Nicola Caroli

I was very interested in the subject of the course and found Thomas Farber to be a good role model for this genre. For me the course could be much longer, with set tasks of one type/ one task per unit, for example just writing, then reading/watching video about the genre and writing about that etc, rather than mixing the two because then I chose the greatest priority. Basically I would like the space to go into more detail, to reflect more on what I’m doing. I felt it was very rushed and just tried to get my assignment in at the last minute without having had time to really work at it. I would have prefered in the beginning to just correspond with one/one group of peers so that they can support/guide the beginning process of the text and later on expose my text to other peers. As the time was so short, it was a very active mode, rather than an associative flow and I would have liked even more  constraints, so that I could concentrate on one thing. Similarly Jane’s comments were excellent but addressed so many indepth things at once that I sometimes ended up not heeding any of them. The peer conversations were great as long as we knew exactly  what we were talking about and to what purpose, again it might even be good to set certain subjects we should talk about which then get incorporated into the writing excercises for example.

I don’t feel I’ve produced a text I can do anything with but the course has opened my perspective to the genre, to weaknesses and strengths of my writing. So I learnt things I can use for texts in the future. I learnt from reading the other peoples text where I often found that people had similar difficulties to mine, or different strenghts and weaknesses.

Regarding the text I learnt most from Jane’s comments.

I already wrote a feedback about the technology aspect of the course earlier on.

Overall I’m very pleased I took this course, I learnt something about a new genre, about my writing and would like to do another course with peer to peer university. Thank you for making this learning experience possible.

Daytime View of “The Perpetual Procrastinator”

Sunset View of “The Perpetual Procrastinator”

The Many Lives of The Perpetual Procrastinators

A sunset view might cause others to draw the curtains and prepare for a long, dreamless night.  Not so for Viola.  In her case, this is her own customized version of  The Morning People’s dawn.  A creature of the night, she prowls the back alleys of her tarnished emotions only after she has fed her family; made love to her husband and put him to sleep; and switched off all the lights.  All that remains to guide her journey now is a glimmer that emanates from her computer monitor.

She peers out of the window into the endless merging of sky with its distant clouds and the water beckoning the moon’s shadow.  Once the sunset hues give way to the rusty blending of the night sky into the horizon it takes little time to scan the neighborhood and reassure herself that all is as right as it can ever be.  She knows, instinctively, that the night will shade her secrets once more and honor her wish to prowl into unconquered territories of the uninhibited mind.  All she needs is a cup of tea and peace on earth.

She sniffs her more immediate surroundings with the deft whiskers worn down by a thousand nights of roaming this strangely familiar neighborhood.  The Night Prowler in her soul is more drawn to her other senses now that the lights are dim.  She scratches around for moral and creative sustenance.  Her hunger draws her willy-nilly to the old painted walls near the dumpster of her desires.  She longs for any shard of sensible material that will bring tonight’s project to a close.  Through decades of juggling the Day Character with the Night Prowler, she knows her routines.  Aah! Routines: the bane of her existence and the salvation of her life on earth.  The barbed wire fence upon which she must perch gingerly looking one way toward the rule of Days and another way toward the freedom of Nights.  The populated world’s logical demands and the irrational wanderings into blissful fantasy. too little concrete detail for me to follow

She sharpens her claws on the rough surface of the old wall, peeling layer upon layer of mottled paint.  No.  This is nothing like the peeling of an onion to get to the empty core, she muses.  It’s nothing like the flowery philosophy of her dharma instructors trying to bore down to the pure inner light of her unconscious.  The variegated curtains of dust and lead, and -who knows: possibly of asbestos? – pour down on her head.  She blinks.  She sneezes.  She pulls away momentarily, in confusion and disgust.  Yes, it’s never tidy in her night world, but it’s her sole (soul?) proprietorship.  The night lasts only so long.  When the Morning People – or the MoPes, as she likes to call them  – emerge in the early light of dawn, her travails will be over.  Only then, of course, the MoPes will put her to the real test: Can she function in a whole other capacity in daylight hours, despite her long night of labor.  How long can she keep up this double life under their daytime rules?

