet, so static, to be a writer is to have vied for a lesser art form than the filmmaker than the animator, the one that draws to tell a story. Words on a piece of paper are just black lines that are standardized, they hardly sing, they do not have a life of their own, but still you have to try, mainly because a typewriter is so handy, a pen is so handy, you can write anywhere while you cannot make a film anywhere, you need more gear though maybe nowadays you can make a movie easily by using an i-phone. As for animation, an animation stand is bulky, you cannot really make your way to the art school to shoot a movie, you cannot go to Mc Donald’s down in Richmond to produce the rightly calibrated images for a film, the logistics of making a film are strange, they are unsurpassable, at least that is how it looks, thus writing has to suffice, even if it is just writing about writing, while the day breaks silently, while time stands still, for moments for moments at a time. we have 27 045 here, time to wrap this up, for now and for now.

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She read through her words, this her morning mini essay is not good enough, the sentences are way too wonky, they have to be edited at a later time, the words that are used now have to be substituted by better ones, more accurate ones, the sentences have to be broken up and the words have to be rearranged in order to construct better sentences, that is how writing works, it is all about eradicating a way in which you arranged the words and then rearranging them, it is all about composing the right kind of sequence, there is no right and no wrong, you just have to play it by ear, try to find the right kind of fit, try to illustrate your intentions in the right kind of sentences. her words are contradictory, maybe she can blame it on the early morning-hour, then again, she could read through her text and rearrange the words in a more logical way. twentyseven thousand words at four in the morning, this better be good and better be good.

Itzehoe once More This is author’s office here, her respite from the world, where time stands still, where nothing matters but the words that climper down onto the laptop, this is where everything is in place, the chatting women near the window, the waitress, the woman near the fashion store. Author here is so used to running into these same individuals each and every day, she hardly notices that the actors change, it is not the same waitress here each and every day, the chatting women are not necessarily the same ones that were there the day before, only the sales woman of the fashion store seems to be the same, changing her costume every day. and the rain is fairly constant, it seems to make her write. the trek from hamburg is fairly constant, she usually uses the same train. she tries to make it in time, she is getting used to see the same commuters each and every day. familiarity in her dislocated life, that should translate into fairly consistent writing, consistently good that is. if you play your hands right, then good words should follow. The art of writing is pretty fickle, you have to chose the right words, which is basically hit and miss, but if 78

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you know what to expect in the place where you write then maybe you are able to fashion the right kind of words, you will be able to hunt them down and smush them onto the keyboard, somehow, ah somehomehow. 27 500, for now for now. and the rain comes down onto itzehoe, mercilessly mercilessly.

In The Kitchen The kitchen office, not a good writer studio. Great work cannot be fashioned at the kitchen table, it is not possible, the isolation will do you in. there is nothing going on here, there are plants, dishes waiting to be washed, there is the ice dancing on the telly in the other room, there is the sleeping roomie. There are the sounds of typing, but not much more, not much more. the ppl on the telly are talking about ice dancing, a woman broadcaster, she is hogging the microphone.

Now a guy is talking, maybe kurt browning, the woman called out KURT, so maybe it is him, there is music in the background, apparently someone won a medal, hope to see you next week, good bye for now. welcome to the CBC something, CBC- family Sunday starts NOW. author really should take her computer to the coffee shop, there is so much more going on there, stuff to write about, so it seems so it seems. 27 666, for now and for now, for now.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK The little writers studio on fourteenth, she has to make it up the stairs, in order to type and to type and to type and to type. There are other writers here, others that are better with the language, worse with the language. Some who are social, some who are utterly anti-social. Yup, it takes all kinds, but it seems to depend on which paragraph of their writings they are at. She has her tea, it is a tad too strong, even though she took the teabag out as fast as she could. there was a delay, the black plastic stir stick bent, so it did not really grab the round tea bag in time. the tea bag was in 79

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the hot liquid a tad too long, it made the beverage too bitter. We cannot have bitter tea here and type up amazing stuff, it is just not possible. In the other room, the telly is on, a kid’s show.

Author ponders, should the writer’s studio not be quiet? well, it is Sunday and people are bringing their children to this place and plant them in front of the idiot box, as if they cannot do that at home. weird, huh. author here starts staring at the plant near the window, it is some kind of palm tree, a small one, and some of the palm leaves are getting all yellow. The tea is pretty cold by now, she should take her laptop and go somewhere else. if you change your place a lot, a good story has to emerge, like magic, like magic. The world will dictate its stories, life will dictate its stories. New york will sing her songs to the writer, so that she will be able to write them down. the laptop is her dictation pad.

She had enough of writing, of sitting hunched over, she makes her way down the stairs, fourteenth awaits. Union square as busy as always, she picks at one of the three mini cupcakes she got in the overpriced store, Melissa-something. baked by Melissa, cupcakes by Melissa, the people behind the counter were very upbeat, they are young, it is their first job, the world is their oyster, yup, that kind of upbeat, that kind of happy. No back pains, no wrinkles. The bliss that is youth.

New york in late march, somehow spring is coming out again. pix eleven forecast snow, there was a big headline on the telly, WHERE IS SPRING, but, hey, apparently the weather gods do not watch PIX ELEVEN. The sun is shining, life is good. we are still alive, we can work on our master piece, even if nobody wants to publish it. one day there will be an elevator, one day we will sing the right pitch. And if that does not work, there is always self-publishing. Yep, something like that something of that kind. She loves union square, the hustle the bustle. Always something to see. it is less touristy than times square, you feel like you are a new Yorker, born 80

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and bred. Not to mention that the whole world seems to pretend that it is born and bred new york. Or maybe London, Milan, tokio, shanghai. Moscow, reykjavik. Yup, why not reykjavik?

Why not Tabriz? Author ponders, she is not quite sure where she was going with this, maybe she should write day-in and day-out as long as she is able to type, as long as she is able to be borderline coherent, borderline logical, for writing you do not need to be that much of a logical person, if there are glitches you can always claim poetic license. Ah, this sentence does not make any sense, well, sue me. It is incoherent dribble, well, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, huh. yup, that is how writing rolls, words are mere mutterings, slight inklings, for moments for moments. Someone plays the sax, pretty bad, new york city is happening happening.

28 349 Well, that is quite the word count. she starts staring out the window, thirty thou, nope, that is nothing. she is working on this since last september, we are now way into march, this is not much writing for half a year. more than half a year. she will never ever be able to make a living at this, don’t quit your day job as of yet. she just e-queried an agent, for another project. They all are good at e-rejecting, only once did she get a request for a whole manuscript. And that was her first query, at a time when she did not even know what queries are. she must have done something right, she was never able to replicate her first pitch. Well, he was an acquisition editor for a major publishing house, maybe she should just query publishing houses, eliminate the middle-woman. 28 490, write on and write on, write on. 28 499, 28 500, spellcheck and spellcheck.

Writing Writing

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some more words against the stories on the telly, the news read by a blond woman in purple.

Crimea, Malaysian air plane, some more Boston specific news.

Caramel Macchiatto Well, the coffee has about 260 calories according to the website of the coffee website. On the telly, a whodunit, the second one for today. A very tense situation, a murder suspect, everyone is dressed nicely. Now an ad, now the machine waiting for more input. There is not much to say, author here had her customary latte, that will not be good for her weight. It kind of fires up her writing though, so you have to weigh what is more important. The days of a writer, so boring so boring. Two pages per day, that is how you build a book. Lots of books in ten years. Once more the news, the plane, now an IKEA ad. author here ponders if the IKEA ppl in Richmond are still on strike.

The conclusion of the whodunit, you are on arrest for murder.

Itzehoe Once More This can go on forever, the daily trek to the coffee shop in this small city, the writing at ten, the watching of the opening of the fashion store, the munching on the Danish, the words that flutter onto the page. This is how world literature is built, one letter at a time, one word at a time. The three women near the window, the waitress slightly on the bored side. Outside rain, yup, everything is just so, just as usual. Nothing here ever changes, you need that for writing. For being able to write up the right amount of words, in the right order. The train ride here is fun, so is the ride back. It is like commuting, commuting and being self-employed. In a slightly weird and strange fashion, but, hey, we need to fashion a certain amount of words per day, we will sell

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them at a later point. Or put them in a warehouse, where the inventory of lost words is stashed.

Somewhere in cyberspace, she ponders if her metaphors will cut it, cut it.

Still rain, still rain, still rain.

Two And A Half Men Laughtracks laughtracks. Outside, still the day, so near to dusk, yup, the last gasps of the day.

The weather is pretty nice, Vancouver finally made up its mind that spring is inevitable. Jake and Charly on the telly, now an ad. For a bank. Author ponders what to build into this quiet late afternoon-happening, how to infuse some kind of plot into this. Just describing stagnation will hardly cut it, you can try to peel layers away and still not find something interesting to write about. The everyday is just that, the everyday. But the writing has to go on, after all this is what we have to produce here, two pages per day, two pages per day. In order to feel like a writer, you have to have something to show for your efforts, you have to have written stuff, if you want to call yourself an author. Nobody cares about publication, what is important is that you put in the time and drive the word count forward. And laugh tracks it is.

About half a page is left to fill up, we have 29 054 words here, so near to thirty thousand. Thirty thousand in spring, the non-publication is irrelevant. So she tells herself, again and again. Maybe some kind of MFA would be good, there are programs that you can do online. A certified writer should outdo an uncertified writer, after all a piece of paper should make all the difference. And still some more laugh tracks, still some more laugh tracks.

Why Not Itzehoe again

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You should be able to spin a yarn out of describing the same place again and again, familiarity of narrative has to count for something. The story will peel out eventually, organically. The rain outside, the waitress, the fashion store woman, the chatting housewives. Ten in the morning, late March. Today it is the laptop, instead of logging pen and paper all the way from Hamburg.

Heavier stuff makes you write better, if the tools of the trade are more convoluted, you look way more professional. Author here makes up stupid rules, it is fun to do that. It sure is entertaining, you have to humour yourself, especially when you are basically a failed writer. Some kind of non-writer. Well, at least we have 29 251 words here, that should count for something. 29 260 it is it is it is it is.

IN THE ARTSKOOL it is full of people here, it is rainy outside, the keyboard is wonky, the sticker on the computer desk says FOR STUDENTS ONLY, author should not be here, it is not for alumni. but, hey, gotta write, so what if it is not that legit. this school was not that good to her anyways, her GPA sucks, so there. this is what you get for giving us bad grades. next time make sure to pass your students with flying colours. so that they do not come here disgruntedly. disgruntled alumni are the worst. author has until three to use this place, three, that is when her parking expires. she puts her purple toque on, apparently it is good for her, ever since she stopped wearing it, she has a tic in her right eye. apparently her body is used to wearing a warm hat, so if you do not have that, your right eye acts up funnily. this is how life is these days, sometimes her back gives out, sometimes her knees act up, sometimes she has a nervous tic. her body is not a temple, apparently, and if it is, it is pretty derelict. the woman next to her looks at an image of a boomerang, author wonders if she should write about that. there are books on the bookshelf next to her, it is after all a library.

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books with a lot of images, this is after all an art school library. this library rocks, even if the rest of this place utterly sucks. we have 29 500 words here, still gotta write still gotta write. author has to prepare the submission to the art thingie in nyc, the deadline is april 5. today is march 25, so she has about eleven days to do that. march is thirty-one days. she ponders what to write about, well, maybe about the red toque of the woman behind her. author can see it out of the corner of her eyes, when she turns to her left. the toque woman sits diagonally behind her. there are lots of books to her right. lots of dictionaries. world film books. you know, the usual art school library fare. volumes that nobody reads. in another life author here thought that she will be the next Rosalind Knauss, well, that did not really work out, now, did it? nowadays she just types up random shit, sends it out to publishers , gets rejected. it keeps her busy, the fake writerdom is fun. the unsuccessful writerdom. maybe she should go on a book tour, sell all her rejected publications. there are about twelve of them, each 300 pages long. tomes that nobody reads. that are not in the pantheon of world lit, well, not yet not yet. first you gotta die, and then somebody rescues your works from the attic. that is how this works, because, hey, anyone can write stuff. grocery lists, text messages. who is gonna say what will be in the pantheon and what the f. is a pantheon anyways? we have 29 785 here, ah great ah great. she should go down to the caf and have some kind of tea, there must be still time for that. she feels like baring, barfing all over this keyboard. the typing machine is kind of like an old fashioned typing machine, maybe this is not the right keyboard for barfing. and we type here type here type here type here. an English-german woerterbuch, Langenscheidt. 29 855, a woman starts to sneeze but aborts it in time. there is a book that says A HISTORY, the rt is not there. maybe it is really “a history” instead of “art history”, who knows, who really knows? 29 894, write on and write on. 29 901, 4 now and 4 now. it is 2:49, the woman in the red toque is now at the printer. she is young and

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pretty, apparently everybody in this place is young and pretty. author did not really register that when she was here, it was more about the struggle against the machine, against the educational machine. well, more against the literal machine, the softwares that did her in. she never became the next seth mac farlane, which is a tough thing to bear. this place produces a lot of failed animators, lost animators. well, maybe, it is because only seth mc farlane is seth mc farlane, there is no room for another one, apparently, apparently. how many animators do you know, well, if you are not an animator, you would not know any. well, except for Disney, yuh. author ponders, her insights today are too propound for her own good, maybe it is time to make her way home, spellcheck, save, the like and the like. the two women next to her talk animatedly in a language that she does not understand, another woman walks by, sneezingly. yup, that is how it is how it is. 30 097, yay and yay and yay and yay. 30 113, actually, actually. it is three oh five, her parking has already expired.

SKIM MILK CARAMEL MACCHIATO An evening in Vancouver, author makes it down to the coffee shop in the small strip mall on arbutus. well, it is not really a strip mall, strip malls are more rundown. This is just, well, a mini mall. Or maybe it is a strip mall. It has a subway, a starbucks, a nail salon, an m and m, a sea food place. a chevron next to it. on the other side of the street is a country club. So it is a country club adjacent strip mall. Anyhoo, the non fat latte was kind of disgusting, the skim milk does not go well with the caramel. Maybe disgusting is too strong a word, let us just say that the beverage did not taste good.

Now on the telly, it is family feud. Not exactly something to watch if you want to pen world lit.

Outside, still bright daylight, this is what happens when day light savings time changes. It is end

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of march, so the sun is starting to go down later in the day. author ponders, is this really something to write on. there is no story in this, at least none that is gripping. No cliff hangers in the description of her surroundings. Author received an email from the word construct group at the community center, apparently they are out of authors. Anyhoo, let us write on here, write on here.

ITZEHOE ONCE MORE Beginning of april, ten in the morning, the coffee shop, the waitress, the three woman chatting near the window. the saleswoman in green, the fashion store. Everything is in place, author brought pen and paper. yup, today we are rolling old school here. she feels tinges of homesickness, but not that much, not that severely. It is more a feel of dislocation, of slight disorientation. It is definitely good for writing, there are no chores to do, which is always good for getting the job done. writing, ah, writing.

NYC Five in the evening, union square. so many people, so many people. author here ponders, she could go up the flight of stairs to the writer’s studio, but somehow she does not feel like it. it is more fun to hang out here in the city, there is so much to see, so much to do. new york is happening, fast, furious, furious.

30 522 Well, at least the word count is marching forward. on the telly, family feud, steve Harvey, now it is two and a half men. An ad for a car, an ad for a sandwich. An ad for a furniture store, and an

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ad for a computer. a cereal. This is how you drive the word count forward, you watch the telly and document what you see.

LATE AFTERNOON It is darker now, not dark though. just late late afternoon. author here ponders what else to write about. maybe one of these days she will be one of those writers who tell stories. Beginning,middle-end-kind of stories. Author here is tired of writing, it is not writers block, it is just a physical aversion to sitting hunched over and tap at the square keys on the laptop. The noise on the telly is annoying her, it kind of counteracts clear thinking. Noise-pollution, noise-pollution.

Writing to block out the words on the telly. the sounds are rapid, music, talking, the constant change of pace. Exhilarating and stifling at the same time. 30 703 words, yay and yay.

NYC take two Now it is later in the afternoon, six-ish, author ponders if this constitutes early evening or late afternoon. she will go and listen in to a panel discussion at Strand’s, the bookstore. The strand or strand’s, anyhoo, it will start at seven. Writers talking about publishing, should be good, maybe we can learn something from the event. Maybe we will learn how to write better, well, if that is something you can learn. Author here believes that writing is something you learn by doing, you do not really need a coach. You just have to have staying power, the patience to sit at the computer, strong hands that can weather a lot of typing, wrists that are prone to resist carpal tunnel. You need to have shoulders that can thrive while being contortedly hunched over, a neck that can stay tilted while you are staring down onto the key board. yup, that is what it takes to be a writer and nothing more, nothing more. the rest is easy peasy. And 30 883 it is it is it is.

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Still two and a half men, still laugh tracks laugh tracks. Outside, it is really getting dark and we have next to 31 000 words here.

ITZEHOE ONCE MORE ONCE MORE The coffee shop. author ponders if this will work out. the daily trek to jot down two pages, the weirdness, the strangeness. if you are a writer, you should be able to write anywhere. you should not travel to the other side of the world, you should not have to commute two hours per day. writing should come naturally, at least in a perfect world. well, at least she has 31 000, and maybe in the end it does not really matter what it takes to produce all of these words.

FALLING Asleep AT THE COMPUTER way too tired 4 this, there will be a talk in one hour, well, maybe more like forty minutes from now, author here ponders how she will make it until then. she is way too fatigued, way too exhausted to make it through the talk. not enough sleep, an exhausting exercise regime, one hour of stationary bike and walking over the cambie bridge, that is sure to do yer in do yer in. then again, she does not really have the energy to make her way home, she might just as well just stay put here, type up some stuff until it is time to venture into the presentation room on the second floor of the north building. after all, she came all this way down to the island, she had no idea that she will be this exhausted. we are hungry here too, but lunch has to wait until after the presentation. and we write here and write here. the presentation will be about something called design theory, whatever that might be whatever that might be.

LATER IN THE AFTERNOON

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Well, it is once more the usual, the telly with all its laugh tracks. Some ads, outside still daylight. author here ponders what to write about, there is not much to say here, but that should not stop us here.

STILL LATER On the telly, the show about how everybody loves Raymond. The guy from king of queens is in it, funny how they merge two sitcoms. They did the same with golden girls and the show about the pediatrician and his two daughters. Author here should really get a life, some place so very far away from tv-land. Where there are no noises coming out of some box. Where everything is three dimensional instead of two dimensional. And we still are writing, still writing.

YUH, ITZEHOE, WHY NOT, WHY NOT A day in april, still rain though. today, two women near the window, chatting away. the fashion store opening, ten in the morning it is. author does not come here on Sundays, apparently this place is closed on Sundays. besides, most stores are closed in this part of the world on Sundays, thus the fashion store must be closed too on Sundays. the coffee is pretty smooth, author here is having a latte, a vanilla latte with skim milk. and the ubiquitous Danish. she usually goes for runs in the afternoon, after all you have to work off the pastry and the sugary drinks. A run around the alster, whatever the weather is.

The door opens, two construction workers come in. order pastry and coffee. All the people in the coffee shop start talking, in german. Anyhoo, we type here and type here.

31 474 words, well, at least this is going forward. the fashion woman outside is wrapped in some kind of black and white flowery outfit, too many ruffles, she looks like a pillow. A decorative

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throw pillow. Well, she sure makes sure to make a fashion statement. must be tough to do that each and every day, each and every day.

The rain stops, the sun is coming out. the vanilla latte is getting cold, chilly.

She has to wrap this up in order to catch the train back to Hamburg. A fast walk from the train station to the coffee shop, that is all she sees from this city. The daily routine that keeps her grounded. That makes her type up all of these words, which somehow somewhere will morph into some kind of narrative. Well, 31 608 it is, for now and for now. stop, save and spellcheck spellcheck. Not necessarily in that order.

Tomorrow will be another day, another day to type up two pages straight.

31 646, yup, for now and for now.

ONCE MORE IN THE LIBRARY so now we are back in the art school, it seems as if time has stood still, all the same people doing time in this place. and if push comes to shove so does author here, she is even lower on the food chain, she is the one who was not able to translate this art school education into a job. she ponders, is it the fault of this particular art school. would another art school have been better, she obviously is of that opinion, the particularities of this place just suck, the logistics are in a way that you are out of a job once you are finished with this place. there are other art schools which have the propensity to propel your work into the limelight, schools in new York city or London, this particular art school just did not cut it, at least not for her. then again she met alumni from parsons, from tisch, from pratt, who were just as unhappy, she met people from the film program at yale who were not happy with their education. it comes with the territory, so they say so they

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say. the profs will do what they can to hinder the careers of the next generation, let us see how many boulders we can haul into the paths of the next big things. anyhoo, the ocean factory spews out its smoke, there is a lowly red blossom on the grey table, between the keyboard and the monitor. author here is still killing time, there will be a talk at eleven thirty, one on sculpture, sculpture. on the second floor of the north building, we still have forty-five minutes until then. maybe we should eat something in the market or something in the coffee shop near the bus station, after all she just had a yoghurt for breakfast and that is not enough, not enough.

THE TELLY King of queens on the telly. funny, huh, funny.

Now Two and a Half Men. Author here ponders, so this is what you do four years out of art school. You work on books that nobody publishes. And maybe rightly so. though author here definitely doubts it. the publishing industry is just biased. Yup, this is the story we stick to here.

Her writing is good, well, good enough to be precise. Who is to say what constitutes good writing. you cannot really argue about taste. It would be better if her computer would work better and by that we mean that it should capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence automatically. Anyhoo, we type here and type here. 32 097, not bad, huh, not that bad. Laugh tracks on the telly, outside the shining sun, in here the days of a couch potato. The long long long days of a couch potato. Author watches a tad tv, a tad of a web series called THE LOUISE LOG, she knows one of the actresses, met her in nyc while working on this art project. Anyhoo, still writing still writing. time to watch BIG BANG, time to get a coffee, time to do some dishes. And the sun is still shining, author feels nauseated, the tortellini had this weird aftertaste. Now Sheldon, priya, koothroopali, actually, the whole gang is on. and “our whole universe”, you

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know the song that nobody can decipher. Now an ad for an allergy medication, an ad for tj-max. tj-max and marshalls. Now Disney something, world, land, and now an ad for a movie. Some kind of chick flick. What would you call American pie? A rooster flick? Anyhoo, writing, ah, writing. an ad for lord and taylor. An ad for some kind of car, a Volvo apparently. And back to the cheese cake factory. 32 286, 32 287. Laugh tracks, ah, some more laugh tracks. 32 300, stop and spell check spellcheck.

ON THE TELLY- TAKE TWO Well, now it is HOUSE on the telly, outside, the sun is shining, author here went down to the little strip mall on arbutus, she ordered a skinny vanilla latte, which was way too cold. and then there was no place to sit, well, at least not a nice place to sit in. The two young guys left her favourite seat in a total mess, only to drive away in a black Mercedes. Brats, your mom does not live here, clean up after yourself, how tough can it be. so author sat in her car and had her coffee, and now it is once more watching the telly while typing and typing. An ad for hair products, an ad for a fiber beverage. Now an ad for ikea, now an ad for car insurance. So you need nice furniture, good hair, a car and regular bowel movements. And now an ad for a car. and outside the sun is shining, she writes here and writes here. today she listened in to a presentation by a sculptor who wants to teach at the art school, the woman was all over the place. apparently it does not take much to be an art teacher, given, that author here did not make it as an artist is an attest to that. four years out of art school, a more than luke-warm career. And we are typing atyping. Author feels borderline nauseated, she cleaned up the dishes, at least she took them out of this room and lined them up on the counter in the kitchen, like little toy-soldiers waiting to be called out. the sun shining, the door handle glistening. It is not aligned rightly, author ponders,

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maybe she should work on her ocd. The dishes would thank her, ocd is definitely underrated. 32 608, a Thursday in Vancouver, late march in 2014.

RAIN It is raining cats, dogs and the like. there is one hour left until the talk in the art school, actually there are two talks. Simultaneous ones. which makes it that much tougher to render a choice.

Author feels not like going, it is a bitch to fight the traffic and there will not be free parking.

Which means that you have to pay, not to mention the price of gas. Maybe sitting in here warm and cozy is better, so much better than to venture out into the wet wild world. sitting at a type writer while all hell breaks loose. While one can hear the raindrops fall, while quietness and silence is all that is here. while boredom sets in and grapples her at the throat. suffocating, stifling, the like and the like. the solitude of the writer, only her and a bunch of words to keep her company. she is tired, fatigued, physically sleepy. Time to take a nap, so close after waking up. after shower, after morning coffee. The trek to the market did not help, after all the market at this time of the day is swimming in retirees. her back acts up, must be all the retirees she saw. Typing ah typing. One of the talks will be on sculpture, the other one on design history, design theory.

Maybe they will say things that are utterly new to her, maybe they will merely reiterate what we already know. it is like watching a live concert by a singer you already know. writing ah writing. that is where it is at, she does not know what that really means. her words klimper down against the machine, a writer is merely a person in a room with way too many words, silence is golden, now chew on that and chew on that. time to venture down to the art skool, for moments for moments. The art school instead of live tv, theater instead of film.

EVENING NOT QUITE

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So rainy. She could go down to the coffee shop, have a skim milk latte, instead of sitting in here and typing while the Simpsons float all over the telly. it is getting so addictive though, a latte each and every evening, as good as it is, it is not good for health, supposedly. One can do without a latte, it is way too rich, especially in the evening. outside, still light, the greenery on one side is extra lightened as if the sun is shining straight on it, the rain makes everything look crisper, fresher. Homer and bart, ah, yellow trash. Which is how bart refers to himself in one episode.

Now marge and bart. Homer in a gay bar, make that a club. An ad for a mattress. An ad for a car. all kinds of ads, gotta really write about that.

TWO PAGES TWO PAGES She is at home, time to type up those two pages. the ones that have to be fed to this machine, while the telly is playing quietly, while the day is pretty grey, a grey greenery, while the laptop sings silently, in a muffled way. the day is soso, nothing interesting is happening. writers do not have to have interesting lives, interest will stifle the words. the muse likes banal lives, she likes nice fingers that are able to type. Nimble ones. Author here had a soso day, the Y, two malls, two train rides, a phone conversation, two you tube movies, make that two and a half. A banana bread, a coffee with cream, a piece of something that is named swiss roll. a sample of gen maicha tea, cold. Well, more like room temperature. It is a Saturday, a march Saturday. She read her email, answered, in the apple store. That is what apple stores are for, to check the email, to shoot selfies and put them on vimeo. She ponders, is a selfie a movie or a picture. For her, selfies are movies that are ten seconds long, so, technically they are non-selfies. They are selfie-films. anyhoo, the day marches forward, though stumbles is a more accurate description. author went down to the art school in the morning, she looked through the MAA exhibit, the first-year MAA students’ exhibit. Author tried out for the MAA program, about four years ago. she did not make 95

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it, which was kind of weird and strange. they let you in for undergraduate but do not let you in for graduate school. What a weird school. Well, her grade point average was too low, but, hey, whose fault is that? anyhoo, let us write and write. on the telly two anchors in front of a screen with people dressed in green. Lime green that is. now an image of a building, now a police car, now a mug shot. Now cst. Fiona something talking. Cst. is short for constable, you can decipher that from the uniform. People who watch the telly are definitely of the deciphering kind.

Apparently a shooting in Brampton, Ontario. Author is not quite sure if the images were about the shooting, it is kind of weird to follow the telly, when there is no sound. Today it is earth hour.

Chris Hatfield and the startrek guy are making propaganda for earth hour, two white men. The biggest proponents of sustainability tend to be white men, read into that whatever you want.

Anyhoo, we write here and write here. 33 501 words, still one page to go.

Now a pretty woman on the news. Now she talks about the weather. anyhoo, we type and we type here. now she is talking in front of a map. Now in front of a zoomed-in map. Kingston this, Ottawa that, western ontario this, eastern ontario that. so this is what progress looks like, all the networks of the world. just push the button, and you can see the news according to, well, bbc, doha, toronto. she ponders, should it not be London, doha, toronto. her writing sucks, that is how it is how it is.