Just a few days ago, she had even shared a secret poem with a MoPe.  Clever, they are.  They come in their own hardy disguises!

Day people run the world:

Dictate,

organize,

and command.

While the people of the night

lay their sacrificial souls

at their altar

in the depths of darkness

birthing the essence

upon which

day people feed.

Symbiotic?

Yes!

Joyful?

Perhaps – along the aquamarine haze of blurred boundaries

some dare not cross.

These barriers of darkness into light.

It is The  Others who see no need

to disrupt their sanguine sleep

so essential to their early morning appetites:

devouring their self-proclaimed birthright

to this: their nectar of life.

Of course, Viola’s poetry is just a stop-gap measure to avoid all other kinds of work.  In her eyes, it legitimizes procrastination, her strongest passion and the source of her deepest pleasures.

It’s not often that she can write in the daytime.  In fact, night-work had been such a big part of her life that until her first morning arrival at her new writing job she never even realized she couldn’t write by sunlight.   But she was hired to write.  “Writer” was her full job title!  Though, technically speaking, the job description leaned far more toward copy-writing, still in her youth she had mused:  “How amazing is that?!”

In this, one her many past lives, she had been hired in an in-house ad department, sight unseen, after sending in some writing samples.  Sitting at her desk now on that first morning at work she had a clean office; sharpened pencils; a brand new Selectric typewriter; and no clue how to write in daylight.  No choice but to report to her boss and confess her sins:

“I really did write those samples, but I’ve always written at night.  I had no idea I wouldn’t know how to write in daylight.  I’m so sorry!” She had babbled on, half wanting to convince her boss and the other half wondering if the prior writings had all been a fluke.  Did some other force channel through her at night and at any moment desert her for good?  How sure was she, really, that she could ever write again?

“That’s OK” her lenient boss had replied, so many years ago,  “I know how that feels.  We’ll think of something.”

This was the very boss that she’d be asked to fire as her first act in the new position offered her as Vice President for Marketing.

“No, I’d rather quit than make such a bargain with the devil” she had thought over a weekend of agony; weighing her need for money and success against the morality of firing the woman who had been instrumental in allowing her the nigh-life.  She had quit instead.

“Maybe you can spend the days doing research; then do your write-up in the evenings,” her boss had offered kindly.

“Work four long days and take three-day weekends.”

“This might work beautifully after all, given that I have a 180 mile commute back to my home!” “– two state-lines away.”  She was grateful for any job, but especially to one with writer in its title.

“Just bunk with my family for the mid-week nights and spend the long weekends at home.” She had finally offered, thus starting an interlude memorable in so many ways.

That was during the reign of her Fourth Life, when she was carelessly flaunting the five more she had left under her slightly protruding belly.  She had always aspired to be a writer.  It ran in her family.  Both sides.  It was her calling.  Or was it?  Was it, in fact, more likely that it was her calling to buy stationary and notebooks, gorgeous pens, multi-colored pencils, and stockpile them?  Maybe her true calling was to open a stationary store.  Maybe the papers looked so much better in their pristine condition, unfettered by her occasional scribbles.  May be.

Now, her whiskers had turned visibly gray after decades of roaming in the dark and the layers of paint on the wall told a different story:  The eight hues of paint scratched out with her worn-down claws reminded her of how little time may be left for her philanderings.  Still, she had to wear down those sharp claws and what better instrument than the wall of memories in the back alley of her temptations.

That brief nostalgic look back could have been a split second in mid-night time or the better part of an hour.  Time-warp is a condition Night People approach nonchalantly, as they would the drifting of clouds on a moonless night.  But tonight, there was a waning moon to hold her attention.  She began to scribble.

It used to be

When deadlines were closing in on me

I’d wash the kitchen floor,

Hang pictures,

Or write a long-overdue letter

to a long-forgotten friend.

—

Gleaming countertops

now reflect

wall-to-wall pictures of

those long-lost friends

Dust-proof carpeting covers my kitchen floor.

Stooping low to read junk mail;

Upgrade all my software;

And compose this poem;

I cringe beneath

The next inevitable deadline.