Author here feels pretty nauseated, that happens when writing.

On the telly, a man who talks. Now a woman who talks. Author has turned down the audio, the news is nicer when served cold. well served without audio. She ponders, her word play is everything but intelligent, that is why she is unpublished. She just watched a video about max Frisch, he said that he is the kind of writer who rewrites a lot. Rewrote a lot, that is. author here

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is not good with using the right tense in a convoluted sentence. And she definitely is not the rewriting kind. And that is how you avoid publication and the paparazzi that comes with it. anyhoo, we have 33 743 words here, time to go down to the quaint coffee shop on arbutus, time to have a skinny vanilla latte, time to watch the cars drive by. a man in a beard on the telly, soldiers, tanks, police. Something written in Arabic. A picture of putin, a picture of obama. Who really writes the news? Randolph hearst said something about furnishing the wars and the news.

She can google the exact quote, the one that was quoted in the james bond film she saw in dunbar. Something about how the media creates all of the wars in the world. that cannot be true, billy joel must have had it right, more so that is. and we write here and write here and write here. end of page, and we are outta here and outta here. 33 888.

Now an ad for some skin cream, apparently it will make your lines vanish. Author here should still type up some more words in order to drive this down to 34 000. Maybe some reflection on skin lines, on wrinkles. Leonhard Cohen was looking for someone with lines in her face, he will not land a contract as a sponsor of an anti-wrinkle cream. anyhoo, we write and we write here. fifty-nine more words and we are there are there. at the 34 000 line that is. on the telly, rawhide, the theme song, now steve mc queen. a very young one, “wanted dead or alive”. Now an ad for gilligan’s island, anyhoo, we have 44 thou, time to watch what is on the telly, no more words for now and for now.

NIGHTY NIGHT So late in the nite, way past midnight, batman and robin on the telly. author here saw it seventeen years ago, wow, time sure flies. She looked up the quote by hearst, it went like this: you furnish the pictures and I`ll furnish the war. But apparently he never really said it according to the

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American journalism review, some obscure place out of the university of maryland. Be that as it may, we are still writing here, tired, exhausted, the like and the like. author here was pulling something close to an all-nighter, she was busy with preparing her submission to the art project in October. It finally went through, it took her forever to figure out how to do this. she will get the yay or nay on april 26, ah well, might as well. on the telly, a lot of flimmer and glitter, futuristic fighting and a pre-gubernatorial arnold Schwarzenegger. And we write here write here.

34 175, for now, for now. the klirring on the telly, noisy, sharp blades` sound, music that underscores the drama. metallic noises, sharp whiffs of noise, that zip and zap in perfect synchronization with the blue-green images, the fast motions of the protagonists, the antagonists.

And we break to commercials. 34 225, for now, ah, for now, for now.

Writing ah Writing She went out, the usual trek down to the coffee place, a Sunday afternoon, two PM, a coffee a banana bread. So many many people, no place to sit. A short man cut in line, he wanted to show the sales woman, the barista in black and green, his tab, apparently he thought that he had been overcharged. Yup, this is the stuff you encounter when venturing out into the world, exciting happenings, exciting happenings. Two women looking at the front of their car, now that is something to tell for the ages. The everyday, that is where it is at, where it is at. A phone conversation, the lazy lazy weekend. the swiss roll, the two eleganr women in French. The Quebecois broads, one in black, one in beige. nicely make-upped, nicely coiffed. The weight in the Y, two pounds lighter than the day before. What happened, she only worked on her submission, apparently the wrangling against the machine makes yer thin and skinny. 34 411, for now and for now, for now.

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LATER THE SAME DAY She was in oakridge, then phone calls, later a chai tea latte in bean bros. the Sunday evening crowd, a ginger cookie, oversized. People on their laptops, working away for tests. It is the end of march after all, there are upcoming finals all over town. Author misses school, she should take some kind of class. instead of hammering away on the laptop, instead of writing this up. there is no plot here, it is merely a journal, the day-to-days of a writer. Outside, greenery, crisp, forlorn.

One page more and we are outta here outta here.

ITZEHOE AGAIN Ten in the morning, the fashion woman in green with black polka dots, an up-hairdo, three women chatting, the waitress looking out the window. the crumbly danish, the peppermint tea.

The laptop, the typing. March in the north of germany, the words accumulating on the keyboard.

Author ponders, she should send her stuff out, you have to woo editors, publishers. Acquisition editors, the ones that make or break a writer`s career. The ones that will make it happen or not.

Lit agents in nyc, those are the ones that have the ability to say yay or nay. She taps away at the keyboard, that is her life these days, her words, ah, her words. She reads a lot, mostly online, they say that the more you read the better you will write. Author here is not quite sure if that is true, anyhoo, she has to finish this page. The Danish has a blueberry filling, it oozes out of the flakey pastry. It is a tad too sweet, author here likes the quark kind more. There are some sprinkles of sugar on top of the pastry, she ponders if she should take a pic. Put it on instagram, like the young ones do. She can describe it in words, like a gourmet cooking showish judge.

Anyhoo, she has to fill the page, so that she can make her way back to the train station in order to catch the train home to Hamburg. This is how we write here, take the train to another town, go to

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the local coffee shop, write some, take the train back to the bigger city. The ritual of coming here will make for good writing, or for adequate writing at the very least.

STILL SUNDAY EVE It is twelve minutes after seven, she is about to wrap this up, outside, white, grey sky, with all the fern in front of it, the curtains are half-drawn, which makes the view more cinematic, more theatrical. Looks like a curtain of a stage, where the drama is about to unfold. Except for that there is nothing going on, there are only trees, and the sky, solitude, stagnation, desolation. She types types, pretty hectic, pretty erratically. End of page, ah, finally finally. And one hundred pages we have here, yay, ah, yay. one hundred pages in seven months, well, better than nothing better than nothing. she should still type in order to drive this up to 35 000, two milestones at once, depending on which system you use to count the words. Pages or each word, there are so many ways to measure something. Still forty words, run forwards, write ah write. Outside it is getting darker, on the telly an old tv-show, kojak, the words that have to float onto the page. still no narrative, no discernible plot. Six more words, three, two, one, 35 thousand it is it is.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Not exactly the best time to write but better than lying wide awake and doing nothing. Counting sheep has lost its lustre. One might just pen one thousand words against the quietness of everybody else sleeping in the house. When nothing but one`s own typing pierces the desolate soundlessness. Author here ponders whether the words come easier in the midst of the night, during the early morning hours. When it is only a room of one`s own, when one had merely four hours to sleep. These days her sleeping patterns are way out of whack anyways, must be old age or the illusion of old age. She ponders how much is real old age and how much of it is perceived.

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You just know that at a certain age your body is supposed to work slower, your reactions are prone to be more restricted, your agility lessens, the like and the like. But then there is any number of eighty-year old marathon runners, people who play golf until age ninety-nine. They are paraded on television, they are atypical but they did something right. They ate the right combination of food or they had good genes, superior ones. Anyhoo, we write here, while it is deep in the night, yup, instead of sleeping instead of resting. 35 227 it is it is. she ponders how much longer she is able to write up a book without any glimpse of a plot, apparently she is able to sustain this state of plotlessness indefinitely, all those essays in art school and community college produce a writer that can wax on indefinitely, letter after letter, word after word. The news on the telly is bleak, well, seems that the news is always bleak, apocalyptical. That is what makes for ratings, for readership. And we write on and write on here. While the birds start up, while the city slowly awakens.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE? She now manages to push the right button in order to eliminate the wrong spelling, well, to be precise, the wrong punctuation mark. Somebody helped her to understand the intricacies of this keyboard further which is nice. a Monday here in itzehoe, yup, she was on the early morning train out of hamburg. Well, not really that early, there is no use to come here too soon, apparently this place here opens at nine. The coffee house opposite of the fashion store, apparently it caters to shoppers and they just come out of their nests at ten. When the stores in this little city open.

Most coffee places are open at six in the morning, well, not this one, not this one. this Monday, there are two women chatting near the window and the fashion woman is wearing blue. author here is writing longhand, a nice change for her fingers. to scrawl the pen over the page, to paint the letters instead of letting the fingers fly over the keyboard. Using different tools for writing 101

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makes the task feel more alive, more interesting. Counteracts the monotony of the words. for moments at least, yup, so it seems so it seems. Today it is a danish with a raspberry filling, today it is chamomile tea. Yup, to hiccup the daily conventions, that seems to make for better writing, more fluent choreography of the sentences. the language is malleable but only to a certain extent.

She scribbles down onto the paper, fast and fast, her train will leave soon and she has to finish this up and then rush back to the station to make it in time, to make it in time. her writing her writing, ah, this better be good better be good.

IN THE ART SCHOOL Ah to kill time before the listening in to the sculpture lecture on the second floor of the north building, in the room that is slightly uncomfortable, in the room that is the lesser room for listening in to talks, well, it must be the third best room, a room that wants to be an amphitheatre but will never ever make it. Actually it must be number four or number five in the ranking of nice rooms for talks, there are others in the photography place and in the film place which are definitely better. They have the feel of a small theater, a very cozy theater, one for a small group of aficionados. There is one on the third or fourth floor of the south building, the one behind the sound studio. There is one in the painting place where painters tend to talk. There is one where poets do their readings, there are all these different places here. Author ponders if she should be part of the leeway once more, the studio that costs about three hundred bucks for one month, the one where she can produce, well, stuff. She could do exhibitions, try her hand at curating other people’s shows. Instead of just doing shows of her own shitty stuff. She ponders if she is organized enough, if she is enough of a people-person. She is more the one who sits in the corner and writes, the one who sits in the corner and doodles. She could venture out of her comfort zone but why? 35 thousand words, so near to 36 000. Writing ah writing, typing this up at this weird 102

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typing machine, the one that is connected to this weird computer, the art school library is happening ah happening. It is pretty chilly in here, pretty desolate. One hour left to the talk, a talk about sculpture, by a potential sculpture teach. People who wanna teach sculpture in this place, how do you possibly teach sculpture? You make SCULPTURES, YOU LEARN BY DOING, BY CHISELLING AWAY. FOR SOME WEIRD REASON THIS keyboard makes her type up all these words in caps, something went wrong here, something always does with these machines here. And we are typing a-typing. 36 000, exactly, x-aktli.

BACK HOME So, she listened in to this artist talk by someone named peter simensky or some name like that, he was really good, he went to hunter college CUNY, and it seems that hunter college is really good, this is the second artist she encountered who went to hunter, seems hunter is really good and it is affordable to boot. Well, more so for US citizens, if you are international you have to jump thru hoops what with the permission to study in the US, tons of paperwork, so it seems.

Anyhoo, the college is conveniently situated in midtown mAnhattan, all of simensky’s work had a decidedly new york whiff, a new york feel. Anyhoo, we type here and type here, back at home, at the kitchen table, listening in to the songs from the fridge. Author had some kind of pastry on granville island, a linzer torte triangle though the woman called it linzer torte square only to correct herself., yup, triangle it was, the cream was way too rich, there was a funny aftertaste, the price though was very good, one buck, the cup of the tea was shitty, the tea was whopping out of the slit when walking. Anyhoo, gotta write, gotta type here. 36 211, this marches forward pretty aggressively, pretty aggressively.

ON THE TELLY

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Well, on the telly, law and order. This is the second show she is watching, not exactly what author here usually watches. Her usual fare is sitcoms sitcoms. They are shorter, half an hour, they do not contain blood, they have laugh tracks, well, most of them do. but nowadays she watches house, law and order, bones, too, mainly because they are all on after big bang. After king of queens, two and a half men, how I met your mother. They are more serious, more gruesome. House, law and order, bones, that is. author here watches way too much tv, the constant music of the telly will do her in. you cannot produce good lit while listening in to the idiot box. Or maybe you can. there are no rules for the life of a writer, you gotta play it by ear. At least that is how the greats do it, did it, she watches author interviews on you tube, everyone has his or her own M.O., there are as many of them as there are writers. anyhoo, we have page one oh three here, this is marching forward, marching forward. slowly steadily, slightly at a glacial pace. On the telly policemen running after a baker, they hand cuff him. anyhoo, we are writing ah writing. outside still a sunny afternoon, yup, spring is here, forcefully. later on she will have a latte, but not yet not yet. let it be more near darkness, near night. she feels more like typing, like producing some words some words. on the telly, an ad for a car, the kia Sorrento, now an ad for a beauty college. 36 499 we have we have.

And we write and write while watching the telly. this show has former sitcom stars on it, angela bauer from who’s the boss, the dad from growing pains. Wow, they hardly aged, twenty years did not change them.

And these are her insights, maybe this cannot cut it. anyhoo, now an ad for expedia, an ad for kmart. An ad for a tv-show, an ad for painters. Certa pro. An ad for a credit company, an ad for a weightloss company. or a liposuction company. and back to the police show it is. whodunit, ah, whodunit. 36 602 it is it is.

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HER WRITING HER WRITING Once more sitting in the coffee house in itzehoe, she looks at the crumbs of her danish, looks out at the rain. Her words on the paper are like a never ending knitting, one that she works on incessantly, one that does not go anywhere. A knitting that seems to go on forever, one that she knits so that she has something to do. Maybe the knitting metaphor is way too wonky, after all you have something to show for when knitting. Socks, pot warmers. Her knitting of the wordyarn is merely an accumulation of words, the word count marches forward, but she feels as if she is driving in circles. She comes to this coffee house, she types up, writes up her daily dose, but there is no real breakthrough, there still is no plot, it is only the mere description of this her struggle with the language. The documentation of writers’ block, writers’ inability to fashion the right words. A description of failure, of defeat. The manifestation of self doubt. But there is something to be said for the soldiering on, after all this will, should go somewhere. Lots of human endeavours are shootings in the dark, after all who needs a marathon run, a basket ball game. Art is so near to sports, you row because it is exercise because it seems to be a positive outlet for your energy. Writing is of the same kind, it is time well wasted. And we are still writing still writing here. The woman in yellow opens the door of the “fashion-in-fashion-out” store, the three women are chatting, the waitress is bored. Itzehoe like it was the day before, like it will be all through days to come. Author sticks her fork into the last crumbs on the plate, it is time to pay, time to march back to the station to catch the train back to Hamburg. She has some more words, which should count for something something. Maybe sixty words more, she counts the words by page, one page has about eighty words here. Maybe still some words and still some words more. The rain is still coming down, it seems to be the ubiquitous background music to her constant writing. The water that is coming down, incessantly so incessantly. Author here is 105

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the kind of writer that prefers to describe rain more so than human interaction, inanimate objects more so than human drama. It is easier to describe concrete stuffi-muffi. So it seems so it seems.

We must have about 37 000 words or so, yup, time to wrap this up and wrap this up. Time to run after the train, time to host her own little performance piece. The weird and strange trek to a different city only to jot down some words on a sheet of paper. her tea is cold now and the crumbs are getting dry. The women are still chatting, well, this is the reality of this place. she is definitely out of words, just puts down words mechanically. Gotta stop this and stop this. for now and for now, for now. 37 137, maybe, maybe.

MORNING MORNING Some jots onto the paper, before heading out. the question, how do I write, what do I write. I try to stay abstract, by that I mean, if I write about a tummy ache I write in a way that is generic, that describes the condition of anytummyache, in a way that anybody can relate to. I do not describe my specific tummy ache here, like an ache in the right side of my body, near that specific rib, it comes and goes every two minutes. The specifics are unimportant, the exact locale is unimportant. I describe my specific tummy ache in a way that anybody can relate to it. The tummy ache of the human condition so to speak. Anyhoo, I hope that what I just wrote makes sense, gotta have the morning coffee, the caffeine jolt that makes yer feel alive, come alive.

Something is cracking in the wall for moments, there it is again, again.

FAST JOTTING All the day moving around, resting, moving again, from place to place all over the lower mainland. Now back at the computer, to push some words into the machine before night time, while modern family is flimmering all over the telly. author ponders, she has not 106

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compartmentalized this book properly, it starts out with book zero and then it stays in book zero.

For the whole length of the text. Maybe she will change that, maybe there will be regular chapters. The right increments of chapters, so that there is an illusion of orderliness. Instead of all these jotting, all these short vignettes. On the telly the gay couple is fighting, outside it is pretty lightful, it is late evening, late afternoon, but it seems to be more sunny than at noontime. She had a latte, a vanilla latte. Down in the coffeehouse on arbutus, she actually brought it home, well, most of it. To watch modern family, anyhoo, we write here type here. There are dishes accumulating in the sink, there are sofa cushions that are non-ordered. How can you write in chaos, you need a Spartan table, clear lines in order to write orderly. Something that screams office. Something that screams work space. Something that says these are serious words that will be bound in non-decorative books, these are words that are as solid as the foundation of a building. These are words as accurate and exacting as blueprints, they are well-thought thru, they reflect a life fully lived, they demark wisdom. Author ponders, how much intelligent words can you really produce while watching someone make a purple milkshake in a blender on the telly, but hey that is irrelevant here. We have 37 and a half and we type here type here. All these words ah all these words. The word construct club at the local community center sent her an email, apparently she still is on their list. Thus she receives all of those emails, they write short passages and discuss them in detail. It is so very different from nanowrimo, where whole books are churned out by the seat of the pants. Author ponders there is a metaphor like that, an idiom like that but she is not nailing it, her words are inaccurate, they are wonky, but hey who cares who cares. On the telly the modern family crew, everybody is nicely dressed, they are going to some kind of event. She still needs three hundred words here in order to march this down to 38 thou.

And we write here and write here.

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She ponders maybe this has to wait for now and for now. Cannot rush all of these words here, while watching an ad for some kind of cheese on the telly.

ITZEHOE LIKE ALWAYS Ten it is, a cheese danish it is, a herbal tea it is. two women chatting, one bored waitress, one fashion woman opening a store. And rainy it is, rainy it is. she lugged the laptop all the way from hamburg, she starts typing, typing. Typing a-typing. Poetic words are inevitable when you live on the other side of the planet. When you take the train every morning, when you commute to a certain coffee house. The strangeness of this kind of life has to breed a master piece, whether you like it or not. and the rain does not hinder that either, the rain provides the necessary gloominess for profound words. You cannot wax philosophically when the sun shines brightly, the gloomy overcast, the water pouring down, well, now we are cooking here. One hundred and five words to march this forward down to 38 000, another milestone on the road to one hundred thousand words. Writing is no race, huh, not so, it definitely is. Sports and art, so near so very very near.

The Danish seems stale, the cheesy filling is caking up. There are some lonely berries in the filling, they seems totally out of place. Forty more words, write on ah write on. Thirty words, thirty more words. The women are chatting, the waitress makes sure that she looks bored, the fashion woman fixes her up-do with her hands, fixes her dress, a stroke over the fabric, today it is some kind of shimmery pattern stuff. Itzehoe so quietly, so silently. The perfect space for writing this up, at ten in the morning, each and every day, each and every day. When the small city is still utterly sleepy, when the coffee house is happening silently so silently. Her words are off today, but, hey who really cares, we are at thirty-eight thousand, finally ah finally.

ART SCHOOL LIBRARY

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Back in this place, there will be a talk at eleven thirty, on the second floor in the north building.

Author here is so utterly tired, fatigued might be a better word, a more elegant word. She slept enough, she had food, but her energy is, well, in a slump. An energy slump, one that hit her like a brick. Even when sitting on the stationary bike in the gym, she could only muster 30 RPM’s whereas she tends to do at least 50 RPM’s and 70 RPM’s on good days. Rpm as in rotation per minute. All at the level I position. Then there was a guy in the gym who collapsed, author here left that place before that would happen to her. It seems that on some days you are not yourself, there is nothing you can do. Maybe she is coming down with something, with a bug. But that is not it, there is nothing physically wrong. Must be the blues that is holding her down, something psychosomatic. People talk about bagels, everybody bagels, everything bagels. They laughed, stopped their bagel discussion, author types and types. She shot a vimeo selfie, eleven seconds of amazing inspired acting for the camera. A woman at the other computer station, she has a long flowery skirt and a smile. Author ponders, she still has to kill one hour here until the talk, she could go down to the bakery and buy some loaf. She could have a tea in the market. Or she could sit here and pretend to be a published writer. Or a writer at least. Two pages, two pages, that will bring yer about six hundred pages per year, two books ah two books. Then she will find a PR person, hire her or him, then her sales will be in the millions. Then she will retire to an island in the south sea, something like that something of that kind. Her writings ah her writings. She will be quoted, extensively. School kids will analyze her stuffi-muffi. The two women next to her talk about their grad project, is that your grad project, I think so, I did not apply to the grad show, something about the grades, about the payment of tuition, author ponders, she did all that, and now she types up inconsequential words and hammers them into a machine, her art career is nonexistent nonexistent. She should sue this place, they were not able to make an artist out of

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her. She only is a writer, a writer who did not make it. Who types and types away. 109 pages out of 110, that is what the icons at the bottom of the page say. It is chilly in here, it usually is, always is. There is some paper next to her, something by a doctor. A doctor’s note. There is a painting on the wall. There is this machine that is awaiting her input. There are print and digital copying guidelines on the wall, there is a picture of the art school on the wall. It looks like some kind of rocks, author here has seen this image before, she always thought that it is an image of cliffs and rocks, apparently it is a pic of the school, but very weirdly contorted. Author never noticed that it is actually a photograph of the school, because the lighting is so off, the angle is so strange. Anyhoo, 110 of 111, 38 651, author ponders, her teacher said that the mentioning of the word count is author’s personal stylistic thingie. Author ponders, she uses way too much stuffimuffi and thingie ma bop, that is not how writingish adventures should be. There are formal restrictions for penning stuff, there is the rule that the word STUFF should be omitted from serious writing. aUTHOR HERE thinks about barfing, somebody sneezes, twice. Somebody coughs. The days in the library, some noise is starting up starting up. A machine, maybe a vacuum machine. Life in the library, author here ponders if she should rent the studio space on the second floor of the north building. It is one hundred and fifty, ah, one hundred and fifty down the drain. She can come here and write whenever she feels like it, it will be legit, non-sneaky as it is now. And we are still typing still typing here. And stop and spellcheck spellcheck.

A TALK A BURGER Yup, that is what we did here, a talk, a burger, and now it is back in the room with the green couch, we are at it again, typing ah typing. The lunch hour , make that the after lunch hour. The burger was way too much, usually we have a much much lighter fare. Anyhoo, outside, the sunny day, in here, the laptop, the curtains that are drawn, the words that splash onto the monitor, onto 110

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the keyboard, into the machine. 38 897, this better be good better be good. the talk was great, a woman from Austin talking about this fascinating designer. You should have been there, author is not good at recreating a talk, it is kind of like live theater, but so very difficult to write about. some things you have to experience, they are not recreateable in the form of words. listening in to a slideshow, you cannot really mediate that. maybe because it is a mediated environment and if you try to recreate that something gets utterly lost. Like a third generation copy of a master tape, like a carbon copy of a carbon copy. 39 007, ah great ah great. 110 pages of written text, the book, the novel motions forward, ah, forward.

MAYBE TEN PAGES She ponders, maybe she can type up ten pages straight. While the telly is singing its songs, while the day marches forward. call it some kind of art project, the writingish art project. The late march, early april art project. The doing art while watching how I met your mother. Well, a how I met your mother rerun. The final was shown two days before, but maybe that is irrelevant.

Outside, blaring sun, a tad later author here should go down to the coffee place on arbutus to have some kind of latte. Vanilla, caramel, ah, whichever. Foams are fun, that is what this book about food said. Anyhoo, we are typing and typing. She could take this computer down to the coffee shop, she could look around, write what she sees. Here it is merely the stuff that is happening on the telly. barney on the price is right.

MAYBE ITZEHOE Today, no rain, that is weird. But still the bored waitress, still three chatting women near the window, still the fashion lady, today in ecru. Ecru sounds nicer than beige-ish or off-white. the

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danish is fresh, the peppermint tea nice. the perfect day for writing perfect words. so it seems so it is.

TELLY TELLY An ad, now king of queens. It is april second, she types a-types. Should drive this down to forty thou, yup, why not and why not. not that this text has a plot, but, hey, seems that we can do without. On the telly, carrie and doug, author here tries to wrap her head around what to write about. she cannot really watch the show and document it, that is not what literature should be like. now Spence is coming in. laughtracks ah laughtracks. Outside, nice weather, the sun is shining, in here, the machine that is staring at her and is calling for input. 39 340 words, type ah type.

600 words that is all we need here to make it down to forty thousand, would be nice if she had something to say. how long can you possibly wax about that you have nothing to say. it tends to get repetitive after a while. anyhoo, now an ad, all in blue. an ad for an allergy medicine. Hmm, seems there is a lot to describe here, outside the leaves are moving silently in the wind. 39 422, ah, write on and type on. 39 430, huh.

STILL ANOTHER EPISODE Still another episode of king of queens. Laughtracks ah laughtracks. The word document is pretty weird and strange now. for some reason there is an image of the interface in the word document, it cannot really be cut. Which is weird. Actually it worked, she highlighted it and pushed the cut button. So now that everything is honky dory again it is back to typing while listening in to all these laugh tracks. 39 507 words, still writing, still typing. Outside nice weather, in here the telly,

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the laptop. The machines that make her pen her masterpiece. 39 531 words, and still typing atyping.

NEW YORK NEW YORK She types while listening in to sinatra singing new york new york which is kind of competing against the ever-chattering telly, all this noise pollution should drive her words forward. well, the music is pleasant, the ads on the telly, not so much. now carrie and her neighbour, author here watches the screen for moments while typing, it’s up to you new york new york. Multitasking while writing while watching stuff while listening in to stuff. and save and save. 39 623, write on and write on. the story of the show is really funny, well, it usually is. that is why they call it a sitcom, and frank is crooning along, makes you sing. Outside, the greenery, some yellow highlights, the text marches forward, I want t to wake up in a city that never sleeps, her writing is a tad too fragmented, she hammers in a whole lot of typos. If I can make it there, anyhoo, write on and type on, type on. 39 707, we only need 300 more here, type on and type on.

Itzehoe, yup, once more Same story, same story. The right ingredients, the same ingredients. Rain, waitress, chatting women, fashion lady, ten in the morning. danish, tea, and any kind of tea will do. some writing tool, make that pen and paper for today. The glumness of the writer, the one that cannot garner publication for the life of her. who wants to publish some confusing story about a writer who does not make it? a failed one, an utterly failed one. who wants to read about rain, about danishes? About the crumbs on a plate, the ones that can be mushed with a fork. Anuyhoo, still typing a-typing.

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Well, actually, now it is two and a half men. The tv never stands still, motions from one show to the next. Now sinatra, I want to be a part of it, the ad on the telly is kind of disconcerting. Stimuli overload, how do you pen a masterpiece while listening in to all of this, the chattering on the telly, the trumpet whiffs, the laugh tracks. Anyhoo, we are still typing, still typing here. 39 906, pretty good, ah number one, these little town blues, anyhoo, write on write on, even if it does not really make sense. the sun is shining, it is three oh one, gotta push the replay button on the you tube movie, once more new york new york. What did people do before the advent of you tube?

Start spreading the news, these vagabond shoes, new york new york, on the telly, berta and alan, we need merely eighteen words here, run, run, ten more, barely there, run, five more, and 40 000 it is it is. I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps. Yup. 40 010 it is it is it is it is.

40 000 Ok, 40 000 is not enough, it never is. the minimum word count for a novel is 50 000 according to nanowrimo or amazon breakout novel contest, thus we have to produce much more here mostly because we do not even have a plot here as of yet, this is only a description of the life of a writer and a pretty confusing one at that. sinatra again, a new episode of two and a half men is astarting. Her writing is all about putting an a in front of verbs, it makes for higher poetics. Well, hopefully that is. yup, frank it is again, we are on a first name basis now, these vagabond shoes, she ponders if she should listen in to the liza minelli version, or to the one where they both sing together, a duet, huh, apparently, liza sang it first, so it seems, so it seems. On the telly, laughtracks, alan and charlie, author here ponders, maybe she can drive this forth down to fifty thou by the end of the day, nah, too harsh on the body, you cannot sit and type for the life of it. and outside the sun is shining a-shining.

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Some more words, now, the girl from ipanema, anyhoo, we are writing here while listening to all of these songs, now Diana krall, before it was liza minelli, outside, the sky is white, but the sun is behind it, so it is pretty bright outside. in the other room, two and a half men are playing for nobody. This is getting pretty weird here, it is better to type in public, more constrained, which should make for better writing, huh. be this as it may, we have 40 319 words here, yay and yay and yay.

TOP OF PAGE 114 The only thing missing is a cigarette dangling from her mouth, that is how reporters were portrayed in ol’ Hollywood flicks, feeding the words to the machine, fast and fast and fast and fast. author here woke up, had a quick shower, came down here, typed up some stuff, went to the gym, went down to the art school, typed up some stuff, had a burger, came home, planted herself in front of the idiot box, typed up some stuff. a life in typerville, ah, this better be good better be good, huh. next thing, we should pick up boozing as a career move, that is what writers do, supposedly. The good ones at least, the published ones. the male ones, supposedly, supposedly.

40 456, yay, ah, yay. on the telly, big bang, gotta go, gotta go.

BIG BANG Typing a-typing. The show is really really funny. and still another episode. Outside the sun is glaring some more, now it is an ad for x-finity. An ad for a steakhouse, outback. Writing here ah writing.

The tops of the leaves outside are bathed in sunlight, and back to big bang it is. falalalalalala. It is that episode. Now an ad for chocolate.

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BACK IN THE TV-ROOM And back in front of the telly it is it is. The tv is not on, it is still bright outside. Though dusk is near. Author here went down to the coffee place on arbutus and had a tall skinny vanilla latte.

Yup, that is how we march the day forward. The coffee place is so interesting, there is a lot to describe. She should take notes so she can reconstruct the scenes once she is back home at the typing machine. And we type here and type here some more. She talked on the phone with Toronto, it is ten over there. And we type here and type here. While the daY leans into the night, slowly and slowly. She takes a jab at being poetic, not that successfully though, not that successfully though.

ITZEHOE, WHY NOT Ten it is, rain we have, two women near the window, the waitress, the fashion woman, today purple it is it is. the danish has raspberries in it, well more like a raspberry jam filling. Some cheese, some quark. The tea is chamomile, still warm, still warm. She is typing, yup, she lugged the laptop all the way from Hamburg. Her writing makes her happy, even though there is no story here. 40 749, it is it is.

EVENING, NIGHT It is pitch dark now, on the telly, al jazeera’s documentary about elsipogtog. It is kind of interesting to see the stuff that was on national news through the lens of an international media outlet. And we write here write here.

Once more itzehoe

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the coffee house, her writing. she wants to put in more time than usual, she never stayed in here during lunch time. she usually leaves at eleven, because she feels that she cannot hog this place here and write during lunchtime. Maybe she could walk around town, explore this small city, come back in the afternoon and start writing some more. should be interesting, besides, she needs the exercise. Too much sitting does her no good. writing is too stationary an occupation anyways, you have to go for walks. And we still write still write. she moves the crumbs of the danish around the plate, she drinks the last drops of her tea. The cold last drops. Rain is coming down, but sparingly, sparingly.

THE DAY IN THE RAIN or EXERPT on PAGE ONE ONE SEVEN (117) Rain is coming down, as if spring is not here. April showers bring May flowers, yup, the like and the like. The coffee house, the vanilla latte, foamy, skinny, the street drenched in water, the cars that go up, go down. The late hour, right before closing time, the math teacher and his student, the too good looking man near the window, the too beautiful woman behind the counter. The impending darkness, the talks, the plays, that we will not attend. The night with all its glories, the restaurant dinners we will not be part of, the cocktail parties that we will forego here. In order to sit at the type writer, in front of the telly, to type this up, to type this up, to listen in to the production of still another text, one that should cut it, forcefully, forcefully. That is what we are awake for, that is why we move through the city, that is why we let the world waft over us. From airport to downtown, from mall to mall, from educational institution to educational institution, from coffee house to coffee house. All these persons, all these people, all these individuals. Faces of humans, for moments for moments. In order to write to write. Writing you cannot teach, not like the young teacher who talks silently in Chinese to the young boy, math is so clear, so matterof-factly, you have all the answers, writing on the other hand, words, literature, that is not like 117

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that, you have the whole vocabulary to pick and chose from at random, at random. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. You play your instrument, you write up the notes each and every day, if you are lucky, you get it just right and just right. You are in mid-air for moments, for a split-sec, you look around, waiting for the standing ovation that will never come and never come. Anyhoo, let us write, while laugh tracks holper over the screen, while the telly gives you Seinfeld, Seinfeld. One of those reruns that author here can mouth by ear. The one with Elaine moving in, so funny, so funny. The poetics of comedy, the stories that are so universal, the lives that are ah so similar, so similar. The human condition condensed in an art form, exaggerated, caricaturized, satirized. The human condition as it is in its purity, everywhere, the world over.

Short absolutes, splashed in, hiccupped by ads for chocolates and creamy make-ups. Over-sized burgers, a song for a beauty-school, the song so familiar, the voice of a beautiful woman. Hair club for men, and you thought that poetry is dead. Still writing, ah, still writing.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Ten in the morning, the usual, the usual. Rain, women chatting, three of them. Waitress in perfect boredom, fashion woman in pink shininess. Danish crumbling, which is funny, because Danishes do not usually crumble. There usually is an elasticity to the dough, seems that this particular piece of pastry stands somewhere between puff pastry and scone pastry. Half bread, half flakiness. The tea is still warm, still spouting out wafts of silent smoke. Anyhoo, we are typing here, the words onto the keyboard, the story, that might not make it, might never ever make it.

She stares to the outside, feels short pangs of dislocation, who travels to the other side of the world, in order to become a famous writer. Well, hordes of writers did that, do so, but, who is to say that her writings will cut it in the end, in the end. Who is to say that your words become

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better if you travel, what, does the discomfort of not sleeping in your own bed at night automatically make for the ability to chose better words, more accurate words. Seems kind of preposterous, but, anyhoo, we type and we type here. The women chattering away, in their Northern German lilt, the s’s and the t’s just intonated like so, the e’s stretched out in a way that are a dead give-away, if you are familiar with the local accent. Author here is from here, from this very neighbourhood. Well, from Hamburg, she left long ago, at age twelve, for better shores, for different shores. Now that she is old, she is drawn back to where she came from, the slight eeriness of familiarity is weirdly fascinating. Her English words into the machine, short sketches for not-yet-published books. Anyhoo, we type, we type here, fast, fast, the train to Hamburg will go back in time, in time. She will catch it, quite possibly, quite possibly.

STILL SEINFELD The last laughs of the episode, we have 41 717 here, save this, spell-check this, let us be out of here, the daily work is done ah is done is done. 41 740, for moments, for moments. wHERE EVERYBODY KNOws YOUR NAME this place here has a certain where everybody knows your name kind of feel, author here ponders if that is good or bad. seems it is both stifling and exhilarating, familiarity breeds comfort, the kind of comfort you need to feel at ease in your own skin, the kind of comfort that makes you write certain things, there is no pressure to not say it as it is, you are free to call a spade a spade, the world will be behind you. on the other hand, you stay put, you do not open your wings in order to soar, you do not take risks, you stagnate. yup, so it seems, so it seems. she is once more sitting at the computer which has a lot of problems, she can see the light hovering above the ocean factory, she remembers when she came here a lotta years ago, while working on her grad 119

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project. now she is back here like so many days before, writing a-typing. there is an info session for a class at eleven thirty, the one on kinetic architecture, the one that will start tomorrow. and we type here and type here. a white car passes by, slowly ah so very slowly. maybe fifty words or so, then we will stand at 42 thou, quite an achievement, well, compared to the people that have not written up a single word, but not compared to the guys up there in the pantheon of world lit. yup, everything is relative, so very relative. writing equals some quips on fairly obvious stuff, so it seems ah so it seems. 42 020, yay and yay and yay and yay, once more. 42 031, for now, ah, for now.

EVENING Pretty late here, the telly is on, today was a day way too busy, a lot of running around, all over two cities, her head is swimming, she hates days like these that are way too hectic. Easy does it and if it does not, something is off. she is up since seven and it is nine now, which is ok, the problem lies in trying to cram too much into one day. less is more, so it seems, so it seems.

AND ITZEHOE IT IS AGAIN At the table, stirring the tea, storking the fork into the danish, listening in to the women chattering away. the coffee house here is peaceful, she gets a lot done coming here, she distils all her energy into these writing spurts, the rest of the day she basically rests, takes long walks around the alster, orders her thoughts in order to be able to write again the next day. a text has to evolve organically, slowly but steadily. You cannot rush poetry and her writing is more poetic than anything. More like a painting, like a symphony. With high notes, with low notes, cadences, pauses. Strong colours, silent colours. She ponders, symphony is a tad delusion of grandeurish, but, hey, who cares, who cares, who cares. The danish crumbles, it always does, always does.

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writing annoys her, it is always such a shoot in the dark, you never know where you are going. you follow the lead of the words and you hope for the best, editing will come later, come later. she has 42 299, for now and for now and for now.

STILL EVENING The news on the telly, she is fatigued, tired, her back is acting up, writing is not easy on the body. it is unnatural to sit hunched over, to type all of these words, descriptions are way too slippery, the words are not easily molded into coherent sentences, she is definitely not a gifted writer, though some days are so much easier than others. today is definitely not her day, too much happened, insanity is palpable, ah, so palpable. She talked to a total stranger on the train, not a good idea, the train is for shutting up and enjoying the ride. So that you have enough energy for typing for typing. She talked too much on skype, two hours, you should never ever do that, there has to be a time limit for phone calls, for skyping. You are not supposed to talk until utter exhaustion, anyhoo, her writing is over and we are outta here and outta here.

SOME NASTY MORNING Somehow, staying put in the morning, having oatmeal is weird and strange. usually she is out of the house as soon as possible, today, she is at home having oats and milk. warm milk, it is some kind of porridgy concoction. A man was handing out these samples near the downtown skytrain station, they are way too sugary, way too rich. Author sees the outside, darkish greenery, it is a slowly simmering Saturday morn. She is mainly online, catching up on the world that barfs at her from this little screen. A rectangle box, that is there to awaken her, to entertain her, it spits the world out at her. this is not how life should be, a nutshell as box, gotta be out there and exist in the world, huh.

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AND EVENING ONCE MORE Well, late afternoon, a tad and a tad. outside, the day leaning in towards darkness, while still being bright. Author here ponders how to paint a picture of the light of the sky at this very moment in time, how to do that without the use of a camera, without the use of the brushstroke of a painter. How do you document reality notwithstanding the fact that reality is ever changing.

And how do you use words in order to draw a picture to preserve for eternity. And is that even possible? On the telly, an interview with the founder of Wikipedia, author here listens in while making her thoughts wander, while being side lined by typing up her obligatory two pages.

Outside it is getting even darker.

ITZEHOE IN THE MORNING Today we feel like dunking the Danish into the tea, which is kind of iffy, you do not dunk a Danish and you definitely do not dunk it into a watery tea, she puts the contortion back on the plate, squishes the fluid out of the pastry and picks at it with her fork. Just to entertain herself, just to change her routine a tad. After all, she is once more here in this place, it is once more ten in the morning, rain is coming down, women are chattering, waitress looks bored, fashion woman is draped in some fashionable garb, author’s words on the keyboard, over the monitor.

Nothing ever changes, the routine makes her feel warm and comfy. The clear habits that hold her in like a warm fuzzy blanket wrapping her tight. That make her write, that maybe even dictate the words that she chooses to use for her text. Out of all the words of the language. Maybe she chooses different words here where everybody around her speaks German in a strong northern lilt, the words in this very environment should be different from the words that she would use in all-englishish surroundings. Be that as it may, we have 42 900 words here, so near to 43 thou.

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The rain is coming down, slightly bored, slightly dispassionate. The rain as part of the landscape, an homage to utter grey-ness. Author here takes silent stabs at being poetic, it sometimes works out and it sometimes does not. Which is not really that important, what is important is that the word count prussels forward. 43 003, yay ah yay.

STILL SOME MORE WORDS, WHY NOT On the telly, some kind of talking heads, a woman in red, a man in grey, both his suit and his hair. And we type here and type here. Still some words, yup, and still some more words here.

Will drive this down to sixteen lines, that is where we stop this very page, so that we have two pages in whole, and two pages per day will make for the illusion of being a prolific writer. Later on when this is all finished, we can go back in and start filing around at all the sentences, hack them up here and there only to put them together in a different order. Writing is so debatable, who is to say, which are the better words, the clearer words. That what is totally clear to one reader is utter gibberish to another. Maybe if the highest number of individuals get the gist of a story, then one could say that the writer is reasonably clear and accurate. Anyhoo, we have 43 181 here, seems to be enough for today, she has to count the lines, hopefully this will all work out work out. It is still later in the day, not dark though, this day is so weird, the lighting is off, it is dark but not dark enough. A long lingering darkness that is kind of teasing, that approaches the night without really getting there. A lazy Saturday in Vancouver, with words that go down onto the keyboard, that manifest themselves in little letters on the page, on the monitor. The telly, a woman in ash-blond hair, talking for seconds, for moments. And 43 287 it is here it is here. Yup, 43 287, for now and for now.

SUNDAY MORNING SUNDAY MORNING

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Sunday in Vancouver, the gym, the coffee house. Fast words onto the keyboard, right before the meeting up with friends that are here from Portland. Sitting all dressed up and nowhere to go, at least not for the foreseeable future. The future of one hour, you have got to kill one whole hour, might as well sit here and feed all of these words to this very machine. While the greenery is there so very reluctantly, while we could write about the swarm of early morning bikers on fortyninth. Words down onto the keyboard, in order to avoid talking to the other persons in this household, in order to have something interesting to do. The writing of a book, one that does not sell, will not sell. Or will it? Will we forge a book tour here, will this be the one that students pen book reports on. That will have numbers next to its lines, in order to be properly annotated. We are vying for that, did Shakespeare vie for that? What were the reasons for writing in times gone by, the easy answer out would be that there are as many reasons as there are writers. Anyhoo, we type and we type here, the light is non-sufficient, it is way too dark and way too dark.

Now on the telly, talking heads that talk about pinging noises of the black box, this is in the aftermath of the crash of the Malaysian airplane. It is nine oh nine, the brunch crowd will be here at fifteen to ten. So still time for typing ah for typing.

AND ITZEHOE IT IS AGAIN AH AGAIN Yup, the danish, a chamomile tea in the morning, three women chatting, one bored waitress. A fashion woman out there on the other side of the street, ten o’clock, the rain, ah, the rain. This is the perfect place to pen the perfect text, the one where each and every word is in the exact space that it should be in. words for the ages should be written here, words that will float around for centuries. This very coffee house is the breeding ground for greatness, yup, why not and why not. she ponders, anywriting is great, there are no hierarchies, there are no lesser words versus

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higher words. words are words anyways, bricks that are there to build up walls, buildings, anyconstructs to withstand the tide, the storm. author ponders how much can she really wax on writing, seems, forever and forever. Artists have about one and a half subject matters, she read that somewhere and she thinks that that is totally true. whoever said that, nailed it ah nailed it. the danish crumbles under the fork, the cheese oozes out, so does the blueberry jam. The mush on the plate, the whiff from the teacup. Ten in the morning in this god forsaken place, she feels homesick, a tad and a tad. today, she has her pen with her, her legal pad, today it is writing in longhand in longhand.

IN FRONT OF THE TELLY Cnn, talking about double standards that female politicians face, and discussing whether there still are double standards or whether there are not. Pelosi, Clinton, are talking talking. Anyhoo, we are typing a-typing here. still some more lines to feed to this machine, some more ah some more. finish this page, then save it ah save it. and do not use way too many ah’s here, the writing will become wonky and off. 43 000 and some, so very very near to 44 000. Only ten minutes to write them, it is all about numbers, so it seems so it seems. The number of words, written down in a certain number of minutes. The words that will sell for a certain amount of money, a certain amount of words that will fit onto a page. nothing but counting, the counting of letters. it is all so insane, happily happily insane.

She ponders if she should stop this, if she should stand in front of the door, coat and hat in hand, or if she should still feed her words to this machine here. it is nine and thirty-five here, let us stop this for now and for now. 44 022, yay, ah, yay and ah yay.

TWO PAGES FAST 125

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She ran around all day, yup, like the proverbial chicken sans head. outside greenery, summer is coming, it is way too hot already and we only have april seven here in this city. mainly because author here is still wearing her winter clothes, a warm shawl around the neck. shawl and toque are so very comfy, the wool holds you together, so that you do not disintegrate. Everything is going haywire anyways, you need an anchor and why not a warm hat for that. for the anchoring that is. author fledgingly scrawns out the two pages, there are other things to do, other places to be. the obligatory two pages are the respite within the busyness, the raison d’etre extraordinaire.

A tad too much French for one english sentence, stylistically wrong, so very very verywrong.

Yesterday was exhausting, ten hours of socializing, she is still reeling from that. anyhoo, we type and we type here, she had way too much food, she must have gained ten pounds. There is something to be said for regimented eating, you have to have certain rations and you will be agile and fine. Okh, the writing, the writing. the no words writing ah the no subject matter writing. the one with the thin plot, the way way too thin plot. 44 248, drive this down to 45. Today her writing sucks, just like this whole day sucks. Too much fatigue, too much stress. Too much caffeine and too much booze. That is what writers do, they booze along. Too bad that alcohol makes her barf, she will never make it in gifted writer land. If you drink hard you will garner awards if not, huh, then nobody will even publish your dribble. And btw, it is all dribble. The famous words the obsolete ones. all equally dribblesque. And still typing ah still a-typing.

Forward down to fifty thou.

EVENING On the telly, king of queens. Outside, still afternoon, but it has the feel of evening. at least it sounds good to say it like that, poetic maybe. author here should go out for still another latte, decaf maybe. all these foamy drinks will do her in, all these laugh tracks too. pretty depressing to 126

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be a wordsmith, a redundant job, a low-paid job. In her case, a non-paid job. Dishes were piling up in the sink, author here now put them in the dish-washer. They will start rotting in there, out of sight, out of mind. Furthermore, there is laundry waiting to be pushed down the machine’s throat, yup, these are the things worth writing about. banal stuff does it every time, you can wax about it endlessly.

LAUGHTRACKS They are kind of entertaining, sometimes roaring, erupting, sometimes way too short. They just hold the melody, they are part of the telly symphony, the background music to all those wits.

Now an ad, one of many. we officially do not have anything to write about anymore, this is how writers’ block feels like. but gotta keep on typing, gotta drive this forward. two pages per day two pages per day. and still another ad.

44 553 It took quite a long time to get to this, we are working on this very text since last september. and it is april now.

ITZEHOE ITZEHOE Same table as always, same danish, same tea. Same time to boot. Same rain, well, not the same obviously, but you get the gist. She ponders, gist is not the right word in this case but she is not the kind of writer who will search around for the right word, she will sketch a word, we can come back later and edit this.

FAMILY FEUD

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Quite a loud-mouthed show, everybody is screaming way too loud. It is a pretty annoying show, the antithesis to the quiet greenery outside. 44 670 words and we write and we write. the end of the two pages, we are outta here and outta here.

COULD BE NITE Outside night has set in, darkness, darkness. On the telly, everchanging images, the machine here is waiting for the words. typing keeps us alive here, which is weird because we are just sitting hunched over, utterly contorted. It must be the listening in to one’s own voice that keeps us company. Writing is a weird profession, an utterly insane undertaking that for some weird reason makes you sane. It is like exercise, like flexing your muscles, like the physicality of repetitive movement, repetitive motion, like marching in certain increments, it is the mechanistic aspect that produces endorphins maybe. Serotonin inducing writing, something like that something of that kind. The feverish hacking on the keyboard, the pushing down of squares, letter after letter after letter. A show on the telly, a whodunit with beautiful women. There is music in the background, haunted, suspenseful. She gets caught up in flipping the channel, how I met your mother or charlie rose, tough choice huh.

Maybe 150 words more to drive this down to 45 thou, some words while hacking away at the machine, while pushing black squares with white thin letters on them down, while the night is darkening the place outside, while the telly sings its weird songs. Now merely one hundred, while doogie howser is on the telly, talking to jay-lo. She ponders if she should write once more about the coffee place, about the danish. seventy words, that is all we need here for now. laughtracks on the telly, fifty-five words will do. now cnn, a man with a beard talking on aviation. Forty-one, type on ah type on and type on. you can do it, it is really like the last steps in

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a marathon, not that author here ever ran one. eleven more, the finish line so near, break through the ribbon, 45 000 it is and it is. 45 007, forty-five oh oh seven.

EVERYBODY Everybody always comes back, so the lady said. About the art school. Seems she was right.

Author in the library of the art skool, while the steam is coming out of the ocean factory. She must have sat at this very place a hundred times, she must have fed her words to this machine for twenty years. All these words that are never bound in book form, only to be put on a shelf to be forgotten. Nope, her words floated through cyberspace back when people used the word cyberspace. They float through the cloud nowadays, maybe in 2014 people use the word cloud more than anything cyber. Buzz words tend to change, but the persona of this very writer never ever changes. The failed writer, the unsuccessful writer, the one that will not be featured on Charlie Rose. Nobody wants a piece of her, the song about american whatever did not come true in her case. You know, the song that was on the radio some 15 years ago. Author ponders, nobody will get her quip, her connotations, that is the case with connotations. they wither and are utterly non-understood. They wilt in the sun, something like that ah something of that kind.

Smoke in front of the ocean factory, we are tying here and typing here. Late in the school year, seems that classes are out, now it is panel time, grading time, exhibition mounting time. Author is not quite sure if she should venture into studio land, it will cost her ten bucks per day to rent this, maybe she can do without. After all, nobody minds her typing in here, you can use the library as much as you want. No one enforces the law here, the librarians are so very lax, come, come, if you want to pen your next masterpiece in here, come and come. Author ponders if she should use the word ah or the word and, her stylistical word choice is done in a split second at random at random. After all, her writing is more aesthetic, not really truth based. If it sounds nice 129

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we are fine we are fine here. 129 pages of 130, 45 372 of 45 377, that is what it says at the bottom of the word document, nobody knows what that means and it is good it is good. There is a red cross at the bottom, over an icon of a document, hopefully that does not mean anything, hopefully she can save this save this. She has one page already already, only one more to go and we are outta here outta here. Done for the day, this was fast and fast and fast and fast and fast.

Two women talking at the computer behind her, group work ah group work. Everything here is decided by committee, weird huh strange. No lonely genius in this skool, people do not want lonely geniuses anymore. The ocean factory so grey, a lite, and steam. A bird on the factory, a construction worker in orange and yellow. And we type and type and type and type.

ITZEHOE # 77 The usual ah the usual. Tea Danish waitress fashion woman. Rain rain. Typing typing. Her book that no one will publish no one will read. She does not really care, the journey is what counts.

That is what you have to tell yourself over and over, when publication worlds do not want you, when there are no book tours for you and no signings either. Maybe she should stage her own book tour, hire actresses and actors to clap at panel discussions. Fictional presentations for fictional books. Her writing ah her writingish career. Rain is coming down, the only constant in her hapless life as a writer. A so called writer. A wanna be writer. A writer who sings the blues because, hey, what else is there to do if you are utterly unsuccessful. If your words refuse to march in place, if you do not make money by selling your words. And we type here and type here, some more words until it is time to catch the train back to hamburg. The tea is getting cold, the crumbs of the Danish stale up, the waitress looks bored. Everything is in place, like it was the day before, like it will be the day after. This is what drives her writings forward, the ubiquitous itzehoe environment, the coffee house that is always there to nurture the muse. That cradles the 130

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writer from a land far away, that waits for the influx of words ah words. She types some more, today she feels more like scribbling words onto paper, but she did not bring a pen thus the typing machine must do must do. 45 792, for now, ah for now.

NO SIGnAL Author here made her way down to the coffee house on arbutus, it was a tad too soon, there was no place to sit. Well no comfy place at that, one with enough buffer zone to the next table. so she got her too sugary latte to go, sits now and stares at the telly that says “no signal”. She sat a tad in the car, looked out at the cars rushing up and down arbutus, yup, the rush hour cars. Now we are back in the room, back a-typing. How a-nnoying. The foamy drink is too sugary, author here has to watch her caloric intake, she should not gain all of her weight back, this time the weight loss has to stick, gotta be vigilant, gotta keep track of each and every weight fluctuation. Her joints will thank her, though they are pretty beat as is. her knees, ah, her knees. Apparently yoga would help, pilates, mere stretches maybe. weightloss is good, if you have bad knees, at least make sure that your weight goes down. and stays down to boot. Outside the evening greenery, the early evening lights. the rest of the foam sticking to the cup, today you can eat for free in ben and jerry’s. her thoughts are all over the place, that should make for good writings good writings.

46 042, yay yay yay and yay.

ITZEHOE ITZEHOE Ten, fashion woman, waitress. Tea, chatting near the window, danish. aha, this is what we need in order to write, this is what gets the creative juices flowing. Her word-sprinkles, she will not be able to sell them on these shores. She could have them translated, maybe that would work.

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concept, then again everything under the sun has been done before. she likes the idea of being a hapless writer, there is a certain romanticness, romanticism to it. the struggling artist, boozing, starving, more boozing than starving. Well, maybe you could use your money for food instead of for alcohol. artist in the gutter, poet in the gutter. Bob Dylan sang a lot about the gutter, what exactly is THE GUTTER? Anyhoo, gotta wrap this up, gotta catch the train back to hamburg, she knows the drill, yup, knows the drill. Tomorrow will be still another day for writing, there are so many writing days left for her. 46 224 it is and it is, is.

TEN Ten in the morning, the obligatory coffee is in the body. author here is fashioning this very sentence while driving up arbutus. while waiting in line at the bottleneck, while a car broke down and obstructed the drive for all the cars coming up arbutus, especially the ones heading out of the parking lot near safeway. She had her coffee in this little godforsaken mall, the one where you cannot enter in if you are under seventy. Or over eight. The place that time forgot. They did not have banana bread thus overpriced ginger bread it is. where little gingerflocks snurch under your teeth. This is the day to make up words, construction is wearying outside while the day is sunny too sunny. Way too sunny for sitting at the kitchen table to write, this is a day when you should be running around when you should be happy that spring has finally arrived. a spring that feels more like summer. this is the weather that you should describe in your story, the story that will be picked up by Hollywood, or at least by some little kickstarterish web series. The construction noise is annoying, it is too weird and strange, it does not have ebbs and flows, it is like sandpaper whooshing over your dendrites. This is not the symphony that will make yer write the right words, it is music that will make her feed the wrong words to the machine. Today is her first day in the studio of the art school, make that day number two. she should go down there, start 132

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painting or something, after all she paid for it. better than the kitchen table, better painting than writing. seems she always has to be somewhere else than at the place she is at, there will be a panel discussion at six thirty in the city, she might attend might not. it is all open, that is what is stalling her artist career, no deadlines except for the ones that you yourself dictate. Sucks to be your own boss, even more than being somebody else’s boss. Cottage industries do not work, that is why they tend to stay in the cottage, rot in the cottage, disintegrate here in the cottage. 46 600, a round number, makes her happy makes her happy.

DRAGONS DEN On the telly, a person asking for an investment in a sport bikini company. and writing and writing. while the telly is singing its songs. still one more page to go. Random words ah random words. outside the end of the day, inside here typing and typing. Lots of noise up there on the telly, it kind of takes away from the ability to write to write.

THE REST OF THE BOOK Who really needs one more book. especially if there is no well constructed story arc. Merely random observations. Some of them worth reading some of them utterly forgettable. Author ponders, there is a panel discussion on public art in the central library, she might still make it if she goes there now. instead of typing instead of typing.

Nope, anyway you bend it, you cannot be there in twenty minutes. Let it go, what will they possibly say? if she starts now, she will be there at ten to seven. Which is too late anyways. public art, huh. maybe there will be a recording, you can watch it somewhere on you tube.