It saddens me to think

That poetry has sunk so low

In my long list of priorities.

“Procrastinators,” (she shifted from the yellow legal pad where she wrote her poetry over to the computer where she kept the many hundreds of her half-finished writing projects),

“Procrastinators” she began again with deliberation, “get a lot of bad press because of the Morning People (MoPes) who believe that by getting up one hour earlier every day you can get through the lifetime backlog of unfinished projects and new aspirations.  Of course, Morning People’s genetic make-up which also seems to include organization, logic, and sequential thinking allows them to get two to three hours worth of work out of that one extra early morning hour.  To them, procrastination is equated with lack of positive, productive work.”

She took a deep breath and poured out her soul in that combination of night-energy and day-determination, hoping that the catalyst of procrastination can serve her well.

“If truth be told, though, procrastinators are really the canaries in the coal mine.  Who, at Death’s Door, would not hesitate to put it off a bit longer?  Who among us chooses to jump right in?  If thinking twice is a pretty good rule of thumb; then thinking it over and over again is even better.  We don’t tend to rush through the pleasures of life so much – do we?”

Viola was now on a roll, in her element.

“It’s a well known pseudo-scientific fact that most procrastinators are avowed Night People.  Most others are simply repressed Night People.  Their condition is a predisposition very much akin to left-handedness, and the inexplicable desire to live in houses with ocean views.  Morning People happen to rule the world simply because they’re up before everyone else, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, excited about the prospects of setting the rules while the rest of us slumber.  They have conspired to keep us in toe by refusing funding for any research that will lead to a scientific confirmation of the origins of, and necessities for, procrastination; thus setting procrastinators free from bondage to socially sanctioned MoPe norms. Though procrastinators have a natural tendency toward serendipitous discoveries, they are simply missing the genetic link that takes them from discovery to publication of results – keeping them in forcible obscurity.  Here and now, we begin to even out the score.”

“For many years now scientists and plain old intuitive, common-sense-driven folk have been chasing the spurious connection between self-proclaimed Night People and their tendencies toward holistic, synthesizing, integrated thinking, and the creative arts.”  Viola stopped short of admitting the very near connection between creativity and insanity, schizophrenia, and similar mental disorders.  She was not here to cast aspersions on herself and the people she loved and wished to protect.  No, this was going to be a sunny-side-up display of unity.  So, she continued:

“It goes without saying that those who battle with the procrastination bug every single morning are simply not going to follow the MoPe maxim: ‘Just set your alarm for one hour earlier in the morning and see how much more you can accomplish with your life.’  Of course, if you’ve been reading all those self-help books that admonish you for not being disciplined, you’ll find that in order to actually get your life together, you’ll need to go into major early-morning-time-debt.

For beginners, you’ll need to double or even triple the time allocations prescribed by the MoPes.  Here’s a small sampling of how much earlier you need to get up every morning just to fit in the basic social norms of being organized and healthy in mind, body, and spirit.  According to various MoPes, depending on their own specialization (yes, they all seem to specialize in something we cannot live without) begin each morning with the following regimen prior to setting off for work:

·      Ten minutes to write your to-do list in your day-planner; and to distribute the not-done list from yesterday’s date into well-reasoned plans for today, tomorrow, and beyond.  If your backlog is considerable, you will need to invest in a multi-year calendar.  Adjust the time upwards.

· Begin your exercise routine with 10 minutes to stretch and warm up followed by 15 minutes cardio and a five-minute cool-down for whatever exercise regimen you happen to be following at the moment.  This could be anything from Tai-Chi or jumping on the trampoline to skipping rope or chasing the neighborhood dogs away from your lawn.  Just don’t skip the exercise if you expect to live a long-healthy life; and be sure to rotate in some weight lifting to tone those muscles!  All it takes is maybe three hours a week.

·      Thirty-minutes for a quick jotting down of your thoughts in your journal.  You will want to set aside ten minutes for free-writing or automatic writing, as you wish, and then get down to the highlights of yesterday’s happenings.  By waiting to write the journal in the morning, you have the opportunity to reminisce about your dreams and to further synthesize what has already passed; viewing it now from a more reasoned distance.  Write a haiku or short poem to capture your mood for the day and to get rid of loose thoughts before you sit down to meditate.