ITZEHOE ONCE MORE

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The danish has blueberry jam in it, or maybe it is black berry. The crumbling, the chewiness, the rain outside. the fashion woman in light orange, fuchsia or something. yup, ten it is, she opens the fashion-in/fashion-out store on the other side of the street. author here ponders, the way that she describes what is happening in this place is never the same. always different words. because even though the days here are similar, they are technically never the same. each itzehoe day is new, different. that is why we are coming here each and every morning, to experience this place anew. There is always some variable, a variation in the danish, a different table, different women chatting. The fashion store woman sure never repeats her choice in outfit, she seems to have an endless array of dresses in her closet. 365 ones, 366 in a leap year. though, obviously this store is not open on Sundays, it is germany after all. anyhoo, we are typing, gotta make it to the train back in time. 46 980 words, twenty words more and we have forty-seven thou here. eight more, run, run, write, type, two more, 47 000, forty-seven oh oh oh.

AFTER METROTOWN It is way too hot, the hotness that is more caused because everyone is still wearing winter clothes, because nobody is opening the windows as of yet. the sun is shining so very brightly but the city is not ready as of yet. so it is sticky and humid and still not warm enough, this is the time when prom dresses appear in shop windows, when the décor in topshop is made out of flowers in dark orange that spell out the word PROM. When summer dresses in old navy go for fifteen bucks, when amy poehler appears in ads on the telly, when summer is here but not quite when it is still april ten but the malls scream bikini and los cabos. AUTHor here was in three malls, wow, maybe the respite of sitting in here and typing is a welcome diffusion. But we still long for the hustle and bustle, if she had enough gas she would have made the trek down to the art school. It is more fun to write when there are people around, she would have liked to go to her studio and 134

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put the sketchbook in her locker, she would have liked to know when exactly the Friday talk is. metrotown was as always, she read a book about a publishing company, she has it at home, but it is more fun to read it in chapters. The seat is more comfy, everything is more on the nice side. At home you just feel like a shut-in, she prefers people, motioning, the like and the like. she had a burger, a chocolate egg, a coffee, a banana bread and a latte, a sugary one. she went on the treadmill for thirty minutes, on the stationary bike for ten. And now we have to churn out two pages, because this is what we do here. a reluctant diary without the my diary caption. A journal, more of a journal. A log book from her expedition into life, into the world, just as good as a log book of a voyage to the south pole. A modern day log book, something like that something of that kind. A staycation log, a non travel log. Some more words ah some more words. still a page and still another page.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Ten in the morning, rain coming down, danish on the plate. She puts down words, this is the city where books are penned. Good books. This coffee house inspires her, maybe, ah, maybe. she lives here in the northern part of germany, until her story is finished. That is what you have to do if you are a writer, you have to live somewhere far away from home in order to pen the perfect text. It is what writers the world over do, have done, will do. somehow the far away from home element gives your words a patina that cannot be acquired if you stay put. You have to travel in order to give credence to your words. there are certain kinds of customs in writing, certain ways of doing things. the persona of a writer is ill-defined, but there are several stereotypes and you have to adhere to one of them. boozing might be the most easiest element of writing, though author here is of the chamomile sipping kind. Maybe her talent will supersede the lack of alcohol consumption, maybe she is such a good writer that she can forego booze. Vermouth and gin is for 135

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lesser scribes, the ones that are not blessed by the gods. Yup, that is how we see things here, the fashion woman is wearing turquoise, the three women are chattering, the waitress looks bored.

Everything is in place, author here will make for hamburg, tomorrow will be another day of writing of writing. her tea is getting cold, the crumbs of the danish are getting stale. Her words on the paper are slightly bowing to one side, she is out of ink out of ink. and the rain is still coming down and coming down here.

STILL AFTERNOON Outside yellow sunniness, inside here, the words that appear on the monitor. The telly is quiet, waiting for someone to push the button. Sheldon cooper wants to talk, the ads want to sell a Toyota. The day huddles forward, it is april ten or april eleven. Maybe more like april ten, author seems to have lost the feel of time, the concept of time. 47 760. Write on and write on. drive this down to 48, the feel of accomplishment when you reach a tiny milestone, it makes us happy, makes us happy here. 47 and seven eight eight.

GLACIAL ART CAREER Her art career is moving at a glacial pace. And maybe that is good so. on the telly, house.

Suspense.

STILL AFTERNOONISH Another coffee would be nice, maybe this time a decaf. Too much caffeine will do yer in. but the foam of the latte will make yer happy. Author here ponders about which book it was that stated that foam is fun. some kind of cookbook disguised as a scientific treatise. Cooking discussed as what it really is, chemistry. Applied science. Aprons are the equivalent of lab coats. Something

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like that, something of that kind. On the telly, still another episode of house. Author here prefers laugh tracky stuff, but the remote control lies somewhere on the green sofa. tough to be a couch potato if you are far away from said couch. If you type while being glued to the telly. the house show is a tad too graphic, too horrid. And we have 47 952 here, only a tad only a tad of words to clock in at 48 thou.

Outside the greenery is losing its luster, the curtain is partly drawn. Nineteen words, we are running forwards to make it, ten more, eight, seven.

47 994, so near so near. 48 000 it is and it is.

MAYBE A COFFEE Yup, maybe a latte would be nice at this point. better than just sitting here and typing. On the telly, house is over, now the news. Actually it is the news in boston, weird, huh. the telly sports all kinds of stations, from all over the world. outside, it is getting near to dark, but the dark is not here, not yet and not yet. still time to go out and have a latte on arbutus, a decaf one with skim milk. author ponders, maybe one of these days she will start up to write something of substance instead of all these banal musings. Nah, she will never ever be that kind of writer, she likes to dabble in inconsequential stuff. big ideas, nah, make that small ideas. There is something to be said for small ideas. 48 147 words, yup.

WAKING UP Waking up in the middle of the night only finding herself typing away at the machine here. not quite sure if writing is what she should do, it is way too abstract an undertaking. Her training was in visual art, she somehow slithered off-course and ended up feeding words to various machines.

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That happened mainly because she was required to write so many essays during her art school years. who bothers to paint a picture when you can just as well sit at a typewriter and describe the painting of a picture. Why draw an image when you can convey an image by using words. typing goes faster than the production of a canvas. the language became more important than form giving. That happens when you sit around with like minded individuals and start talking shop. you can call it academia but that is not it. it is the flight away from reality, you can’t make stuff so you write. they say that those who can’t do, teach, another take on the same idea is that if you can’t do, you write. especially in a field where you have to produce concrete results, abstracting in the form of words will do you in. her constant analyzing will not produce blue prints or story boards, no canvasses dripping with paint, no metal sculptures, no vases to put flowers into. books are so stagnating, you do nothing but sit around writing them and when you finally consume the end product you once more merely sit around reading. A passive non-action.

So it is snd so it seems. It is late in the night, it is early morning. her wordcount stands at 48 419, time to grab a coffee at four in the morning, it is seven in new york now, eight in Buenos aires.

Might be still night here, just motion somewhere else on this planet and you will be in a different time zone. Or as the song goes, it is five o’clock somewhere.

Her writing is a tad too frazzled, must be the early hour. Anyhoo, let us save this, spellcheck this, we can always come in and iron out the glitches later on.

STILL SO VERY EARLY MORNING Songs of birds against the pitch-dark night, make that the songs of one bird. At least that is how it seems. Author lies wide awake thinking about what to write next. When she used to animate she would see figures motioning, trying to build a sequence of images in her head. line based

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animation, the lines whooshing over the paper, over the monitor. Now that she writes she is preoccupied with smushing reality into sentences, trying to abstract her world into clear and concise phrases. It is weird and slightly insane. And not so good on her eyes, all this staring at a monitor should do her in, her left eye is burning up, that comes from too much staring at a monitor. Not so much when she is writing, typing, then she stares down at the keyboard, but more so when she reads stuff on the monitor. And, hey, it is addictive, especially because you can switch from website to website. Web surfing, huh, whatever that is whatever that is. anyhoo, a tad later she should go down to the coffee house on arbutus, get some java, the like and the like. she is out of catching some z’s, that will not happen now, today she has to make do with two hours of sleep. hopefully we will not collapse here, hopefully ah hopefully.

ITZEHOE AH ITZEHOE And once more back to the description of this place, the rain, the waitress, the danish and the fashion woman. yup, ten in the morning, she types, she watches the waitress, her bored expression, the three women near the window. it is nice that nothing ever changes in this place, it keeps author here grounded, it anchors her writing. the familiarity of this place makes her write, it provides the right place for the right words. how can you possibly mess up the words when this place, this very space is so ordered, when everything is just so here. it is like an office, her coffee house office. And you have to commute here by train, the daily rituals make for the exacting flow of words here. 48 878, write on and write on and write on and write on.

LATER THE SAME DAY Outside, still the sun, very shiny, glaringly bright. Such a nice day, a tad too nice. summerish.

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that in ages, the last time must have been way before the Olympics. From the Canada line station to the art school, it was so quiet, not many people, it was as if time has stood still. and it was not sunny yet, the weather was so very reflective, pensive. And before that it was the Y, so very soon in the morning, before work, the morning group that jumps up and down, listens to the personal trainer in red. it is a fun group, all ages, yup, a so very diverse group. Some fitter than others. after that it was the walk to the art school, author put her sketch book into the locker in the studio, then it was back to Olympic village. A short sojourn through the bistro of the cooking school, seems they never have the pound cake slice she likes. She later got a piece of cake from the Chinese bakery. And still later a banana and still later a latte. She sustains on sugar, not good, not that good. anyhoo, she had errands to run, twice or three times to the copy place, then to the mail place in the mall in arbutus, apparently author here cut in line without knowing it. and then back down to the art school to listen to the talk by this comic artist, which turned out to be a drawing class, she left, because she was way too late. He talked about tactility or something, it sounded very interesting, but we had to leave here and now it is back at the typing machine ah the typing machine. 49 196, too fatigued to drive this down to fifty thou. Her eyes are bloodshot, that happens when you try to make it thru the day after two hours of sleep. you are not that young anymore, apparently, ah, apparently.

TIRED Slight head ache, author here had a long day, a long walk from Olympic village sky train station or Canada line station to be precise all the way to the art school, she did fifteen minutes on the stationary bike too. then some work in the studio place then the bus to go downtown. There was a woman on the bus who had baked these two amazing cakes that were elaborately decorated and she put it in the baggage place on the bus. After that author took the train back to the mall, had a 140

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latte and drove back home. now it is typing ah typing time. Typing a-typing. Outside still sunshine, a kind of dreary sunshine, apparently the late afternoon of a so very sunny day is not that nice, it has a weird lighting. The afternoon after an overcast day is usually prettier. It has a more happy lighting. Author here ponders, does any of these her observations truly make sense. well, at least we have 49 409 words here, six hundred are needed to drive this down to fifty thou.

FAST Fast words in the morning, between a cup of coffee and a trip to coquitlam. Yup, some more words to feed to this machine, frantically frantically. It is a Sunday morn’, shower, a talk on skype. Everything seems so very very hectic, author here is so utterly confused. She has to write around her schedule and her schedule can go ah so many many ways here. she could go to coquitlam, to the mall, to the Y. maybe her schedule for the day is more framed around the words that she feeds to this very machine, she only penned, wrote half a page the day before. which calls for writing that much more today, three and a half pages to be precise. And we have 49 550 now, ah for now, for now.

SUNDAY Sunday in the afternoon, near to evening but not quite yet. the light is fresh, the contrasts hard. A so very long and utterly exhausting sojourn into port coquitlam, coquitlam and Burnaby, by streets named pine and pitt, through places of the likes of belcarra. Lougheed mall to top it off, walmart, London drugs and the bay. The quiet desperation that is a suburban mall that has seen better days. author ponders if this is the way to describe a shopping center, it sounds poetic but is it accurate? The voyage kept her so exhausted, some z’s were inevitable. Ah the telly the telly. pix eleven, a woman in stripes talking about a fire in Brooklyn. It is ten over there, in the night. a 141

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fire fighter in stark new york accent, anyhoo we type here and type here. this is the weekend of the nanowrimo marathon, whatever that is whatever that is. 49 712, drive this forward down to 50 000, one word at a time one word at a time.

ITZEHOE Itzehoe at ten, danish, fashion lady, rain. Words storming down onto the type writer, author here lives for writing, lives through writing. she did not make it as a film maker, did not make it as a painter. So now words have to suffice, might as well might as well. words for a non-existing audience, her danish is crumbling, the tea is getting cold and stale. 49 798, write on and write on here. still rain still rain. Summer seems so far away here, the greyness is everywhere.

STILL LATER Later in the afternoon, on the telly, Aljazeera. A man who refuses to have the slightest slip of charisma. The woman who interviews him on the other hand is utterly lovely. They talk about the Ukraine. People with flowers in their hair in Luxembourg. Protesting for the Ukraine.

And still later. darkness is near but not quite there. the quietness of this place here should foster writing, it does not though. the difficulty to describe stagnation fighting against the objective of pushing words onto the keyboard. The telly is singing its songs, that is not enough to make yer write good enough words. what did people do before typewriters, before laptops, keyboards?

Knit, obviously. The knitting of words, that is author’s vocation here. for the last six years, respectively. 49 948, a news piece on entrepreneurship in cuba, this is the second time today, that author is seeing it. endlessly repeated news pieces, that is what makes all day news channels possible. 49 979, write on, ah, type on.

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The greenery outside, author ponders how to describe the changing shades of green. And they change all day, depending on the time of day. 50 011, ah great ah great.

BACK IN THE ART sCHOOL so she is sitting here in the library of the art skool, it is the first day for mounting the foundation exhibit. author here has done this before, when she was in foundation. after foundation. that was twelve years ago. wow. her art career sure did not take off, she just rents this studio place here on the second floor of the north building, she comes here, takes her material out of locker number seven, draws for twenty-five minutes and then puts her sketchbook back into the locker. yup, this is what we are doing these days, we later on document all of these drawings and post them online on a blog aptly called THE BLOG IN THE Artschool. yup, this is what we do here, all our stuff floats thru cyberspace, it is not standing in a brick and mortar space. if you want to access the art of this very artist you have to go online, the artist is uncatchable, it is some kind of catch me if you can kind of art. which seems to be where most artists nowadays exist, they are kind of fictional artists, floating, ephemeral. author here is not quite sure whom to blame, not herself obviously, there is something wrong with the system, a system that seems to exist to further the careers of young thin white guys with ponytails. so it seems so it seems. author ponders if she has a chip on her shoulder, nah, that cannot be it. and we type here type here and still type some more. how to not be an artist or how to be an artist, there is a nice title for this book. anyhoo, still typing still typing. in the library of the art school, she parked in the mall, took the train to the Y, then walked thru the community college, took the train again down to olympic village, then a walk by false creek, some joggers some people with babies, then the art skool, two drawings, then the typing up of various thoughts here in the library of the art school. we have a certain word count here, for some reason author here does not know which button to push to see the 143

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word count. ah well, might as well, ah, might as well might as well. save and spellcheck spellcheck.

50 416 Back at home, the word count button here works, well, technically the one on the computer in the art school was working too, the only problem is that author here did not know where it was located. Yup, that is how it is how it is. she had a piece of pastry in yaletown, a coco exotique, that was its name. in that new bakery which used to be in a smaller space next door. Anyhoo, still writing still writing. author here ponders, she now has 50 000 words, that is enough for a novel that you would pen in national novel writing month. 50 000, it is enough if you are a contestant in the amazon breakout novel contest. Thus, 50 000 is all that is needed to call it a book. a book fit to be published. Maybe we should wrap this up, maybe this is all the words that we need here. there will be other books to write, lesser ones, better ones. she ponders, outside the sun is shining, in a way a tad too aggressive. The light near dusk is so much nicer, more soothing.

Author here ponders, she is not quite sure if she really wants to accumulate more words, maybe everything worth saying has been said by now. and save and spellcheck spellcheck.

MAYBE SOME MORE WORDS Well, why not push some more words into the machine, it is later in the day, maybe five, maybe past six. the dish washer is roaring, author here finally got new dishwashing liquid, the powder is just way too caked up. it needs a pneumatic drill to shatter those cakes up, thus you have to get something new. She had the safeway brand plus a people mag about people that are now half their size. Apparently it was sixteen bucks, fifteen and something. a book filled with before and after pics. Somehow she thought if she buys that she will magically lose weight. this is the 144

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second book like that in four months, she got a workout at home book too. yup, there is a sucker born every minute, it is easier to stock up on fitness books et. al. than to reach for the veggies.

On the telly, law and order, a nurse talking to a detective. Now two fatties. And we are still writing, still writing again. author here had a vanilla latte, a skinny vanilla latte. And after that it was the market, wow, so many many people at dinner time. 50 836, and type on and type on.

YUP, ITZEHOE The peppermint tea, the danish. bored waitress, chatting women, fashion lady. These are the ingredients that should make for good enough writing, at least this is the very least you will need here. author thought she would be much further in her art career, well, that did not work out now, did it. but, hey, you gotta soldier on, what else can you do. and rain is coming down, coming down on itzehoe. 50 919 words here, fifty nine one niner.

OUTSIDE Outside still the greenery, the late afternoon greenery. It is much nicer than the midday greenery, there are contrasts, shadows, there is drama, the like and the like. dark greens versus light greens, silent tones, loud tones. A symphony of colours or something like that something of that kind.

Now, king of queens, laughtracks ah laugh tracks. 90 985, an ad for gelato, an ad for reeses pieces, an ad for some weird hair product. And 51 003 we have here, yup, why not write some more and some more. might as well drive this up to 100 000. The girl without the dragon tattoo, sans suject matter, without little sparkly dots on the cover. And typing still typing here.

MALL

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Short forays into a loud mall, right after the busy lunch crowd coffee house. The gym though is deserted, apparently everybody exercised already to make it in the mall, in school. Author ponders if her insights are profound or logical or both or none, anyhoo, she was staggering thru the world today formulating catchy tunes, catchy word formations. Her writerdom is weird, but it keeps her entertained. The voices in your head have always something to say, you can call it insanity if you like, lunacy, something like that. she sees dots on the keyboard, must be the reflections of the light, could be her deafening eyesight that makes her see flimmers where there are none. Everything is deteriorating, silently, slowly, permanently. We have 51 and one seven one, the weather is rainy, whatever happened to summer. There was a ruby moon the night before, at least that is what the news told us to watch out for. And save - and spellcheck spellcheck.

ON THE TELLY On the telly a whodunit. Bones. It has way too graphic scenes, too much blood. whatever happened to shows like murder she wrote. where it is more about deducing convoluted happenings. Anyhoo, now an ad for dryer sheets, nope make that an ad for American express.

Tina fey walking. Now an elephant, it is a commercial for a medication. The elephant that weighs you down, the condition that weighs yer down. an ad for special K flatbread, an ad for law and order. An ad for mascara, an ad for a restaurant chain. And still another ad for still another show on tv. yup, this is what she writes about here, everything that whooshes over the screen of the idiot box. Outside, the greenery, so very different then the way it usually is. the weather is a tad darker which makes the yellow of the leaves pop out. or maybe those are new blossoms, spring blossoms in full bloom, yellow and green, anyhoo, we type and we type here.

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now an ad for a car, an ad for a dental society in Massachusetts. The ever changing images on the tv drive the word count here forward, the noise makes one typing words. 51 418 words.

COFFEE HOUSE IN ITZEHOE Rain, chatting women, fashion woman in black and white. a danish with plums, which is the only kind they had. A chamomile tea, hot, the sparks of steam whiff out.

She draws the letters meticulously, her text becomes longer. Slowly, steadily. Author here wrote each and every day, for the last three months. And the rain is coming down, strong.

51 415 Words, words.

Still more words while there is an ad for mascara and an ad for a chocolate spread. Not much to write about, no poetics in what you see on the telly. author here should go down to the coffee house on arbutus, writing there would make for better words. the jazzy music on the over head, the cars rushing by up and down arbutus. furthermore, the weather is really good for writing, perfect perfect. Not too sunny and not too gloomy. Right in the middle, the best words in the world are penned when the weather is just right. Author ponders, she sure is able to do a lot of bullshitting today.

It is kind of tough to type this up while watching the show. Especially now that the plot thickens here. the woman who might or might not be the killer. The back ground music kind of makes it scary.

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And now an ad for a diabetes medication, an ad for a restaurant chain. The same that was on some minutes before. and we have 51 662 here, maybe we could drive this down to 52 thou, while listening to car commercials and ads for brake pads.

SEINFELD On the telly, laugh tracks. One of so many reruns. Outside, darkness coming in, slowly. definitely so near to the night. author here is still writing against the songs on the telly. still no narrative for this here, still no story line. ah, who needs storylines anyways. storylines are so 2008.

AND ONCE MORE, ITZEHOE Danish, rain, chatting women. Not necessarily in that order. She hammers away at the keyboard.

51 759 words here. her writing career will never take off but at this point that is really irrelevant.

The daily trek down here is a routine we got way to used to. And the rain is coming down. It is pretty good for waxing poetically, her tea is getting cold, the waitress makes sure that she looks as bored as always.

MORNING IN THE RAIN Wow, it sure became rainy again here in this town. A grey world, a grey landscape. everything is utterly drenched in water, the sun is hiding, so you cannot see the glistening reflections in the raindrops that are hanging from awnings and railings. A grey black world with lighter tones that are merely lighter shades of grey. Author was in the coffee house on arbutus, a coffee with half and half, a banana loaf. They call the slice of the banana bread loaf, which is misleading, it is only a slice of a loaf. Then again one could argue that a slice of a banana bread… ah, nevermind.

The news in the paper was, well, non-new, the woman and the counter person were talking, the

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woman was addressing the counter person by his first name. author here took off her coat and her shawl, she sat and watched the cars go by, a blue one, a school bus, she thought about what she will write once she is back home. while the rain is pouring down. the counter person wished her a nice day, well, a nice day to be sitting cooped up in order to fashion some words, some borderline text that will not be published. That no one shall read. That will be floating around in the cloud without others to cite passages, to annotate, to circle the important parts. No highlighting of words. her words will not be scrutinized not disseminated. They just float around, to no end. and the rain is coming down, harsh and hard.

Writing is a cottage industry, maybe maybe. she is staring out at the cars on arbutus, she is reflecting on this statement that she had heard a writer make about what he did for a living. cottage, huh? would the writing be different if it was done in a high rise, in an office on the seventy-first floor. Would the words lack gravitas, have more gravitas? The term cottage industry is derogative; it has a tint of patronizing, of saying that writing as profession is dilettante. Well, when used about writing that is. a cottage industry is not en par with industry that churns out mass produced items. That fabricates something with metal therein. cottage seems to be lesser.

Homey, non-urban. Recreational. Anyhoo, we type and type, against the rain that seems to have stopped, the still-drenched landscape of an early mid-morning, on a Wednesday in a room all to ourselves. The world is happening, somewhere outside of this place, hustling bustling, author here will venture out there, later ah later. 52 254 words, for now and for now.

ITZEHOE ITZEHOE Danish tea fashion woman. everything is in place, these are the things that will make her write. that should make her chose the right words, accurate ones, exacting ones. by default. After all she

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is paying for the round trip ticket out of hamburg, that investment should produce dividends.

This is the space where great words are fashioned, yup, why not and why not. this here is as good a space as any, a writer’s studio in a coffee house. Words onto the laptop, fast ah fast and fast, so fast. 52 355, by now and for now. 52 362.

BACK IN THE ART SCHOOL Yup, once more back here in this place where dreams are squelched, ground into oblivion. That is how it is for everyone, this is not a spring board for elegant flights. The whole operation is geared towards not teaching you how to dream big, the whole space here is geared to forcing you to dream small. Yup, there are schools that are like that, they are big on stifling and maybe art schools by their very nature are prone to that. After all, art is such an undefinable entity, it is not like math, like science. It is something undefinable that is all over the place. She is sitting here in the art school library, surrounded by volumes on art, the books are about film and pottery, craft and art history. About urban planning and about radio transmitters. There are books about basically everything under the sun and that is why this school spits out generalists that know a teeny tiny thing about something specific and a lot of things about a lot of things. They know a tad about stuff but not enough to build a career. Their skills are non-marketable, the artists have to find their own niche, it is totally a swim or sink endeavour. Author here is back in the library, she parked her car in the library, she could go up to the studio space that she rented, but it seems that writing is her forte, after all theses years of visual arts schooling. She ended up in lit land, so it seems and so it seems. A woman next to her is scanning something, somethig written. The school that takes people who draw and makes them write, a school that takes practitioners and makes theoretic whizzes out of them. People who can draw and who learn to write about drawing. This is a school like that. Ah, may that be as it may, at least we have 52 thousand and 150

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something here, we can send this out again, maybe someone will take pity on her and publish this ah publish this. Her words that are slightly poetic, slightly ah slightly. So very very slightly.

A bird in the sky near the ocean factory, fluttering ah fluttering. Ten in the morning on a rainy day here in april, words on the monitor, for moments for utter moments. Her words are way too wonky today, but, hey, there will be other days, better days. Coherence is overrated anyways, so it seems, so it is.

SOMETHING Something is definitely wrong with her car, it makes funny noises, one of the tires seems to be way too thin. It is rainy, author decides to give it a rest, just stay in here and type. Get some work done. so that the machine does not break down somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The coffee house was filling up, all the school kids, the happiness the confidence that is youth. something like that, something of that kind. It was more a lot of people talking, author is not really into romanticizing youth. or romanticizing old age for that matter. People are individuals, they each have their own way of doing things. when they roam in hordes it is more about the hustle and the bustle, motion, action, fast talking. Something more than quietness, solitude, something different from stagnation. Rain is coming down, drenching up this city. author would have preferred to venture out into the mall, downtown, a trainride would be nice, going to the airport, everything and anything other than sitting in this weird and strange writer’s studio. She sent out her first round of e-queries, about thirty of them. so now it is waiting, waiting. For e-rejections. The ones that will come in, inevitably. Which is more secure than partial requests or requests for a full, this is author lingo btw. This is what happens when you wrote a long long text and you want to be published and distributed by one of the big six. apparently this is the reality of publishing in 2014. Something like that something of that kind. Her shoulder starts up hurting, the 151

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contortedness of sitting at this computer is utterly annoying. A little later we will exchange that feel for the contortedness on the green couch. her life is so eventless, which is good, which is secure. Peacefulness is where it is at, if we need some diversion there is always a coffee house near by, a downtown nearby. An oasis in the city, here in the cottage where the industry flourishes. The cottage industry of writing. sounds bla, like sensible shoes and the stink of rotting old.

YUP, ITZEHOE The coffee house in the quaint northern city, one hour from hamburg. Rain, danish, tea. Words drawn painterly onto the pad, the accumulation of her observations. Her feel of desolation, dislocation, a strange feel of comfort in this being in this state. There is nowhere she has to be, she is all freed up for penning the master piece. the one that will start up her lit stardom. That will propel her onto the trek to Stockholm. Dear nobel committee, who should I thank first. This award will so perfectly fit in with the décor on my mantle, author ponders, how does a nobel even look? Anyhoo, writing, writing, next time she will take both the laptop and the pen and paper stuff, so that she can change tools whenever she feels like. And the rain is coming down, relentlessly relentlessly.

FRIENDS Friends reruns, while the rain outside is ebbing down, while we have a baked potato, a small one with a dash of salt, while author here is puzzled about how to lose weight. And laugh tracks for friends, some ads, author here ponders if that is what her writing should be about. the description of what is on tv, that is not a rich enough narrative now, is it, is it? there are bigger questions to discussed here than what is happening to Rachel and Ross, fictional tv-people. The rain outside 152

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seems to have stopped, drips are hanging glisteningly from the railing. And Rachel is talking and talking.

LATER ON Still some more lines, in order to drive this down to 54 thou. On the telly the scene with phoebe and her ice dancer husband here.

COFFEE HOUSE The coffee house on arbutus, author here has never been there at one in the afternoon. She should stay put there and write about what she observes. Not to mention that there is any myriad of other watering holes around here, we could all describe them. People eating and drinking, somehow there is more to a story, there should be more. A plot, something of that kind. Author ponders, she is more the writer who just prefers to describe stuff, in the same way that a painter documents, a camera documents. In order to freeze moments for posterity. And we write here write here, against an ad on the telly, something weird about weight loss surgery. Something like that and something of that kind. And now it is time for spellcheck, save, the like and the like. 53 555, for now and for now.

DESCRIPTIONS OF RAIN Descriptions of rain, how do you wax on rain for one thousand pages, is there even enough of imagery, enough narrative, enough action in something as prosaic as water coming down from the skies. It is a miracle, sure, but especially in these locales it is what is happening daily. Drops coming down, soaking up the world. author ponders, she was born in a rainy city, she then moved all over the world only to end up in another rain-drenched city. You try to run away from

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the rain, it grabs you right back by your shoulders. On the telly, another new yorkish story, thirty somethings, twenty somethings, how I met your mother. And the funny thing is that all of these shows are shot on the west coast, in LA. The rain seems to stand still, author ponders if this is an adequate enough metaphor or if it is utterly wonky. Anyhoo, the rain is drenching up this city here, the telly sings is songs and author here would rather be anywhere else than sitting cooped up chained to the writing machine. She is out of stories anyways, she has hardly anything left to write about. on the telly an ad for the Cadbury bunny, the Cadbury Easter egg. Utterly artery clogging, hmm, yumm. 53 785, write on and type on here, type on. fifty-three eight oh one, fiftythree eight oh two.

WATCHING KING OF QUEENS There must be something better to write about than a sitcom and laugh tracks, after all the rain seems to have stopped, one cannot hear the drops on the roof anymore. The ones coming down on the drain. Now it is just the telly and its songs, the funniness and the narrative that is stalling here. 53 869 words here 53 870words here.

RAIN RAIN RAIN The rain over this city is so relentless, there was not even a space to park in front of the coffee house. Thus no latte it is for today, gotta write here without having a too sweet too foamy drink first. Writers have to booze, to be high on caffeine, if not, then their writings will suffer, gotta suffer. It is the rule and that is why we cannot even have one spittely word here published. Gotta stay in this state of the hapless writer, gotta hover in failure land. Happily. While the telly is singing its songs, it is the show with robin Thomas and sarah something, Gellar maybe. who

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cares about all these people on the telly. two more words, 54 001 it is and it is. maybe we should drive this down to 55.

FIRST THING First thing in the morning, the sojourn to the type writer. Well, after a trip down to the coffee house, after being greeted by the counter person with GOOD FRIDAY instead of good morningit is good Friday after all, so it is funny - after a coffee and a banana bread. Author here wanted to head out for a walk, she needs about one hour of putting one feet in front of the other in order to restore her pre-age-thirty weight, but in the end she felt more compelled to get it over with her daily two pages, because you know, this is what her life has become, a series of rituals, writing, walking, if they are not met, then her day is so off, is so very off. she dreamt of producing animations, drawings on paper, ink on white paper, the weird thing though was that those drawings were vertical and not horizontal, after all everybody knows that those drawings have to be horizontal in order to be shot on the animation stand. Author here still looks back full of nostalgia at her days as an animator, you know, once an animator always an animator. Her days of animating are over, but her life has changed since she became an animator. One day she will write about that, explain it to the world. To the non-animators. But for now, it is all about the word count, all about walking a certain amount of miles. These are the milestones of her life, the quantity of incremental steps, the distance she walks, the words she produces. You can label it OCD if you feel like it, but, hey, it beats the hell out of popping pills, we produce our daily dose of serotonin the old fashioned way, thank you so very much. Anyhoo, typing, typing, that is your game here, huh? Today it was on the news that the writer of one hundred years of solitude has passed away, author never read it, but knew that young writer in her writing class who was enamored with his work. Anyhoo, still typing here, the day outside is still in its early blooms, it is 155

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happily awaiting, it is forceful marching towards the hours of later morning. Yup, it is still early, but the day has all the makings of a happy day, hopefully. The fridge sings, silently, matter-offactly. The streets were full of the remnants of two days of rain and wind, everywhere were leaves, blossoms on the ground. White stuff from the april trees, a world full of white and yellow confetti. Pink too, though not on the street outside, the one in front of her doorsteps. Author here still has one more page to go, she is not quite sure what possesses her to type all of these words up, she needs her typing machine like she needs her toothbrush. And swirl the water in your mouth and spit. Yuh. Writing as exercise, ah, this better be good, better be good.

She ponders, she will go down to the water, will walk by false creek, by all of the hopefuls for the sun-run, the ones that have no extra pounds on their bodies, the ones that are still able to bob up and down, the ones with good knees and no ankle probs, the persons with no back aches, the marathoners and the half marathoners. In plastic shoes, in colourful clothes, joggers et. al., the pros and the weekend warriors alike. Anyhoo, still need some words here, and still need some words here.

ITZEHOE once MORE Fashion woman in yellow, rain, danish. women chattering away, waitress watching her out of the corner of her eyes, the words on the monitor. This city is silent, like always, author here just comes to the coffee house, she never ever stays in this small city, this is merely the space to write, this is her office building. She commutes here and then commutes back home. no emotional bonds between her and this city, this is where she wordsmiths, this is where she comes to produce, to fashion a certain amount of words, each and every day, each and every day.

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The rain is coming down, hard, peacefully, author here ponders if she uses the right words, the exacting words, the accurate ones in order to describe the water that is coming down. Her words have to contain poetic tinges but they must be clear and concise at the same time. Aesthetically pleasing utterings that convey a precise subject matter. That is how her art should be, has to be, she ponders where does art end and science start up. Art as science, yup, something like that and something of that kind. We have 54 and seven hundred here, time to catch the train back, yup, time, time to wrap this all up. for now and for now and for now. 54 845, yay and yay.

MAYBE So maybe some more words should be written here. on this day somewhere between good Friday and easter. The daily trek to the gym, to the coffee house. A short foray all thru the foundation exhibit in the art school, it definitely does not pass the test. Author’s show back when was ten times better. a storm of creative energy, this show is so utterly bla. Compartmentalized art making versus tour de force. Suburbia versus a tornado. Anyhoo, still writing still writing. maybe that kind of visual art making produces ultimately a writer, an observer. Someone who leaves the world of form giving. And splatters words onto a page of paper. A dying art form, literature. Who has time to read. You fashion texts that have to be forgotten, words that nobody reads. 54 975, write on and write on here. 54 983, 54985.

ON THE TELLY On the telly, the cooking of chorizo. Now they cut up a potato, a big one, now black beans. This is a cooking show where the teachers are sharing their home recipes. Cumin, pepper flakes. The home cook in the middle, she tv people on either side. Chicken broth. So that is basically the recipe. Now the story of the dish. This is a fundraiser for the station, they ask you to buy the 157

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cookbook. She serves this with her crusty bread and red wine. Cooking, storytelling, bonding.

That is what one of the tv persons says. Balsamic into the bowl, spicy chorizo, eating, wow, yum, there is only one more home cook to come. Support us, one more recipe, keep watching. Flaming meat balls coming up. Or flaming something for that matter. Outside, leaves in the wind, to and fro, blossoms on the twigs, overcast. The sunny weather is over, it is now april showers bring mayflowers time. author cooped up here which is what is needed after the marathon walk of the day before. two and half hours, three maybe. from Olympic station down to granville isle, then over the bridge down into the city, a sojourn into the art gallery, then back to the car in the mall.

Walking, taking the train, talking with too many people. now it is nice to stay in here, now the tv person is teaching her stuff, flaming Cambodian meat balls. a little oil in there, splash that around, in go the meatballs, you can make your own. brown them, brown is flavour, two kinds of soy sauce, honey, pepper flakes, hoisin sauce, in a specific order, nope, ginger, yummy fresh ginger, we loooove fresh ginger, author ponders, is this what her writing has come to, listening in to a cooking show, sauce on the meatballs, five spice, everything coated, does not smell this awesome, flambeez the meatballs, tastes amazing, serve either in a martini glass or on a platter with toothpicks in each meatball, that was a show stopper, ah, ooh, they sure make it dramatic with the words they use, especially `cause this is hands down the dowdiest show on the telly, you gotta talk it up, if you lack glamour quite like that. The woman with the toque, the man with the hat, all receiving phone calls. The second page for today, coming to an end coming to an end. thank you for contributing. Submit your recipe. You need to give them a pic of your recipe, give them the ingredients, for how many persons the recipe is, and then, maybe you too will be a celebrity chef on the telly, you too can be a movie star. Ah, what to wear for that, how to ward off the paparazzi, maybe it is better to stay a chef at home. Now, it is American test kitchen, this is

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what Saturdays look like, no sitcoms, but a variety of cooking shows, they now teach you how to clean a bbq. Alright, the grill is ready, outside, slithers of rain, no wind, we have 55 494 here, ah, ooh, she sure talks up the food, uh, they look gorgeous don’t they. She talks about slabs of meat, amazing, they sure use a lot of glorifying words here. six garlic cloves, takes two minutes or thirty seconds to smell the garlic. Nice and fragrant, not the garlic, anchovy paste, chops look terrific, juicy, great, perfect, the recipe crowd sure talks up stuff, talking up a storm, and now they show pressure cookers. Anyhoo, a lot of food, now the guy with the glasses and the red apron talks about the different parts of the cow. And save and spell check and spellcheck. The writing about cooking is finished for now, time to eat, time to have lunch.

A SHORT SOJOURN INTO ITZEHOE Ten, rain, danish. fashion woman, tea, waitress. All the makings for a perfect story. Outside the window the water coming down, in bushels in buckets. The words on the monitor, her hunchedoverness in the corner of this very coffee house. Author likes it here, nobody will publish this, no nobel for you here.

ON THE TELLY The news, talking heads. Author here tries to block the sounds and the sights of the idiot box out, mainly because she has to push her two pages into this very machine in front of her. If you type up two pages per day than eventually something will happen, should happen. Your words will become marketable whatever the market is. The market of ideas might change, they will change.

But some ideas will stand up in any environment, they convey absolute truths. In a world where there are no absolutes. Weird but that is how it is. Outside the sun, behind clouds. author here was in the mall, had a coffee and a banana bread. Then it was off to the Y, the weight is way too 159

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much. She is pretty vigilant, is not quite sure why she gained. You never know, all these weight fluctuations come out of nowhere, that is how it seems and that is how it is.

After the gym it was the art school, it was pretty early in the day, she found a parking space easily. A walk thru the foundation show, a walk up to the studio, the one that was closed up.

Anyhoo, after all of that it was the coming here, the writing about this lazy quiet Sunday here.

Easter Passover. Religious holidays, but more so a regular Sunday. People running by the water, in hordes. The Vancouver sun run crowd, the ones that are training for the marathon. And still we are writing still we are typing here. In the art school, there was good stuff and bad stuff, there was a bike as a sculpture, that one was really great. 55 985. Run on and run on. We have to drive this forward, the two pages of this day. A journal filled with observations, like beads on a string, like bricks in a wall. Units that are there to make for one new unit, one bigger unit. 56 012, the wordcount that becomes bigger with each passing day. A story, a non-story, some kind of narrative that has to crystallize, that has to come out of nowhere. If you build it they will come, if you write it it will be good . If you smush words into a type writer, eventually you will have something worth reading. Gotta believe that, because there is no other alternative. Just stumble forward and hope for the best here. The eternal optimism of the form giver, the wordsmith. You have to arrange and rearrange the glistening marbles at the beach, eventually it will be all good, will be pretty. And still writing here, still writing.

AND ITZEHOE IT is it is The coffee house at ten, the danish with raspberry jam therein, the chamomile tea. The ubiquitous rain out there, the silent day. her words against the machine, the waitress with the bored face, the bored expression. The three that chat near the window. The fashion woman in

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orange, all of these actors in the environment around the writer here. the rain is the most important element here, it manages to dictate its songs to author here. How can you not start waxing poetically when you look out and see this languishing, longing, sullen weather. The drops from the sky translate easily into poetic stuffi-muffi. That is how it is how it must be. We have 56 and some. Ah still writing ah still typing.

WEATHER BUNNY On the telly a weather bunny, thin, with a uk accent. Outside the day waiting for sun. late morning, early noon. Somewhere in the nowhere land between midday and morning, a woman in red reading the news. Outside the greenery, it is nicer to write about leaves than to write about the disturbing news. And it is always disturbing, it is all about deaths, all over the world. still some more words here still some more words.

We need four more lines, some letters, some sentences. Punctuation marks, the like and the like.

She could use a different font, another size. That is how you drive this forward. Author here is utterly bored by this undertaking, the endeavour of a writer, the mind numbing typing, the hunched-overness. One day she will do the reading thingie, the panel discussion thingie. The book signing thingie. But at this point it is only typing, only typing. And save and spellcheck, 56 417 it is, it is. Her fingers hurt from pressing down the keys, yup, that is how it is, time to wrap this up wrap this up. 56 447. 56 448. Save spellcheck the like and the like. 56 459.

SO MAYBE So maybe writing is what she is supposed to do on this rainyish easter Monday morning, btw, it feels like morning but it is noon already. a coffee in the mall, the woman recognized her, this means too much coffee in the mall. Then the Y, then fast music on the car radio. Now all these 161

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words that have to be presented to this very machine, if you are a cello player you have got to practice the cello every f. day, the same goes for writing. if you wanna have good writing chops you have got to play the chops. Oil the machine, do writing exercises every day. write about anything and everything, describe what you are doing, the greenery outside, the languishing day that inches forward. this is better than the mall, better than the hustle and bustle. This is the perfecting of sentences, the short fast sketches, the reflective pauses. This is the writer’s studio, this laptop in the tv room, the hunched overness, the fast two pages that have to be done, it is a routine just like brushing your teeth. 56 and something, write on ah write on.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Danish, tea, women chatting. Waitress, fashion lady, rain, the ingredients for a nice enough writing spurt. This is way too addictive, now she feels as if she cannot fashion words if there is no rain no fashion store woman in Technicolor outfits. No sing song of chattering women, no bored expression on the face of a waitress. There are writers who can do without all of this, most tomes of text have been produced so very very far away from itzehoe here. It is not this coffee house that makes a writer out of you, it is the draw of the language, the wish to produce. But for author here the trip from hamburg is what makes or breaks the writing, this is the habit that she formed, or is it the other way around, did the addiction to coming here seduce her, grip her by the throat. she is getting slightly insane, without even knowing. Writing does that to you, the constant throwing of sentences against the machine. The words that might stick or might not, one day she should go back to painting with water colors, drawing with oil pencils. Anything that is more fascinating then black little letter marks on a monitor, something more sweeping, more dramatic. The pics of an animation, the sounds of a song. Music film image, author here fore

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changed all this for dry dry words. utterings to a machine, words that sail in the cloud. Outside the rain is still coming down and still coming down and still coming down.

TV ROOM Greenery outside, she feels like finishing this up, the daily allotment on a Monday morn. The fridge is quiet, the telly is quiet. the only sounds here are the typingish sounds, the tapping down of all of these black squares. A text is born, pretty loudly that is. even a pen over paper makes slight noise, slight queeking, but typing is the ultimate loudness of words. maybe evn louder than spoken words, there is the air of permanence, the words are loudly inscribed, letter by letter. kind of reminiscent of times when you used a hammer to permanent a letter into stone, something like that ah something of that kind. 57 072, she still has to finish up this page. she described the greenery already, she is out of words for now. it is end of april, author here worked on this very text since last september. or maybe it was even still august. And the text is still marching forward, all these short observations, all strung together. one of many many books, one that is penned slightly out of boredom, slightly out of the wish to document these her days. the days of two thousand thirteen and two thousand fourteen. The loneliness of the marathon writer, a documentation of this of this. and still half a page that has to be filled up with words.

The art school is closed for the day, so is the studio place on the second floor of the north building. no drawings in the sketch book, if you want to draw take a while sheet of paper and start scribbling. At the kitchen table, as good a studio as any. You can then pin the drawing on the fridge, yup, your drawings are as marketable as those on a fridge. After fifteen years of art school, schooling does that to yer. it kills the spirit, comes with the territory, so it seems ah so it seems. Squelched dreams, scrunched up delusions of grandeur.

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The monitor is still waiting for the rest of the page, we have 57 260 here, so many words ah so many many words. a lot of whining, some philosophical musings, more semi-philosophical ones. time to warm up the creamy tortellinis, a tv dinner to be consumed in the tv room. while the greenery outside is unsure if it is rain or shine, yup, that is how it is how it is. still some more sentences needed to reach the bottom of the page, still some more ah still some more. the words are there to fill up the blank space, that is what words are for, utterings are for. apparently apparently apparently apparently.

WELL Well, maybe we could feed two more pages to this machine here. on the telly, an ad for a car, now the big bang theory. Sheldon talking, that is how it is starting. Laugh tracks laugh tracks.

It is a tad later in the day. she got a skinny vanilla latte from the coffee house on arbutus, there was hardly any space, so she just came home with the drink. on the telly, frasier. and now an ad. the coffee house was exilhiarating, everyone was dressed to the nines. The easter Monday crowd, nobody has anything to do but to waste time. because it is a statutory holiday in many places, there are businesses that are open and businesses that are closed. The nail place is closed, the sandwich place is open. Schools and colleges are closed, city hall is closed. Safeway is open.

Anyhow, now it is still another sitcom on the telly.

Outside the greenery, still another shade of green. This is how our dats here are going, typing up inconsequential words while watching the shades on the leaves outside. every hour of the day makes for differing greens. 57 600 words here, let us drive this down to 58 000.

THE COFFEE HOUSE IN ITZeHOE

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The danish the tea the rain. Words on the paper, author here spits the letters onto the paper. yup, today it is pen and paper. you have to make slight changes every day to keep this writing biz interesting. And ten it is. the saleslady on the other side of the street. today it is some black and white number. And “fashion-in/fashion-out” is once more open for business. Author here ponders, her writing is totally boring, she hates coming here. well, it is more a love hate relationship with this task of writing.

It is now eleven, she wrote enough, time to pack this up and catch the train back to hamburg.

LATER LATER On the telly, the Simpsons. Not exactly what she likes to watch, but, hey it is on and the remote is too far away. she ponders, this is not the stuff that world lit is written on, banal lives are not worth documenting. Texts should be on bigger ideas, the like and the like. writing about the process of writing, meh, that will not cut it. writing as an exercise in typing, she ponders, somehow it seems that it is better to not know how to type with ten fingers, the immediacy of the words might get lost. There are all these little idiosyncrasies that make or break a writer, everyone has her own style. The language on the other hand is this big pool of units that you have to chose from, there are no rules, no regulations. She used to take more liberties with orthography but then a teacher told her that that has all been done before. the heyday of misspelling as a stylistic tool is way over, nowadays people spell conservatively. Author here is not quite sure if she agrees with that teacher-lady, after all this is the age of texting, of twitter.

Email is changing the way that words are used. And we are typing and typing, marge and homer on the telly. yellow trash. And it is still light outside, the green tones are once more changing.

There is a tint of violet in there, before it was a tint of yellow. It changes according to the time of

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the day. 57 941, only fifty or so to finish this up, only fifty or so to reach 58. 58 000 words, anyhoo, we write here and type here. a white blossom filled sprig motioning silently up and down against the backdrop of the green.

STILL LATER Near to the night, words appearing on the monitor, just keep on typing and keep on typing. 58 003. All of these words and all of these words.

IN THE LIBRARY So, we are back here in the library of the Art school. It is pretty desolate here which is just fine.

The ocean factory is in its place, shiningish, the room here is without people, well, except for the women near the circulation desk, the one near the entrance. Author here ponders how many words she needs to recreate the feel of solitude that permeates this place, should she just merely repeat that this space here lacks individuals, is that the way to style your text, by saying the exact thing again and again, only with different words. That is how her writing is anyways, one thought, packaged in different forms. Repetition is the main characteristic of her writing, one idea, reiterated. She ponders, is that how dissertations are fashioned, you say the same thing for the length of two hundred to five hundred pages? You repeat the same thesis, give numerous examples. Later in the game you sit in front of a group of individuals who have or have not read your stuff and you defend it. The ones who poke holes into your writing are usually the lazy ones who had better things to do than to read your words. They usually start personal attacks in order to diffuse the situation, in order to make their peers think that they really read the stuff. Author here sat in into numerous master defenses, it definitely seemed like that was the case. And usually the women folk will attack the women folk and the men folk will attack the men folk.

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Then the others come to the rescue of the attacked creature aka the candidate for the master thesis. It is all about litigation, it is kind of loosely recreating people’s court. Though there is no judge judy, everyone is judge and jury at the same time. Author here ponders, maybe that is how judge judy worked too.

It is nice outside, sunny, not exactly a day when you sit cooped up and let your half-baked insights flow into the machine. She walked thru the foundation show, it was pretty funny, especially the little notes near the diverse art words. To be clear, a foundation show is the show at the end of the first year of art school. Everybody has to provide an art work and a statement of a maximum of fifty words. The curators of the show will then mount the art works and put a label next to each artwork. The label contains the name of the artist, the medium that was used to create the art work and the 50 words or less statement. The statements can be about anything but they usually are supposed to talk about the first year at the art school, everything you did and learned in a nut shell. One woman said: “In the first year here at this school I learned that everything is phallic. Everything. “ Author here thought that was funny, chuckle-inducing statements are the best. Author even told the librarian to read it, look, this is funny. There were other statements too. One said “art school is even weirder than it is rumoured to be, it is even stranger than people think”, another one said “the school is terrible, the people are terrible and the art is really terrible”. Talk about negativity. Anyhoo, we are writing, writing. Outside a man with grey hair and a green overcoat walks by, slowly, pensively. Author might go back to her studio place, she put the sketchbook and the pen on the table, she signed in, she left that space on the second floor of the north building to come here to the library for typing up her two pages.

This is her writer’s studio, somehow she morphed into a writer while being at this school. The visual artist became a literary artist during her art school years, maybe the reason for that is that 167

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there are way too many sub-disciplines taught at this very school. The school wants to be everything for everybody, that does not really work out, the confusion that is bestowed on the students makes them, well, confused. It seems as if the curriculum in this very place is geared towards confusing people, maybe that is because Vancouver itself is not quite sure where it stands in the scheme of things. BC has fisheries and mining, those are its main industries. There is a little bit of film, a little bit of hi-tech. come to think of it, it is a good place for writers. This very school is good at producing writers, well, it produced one eminent writer, who is by far the most famous alumn. Anyhoo, be that as it may, we have two pages here, time to go down to the market and have a tea while looking out at false creek. On the other side of the water. Author wrote about the foundation show, she wrote about the province. All in two pages. She talked about the system of giving out masters, her writing is way too much slithering on the surface.

You have to describe stuff in detail, you cannot just coast on the surface. One day she will make up her mind if she is a fiction writer or a nonfiction writer, one of these days, yup, one of these days. But until that day comes she will keep on writing like this, somewhere in between fact and fiction, somewhere in this literary no man’s land. Where ideas collide with the notion of self, so to speak. Stream of consciousness is a slightly derogative term that basically says that the words that are uttered are non-scholarly, that they do not denote reason, logic. There is a way to make a point and to cement that point. Which is academic, which is persuasive. But, hey, here in the real world everything mushes together, compartmentalizing the different states of being as a human animal on this planet will not help anyone, it is a futile undertaking. Holistic is a weird word, too new-agey, it has the stench of old-hippidom, that makes yer barf. It reeks of white guys with bald scalps and hair in a ponytail, who are stifled by their own mid-life crises. Anyhoo, we are writing here and writing here, not without attacking everything and anything under the sun. Long live the

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chip on your shoulder, something like that, something of that kind. Her writing is definitely all over the place today, that happens when you are wide awake at five in the morning, when you went to the gym already, when you have to write this up fast, in order to take your car out of its parking space in time when the three hour parking time limit is reached. She came here at eightthirty, she has to leave at eleven-thirty. It is now ten-eighteen, she has 59 167 words here, save this, spellcheck and spellcheck. One of these days she will hit sixty thou.

MIDNITE Way too late to write, but they say that you write better in the middle of the nite. When it is quiet, when you can hear yourself think. though at this time this so very annoying show is on on the telly, so very loud. And that is actually all we have to say here, maybe silence is golden after all.

A DAY A day full of laundry and dishes, seems that is how today will roll. along those lines, apparently, apparently. Goes with the outside-rainyness, goes with the mountain of dirty stuff, pottery, textiles that seem to suffocate the interior of this space here. a horder of chores that have to be done, a collector of to-do-lists. Usually she is out, which is better, saner. In here the work never stops, there is always something that has to be arranged just so. the rolling of the machines is deafening, one washes, one dries. Author ponders what else to read into this, the songs of the appliances, is there anything more poetic? Is that what her subject matter will be from now on, a description of the inner workings of a washing machine? Next, a poem on the combustion engine. inanimate objects have certain intricacies, they are standing still only to be moved with the push of a button. The potential of their motion is what makes them intriguing, furthermore the mystery of how all these things work. Outside, overcast, dreariness, in here, the typing 169

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machine, the silent telly, the words on the monitor, the ones that appear letter by letter. how do you spell insanity? Later in the day she will venture out, take the train to downtown, see the world, anything to fragment this feel of solitude. An urban environment beats nature every time, she is a city mouse, through and through. When she is inside, annoyance marches through her whole being, yup, something like that, something of that kind. We might venture down to the art school, sign in in the studio space, take the sketch book out of the locker, fabricate, fast fast sketches. Instead of running all these words by this machine. 59 555, type on and type on and type on and type on.

First thing in the morn’ she was down in the coffee house on arbutus, banana bread, pike place. some cream, a tad too much. people streaming in, the early morning crowd. All those people who sit in shiny offices or handle shiny machines. All those creatures who are out in the work force.

The better ones. author is not at the top of her writing game today, you cannot be if the weather is as dreary and sullen as it is today. Yup, the weather is sulking, after all these days of blatant sunshine.

The plant near the window, the other one near the other window. not much to describe here, the leaves are like spears, pinching, cuttingy, stabbingy. Author ponders, even her wordcreations are off, these are the neologisms that can’t cut it, won’t cut it. upstairs the yelps of the dryer, make that the rinse cycle. Author here longs for the Laundromat on eighth, the one that she frequents when down in new york city. that is why people go to new york, to do laundry. Laundromats are fascinating, so many different people, so many pieces of laundry. She took a lot of pics with her i-phone, gotta document the laundry place. there is a gallery in nyc called the Laundromat, another one called the kitchen. Or maybe it is merely a Laundromat project, something like that, something of that kind. Author ponders, she should start fashioning a story instead of circling her 170

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ideas around. She should be able to anchor a publisher in, instead of writing down all of these unmarketable ideas and thoughts. Words are not here just to be played with, just to be arranged into mobiles that chime in the wind. Still need some more words here to run this down to sixty thou, need about one hundred and fifty more. the washer is near its end cycle, it is extra loud and extra fast, it stopped, geez, finally. and we type here and type here and type here and type here. top of page 171, yay, how nice, how great. another day’s work is done. And we are outta here and outta here and outta here and outta here.

LATER IN THE DAY # 2 Some more words ah some more words. outside the sun pretty blaringly, the greenery is bathed in yellow light. on the telly, the incessant songs, the ever changing flimmering. Big bang time, well, one of many many reruns. Not what you should write about as a writer, there are bigger questions to discuss than the tv-program. More convoluted stuffi-muffi. Critics will not respond flavourfully to this kind of writing, author here just noticed another DEAR AUTHOR mail in her in-box. Yup, the e-rejections are coming in, for this very text. Author here could rewrite it, but apparently all is lost, there are no ways we can rescue this one. it has to exist unpublished, one of many many manuscripts that will not see the light of day. she ponders, how does it feel to pen stuff in obscurity? Actually pretty good, you are free to write whatever you feel like, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. We do not have to live up to any expectations because, hey, nothing ever got published. Well, as of yet. on the telly, penny and wolowitz, it seems that the greenery outside is even more glaring, it is brightening up while the day marches forward. the word count is past 60 000 here, ah, another milestone, how drole. And we are at the spellcheck and save point, later on will be another occasion to shove words into this very machine.