·      A fifteen-minute sitting for meditation is really rather minimal.  You will eventually want to work your way up to one hour or more.  This will clear the last of your nagging stress and provide the centered respite from which you will gain your strength to face the coming day. Additionally, as Mortimer Adler once noted: “You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think”

·      Twenty minutes to take a shower, groom, and get dressed for work (to allow for greater efficiency, lay out your clothes the previous night and be sure there’s enough gas in the car as you will not have time to make unnecessary stops on the way to work.  Preparing your lunch the night before is also a time-saver for early morning hours.  But who’s counting the night-moments here?!)

·      Thirty minute allocation for a leisurely breakfast that gives you the opportunity to enjoy the healthy habit of sharing the start of this new day with your family.  Of course, if you must also feed the kids and spouse, you may wish to allocate more time for this most important meal of the day.  Everyone but everyone claims this is the most important meal of the day – regardless of the fact that Night People may choose to sleep until noon.  Still, if you wake up at noon, be sure to have breakfast before you move on to lunch.”

Hmmm.  Let’s take out that calculator, the MoPe’s best friend… Viola took a breath.  But her task was nearly done.  Must press on.

“If you must report to work by 8:00 A.M. and assuming that you are lucky enough to live only one-half hour away from work, the above regimen will require a minimum two hours and forty-five minutes of Morning Time prior to the actual start of your day ‘at work.’  So, set the alarm for 5:15 and stick close to the schedule as I have not left much room for dilly-dallying.  For each additional person you must prepare for departure, add forty-five minutes to one hour and adjust the alarm accordingly.”

“Then, again,” She continued in a new frame of mind:

“Then again, you have the option to take a deep breath and, without even bothering to waste any time to join Procrastinators Anonymous, re-set the snooze button and extend your leisure-time in bed.  Take a stand against the MoPes.  Better  still, don’t even bother to stand up.”

“With no to-do list to worry about you are already on step number two.  Stretching in bed is just as effective as putting on yoga clothes and stretching on a mat.  Skip Step Two.”

“Who needs a journal when your brain is not overstressed from the sound of the alarm?

Skip Step Three.

“…And with the money you save by not having to buy an alarm clock, exercise clothes and equipment, journals and pens and meditation tapes, you actually don’t have to work quite as hard to enjoy life.  What’s critical, though, is how you choose to spend your new-found leisure time.  Remember: it’s not the delay factor itself that gets you into trouble.  Rather, it’s what you do with the time you’ve gained that separates the sinners from the saints.  Enjoy your time off; you can always read the next chapter later this evening, after the MoPes have already gone to bed.  You can count on me.  I’ve been there.

I used to be one of the night people for most of my life.” She lied happily. “ Somehow I found daydreaming a lot more pleasant late at night.  Then child care and work made me into a morning person by law.  You realize immediately that such laws exist the moment the baby screams for milk and you find the feeder directly attached to your body but absolutely not under your own control.  Procrastination is automatically punished by excruciating pain and an extra trip to the laundry.  Once you become a law-abiding citizen, breaking your will comes easy on all other counts. By now, with advancing old age, I realize that another natural law requires that I burn the candle not only at both ends, but also from the middle: night-time, as usual, because that’s my natural biorhythm; early morning based on three decades of habit; and middle of the night for a bathroom run.”

For some reason, she contemplated aloud, the authors of most self-help articles and books are Morning People.  I’ve hardly ever read any of them say:  “To get more work done, just stay up two more hours at night.”  Yet, I know for a fact that that’s when I get most of my own work done.  That alone should serve as the best credential for my expertise in procrastination.  Yet, I can boast another accomplishment as well.  I started this book fifteen years ago – but as a second choice to another as-yet-to-be-written book which was far more important for my promotion at work!

“Remember,” She concluded with a definitive nod to this task: “Nothing is improbable when you have nothing but time!  Enjoy, but do heed the warnings!”