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TRYING TO WRITE Trying to write this up while the telly is singing its very songs. A whodunit, the detectives stobering thru a fridge in a suspect’s fridge in Brooklyn. The story is all black and white, the detectives are dressed like lawyers. No beige raincoat a la columbo, nope, these cops are all dressed to the nines. Classic attire that will go anywhere. more businessy than anything, more wall street than main street. author here ponders, do her metaphors ring true, ah who knows who really knows. she had a vanilla latte, a skinny one. it is too lukewarmish, the barista had it in for her. yup, that must be it, if your drink is too cold it is the equivalent of the spit on the pizza. Not that we are paranoid here, nope these are facts. Baristas are the masters of the universe, they dispense favours at random. No foam, soy, extra hot extra cold, these are the ways how they regulate the moods of the world. If the drink is not en par than your whole day is screwed.

Author wonders, frasier is on somewhere, niles is the perfect example of someone who lives by the sword of a drink dispenser. Anyhow, author here is pretty sure that not many readers of this will understand her logic, will get her connotations. Maybe that is why you should vie 4 connotationless prose, anyhow, still writing and typing here. the little stripmall on arbutus was uberfull, so was the coffee house. On the telly, an ad for a turkey and bacon avocado sandwich.

Now MODERN FAMILY. AND ONCE MORE ITZEHOE HERE Ten in the morning, the fashion store opening, the woman is wearing all white. rain in this city, just the way it has to be. pen and paper today, it is easier to lug that all over the place. onto the train into the small city, for writing in this coffee house. The waitress mustered a slight smile of recognition, her upper lip made her look almost human. You look nice with a smile, even though

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you somehow manage to hold the expression of boredom. the small town wish for higher glamour, written all over your face. author here ponders, she sure can pen a whole story about the waitress in this coffee shop. small town aspirations that do not go anywhere, there is a whole subgenre in literature on that subject matter. Dreams that are slashed into pieces are always worth discussing, they have drama more so then dreams that are fulfilled. And we write here and write here, while the danish crumbles under the fork, while the blueberry jam mushes and yelps, while the tea is at its last whiffs of steam. The rain is there, outside, soon author here will pack up her stuff to catch the train back down to hamburg.

MAYBE Maybe we can market these words as the musings of a suburban house wife, not that that sounds even borderline glamorous. But hey maybe glamour is not what we are shooting for here, maybe our readership is the same one that flocks to seeing “mall cop”. Who wants to be part of the Williamsburg crowd anyways? Author here ponders, whoever started categorizing literature, book award creatures or bookshop owners? Anyhow, on the telly, modern family, on a trip to Australia. And the words thunder down onto the keyboard, relentlessly ah relentlessly relentlessly. now some weird movie, a woman talking with a guy. Author here is bored with describing the songs, the sights of the telly, outside the greenery is so really bored, awaiting the night, awaiting the darkness. Author here ponders if her text is too poetic, not poetic enough, maybe she should really start taking online courses in writing, gotham writing workshops, the like and the like. Sitting in class to learn writing will destroy her ability to fashion sentences, that is a given ah a given. You can only write by doing it, nobody can teach you which words to choose. There are no set rules, that is how it is how it is. It is art after all after all. And we have 60 861 words here, today was quite a day in writerland. Yup, that is what happens when you 173

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choose to not have a life, you become extra prolific that is how it is how it is how it is how it is.

Repeating a phrase goes with the rhythms of the language, yup, something like that and something of that kind of that kind. Today we produced five pages, mainly because we sat at home and filled up the washer twice. yup, laundry is conducive to higher amounts of literary output, so it seems ah so it seems. Five pages, not bad not bad at all. 60 967, only twenty or so to make it down to 61.

Still MODERN FAMILY, it is kind of funny, but hey it lacks laugh tracks. And what is a sit com sans laugh tracks anyways. You just have to figure it out for yourself when to burst into laughter.

Ah, what a drag. Btw, 61 022 it is ah it is.

RAINY DAY She ponders if she should call this short piece rainy day, after all all her stuff is usually happening while it is raining. We live in a rainy part of the world. Author here parked her car in the space where she had to pay three bucks and a half, that space will be out in about ten minutes or so. Make that 20. Thus we have about twenty minutes to write here in the art school library.

She listened in to an extremely boring conference presentation, the boredom was so very palpable. Both speakers made a point to be extremely non-animated, there was very good food on the buffet table though. What was the most interesting were the video installations both in the room adjacent to the mocap studio and in the ie. Gallery space on the ground floor. What was intriguing was that basically the technicians were mounting the stuff, which means that art is mounted by technicians. Video art that is. Author ponders if she wants to show her stuff in galleries she should ask technicians to mount that, after all she can shoot the films but she has no clue how then to make the film appear on a bigger scale. Anyone can shoot a movie what with i-

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phone technology, the tough part is how to make it appear on a wall, how do you project your small movie that only exists on you tube or face book or vimeo, how do you enlarge it, how does it appear on different platforms. Author ponders, she has a lot of tiny film snippets, some of them even still on VHS. There is another problem too, lots of her movies have a copyrighted sound track, you need clearance to use the music of petula clark or yussuf islam aka cat stevens. She ponders his name first was cat stevens then yussuf islam, if push comes to shove he first had a greek name and then became cat stevens. Anyhoo, we are still typing here and still typing here.

The day before she mostly lived at home, all because of the two loads of laundry and the dryer is extremely slow. Maybe even hanging the clothes on the drying thingie takes less time, drying the clothes en plain air. Author ponders, her wording is off, plein air means outside of a building and those dryer thingies are indoor, well, thingies. This writing of her will not cut it, you cannot just use the word THINGIE in order to denote a structure made out of metal and wood. Anyhoo, still typing here still typing here. She could go down to the foundation show, hopple around a tad, look at the animations in the studio room, yup, something like that something of that kind. She could go to her own studio space, start producing some more art that nobody wants to see. Or she might just write up, type up all of these words that nobody wants to read. The ocean factory is majestic it always is and always is. 61 539, write on and write on and write on and write on and write on STILL LATER Sitting again at the computer in the art school library, while the librarian and the technician talk in the back about how and where to mount certain stuff for the grad show, author here feeds some more words to this machine here, she listened in to still another presentation in the symposium, equally boring. The food though was good, and we learned some stuffi muffi. Not 175

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that we remember any of it, it goes in to one ear and comes out on the other side. 175 pages and 61 647 it is and it is.

ON THE TELLY On the telly, parks and recreation. Outside, sunniness. A generic afternoon near to evening. hanging out all over town without any real objective sure is exhausting. But hey, the words are accumulating and that is all that we are shooting for here. two pages it is, not quite not quite.

Maybe just sitting put in front of the typewriter is way better than this kind of writing, going all over town, checking in every now and then with the typing machine, in different locales, all over town. Author ponders, she has to tackle writing like an office job, not like a jog through the world in between disconnected words. who is really interested in her daily routine? Her coffee, her banana bread, the overpriced pastry in the bakery in yaletown, the boring symposium in the art school. Where there is still stuff happening at this time, a performance piece and later on the media show, which will start up at eight. There is media happening right here, the telly that is singing its songs. Later in the evening we will have a latte, author ponders that is not what should go into this book. nope, it is shared on twitter, that is how the kids do it these days. she ponders if this her text will qualify as journal, as diary. It is not meant to be like that, it is more a travelogue, more a stacationlog. A generic log of a fictional persona. And her alterego in itzehoe.

If that is confusing then it is intended. Art is supposed to be confusing, especially bad art. author listened in to this woman who quoted different artists who were giving each their own interpretation of what constitutes art.

Author ponders, her syntax, her grammar is off, but she does not really feel like correcting it. maybe using the slightly off wording is better, it sure is creative. Creative license to write the

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wrong words, yup, maybe that is how literature should be. anyhow, still typing, on the telly Madonna and mike myers, way back when they were young. And btw, 62 007 it is and it is here.

ANOTHER DAY Late afternoon, it is sunny outside. the rest of the sunniness of a perfect day. had a skinny vanilla latte in the coffee house on arbutus, the woman said that hey now you get hooked on fancy drinks. Not good, because those are the drinks that will fatten you up. anyhow, typing here and typing here. went to the art school, part of the symposium there, the talks were brutal. Ah how do you document boredom, author here was yawning all the time. the day before there was the media show, which was great. furthermore we went to metrotown, now we have stuff to write about. literature about malls and two and a half men, to encapsulate life in north america. 62 137, write on ah write on.

ONCE MORE ITZEHOE Ten, rain, opening of the door of the fashion store on the other side of the street. the danish, a peppermint tea, three women chatting up a storm near the window. today it is the laptop, the words rain down onto the keyboard. 62 190, for now for now.

ON THE TELLY Seinfeld ah Seinfeld. Funny ah funny. laugh track galore. Rerun galore.

NOT WRITTEN IN AGES The seat at the type writer had been vacated for several days what feeled like several months here. once you have been away it is difficult to get back into the routine. Maybe that is good for the world of words, there is a respite in the production of this particular writer here, a pause in 177

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the output. Last day of april will be tomorrow, suddenly it is summer. today she was part of the art intake for the grad school in the art school.

ANOTHER DAY IN ART SCHOOL Once more in the library, she is typing a-typing. Author here feels as if she was thrown in front of a moving steam roller and run over, slowly steadily. She slept enough, the weather is nice and sunny, she is well-fed and well-hydrated, no sniffles, no cough, nothing, no tuberculosis, no diphtheria. So why does she feel like shit, every muscle hurts in a very non-hurtingish way. It is as if she just swam the English channel, just went up mount Everest and jumped down. The lingering aches of utter exhaustion. Might be psycho-somatic, then again, what isn’t? Every booboo is psychosomatic, each and every one. She ponders if that is a scholarly statement, ah, who knows and who knows?

She went to the place where people are working on installing their artworks, author here asks them irrelevant questions, is basically in the way. Nobody is answering her, because, well, they are all extra-busy. It is as if you ask a surgeon while she or he is cutting somebody’s body open about the blade of the scalpel they are using. Excuse me, which make is that, what cutting grade is that? You should never disturb men at work or women at work for that matter. Author here ponders, she left her car in the parking lot of the mall, hopefully it will not be towed away.

Anyhoo, still typing still typing here. One of these days we will write a book on assembly and disassembly of an exhibition, if that musical group whose name she does not remember, the one that made the record THE WALL, if they could make an LP about pictures from an exhibition then well then she could write a book about assembly and disassembly of an exhibition. She is here these days a lot. Like an old creeper. Looks at the grad show going up, before that she

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looked at the foundation show, at the grad show in sfu, at the exhibition in the vAG and at the one in the CAG. At the one in the pendulum gallery, at the one in the roundhouse community center. At the one in the OR galley, at the one in the display vitrine in the center. Yup, these days there is an exhibition overload, she looks at as many exhibitions as she can, she walks through diverse malls, looks at the window displays, after all those are exhibits too, and if push comes to shove more polished ones than the ones in any museum. Anyhoo, still typing ah still typing. She had one too many chocolates in the concourse gallery, one too many coffees. The ones that are dispensed freely there, for everyone that happens to be there. And still typing ah still typing, still typing. There will be a preview nite, the opening. Today is her last day here in the studio on the second floor of the north building. And we are writing, ah, a-writing. A-writing. 62 788 words, time to march this forward, ever so reluctantly ever so reluctantly. Time to describe her fictional sojourns to the coffee shop in itzehoe, time to touch base with her alto-ego. And we are typing, writing, the like and the like. 62 837, for now and for now and for now and for now.

MAYBE Maybe she is a writer after all. not a visual artist. It is pretty hot outside, good for the start of may. Author here bought a print for five bucks, in the art sale at the community college. her first art purchase since, well, since the beginning of time. the print was just too good to stay nonpurchased, gotta own it, gotta have it. and so the career of a collector starts out, there were these two persons in new york, the vogels, who crammed an amazing array of art work into their twobedroom apartment. Or maybe a one-bedroom apartment. They were a husband and wife team, he was a mailman, there is a film about them. author is not quite sure if he was the mailman or if she was the mailwoman, maybe she was a nurse, but anyhow, they always bought art, over the span of thirty or forty years. art that can be stored, that does not take up space. They had a keen 179

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eye for quality and that is what really counts. An acquisition person at the tate does the same after all. and we are writing here ah writing.

Today in the evening it is industry nite at the art school, we might go there go there. after all we are part of the industry, which is how some bystander put it. anyhow, typing ah typing. There was an exhibition of the stuff by the photography majors in the college, was nice, was interesting.

Everyone had mounted the images in a different way, each and every bio was different from the next. And we are typing this up typing this up, her jaw hurts when eating, she bit on this too hard dry peach which kind of traumatized her jaw. Weird, huh. it happened the day before and she still has problems when chewing. It is fine when she is not moving her jaw, but even talking is kind of a hassle. Her mouth needs total rest, no chewing, no talking, the muscles of her mouth, the ones all around her right jaw, they need to be riced. Weird huh, strange ah strange. on the telly once more the Donald Sterling story, the scandal, outside, the sun shining ah shiningish. 63 228, ah great ah great.

THE DAY IN ITZEHOE Once more, back here and back here. waitress with bored face, fashion woman with too much make-up. rain. Three woman chattering away. danish with raspberries therein, tea that tastes like pepper mint. The words on the paper that are not good enough to be published. That are just so, that are inconsequential, a tad too convoluted. Lesser words. words that will not be cited, that will not make it into a database. Words that are just that, words. good enough words though, they are never ever that bad. Her grades are always good, A’s without even trying. Maybe the profs are too lenient, maybe they should grade harder. Or maybe she tends to be in classes where the other students have other priorities like sculpture, like painting. Not everyone is into words all of

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the time. anyhoo, her words accumulate and that is all we are shooting for here, all that we are shooting for after all.

LATER LATER And we are writing and writing. author here is about to keel over, from exhaustion, fatigue, something like that, something of that kind. She is not quite sure what she is exhausted from, we slept enough here, had enough food, everything should be hokey-dorey, but instead she is excruciatingly tired. In the evening there will be industry night, it is better to stay wide awake in order to be able to attend. Though there is always the problem with parking, lots of times you cannot find parking on the island. Anyhow, still typing, typing, while two and a half men is singing its songs against the roar of the laugh tracks.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE The tea, the danish, the rain. The writer who feeds her words to the machine, basically because she does not know what else to do. her career as an animator did not take off, neither did the one as a painter, a sculptor, a sound artist, a curator, a blogger. She did not get into grad school, not in north america, not in amsterdam. no MFA for you, then again you can always reapply. Then again, a masters is more what you do if you want to teach, which will not really work out for her, there are so many applicants with PHD’s that are totally crowding the application pool. No tenure for author here, that will not happen. Stick to typing up these words, while the rain is coming down while the three women are chattering, while the fashion woman opens up her store.

While the drops of rain wet up the little town here, while the steam from the tea whiffs away and whiffs away.

63 677, for now and for now here.

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SO MAYBE So maybe after running around like crazy it is time to feed some words to this machine here. rushing to the mall, rushing to the gym, tanking some gas and back to the typing space here it is it is. writing as an addiction, that is how it is how it seems here. outside so very red flowers on the bush, a reluctantly rainy weather. greyness after all these over-sunny days, maybe this is a welcome respite. Nice weather cannot last forever, make it stop ah make it stop, author here is still reeling from the preview night at the art school, so many people, it was a circus for sure.

Now it is quietness here which has its charms, hecticness put on ice. For now ah for now.

ITZEHOE ITZEHOE The chattering of three women near a window, the pouring rain. This small town and its unsung charms, the fashion woman is wearing peach and green. Poison green. The danish clumps around the fork, the tea has short whiffs. Everything is just so, the way it should be in order to produce the perfect environment for a writer, for any writer. put any individual here and the words will flow, should flow. mechanically, automatically. A non-writer is as good with words as a professional writer, yup, let us stick to this story. And 63 909 we have here and we have here.

OUTSIDE Outside, nothing but rain. Drops hanging from the railing, silver spheres against the sharp spears of the greenery. On the telly, quiet images that hurl past from left to right. In a blue that is not quite grey and not quite turquoise. A tad later she will go down to the coffee house, a skinny vanilla latte, the fugitives from the rainy dreariness. A tad later still she might go down to the grad show opening in the art school, well, if she has the stomach for being thrown to and fro. So many people, a sea of humanity. A nice contrast to the utter silence in here, there has to be a 182

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middle ground, not too high a degree of desolation and isolation, not way too many persons motioning to and fro. Not city and not country. somewhere in the middle, somewhere pleasant enough. the respite from the storm, but not too death-like. anyhow, still typing here, 64 079 it is and it is, it is.

A LATTE A vanilla latte to be precise, down in the coffee house on arbutus, against the remnances of wetness, against the immediate shutting down of the place, the closing hour. The two youngsters in shorts and black t-shirt, spilling out of the monstrous truck, howling in the cartons for the place, fast, so very efficient. On the overhead, pot of gold, only author and the man in the back know the tune. You always can gage your age by the tune on the overhead. Back in front of the type writer, words are splashed into the machine, fast and fast and fast and fast.

MAYBE ITZEHOE ONCE MORE Short descripts of this very place, sketched into the machine, while rain is blanketing the city. author here ponders, wrong choice of words, snow blankets a city, rain just drizzles around. She is getting fluent at differing ways to describe rain, to describe the danish on the plate. You take the language and start picking words at random, throwing it at the item that is supposed to be described, hoping for the best, hoping that it sticks. You can staccato the flow of the words, put pauses here and there, emphasize one word or the other. so many ways to do this, the myriad of choices dazzles yer. even though you have to sit hunched over to type away while itzehoe is happening outside of this place here.

She is kind of frazzled by this writing biz, at this point she is way into typing up all of these texts, she peddles them to all of these publishers, she ends up in rejection land always ah always.

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the only road left is self publication, if we can figure out the odds and ends of how to do this, author here should go for that. anyhoo, still typing still typing, while the rain is coming down, while it is getting late for the train back down to hamburg.

ON THE TELLY Al jazeera, the news. This Saturday is coming to an end, there are still some two hours left though until the days yelps out. author here uses the word of YELP, not that it really makes sense in this context, snuffs out might be a better term. Anyhow, still typing, we have 64 500 or so, might run this forward to 65 thou. Author did not go down to the art school, which was a mistake, it is always fun to be in a place where there is an event going on, the whole shebang, the big party. Even bigger than the one the day before but somehow author here is partied out. so sitting in a small room with a telly has to do, a study, a studio. Instead of dressing up and partying it up, instead of roaming through a space with lots and lots of art, instead of enjoying free food and free entertainment, the movies, the animation, we have to feed all of these words down to the machine here, in the same way that a runner has to put one foot in front of another, has to train, in order to be able to run on race day. on the telly, stuff from the Ukraine, author is not quite sure what is going on, all the members of the feuding groups looks alike, orangeish beards and not much hair on the scalp. Anyhoo, still typing, still typing on. this better be good better be good.

ITZEHOE AS ALWAYS Ten it is, the fashion store is opening. The sales woman is wearing blue, the rain is coming down on the town here. The danish is crumbling under author’s fork, the tea is still on its last whiffs.

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might go somewhere or might go nowhere. The words accumulate but hey, to what end here? 64 740 words, some more and we are down to 65 000. Or better yet, up to. author works on typing this up, while listening in to a speech on her laptop, which is kind of difficult to do. listen in to some words while trying to fashion other words. about different themes. Your brain is somehow partitioned down the middle, one side listens to the speech, the other side tries to pin words together. anyhow, rain is still pouring down, time to catch the train back down to hamburg. Or maybe it is up. author here should look at a map once in a while.

TELLY AH TELLY On the telly the actor who plays the lawyer on community, talking talking. Anyhow, now it is the cooking show on cnn, Anthony bourdain parts unknown. now an ad for a car, now an ad for still something else. all these images on the telly mush together. watching the idiot box while typing, this better be good better be good. a mere one hundred words, that is all that is needed, the push of a button and now it is still another rerun of a friends episode.

ITZEHOE The danish crumbles, author here plays around with her food. the whiffs from the tea play around above the tea cup, today author here is scribbling the words onto her notepad. One day in the future she will sit down and transcribe this, gives her something to do.

Rain is there as always, yup, the ever rainy city here. seems that the only constant in her life is the rain, it is the same here as it is in hamburg. It is pretty good if you are a writer, dreariness seems to feed the words to the machine. Or in this case the paper.

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The three women chattering near the window, the fashion woman on the opposite side of the street is wearing pink. And the rain is coming down. the waitress is making her bored face, author ponders if the woman has the same expression even at times when she is not working here. be that as it may, it is time to catch the train back to hamburg.

IN THE ROOM WITH THE TELLY Her head is swimming, she had a so very busy day. now it is back here in the tv-room, at the typewriter. On the telly, the rolling credits of an old detective show, CANNON. Now it is still another one of those oldies but goodies, THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO. Make that THE ROCKFORD FILES, streets of san Francisco is on later. Sundays it is columbo, kojac, cannon, and the aforementioned streets of san Francisco. Lots of old whodunits. The audio is kind of off though. anyhow, we changed this to two and a half men. Outside, the weather is kinda iffy. The may that does not really want to set in here in this city.

AND BACK TO ITZEHOE IT IS HERE Train ride out of Hamburg, fast walk through the pouring rain, the coffee house it is and it is. The three women chattering away near the window, the bored waitress leaning near the door to the kitchen. The fashion woman on the other side of the street, today a silvery number it is. This all is like a scene out of an old movie, or a rerun of a sitcom. Nothing new here, this is way too surreal. Author here has her tea, has her danish. she types away at the laptop, two pages and she will catch the train back to hamburg. All of these words will slither together, hopefully hopefully.

One day she will land a publishing contract, she will find an editor, an agent. One of these days. but at this time a rough draft is all that we need here, later on we can go in again and arrange and rearrange all of these wordings. One of these days. but for now, the rough draft has to suffice, the 186

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structure, the rudimentary one. all of her words ah all of her words. 65 419 words, 65 422.

Number crunching about words, not exactly the right way to do things. her syntax is off, her grammar is off. quantity begets quality, well, let us hope for the best here. all of these words ah all of these words.

Author looks out the window, the rain is coming down as if there is no tomorrow. she ponders if this her observation even makes sense, she hates writing, her metaphors are off, nothing seems to work here in writerland. She used to be ah so eloquent, nowadays on the other hand we are full of bullshit here. full off self-doubt, full of, ah, forget it. writing cannot be taught, you either have it or you don’t, there are all these theories about good writing. literature, what does that even mean? For author here the poetics of grocery lists or dishwasher manuals are as beautiful as Shakespeare. And that is why she ain’t no writer, no successful writer, no sought-after scribe.

Anyhow, the rain is coming down, the danish is crumbling, the tea is cold. 65 597, ah, that should do for now and for now. time to catch the train back to hamburg, there will be other days of waxing away. other days for this writer, other days, still other days.

THE TELLY Laughtrackland is pushing this forward, fast and fast. one of many reruns she has seen before, it is still funny though, still funny. an ad for a mattress company, another one for a detergent. An ad for a law group, an ad for a car. outside the reluctant greenery of a late lazy Sunday afternoon, some sunniness that still wants to come out. an ad for a fast food chain, an ad for a cold medication. The songs of the telly, singing to her, dictating some silly stories. The ever changing forms that motion over the screen, ever-changing ever-changing.

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Coffee house, rain, fashion woman. coffee, danish, waitress. These are the ingredients for a good enough text. One that may or may not sell. But one that will have a certain word count, one that will show that author here tried. To sketch down a story or at least a journal, a soso-journal.

Some kind of smithering of journal. And the rain is coming down and coming down here.

HOT COFFEE The hot vanilla latte is everything but hot, the coffee house down in the strip mall was next to closing time. two women, very young, the poster on the wall that propagated an event that was three days ago. on the telly, big bang, she left when it was on, she came back and now it is sheldon being the flash zooming all through the US in a jif. The sounds of the telly are too low, it is weird, strange, as if you listen to the murmur of a creek. A man-made creek. Author here had a very eventful, slightly crazy morn’, running all over town, downtown, metrotown, mall one, mall two, the gym, UBC. And everywhere by bus or by train. public transport can get to you, after a while. she was totally exhausted, that happens when you are on an errand run that does not get you anywhere. a mission that is unsuccessful. On the telly a car chase or more like a run-chase, men with grim faces running after each other in black swat uniforms with guns, kiefer Sutherland, in between a face of a woman who is angelic and blond and very beautiful.

SOME MORE ITZEHOE She knows the drill, the run thru the rain, the coffee house, the three women that chat away. waitress, fashion woman in pink-blue, danish. tea, laptop. This is how she entertains herself, one day somebody will purchase up these words. curl up with one of her many books. Writing, writing, such a weird profession. The typing up of letters, words, sentences. some pauses, some apostrophes. the noise from the dishes in the kitchen distract here, cut into the flow of her words. interrupt the ideas, the sentences. something rumples. Author ponders, usually there is no sound

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from the kitchen, usually nothing is happening in the kitchen at ten in the morning. today though it is pretty loud, the sound of metal, a door clapping. Author here prefers the sounds of the rain, the quaintness, the dreaminess that is so conducive to good words. the right kind of mood here makes for better words. author dreads the day that there will be no rain, sun will be killing her writing. you can only write in fall or in weather that feels like fall. Rain, water rushing out from the heavens, that is what makes your words erupt onto the page. gushing water, gushing words. she will catch the train back to hamburg, in time ah in time. alsterhaus, jungfernstieg, the sites of her childhood. But first comes the writing the writing. her quest for immortality, the documentation that a life was lived here. everybody has a story, this is hers. The danish crumbles under the fork, clumps around the silvery spears. Raspberry mush is oozing out onto the blue and white plate, the door opens, two construction workers in boots and hardhats. One of them is a woman, they start chatting in their thick northern german lingo. Thick regional accents is what author here likes, when the language is hiccupped and totally distorted. When there is a sense of place that tinges along in the sounds of the speaker, it is the antithesis of author’s too rippedupped life. being born in one place and dying in the same place, that is where it is at. Who needs to rush all over the place, all over the planet? It only keeps you from the search for the right words, from formulating the right words.

Rain is still pouring down, time to wrap this up, time to catch the train back to hamburg. That is how it is how it is.

TELLY TELLY The antique road show, a man and a woman talking about vivien leigh, and now about grace kelly’s earrings. Historic jewellery, now a woman in pink talking about a framed photograph of babe ruth. A signed one. it is over-sized and very early, apparently that is how this photograph

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stands out from other babe ruth’s memorabilia. Has something to do with vaudeville, ten thousand dollars for this photo, actually fifteen to twenty thou. For one photo in a frame. Now a tomahawk, a man in a beard is talking about it. the woman who sells it has glasses and looks like a librarian, like a pretty one. author ponders, why she uses the words she uses, we have two pages here, time to finish this up and finish this up. 66 555 for now and for now.

ANOTHER DAY IN THE ART SCHOOL Back in the library, typing typing. She could describe this very place, bitch about the keyboard, about the big wooden structure that obstructs the view of the ocean factory, about the grad exhibit thingies. But that is not what we want to write about here, she would rather formulate her thoughts that she had when leaving the house. Something about how one can make a living by drawing lines on paper, be it as an architect, be it as an animator. Be it as a writer, for that matter.

Be it as a composer, a choreographer. There are lots of ways to make moola by infiltrating the creative industries, for some reason her well has dried out. In the beginning she was overjoyed, fascinated by the easiness that she could sail into the art world. Her portfolio was rated 9 out of ten in most subcategories. Mainly because she had mastered the craft of fashioning a portfolio tailored specifically to the requirements of this particular school. Anyhoo, afterwards everything went way south mainly because she tried her hand at stuff that she was not good at. Not innately good. Technical IT-stuff, mainly. If you are not a programmer, well, then good luck in this school, where mostly older profs were fascinated by the brave new world of pushing buttons and making things appear and disappear while the younger generation scoffed at those kind of gadget hungry behaviours. Anyhoo, we are still back here, there are three hundred or so graduating from this place, where will they be in five years? Author her is busy with typing up stuff, not that she secured a publishing contract as of yet. Wallowing in unpublished-writer-land, that is her trek all

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of these days. The sweet smell of failure, yup, that one and that one. She might take a short course in curating, in june or july, in nyc. Yup, why not and why not. Anyhoo, still typing still typing.

BACK HOME Big bang on the telly, now an ad. author here is still feeling the taste of the burger she had for lunch, burgers make her sick. we watched an assortment of sitcoms here, while holding a skype conversation. Which is all so weird, you have to kind of navigate all these equally useless endeavours. Listening in to laugh tracks, trying to read a controversial article that does not really interest her that much. anyhow, now an ad for a tv-dinner, another one for a furniture store in boston.

ITZEHOE LIKE ALWAYS The walk through the rain, the coffee house, the danish. writing ah writing. more like typing.

This is typing not writing, capote versus kerouac. And we write here type here. three women chatting, the tea is getting cold. all her days here in this coffee house, we still do not have a plot here and we never will. Plots are overrated, so it seems and so it seems. She has more than 67 000 words, quite a feat here.

THE TELLY Laughtracks laughtracks. Big bang, lennard and the assistant of Sheldon. Outside the sun is shining. In here the tv is singing all of its songs, while the words are accumulating. 67 000 words, still writing, still typing here. each and every day two pages have to be fed to the beast.

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paintings of everyday objects, it is a better medium to bring out the eyes of the everyday. So to speak. Ah, it is tough to write coherent stuff while the sun is shining ah so brightly. While the world is happening , somewhere outside. a writers studio, a writers lab is way too isolated a room. one cannot really write good stuff, formulate articulate stuff while laugh tracks roar through the place. While the sun is this bright ah this this bright.

SO MUCH LATER IN THE DAY Still later and still later here. author ventured out to the coffee house on arbutus, this was her second time in this very space, on the same day. this time around it was a skinny vanilla latte, the woman with the curly hair laughed, you changed your drink, while the other lady said, oh, it is quite a time. author here ponders, she is frequenting that place way too much, she basically lives there. ample amounts of caffeine, that cannot be good, not that good. outside it is nearing the night, but there is still light still light. maybe time to take a hike, literally. A walk through green pastures, yup, the like and the like. there is this charming park nearby, where ultimate Frisbee is all the rage. or used to be, along time ago. wow, that must have been twelve years ago when she used to walk there each and every day. she was so much thinner back then, skinny and fit. So much younger than today. Time flies, yup, it does. she was a non-writer back then, back then she dabbled in visual arts. And now we are dabbling in the literary arts. Working with the written word. for free.

BACK FROM A STROLL AROUND KERRISDALE Still later in the day, the weather was ah so fresh, the bridge crowd in the senior center was ah so happy. On the telly now a seinfeld rerun. The one with the restaurant by babu. And the iq-test.

Author here has seen it so very many many many times. now an ad and now another one. this is 192

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how we write here, documenting whatever there is on the telly. and still another ad for a tvdinner. 67 523, for now and ah for now, for now.

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Middle of the night writing, that is where it is at. So much better than middle of the night drawing, the idea that producing an idea in the neck of the night is superior to producing the same idea during normal hours is pretty consistent all through history. There lies a romanticism in there, in the idea that concepts that are produced during the time when the majority of persons are sleeping is superior to the work that is produced during normal waking hours. the baker who wakes up at dawn shows a certain commitment to his trade, so does the reporter who makes her way to the news studio while everybody else is wide asleep. The work has an urgency that is cemented by the fact that it is done while forgoing sleep, while defying circadian cycles. That in itself shows the level of commitment that one has to doing a task. Writer here is writing merely because she could not sleep, but there is the slight hope too that the words strung together at this ungodly hour should be so very good, better than the words that are fashioned during regular waking hours. the telly is singing its songs here, it is three hours ahead of here, three hours ahead on the east coast. WGN morning news in Chicago, pix eleven news in new york city. the woman with the microphone live from the streets of Chicago, in the early morning hours. the weather bunny in new york, in blond, in shiny white. it is five forty-eight over there, nope, it is actually seven. Four here, seven over there. a woman with a mike, in a pink shawl and golden hoop earrings, in a blonde mane. Her words ah her words here. queens man shot fatally, a police car with the marker in front of it, the marker that shows a crime scene. Author here ponders, what do you call those pieces of fabric that tell passers-by that they should not enter the crime scene.

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on the telly instead of black on yellow. A woman and a man on the telly, two anchors, she in black and white, he in grey. Now they are discussing monica lewinsky’s article in vanity fair.

Now a clinical psychologist and a political commentator. It is interesting, but if push comes to shove there are definitely more important issues in this world than the personal lives of people even if they are so very public. And apparently it will be a so very beautiful day here in new york city, apparently, according to the woman in beige and grey in front of the map behind her. author struggling with her words here, she is no writer, her forte is and was the sketching of lines, black doodles on white, writing is a mere afterthought, the dabbling in an art that she is not really good in. And now they are talking about something called an internal bra, which apparently is an implant inside of the skin, under the skin, different from a breast implant. Weird stuff, huh. pix eleven morning news, now a homicide warning, a helicopter shoot of a suburban house in new Rochelle. Now a story about the molly drug, now an image of oprah in dark pink. And now an ad for house paint. Another ad for a car. a dog jumping out of a car. an ad for the mets, buy tics. And have dunkins. Ah to sit hunched over the type writer while the telly is on singing its songs here. we are pix eleven news where every story hits home, tells a story and btw. America runs on dunkins. It is Wednesday, hump day. an image of police brutality. And now an audition tape of oprah before she became famous, which actually coincides with a tape of Elizabeth may being a contestant in a game show long before she became the leader of the green party here in Canada.

Weird, huh, that is what has to be a substitute for news, flashbacks of famous women. There are three stories of women that are already famous, their stories are rehashed, seems that there are a lot of cutbacks in newsrooms thus there have to be all these inexpensive news stories. Oprah, monica Lewinsky, Elizabeth may. Or maybe it is just a slow news day. anyhow, writing here and typing here. documenting the minutes of our lives. now two women and two men talking behind

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the desk and once more a talk about the weather. it is very weird that one can see the news in new york city here in Vancouver, technology ah technology. The man in the grey suit is drinking his coffee out of a white mug. Now once more the weather lady it is. now traffic, FDR drive, accident, talking about the subway routes, the long island route, the metro line. and still writing still writing here.

ITZEHOE, RAIN The rain is coming down, the coffee house is the shelter. The danish, the tea. Three women near the window, chatting it up. the waitress and the fashion woman. all the ingredients for typing up the right words. 68 417, for now and for now.

ONCE MORE Once more the weather bunny on the news, talking about the weather in the pokanose. You do not really have to board a plane to go to other places, just watch what is on on the telly and you feel that you are on the other side of the world. a gadget will bring you there, a screen, a box with noise in it. Be it the telly, be it a phone. The illusion of adventure, of connectivity. Anyhow, writing ah still writing and still writing. chicken apple sausage sandwich, dunkin dunkin. An ad for a Cadillac and another ad for diamonds. And still another ad for dunkins, this time for a pink slushy like summery drink, once more the reminder that america runs on dunkins. 68 557, for now and for now, for now.

LONG TIME AND NO WRITING Author here has not written in what arguably seems like an eternity. It might have been some mere two days but you know what they say it is like playing an instrument you have to make it

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part of your daily routine. Or you will lose your mojo. And we cannot have that. life gets in the way but the muse here no likey. You have to park you keester in front of the type writer, gotta let your mind go blank, gotta start typing and typing. While the telly sings its songs, while two and a half men is starting up, while the words flow onto the page, while the skinny vanilla latte cools up, while the sunny day is slowly lurching to an end. too much sugar these days and way too much grease. Cream puff galore, the arteries are clogging up, slowly, steadily. We are all gonna die somehow, her drug of choice here is whipped cream. she gained eight pounds since x-mas, wow, that is quite a lot. Gotta go to the gym, gotta go for walks. Gotta count calories, gotta get the weight down here. she is not in the mood to do that, she is more the sitting down and typing kind of gal and it shows unluckily. The potato-ism, the couch potato-ism. Her latte is finished, outside, greenery, pink and white flowers here. and still writing still typing. 68 800, exactly, exactly.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Coffee house, danish, tea. Women chattering near the window, fashion woman in white on the other side of the street. everything is exactly like it always is, the verdict is still out if that is conducive to writing or not. author here feeds her words to this machine, after all she has to do so if she wants to call herself a writer. A failed writer, but a writer nonetheless. ever since she hang out her shingle that says WRITER she feels tinges of utter failure. Which comes with the territory. Anybody can call herself a writer but there are differing levels of success. She is the kind of uncritical writer who is happy with the accumulating word count. Everything we pen here must be great, that is what we firmly believe in here. Getting an MFA in creative writing will destroy that level of confidence, that is what happened with her visual art. Anyhow, be that as it may, we are still feeding all these words here to the machine. The ubiquitous rain is coming 196

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down on the quaint city, time to wrap this up and catch the train back to Hamburg. 68 999 - one more word, ah, and 69 thou it is and it is.

FOUR PAGES Four pages and this will be at 200 pages, author knows that she does not have the energy to finish this by midnight. Outside the day is marching forward, well, technically the same holds true for inside here.

Still later, it is arguably so much nearer to darkness, the blue of the sky has the metallness of greys and blacks in it, the changed tone, no yellow any more, no orange. a deep dark night is approaching, rest is near, night time, nighttime with its layers of silence, of solitude. She arranges words here, marches them around, poetry is there for the saying. On the telly, Charlie rose and denzel Washington, the woman who plays funny roles, and still two other women, one of them author here has seen before on the screen. Actors talking shop, against the black backdrop of this very show here. 69 162, 69 163 here.

ON THE TELLY On the telly a lot of noise. late afternoon, after seven. One skinny vanilla latte in the coffee house on arbutus, sitting on the high chair in front of the window, watching the street go by. a bike too. and now back here, starting to type and type. Author here did not write that much for some time, gotta jump back onto the saddle, for writing typing.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Rain as always, three women chattering near the window. everything is in its place, author here ponders she could leave this city here for years and come back only to find the same scenery, 197

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everything intact. Nothing ever changes here in itzehoe, it is the anchor of her existence as a writer.

69 293 All of these words ah all of these words here.

THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS On the telly, a soap, one of many, that is the morning program. It is either that or a talk show, people yelling at each other. then again, there are court shows. That is what is happening on tv in the morning. outside, the sun is shining, in here, the typing machine is waiting for words. a blank canvas, waiting a-waiting. Her writing is not good enough, it never is never is. she walked through downtown, from the yaletown station to the city centre one. she devised new titles for this her text, “bookish”, “walk thru the city”, they are all equally good or equally bad. She listened in to this radio show where musicians were talking about their work, about their music making process. How they build a song. Interesting, there are as many ways to compose stuff as there are songs. Anyhow, typing here, typing here, there are as many ways to write as there are writers. her m.o. today is looking at what is on the telly and typing, and writing. we have 69 486 words here, gotta drive this down to seventy thou, while the woman with too much make-up is talking on tv. it is a soap, they all have too much make-up. this one guy, he must have held this job for the last forty years, must be boring to do the same thing day-in and day-out. still another guy, whose face she recognizes, seems they are both on the same soap. The male susan luccis of daytime tv. and we are writing here and typing here. now an ad for j.c.penney, obviously a soap opera is a great place to peddle clothes. now a Revlon ad. buy nice clothes, buy nice make-up, you too will look like a fashion icon, like a soap star. An ad for juice, for dental insurance, for hot 198

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dogs. food drinks and something to pay for nice teeth. 69 629, 69 630, 630. Still another guy that author here recognizes, seems that the actors never change on this show. They have a job for life.

THE ITZEHOE THING Author here is doing her itzehoe thing, her ritual of making it through the pouring rain to come to this very coffee house. This is the recipe for her writing, the commute out of hamburg, the hope for rain, the wish for three women chatting. The rain and the women are variables, her danish and her tea, those are constants. This place is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but it is open on all the other days. her words appear on the monitor, the ones that she will sell, eventually, eventually. her writing career is pretty exhausting, especially when no one reads this and no one publishes it. but, hey, gotta write, gotta write, gotta produce two pages each and every day. these days, author here had better things to do than clog in her words, gotta make up for all the lost days of manufacturing. If you call yourself a writer, you’ve gotta manufacture texts, no matter what no matter what. consistency is what makes for a writer, stamina. the drive to start up typing, each and every day and each and every day. like brushing your teeth, like taking a shower. The ritual of writing has to be upheld. The description of the danish, of the tea, of the bored expression of the waitress, of the outfit of the fashion sales woman on the other side of the street. pictures to be painted with words, the documentation of the everyday. 69 901, write on and write on, write on.

SUNNY MAYDAY Way too sunny outside to write in here, there are nicer things to do than observing some show on the telly, better things ah better things. 69 937, seventy words and we have seventy thou. A woman on the tv, the audio is mute, a man, another woman. people in the audience, laughing 199

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laughing. We need thirty more, then it is over for today, then the daily allotment is in is in, this is the bottom of page 199, so we have 200 pages here and 70 000 words. two more, and we are there are there. stop this and spellcheck spellcheck. Save save save and save, save.

LATE AFTERNOON No vanilla latte today, gotta cut back on all these empty calories. On the telly there is the news, the same news that has been on all day. 70 050 words, thirty thousand more and we have 100 000 here. all about the quantity of words, that is how we value literature here. if this is lit, if. Grocery lists, now that is lit. outside, the remnances of the day, the day in its last yelps. Pink flowers, white flowers, fool bloom, greenery. A day in may, a day in may.

ITZEHOE The description of the coffee house here, the danish, the tea. She loves this place, feels that this is her workshop, her studio. The garage, the basement where you start tinkering with material, putting things together, taking it apart. her material is the language, but it has this total materiality anyways. If you do not think of words as material then well, then you cannot write. and the rain is coming down, the fashion woman appears, blue and white it is today. Three women chattering near the window, waitress has her usual bored face. yup, everything is exactly as it is supposed to be. this is where writing is possible, it seems to her as if this is the ultimate space to write, the only space to write. 70 243, 70 150. Rain still coming down, still coming down. time to go back to hamburg, the train will leave without her if she does not wrap this up. always gotta have a deadline in order to fashion words together.

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All these words ah all of these words. she is losing it, yup, that happens when you are cooped up writing writing. gotta move around, instead of sitting here at the keyboard while the telly is singing its songs. Still light outside, still fresh. It is not that hot yet, summer is still far away. pink flowers outside, white ones, all fluffy, all like clouds hovering in front of the window, floating.

So surreal so utterly utterly surreal.

SOMETHING Something is wrong with the software just like there was something wrong with the coffee house. It was closed at six thirty even though the sign says that it is open until eight on Fridays.

Ah, well, something to write about. the convenience store had a wooden door, maybe there was a hold-up or something. on the telly, a greek dish, my big fat wedding, why is it that ppl. just refer to that movie or say opa, when they want to talk about Greece. A region defined by one word, yup, that is how it is. and once more, the woman in blue and grey asking for donations to support the station. and you get a cook book too. nine bucks per month, nine dollars sustainer for your public television station. outside, greenery and flowers. Now the hosts are having wine. the man is wearing an apron, the woman is wearing a black chef outfit with red lines around the collar.

And they talk and they talk, keep on cooking. Author writes and types, gotta feed all of these words to this machine, for now and for now.

ITZEHOE ITZEHOE ITZEHOE Rain, danish and tea. The usual. The stuff that makes you put down words, one letter at a time. three women chattering near the window, the waitress and her bored expression, the fashion woman on the other side of the street, in black and white. the crumbs of the danish, smushed up

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by the fork. The last whiffs of the tea. And rain and rain and rain. Time to wrap this up, gotta catch the train back home. well, as much as it is home for now.

70 643 Later in the day, so near to the night. all the contrasts are sharper, no sun to blear and make the contours become wishy-washy. On the telly, an episode of two and a half men, laugh tracks and laugh tracks. Slight breeze outside, making the white pompom like flowers move up and down. nothing to write on, nothing happening here. an ad for staples, an ad for a car. and still writing, still typing.

Author here ponders what to write about, something insightful should do. something about literature, something about the state of publishing. About how to put words together, how to get it exactly right. Or not, for that matter. Well, we have seventy thousand here, worked on this, on and off, since last september. eight months worth of writing, while the telly sings its songs, while the seasons are changing. Nothing but words and nothing but words. the stab at getting published, sans success here, sans success.

70 804, we need two hundred or so more, in order to drive this down to 71 000. Short inscripts to document the days that go by. outside it is still getting darker, on the telly laughtracks and laughtracks.

202 pages.

An ad for another tv-show, an ad for a car. the never-ending songs of the telly, now two cars. And now an ad for still another model. a man in a blue suit with a blue tie, an elegant car sales man.

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An ad for make-up, an ad for a pharmaceutical. 70 895, write on ah type on, type on. 70 905, only 100 and we are outta here and outta here. save, spellcheck, the like And the like here.

ITZEHOE Rain, danish, not necessarily in that order. How many more times can author here describe the same scene. The same coffee house, the same environment. without using the exact same words. the berries in the danish, for some reason there is no jam-mush in this danish today. It is actually very good, tinges of fresh-ness, fruity-ness. 70 982 words, while the rain is pouring down. nine more words, fast and fast, three more, one, 71 000 it is and it is. the last hops of steam out of the tea mug, three women chattering, ah, the usual, the usual.

VICTORIA DAY Still some words and still some more words. outside the sun, on the telly the king of queens.

Second course of watching the rerun that she has seen ah so many times. funny, laughtracks, the like and the like. not exactly the right music that makes yer choose the right words to type up, the right exacting accurate succession of words in just the right sequence. Now an ad for sandals and barbecues, for k-mart. An ad for mounds, an ad for a car. Nissan. An ad for still another tv-show, an ad for a cancer hospital. An ad for Toyota, an ad for still another show, still another car model. and back to the show it is it is.

AND ITZeHOE IT IS IT IS Danish and tea. Rain outside. fashion woman in green, chattering near the window. rain rain rain.

Everything is just so, that is what we need here, in order to write down the right kind of words. the sulking day in a sulking city, all of these words and all of these words.

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LATER IN THE DAY So near to the eve, the sky has that dark blue with dark greys in it. on the telly, Anthony bourdain. Still gotta type up one page or so, whatever the words are. cannot stop braiding the words into each other, maybe there will be a sec when the right words will fall onto the keyboard, gotta always hope. And it is not too much to write two pages per day, there is always time for that. just like there is time for brushing one’s teeth. There is a feel of accomplishment, whatever the words are. slight philosophizing for moments moments. A story arc might be better, if you are into that kind of thing. A narrative, an opinion piece maybe. something that is worth to be read. Anyhow, still typing and typing.

BACK IN ITZEHOE Rain, danish, tea.

Women chatting near the window, waitress making her face. fashion woman in red. author’s words here on the monitor, still time left to finish her daily allotment. Still time before heading back to the train station. she will come here again and again, until the book is finished. At least 100 000 words, maybe much much more. there is a happy boredom which is caused by the life of a writer, the unfinishedness of the words, the always longing for more. there is always something more to write about, always something different to be observed. No two moments are alike. That is what makes writing fascinating, you create something, though the word “creating” is totally overused. There are better words, there always are. so many ways to pick and choose units from the language, so many ways to pull them together, push them against each other. outside, the rain is still pouring down, always blanketing this small town here.

She writes on here, needs maybe ten more lines.

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STILL EVENING Later, so much much later. very near to darkness, the sounds from the telly, the guy and his cooking show. Better to change the channel. 71 543 words, still writing still writing. only six more lines, while an ad for angie’s list is on. and an ad for aspirin. And an ad for something else. too much tv, not good for the words. they just get overpowered by the constant noise pollution.

Writing is not about meaning anymore, it is more about formgiving, about building about constructing. For construction’s sake. Anyhow, 71 609 it is here, we need merely two more lines here, then it is time to wrap this up, to save it, to spellcheck it. writing makes tired, exhaustion sets in. yup, that is how it is and how it is, how it is, how it is.

ON THE TELLY Something with subtitles that morphs now into someone, a woman yelling EL PASO PD, open the door, they kick in the door of some place that looks like a glorified residence of the unibomber. Author has seen way too much tv today, slightly annoying, totally annoying here. now the news, pix 11, something about bears, something about bees. Now a song, a video, the woman in new york in front of the night skyline while it is still sunny here on the west coast. The woman in the coffee house said that it was way too hot, author actually is kind of bundled up, it was not hot where she was. Not hot inside here. anyhow, still writing still writing. one day we will jump ship, from describing stuff to spinning a yarn, the sudden slip from non-fiction to fiction. Anthoo, still writing and still typing here. 71 806 words, 200 more and we have 72 thou.

A DESCRIPT OF ITZEHOE

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Rain, coffee house, danish. some berries. The berries in the mush inside of the danish, oozing out under the fork. The flakiness of this pastry. You could write a dissertation on this very danish, a good writer should be able to do that. piece of cake piece of cake.

Near the window, the three women chattering. And the rain is coming down on the city, on this small town in the north of germany.

STILL TV A rerun of SEINFELD, the one with the toys. Funny, huh. outside, the end of the day, white flowers, pink flowers, greenery. The whole window, full of green. Nothing else, bushes, tress, now there is more white than pink, yup, you can see the seasons changing here, just come and sit at the typing machine each and every day, each and every day. forty words more and we will run the seventy thousand and two mark. Not that you can buy something for that, not even a lollipop.

But hey maybe the feel of accomplishment can make yer happy, they say that that is why people make stuff. something new where there was babkus before. though if the end project is hovering in the cloud then you do not have a tactile result. Ah might as well might as well. 72 039, btw, btw.

EARLY MORNING At the kitchen table, ready to feed some of these words to the machine. The flower pot on the table has a silent smell of rotten fruit, that is how plants that die feel like. smell like. it is not too much, it is more like a low note somewhere in the back ground. not overwhelmingish as of yet. but not that inobtrusive either. Outside the crisp colours of what seems to be still early in this day. author ventured out already, all over town, all over town. She rolled out of bed at five, shower, then gym, then coffee house on arbutus. and now back at the typing machine in order to 206

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jot down some observations, some observations. This is her corner office, not a cottage industry, nope, nope. She is dressed to the nines, just like the guy in his three piece suit, at five in the morning at the coffee house, in his sparkly Mercedes. If you pretend that this is your office then it is. it is not a mere kitchen table, nope, it is where words are slung against a machine, in order to be read by the inhabitants of this planet. If you build it they will come, something like that something like that. there have to be wordslingers in this world, why should her words be lesser than any other scribe’s. outside short simmers of birds’ songs, late may it is, late may. Author here ponders what to read into that, the fridge starts up its roaringish hick-ups, her words are metaphors that are way too hollow for a day this bright and nice. 71 300, write on and type on type on.

ITZEHOE The danish, the women chattering. The music is way too loud today which annoys the hell out of her. she feels light headed which is not that good either. Not enough sleep, not enough fuel. Gotta lose some weight, she has gained ten pounds since x-mas. Those have to come off, after all nothing fits nothing fits here. anyhow, it is rainy, the fashion woman wears all white, gotta wrap this up, gotta catch the train back to hamburg in time, in time.

THE QUIETNESS OF A ROOM TO ONESELF A roar through the outside world, now on the other hand it is back at the typing machine. It is around noon, but it could be anytime in the day. wet overcast, raininess that has a lot of fresh ingredients. There is hopefulness, a sunniness behind the clouds. it is the kind of rainy day that makes you happy. With the lingering observation of sharp contrasts. It is all good. it is the perfect day to write, the perfect time to write. when it does not even enter one’s mind that nobody will 207

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read this. when readers are irrelevant. When the fun of putting words together is mesmerizing.

When there is a grave reason to write. just like there is a reason to cook, a reason to knit, a reason to lay down bricks. When the wordcount is its own reward. Writing as sport, one step at a time and one letter at a time. 72 569, write on and run on and run on. a string of short units, the one moment in a text. Waxing poetic on writing, yup, this better be good and better be good.

ON THE TELLY On the telly, modern family. Author here went down to the coffee house, had a skinny vanilla latte. The mathematics teacher near the window had a different student, a young woman. cars were driving by, sunny weather, sunny weather. there was a sign in front of author’s place here, temporary no parking. Anyhow, now modern family modern family. Writing while the telly sings its songs.

WHY NOT ITZEHOE Danish, tea, fashion woman in pink and orange. rain, chatting women, waitress with bored face. everything is just so, thus the words should come down onto the paper. author ponders why does she have to travel halfway around the world in order to fashion a text. After all, you only need a typing machine. Thus you can just stay put, roll out of bed, brush your teeth and start typing.

Nothing is needed in order to write the great whatever novel, nothing but perseverance. Author squints, stares out at the water coming down from the heavens. The rain makes it all worth it, it illustrates the kind of melancholy that poets need that writers need. yup, itzehoe is dictating its songs to her, a never ending text that teeters somewhere between fiction and nonfiction. Time to wrap this up, time to catch the train back down to Hamburg.

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Typing away while the telly is singing all of its songs. It is near noon, on the telly a documentary on rob ford. The fifth estate. Anyhow, we write and write while watching what is going on on the telly. the stories of toronto. outside greenery, slight overcast. It is pretty chilly for late may, summer is not quite sure if it wants to give it a go.

THE BOOK This is a book of many, one by an accidental writer. Author was in downtown, at the gym, she walked all over the cambie bridge. gotta start up the exercise regimen, the very structured eating pattern. Author has gained ten pounds in six months, obviously we have to watch much closer what we put in our mouth here. the walking regime has to be upped to at least half an hour per day. or more like half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. stamina is what makes for good health, perseverance. Discipline, yup, boring ol’ discipline. Structure, routine. Do the same things at the same time, each and every day. increments of exercise, live with a watch.

Clock yourself and your daily rhythms, your daily routines. Just like you have to write two pages per day. that is how you survive, survive. That is how we get things done here. that is how we roll. author ponders, maybe self help mumbo jumbo is not our thing here. poetic songs are better, come more easily. While watching a food show on the telly. a woman in lavender teaches you how to make Swedish meatballs with creamy gravy. She says that these are the ingredients and like everything from Sweden there is minimal assembly required. What does that even mean?

Maybe she thinks of ikea. Anyhow, now she mixes two kinds of meat. Now she puts butter and oil into a pan. Apparently you have to make this in batches. Interesting. Author here is getting hungry, maybe watching the food channel while dieting is not the right thing here to do. her writing is off, the syntax is screaming. In agony. Now she is doing something with all purpose flour, the woman on the telly that is. the wanna be Julia child who does not have the intonation of 209

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a Julia. How can you teach cooking if you chose to not have a julia childish lilt. How can you be believable. Pepper, salt. Let that sauté. Have a mandoline here, slice potatoes. She puts anchovies into potatoes. She calls it a secret ingredient. She puts tons of cream on the scalloped potatoes.

Wow. Nice way to clog up those arteries, can I have those with a side of an angiogram? Author ponders, the joke does not land, she took it from Seinfeld, but it was kind of different. the episode with mima and mutton, grandma mima that is. if you watch as much Seinfeld as author here does you will know exactly what we are talking about here. and if you have no clue who the f. senfeld is, well, then you just don’t get the connotations. That is how literature here works, yessirree.

And once more the meatball lady, the one with the funny hair. In lavender, it looks as if she has a big brown triangle on her forehead. What kind of hairdo is that? bacon and butter, she calls that decadent, I would call it gross. Who the hell would call bacon decadent? Definitely no Julia.

Author ponders, she went on this site that was grading ice creams, most ben and jerry flavours and haagen dasz flavours got C- minuses and D- pluses. Apparently fat in the arteries is gross.

Even if you pay a lot for the dessert. Anyhow, typing, typing. On the radio they said that in Oregon there is an e-coli outbreak, portlandians were urged to boil their water. anyhow, still typing and still typing here. 73 479, write on and write on here.

ITZEHOE You know the drill, danish and tea. Rain and fashion woman. chattering individuals and bored waitress. This is what makes for a well written piece. the words that stumble onto the page. author here ponders, how come there are so many writers who never made it to this fictional coffee house, who write just as good and just as bad. Her words ah her words here.

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ON THE TELLY So now the woman in lavender has finished her dish, meatballs, red cabbage. And a glass of glogg, whatever that is. we know grog her, but that should be something different. or maybe not. after all this too has cloves and other diverse spices. Perfect after skiing. Ah, canadian living recipes.

BACK TO WRITING Author here tried to find an inexpensive holiday apartment overseas, which did not really work.

She might go for an art residency in zurich, which is nice but definitely expensive. It is unpaid which makes it kind of shifty. One works basically for free for one month which is a good experience and should be a lot of fun, but then again, it is unpaid. Anyhow, back to writing, which is just as unpaid here, but at least you do not have to buy an airplane ticket and you do not have to rent a place or live in a hotel. Besides, zurich in summer is really hot. hot and no air conditioning. On the telly, modern family.

SOME SCENES OF ITZEHOE Once more, the daily trek down to itzehoe. Or up to it, depending on what your perspective is. up on the map, down on the map. Well, usually, north would be up, no, make that down. author here is slightly confused, which is no good ah no good. who wants to read incoherent stuffi-muffi.

Later on we have to do some heavy editing here. but at this time it is enough to do the heavy lifting, the amassing of words, something that is malleable in times to come. you can always fine tune your writing, sometime in the future, some time in the future. itzehoe is its usual self, rain, the coffee house, the danish. the fashion woman in blue and black, three women chattering, waitress making her usual ah so bored face.

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Author here has come here so many many times before. there is a certain kind of safeness in writing at the same table, at the same window, in the same place. even if the words are no good, you feel a certain ping or pings of accomplishment. Pangs, maybe. her writing is slightly off, seems, it always is these days. but, hey, the only way you get better at writing is by doing it, dayin and day-out. it is like trying to get better at riding a horse, you just have to practice. Hard.

Until good form becomes second nature. And that is why we are still typing here, still writing here.

THE TV Yup, still modern family here. now an ad. outside, the usual late afternoon greenery. Maybe author could make her usual trip down to the coffee house on arbutus, but all of those lattes are starting to show. No more sugary drinks with foam. her knees will thank her, so will her arteries.

Seems, unclogged is the way to go here.

Still another ad, subway eat fresh. And now a commercial for mazda, zoom zoom. A commercial for big bang. And back to modern family it is it is it is it is.

She still needs some more lines in order to fulfil her daily allotment. She could describe the greenery once more, after all there is a bright spot there that was not there before. the sights are always changing, depending on the time of day. not that that in itself is fodder enough for a wellwritten piece. texts are non-visual, you cannot really handle words as if they are drops of paint.

Anyhow, still typing, still typing. 74 148, one word at a time one word at a time. now it is big bang, another rerun she has seen so many many times before. the speech by raj on valentine`s day. laugh tracks, laugh tracks, laugh tracks laugh tracks laugh tracks.

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Author here ponders, she could once more describe the fictional coffee house in itzehoe, at this point all her different places are mushing together, the fictional ones and the nonfictional ones. the real ones and the fake ones. others have done that before, better, more coherent. Her writing is way too off to be published, it has all these glitches. And it does not help that the orthography is weird and off. we are finishing line five of page 213, in late may, and at this point that is all we are shooting 4 here, shooting for here.

SO LONG SO VERY VERY LONG There was a hiatus of about a month, there were other things that were in the way of writing. and there was a definite feel of vacuum, author here is not herself if she does not write. she did some cooking, six meals to be precise, which does not sound like much, but it took a lot out of her, this whole new world of preparing stuff, cutting up veggies, sweating over a hot stove. The sheer creativity, the putting together of rice meat tomato paste, something just like putting together letters on a keyboard. Outside, the whole street is in uproar, the sewers will be replaced.

Something like that something of that kind here. it is real summer now, author should fly over to nyc, start her class next week. Instead of staying put here in languishing boredom of this very very town. She listens in to sinatra she listens to the thick new york accent of the chairman of goldman sachs on Charlie rose. Hey, new york is everywhere, you can just stay put here and pretend that you are there. here there is still the keyboard which awaits all of these her words, you do not need to leave, do not need to leave this.

ITZEHOE and ITZEHOE The usual, the danish the tea. Whiffs of tea, the dancing figures of steam, curvy and always changing. Rain, three women chatting, waitress scratching the chin of her bored face. fashion 213

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woman in green and blue. still time left till the next train out of itzehoe. Hamburg can wait, hamburg can wait.

ON THE TELLY England versus Italy, on the telly, on the telly. it is a rerun, still exiting. There was a woman on the train who had two white stripes on one cheek and two red ones on the other, apparently that is the colur of England now, no more union jack. Times they are a-changing, anyhow, we type here and type here.

OUTSIDE These days there has not much writing been gone on, if push comes to shove there have been only small smatherings been sprinkled onto the page. two or three words here and there, while life had its demands. Author here feels kind of uprooted, felt like screaming, ah, the antsiness of the non-writer. Yup, any change in the daily routine would make yer out of kilter, this is what makes for zombie-like demeanour. In her case, it is the two pages per day that superimpose structure onto an otherwise chaotic life, we have to have our routines in order to function, certain places that we have to be, day in and day out. for her, that is in front of a keyboard and anykeyboard will do, should do. today, there is a football match, yup, fifa is running her life, is running everybody’s life these days. outside, the sewer people are still working, the whole street is torn up, the old one-pipe system is changed, two light turquoise pipes are inserted into the ground instead here, all through the street, all in the ground. hardhat galore, orange work clothes, boots, goggles. Like some hazmat suits in Technicolor. And still writing here still writing here.

SO MANY DAYS

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So very many days of non-writing, where have her days gone? she is big into domestic stuff here, cooking cleaning laundrying, it is a whole new world. on the telly, talks about fifa, about bullfights. It is a tad too hot, author here ponders if she should elaborate on her newfound interest in smushing raw ingredients together, to boil them up, to clean et. al. nah, this too will vanish, pass, on the telly, the animation for the brasil fifa world cup. apparently today was chile and spain. Author here is betting on the Netherlands to become world champion, then again she is always rooting for that team to make it to the very very very top. Anyhow, still typing, still typing. We typed a tad too little this june of 2014, mainly because of housework. Housework instead of literary work, instead of feeding the words here to this machine here.

ITZEHOE AS ALWAYS So nice to be here again, the rain is coming down. the usual danish, the usual tea. The three women, the waitress, bored as always, the fashion woman on the other side of the street, a light ecru number without sleeves. In the rain, she jumps back into the store, where there is shelter from the rain.

The day here. her days here in this coffee house. All of these her words, mostly used to slightly describe this very place. while the day is languishing, while the rain is coming down, hard. Time to wrap this up, time to catch the train back to hamburg. She must have enough words to show for today, her danish is finished, she stockles into the crumbs, the tea is cold by now, the three women are leaving.

FIFA FIFA The beginning of the chile versus spain game, ah, whatever. Fifaworld, huh, fifaworld fifaworld fifaworld fifaworld fifaworld. Author here ponders, repeating this word five times has to stand in 215

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for a nice elaborate descript. The voice of the british commentator on cbc, the roar of the viewers, the stadium is beaming. Here in vancity a too hot day, a too warm evening. still light outside, this is the time of too long nights. Make that too long days, long ah long long long evenings. We hAVe 75 206 words, this is what has accumulated since last september here. she could count the months, but somehow it does not really matter. What matters is that this wordcount becomes higher, it climbs, this is her education as a writer. You cannot teach this, you have to do it. outside, still greenery, still the street with the holes therein, the sewer pipes that are a-changed. Two against one (the pipes), apparently chile and spain are much better than Nigeria and iran on the soccer field. What kind of patriot are you to say that? to author, all these games look the same, you know the old saying that twenty-two players run after a ball only to shoot it away, once they have it. and we type here type here type here and type here.

A MID OCTOBER DAY Well, technically it is evening, technically it is june and technically it is late in the month. her writing is off, she slept for four hours. not good for writing, you feel whoozy and cannot think straight. That is when the words fail yer, anyhow, on the telly two and a half men. Fifa is in its first round still, author here was at the vag and looked at all the robotic installations there. 75 419, 75 422.

COLUMBO On the telly, columbo. A rerun, obviously. Nice to write while watching the whodunit. Outside, night sets in, well, not quite and not quite. Author’s writing is rusty, eloquence is living in a far away land. Her words are just so, not precise enough and not lyrical enough. whatever they are, they are of the not enough kind. Lacking in substance, you pick the words from the language and 216

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throw them at an object you want to describe, after that some of them stick and some of them slither down, but you have to keep on trying keep on trying. Even if this will never be published, even if even if. The words have to be fed to this machine, if you want to think of yourself as a writer. An author or something. anyhow, still typing still typing. The internet connection is down for some weird weird reason. 75 575, for now and for now here.

ITZEHOE IN JULY The usual, the usual. Danish, tea, waitress, three women, fashion woman. no rain though, it is july here after all. and once again, time to catch the train back home. wherever home might be here.

WRITING Some thoughts on writing. while the telly sings its songs. Author here is falling asleep while writing. maybe she should just get up and catch some zzz’s. sounds funny, get up to sleep. but you cannot really sleep while hunched over a laptop. You have to be somehow a tad more comfy.

This big bang episode is the one about the physics bowl. The one with the scene at the end where wolowitz takes off his shirt just like the woman of the US-soccer team did once they won. In 1999 or 1998 or so. this being fifa month it is a so very good choice of big bang episode.

Anyhow, we type and type and type and type some more here. 1998, huh, author feels old, is old. maybe it was 1996, her internet is down, she cannot google the date of the win of the US womens’ soccer team. which is so very very very weird. How can you function without googling stuff? she has to drive over to the mall to use the computer in the apple-store. It is as if she is cut off from civilization even though she lives in the city. an urban existence without an online connection. I definitely do not miss my pre-internet brain here.

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75 834 words, yup, yup, yup. Oh, and look, there is the wolowitz scene. Never can get enough of that one. funny is funny, no matter what.

YUP, ITZEHOE, ITZEHOE The usual, the usual. The hapless writer, the tea and the danish. the three women chattering, the waitress and her boredom, the fashion woman in green and orange. the train will go back to hamburg on the hour, every hour.

STILL ON WRITING Big bang is over, well, the first one for that matter. Still gotta feed a page worth of words to this machine here. while watching what is going on on the screen.

One of these days there will be a storyline but until then gotta stumble from word to word. amass all of these inconsequential observations. And hope for the best here. while the telly sings its songs.

ONCE MORE ITZEHOE Danish and tea. All of the writing. it is very soothing to be back in this place, the words just flow so very easily in this place here. 76 006 words.

SO MANY MANY MANY MANY DAYS So many many days of non-writing, her social life had taken over. So had the watching of the world cup games, ah, fifa has ruined my life. one post on facebook was “what shall I do with my life while there are no games on today”. After all, after the first round of matches there was one day where no game was on, which totally puts you off when you are used to the constant 218

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exhilaration which comes with watching twenty-two persons running after a ball only to shoot it away once they have it. haha, that joke never ever gets old.

Outside, the sun is going down, it is six in the afternoon on a lazy lazy lazy Sunday afternoon. author here ponders, it is not technically going down, nope, it is still late late afternoon here. her writing has taken a hike, she is ah so rusty as a poet. the words stall, the long long hiatus is starting to show here. 76 179, for now and for now here.

JULY SECOND Her writing is going nowhere, but, hey, the weather is so very very nice outside. the greenery is moving in the breeze, pretty strong winds for a day this sunny and hot. her writings these days seem to be all about the weather, she ponders how much fodder for a text there is in describing sunniness or raininess. There are meteorological dissertations but none of them are hi-lit. on the telly, two and a half men, laughtracks, the like and the like.

ITZEHOE AH ITZEHOE Rain, danish, tea. The perfect ingredients for a perfect day in writerland.

BACK IN THE WRITERLY GHETTO Yup, back at the machine here, while the day is basking in its sunnily bright glory. A day like this should be enjoyed in the simmering sun, at the beach, listening in to the to and fro of the water against the dunes. This is not a time for being chained to a keyboard, this is not the day to do laundry. Writing and laundry, that is how we fill our days here. one day, in the distant future there glooms an interview on Charlie rose, a book signing, heck, a conversation about yer writing on the bus to the person next to her, the one who does not speak a word of english. somebody has to 219

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be impressed by author’s ability to churn out ample amounts of text, somebody has to cheer, to throw those pompoms high up into the air. there has to be a reason for writing and it should be more than just killing time. the impetus 4 writing, for typing, what could it be, what should it be? there is no story here to tell, but, hey, stories are highly overrated. Outside, the street is becoming its usual self again, slowly, steadily. One month and a half of sewer reparation, in the heat of summer, under the glistening sun here. we have 76 and a half, thousand that is and thousand that is. the writer in late july, her words and her words and her words, all of her words here.

MAYBE ITZEHOE Coffee house, tea, danish. woman in glittery black, waitress making her face, three women chattering up a storm. rain. This is what makes her write this up, nothing ever changes, nothing is ever changing here. gotta catch the train back down to hamburg, but first we have to smush the crumbs with the fork, move them around on the plate, watch the traces the danish leaves on the white glistening and shiny platter. Ah her words, all of these words here, all of these words here.

FIFA Fifa is coming to an end, the world cup that is. on Saturday, the Netherlands versus brasil, on Sunday, the argentines against the germans. One group of sportsmen will win, and then the whole brouhaha will be over. No more football fever 4 u then. Upstairs the washing machine is on its last roars. Loud and dependably, dependably.

LATER Watching the telly, a mish-mash of come on down and drew Barrymore cooking in a cooking show. Now, come on down, win a car, win this that and the other if the price is right here.

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outside, the glistening sun, but the price is right is going on regardless of rain or shine. The enthusiasms of the persons who come on down is the same all thru thirty or forty years. the generic contestants of the price is right. And still some more words and still some more words here.

ITZEhoe ITZEHOE The danish and all the other things that are happening here. she scribbles her words onto the paper, she has a newfound interest in writing, if she only writes again each and every day, her words will be so much better, there will be, should be a jumpstart in her career as an author. You cannot sit still, you have to keep on truckin’. The words have to splash against the paper, a certain amount of sentences have to be fashioned per day. that is how you will success, that is how you will get published. In the end, in the end. outside the rain, the rain. Woman in yellow, the fashion store. Waitress and bored expression, the chatter of the three next to the window. danish, tea, the train to hamburg that has to be caught. Yep, everything is just so, the life of a writer, so predictable, so utterly and utterly predictable here.

SHE She walks around and fills the empty spaces with all of these words. at least that is the sentence that author here wanted to pen down, it is the sentence that she formulated in her head while she was having her chamomile tea in the coffee shop on 41st, while the late way too hot late summer afternoon was happening, while casual acquaintances were having their casual encounters, while they were walking their dogs, while the woman in blue is parking her blue open car near the curb.

ON THE TELLY 221

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Wheel of fortune is happening, not exactly the background music to a great writingish endeavour. There has to be something else, more pensive, more philosophical. More on the deep side, quiet music, quieter sounds. Stillness that will lead to your choice of the so very very right words, she ponders what else to write about here. and now jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy, jeopardy.

AND IN ITZEHOE AGAIN The rain is coming down, pouring down. the coffee house at ten, danish, tea, fashion woman on the other side of the street.

AND NOW A SUNDAY EVE The telly, the trivago guy, the greenery outside. the late afternoon leaning towards its end, the words that stick reluctantly to the monitor. Short sketches, short short sketches here.

FRESH MORNING A so very fresh morning, still waiting to be awakened. Author here ponders, her sentence is way off, there is no inner logic, the stab at poeticness falls utterly flat. Descriptions of her daily routines, a narrative too slow, too ungripping. There has to be drama, staccato, something to agitate the reader, to keep her on the edge of her seat, wanting for more. cliff-hangers, that is where it is at. You cannot write lullabies, 300 pages of lullabies. You gotta describe the human condition, not the condition of your laptop. Which btw is very visually appealing, the reflections of the lights on the ceiling, the round circles, the matte shiny glossy specks on the squares, and then there are glasses and blue mugs in the cupboard, then there is the plant near the window. all the weird and strange surroundings of this early-morning-writer, the one who fell out of bed way

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too early, who now feeds her two obligatory pages to the machine, after a coffee, after the weighin at the Y. her office here at the kitchen table, the writing ah the writing. for now, the fridge is suspiciously quiet, whatever makes these machines sing, what makes them shut up? anyhow, the day awakens, the sun behind the clouds can be looked at through the kitchen window. she should take her laptop with her to different locales all over town, describe what she sees, then try to sell her words to the highest bidder. Or to the lowest bidder for that matter, ah, any bidder will do, should do. writing for money, ah, bookbinders still exist, printing presses are non-obsolete as of yet, machines churn out papers full of diverse letters, each and every day, each and every day. why not her words, why not her words? gotta find a good agent, one that knows how this works how this works. a lawyer, maybe, someone who knows the nitty-gritty of entertainment law. Who can find a market for all of this content, who can target the target audience. a pr-firm, a distributor, the words have to be packaged and put on the shelves of the next super market.

Anyhow, we have 77 thou by now, one year has passed and this is her output. The accumulation of her observations, ah, the writer in spring, in spring here. all the seasons are mushing together into one entity, her neck has pangs of hurt, slowly, tingingly. Her words crash onto the keyboard, they are empty shells, too quiet, way too garded. How to say something without giving anything away, there has to be a manual for doing that, somewhere ah somewhere,somewhere. She could describe itzehoe, once more and once more here. coffee, danish, three women chatting. The train that will come out of hamburg, go back there, the repetitiveness, the routine that drives forward the words ah all of these words. 77, huh, not bad and not bad here.

LATER It is always later, each of the next words is later. time never stands still, there are always other words to be uttered. So weird, such a strange state of doing things, writing words merely because 223

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we suck at making films, at drawing pretty pictures. The visual artist, who couldn’t, the utter failure who succumbed to typing little words, short letters.

The day marches forward, in a gloomy silent way. we have a white sky, too white for deserving the name “overcast”. Real overcast has to have streaks of grey, a short remnance of black. The imperfect overcast, Vancouver in may. It is actually july, but may sounds better. There is a rhythm to the language, which is stalled, interrupted by the sheer facts here. author ponders, do we have two pages already, can we pack this up and leave, sail out back into the real world, where stuff is happening, where words are non-happening, where real three-dimensional objects rule the world, not glimmers of ideas. Where you can touch stuff instead of utter sounds to a keyboard. Where movement happens and motion happens. come to think of it, movement and motion are similar items, her lingo is off, ah so off ah so off. Still 77 and something, still not reaching the 78 thousand mark. The stark leaves of the green plant against the stark background, the colors are contrasty, that happens when you write in the morn’. 77 882, write on, type on. trouble in Gaza, the crash of the Malaysian plane, the second one. World cup is over, all of these stories on the news. There are seven billion stories, maybe eight billion. Who is counting who is counting. She longs for a hot tea, maybe chamomile, maybe mint. A walk to kerrisdale, something to do, something to do. save these words, spellcheck them, put them online. Inscribe some traces that show that you have been on this planet, have existed on this ball that hurls thru space. Some words, some so very very short words. Sentences in a foreign lingo, thirteen words more and we will have 78 thou, 77 996, her eyes can hardly make out the tiny blue number on the edge of the screen. Yup, we are way past 78 now, time to finish up, to join the living, the living.

ON SUBURBIA 224

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This might as well be her new subject matter. Tons of books have been penned on suburbia, there sure is a market. Suburbia sells. Usually critiques of suburbia, urban sprawl, hermetic life styles, bible-belt stuffi-muffi. Or Koran-belt, Talmud-belt, Buddhist-belt, aetheist-belt, any-ideologybelt. Suburbia as the place where feminism died, a la friedan. Author ponders, maybe watching Seinfeld reruns is more up her alley, scholarly writing is too tough. there has to be an inner logic to each sentence, you have to tuck in all those loose ends. Your readership does not share your background, thus they will not get it. anyhow, still writing still writing. had a coffee in the supermarket down the lane, lots of people, near-noon. The near-to-noon crowd. Yay ah yay. insignificant lives, insignificant doings. The everyday, huh. and now the writing amidst all of these appliances here, the words that shatter the keyboard. The poet who cannot use shorter versions of prose, that hacks the language into pieces. And a borrowed language to boot. The fridge starts up its songs, author here hums while she writes. her writing environment is so esoteric, it is not the usual, artist meats philosopher place. you can write better in places like this the kitchen table beats any place that is called lab or studio, anytime. And the words flow down, flutter, weirdly, contortedly. Huh, 78 200 or so it is ah it is it is it is.

WRITING Writing has not happened here in ages, which might be better just like that. after all, her writing career is just as far ahead as her acting career, her animating career, her art career. Yup. No film making for you as of yet, all her creative endeavours suck. Then again, she was able to fix a pretty passable dinner the nite b4. The salad was ok, the fruit basket was ok. The store bought chocolate was really ok. And the container of the chocolate definitely came in handy. The tin was nice as a travel container for soap. A nice soap. Anyhow, writing ah writing. after being at the airport, after making the mistake to not pay the add fare, which is kind of iffy. Anyhow, on the 225

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telly, big bang theory, the third episode author here is watching today. There is a lot of straightening up here waiting for the, well, straightening up. stuff is everywhere, ice cream wrappers, dishes, a blender in the kitchen that has kale and blueberries and banana crusting up in it. the residues of a smoothie. And we write here write here.

BONES On the telly, bones. So maybe writing should take a back seat for moments. She had sushi in the airport, ice cream, loobia pilaw. Her weight is around 190, 86 if you do the kilogram thingie.

A SPRINT A sprint thru the neighbourhood, the nagging want to plaster oneself in front of the typer in order to document the happenings in and around kerrisdale village while it is all still fresh in the memorybank. Author ponders, are there no better more descriptive, more accurate terms than MEMORYBANK? If you are gonna retrieve stuff from a memorybank then it must be stale and whiffing of rotten smells of decay. Of mothballs, of bitter preservation. Life has to be experienced, you cannot really describe it accurately later in the day. whirlwind, now there is a word that nails it, in and around the starbucks on 41st, there were a tad too many people. what is going on, it is august one, Friday at ten, the hotness of Vancouver is way too gripping, too griping, author wanders by people who discuss, what else, the weather. that is what old ladies with white grey curls linger on to talk about, nobody here is concerned about deaths in gaza.

Nope, the peace of this city, this artificial oasis of peace. life that goes on without bombing, far away from shelling. Where your immediate concern is merely your own personal demise, not the demise of others, of masses. Then again, author here has lived under bombings falling out of the sky, at times like that, banal stuff becomes surreally real. You start talking about the weather in 226

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order to give sense to the whirlwind of life. author here feeds her platitudial observations to this machine, while she can hardly decipher the signs on the keyboard, she turns on the light, now this is better here. 78 770 words here, time to get a pretzel bun from wendys. The redhead woman says so and we abide.

EVENING Dark outside, the telly, talking. Time for philosophical musings, lyrical ones, quasi- anythings.

On the telly, a theoretical physics-person, no, not Sheldon. Author ponders, what to write on, after looking at what is up on facebook. And to think that we used to live without computers, in simpler times, slower times. the weather is sticky, hotness has plastered this city. there are gasps of a slight wind, a breeze that is not quite there. that is gulped up by the standing heat.

ITZEHOE, AS ALWAYS Fashion woman in dark green, danish, tea. Waitress, three women chatting. Everything is just so, even though author has not been here in ages. The only constant in her life is this very coffee house here in this town outside of hamburg. Author looks around, what to describe, what to write about? she has to feed some words to the laptop, two pages each and every day, she is lagging way behind the self-imposed requirement. Writing as vocation, as hobby, as raison d’être, maybe. the last crumbs on the plate, the coldened-up tea. Her stale words, the ones that will not cut it. they never ever do.

Time to wrap this all up, time to make it back to the station. through the pouring pouring rain.

79 001

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Yup, that is the word count, not bad, we started this up in september, on september first or something. it is now august one, one year or so later. 80 000 words to show for this year that passed her by, a story that is a no-story. There was the nanomonth spurt of 50 000 too, anyhow, on the telly an episode of friends. Laughtracky world like always. at this point author here slightly expects laughtracks to go off in real time. 79 084, an ad for hair dye. One for a tooth paste, one for mascara. Maybelline new york, maybe it’s Maybelline. And back to phoebe and chandler and monica. It is official, Author’s brain here is turning to mush.

SUCH HOTNESS Such hot weather, all senses are lessened. Everything is swimming together, the heat is unbearable. Author here is so near to a heatstroke, it is this weird state where you know that you internalized too much of the heat, where you know that you need some cooling water on your scalp or else you will not be able to function properly, to think clearly. Writing seems still be doable, there is not enough energy left to take a chilly shower.

ITZEHOE, AS ALWAYS Too much rain, way way too much rain.

SO MAYBE So mavbe she is a writer after all. on a Monday, after the trek down to the mall, the gym, the coffee house. The weather is way too hot for its own good, for anybody’s good, for that matter.

WRITING AH WRITING WRITING Still two pages left to be fed to this machine especially given that author’s writing is so very sporadic these days, summer is interfering, hot weather, vacation stuff, the so very sleepy way of 228

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doing things, way too much ice cream, way too much sun. this is what interferes with her amazing career as some kind of sribe, life hurls obstacles into her way. author ponders, there are more author-boys than there are author-girls, who says that she should waste her days to change the status quo. It is merely a numbers game, anyways. Who cares if there are more boy-writers, and is it even true? Words, playing with words, hurling words at the world, it seems to be a pretty egalitarian field. Anyhow, typing and still typing. 790 390, write on ah write on write on.

YUP ITZEHOE Rain, chatting women, danish. the recipe for so very good words, or ok words, for that matter.

Anywords should do, author is sitting hunched over in this so very dingy place on the other side of the world. who wants to be a writer anyways, who needs to be a writer? You never make money doing this and apparently you never did. this keynote speaker at a symposium in Malmo stated so, to his fellow writers. writing, the breadless profession, the one that never ever pays the bill. Anyhow, time to wrap this up, to run through the rain after the last train back to hamburg.

THE NEWS Aljazeera sings its songs, destruction, fighting, as always as always. a woman in blue is making her money by talking ‘bout other peoples’ misery, so does the bald msn with the british accent.

Undertakers, huh.

STILL WORDS STILL WORDS There are better positions for typing, hunched-overness will catch up with her, eventually, eventually. author here ran into a woman she had not seen in ten years, the woman has hardly changed at all. author ponders, she knows that she herself has way more strands of gray now,

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seems that others are frozen in time. writings have not been good for writer here, it makes you grayen up prematurely. And you sit contorted to boot. She ponders, what if she would write about fitness, would that result in becoming fitter. Not likely, huh. author ponders, these are the things she is ruminating over these days, does the subject matter of your dissertation have any bearing on your health? Anyhow, typing and typing and typing and typing here. weird, to call a random text a dissertation, her words are running away, doing whatever they feel like doing. no control here over logic, coherence, the like and the like. 79 705, write on ah write on write on.

ITZEHOE Fashion woman in silver, pouring pouring rain. Tea is getting cold, danish is finished. Bored waitress scratches the right side of her chin, three women near the window staccato the quietness with their words here. author will never ever be lauded, her words are mere utterings in the quiet solitude of, well, who knows? her sentences here are so meh, no intelligent constructs that grip the reader. Words like sand that runs through the fingers, words that do not cut it, not cut it. stuff that will never be published, yup, unpublishable words that will vanish the minute they ARE put down. 79 817, still run on and write on write on.

STILL SOME MORE WORDS STILL SOME MORE WORDS So near to eighty thousand, author here ponders if anything will be achieved if there exist 80 000 words that are home-brewed by Yours Truly. 80 000 words more to clutter up the literary landscape. even if they just exist somewhere in a corner of the cloud.

SO NEAR TO NOON

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Write some more, bring this up to eighty thou. Writing is an obsession just like running is an obsession. Maybe, life is an obsession. Who is to say what constitutes an obsession and what does not. when is a certain behavior pathologic? When do you go off your rocker, when are you certifiable? When do you have to be committed. Not if you take your time for writing all of these words, but if you do this in ten days, insanity should set in, arguably, arguably. 79 071, the day is happening outside, marching forward, this august four with its heat that is standing still, which is deafening, defying and several other verbs that start with a D. Author here is searching for words, poetic ones, lyrical ones, accurate ones, exacting ones. 80 017, we are outta here and outta here.

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