Morning light was filtering through the sun shades on her window.  She saw her reflection in the mirror behind her computer screen.  She looked surprised and puzzled.  Grabbing the yellow legal pad, she went into her poetry mode and jotted down the last of her notes:

A Necklace

There is a mirror beyond my keyboard

Its original intent: to reflect the ocean behind,

a roundabout way to juice the landscape without

Today I happen to catch a glimpse of myself

from a corner visible beyond the computer screen

It appears that I’m wearing a necklace –

which I don’t recognize.

In fact, I hardly ever wear necklaces at all,

let alone when working alone at home.

I steal a second glance.

The reflected smile I witness: genuine glee!

The necklace as real in its permanence: a tattoo of wrinkles

Where my sixtyish neck meets a forty-something shoulder

Complementing, on the top-side, fifty years of smile lines

in the corner of my eyes,

In a thousand year-old body waiting to bloom.

© dineh-2009

She would be crawling into bed just as the MoPes were arising to rule her world one more time.  No matter.  She had almost beaten them at their own game.  She would retire into her own Night of the Sacred Soul with her tail curled around her body for warmth and protection; her whiskers resting on her front paws; the puddle of her existence kept secure in her knowledge that all is as it should be. “MoPes!” She surrendered, “You Are Welcome to the World of My Creation!”

I think it reads well as a kind of manual/description of the night owls and MoPes. The cat metaphor is too much for me. Because the manual style takes over about a third through, I lose the narrator. So either I’d stick to the one style or just talk about the narrator, what it’s like to be a night owl, rather than concentrating so much on what she’s not. I find it difficult to get interested when someone spends their energy against something. Is it a statistic that night owls are more creative than MoPes? I found that hard to believe. I think the endeavour to describe what it feels like to be a night owl, what night owls do at night is a good one for MoPes to understand them better.

CNF – Week 5  – Jefferson Street 2 Rewrite – Bob Metry

Bob resumed his trek along East Jefferson Street on a chilly Sunday morning in early October 2009.  For two cycles of the traffic signal he stood in the First Street crosswalk in the glow of a half-risen sun, where just a few weeks before in rush hour traffic he had stared down the sprucy lady in the shiny black BMW.  She had seemed willing to run him down so she could race to her reserved parking space in a high rise parking garage three or four blocks away.  Or so he had imagined.  He smiled.  No need to rush to the curb today. much improved beginning

Where he had lived as a small boy a vapid Hampton Inn, eight stories of white stucco, pink brick and flat aluminum framed windows, stuck out of the ground in the middle of a grey concrete car park, tufted here and there with islands of live greenery.  An air of sterility accentuated the building’s dowdiness.  It brought to mind a giant saguaro cactus rising from desert sand and scrub he had seen near Tucson, Arizona years before.

He remembered a bustling commercial block of narrow storefronts, brown and red brick buildings joined like Siamese siblings by party walls or separated by narrow passageways, sidewalks lined with wood framed produce stands, painted a uniform dark green, satellites to the retail stores. His father, Morris, had owned a meat market there before being drafted into the Army and shipped out to England in 1942.  Where his brother, Habeeb (named for his maternal grandfather), was born in 1943.

Depending on the season, the weather, the day of the week and the time of day, there had floated on the air the aromas of fresh or rotting fruits and vegetables, wood and coal smoke from 50 gallon drums stoked to keep the vendors warm, cooking oil and kitchen grease from restaurants, waste flowing in the curbside gutters, and motor exhaust.  Today he inhaled only the combusted fuel vapors hanging above any busy road.

Most vividly he recalled the people.  Lots of people of all kinds. His people.  His family. Shoppers. Sundays would have been this quiet, though.  One thing hadn’t changed.  No one who didn’t live there came down there on Sunday.  Except today no one lived down there.  Just visitors staying in hotels like the Hampton Inn.

Armed with a Kodak EasyShare digital camera (fully charged, loaded with a fresh two gigabyte memory card) and fortified by a large cup of Starbucks extra bold coffee, he set out to document the real present, which he planned to contrast with a recollected (idealized?) past.  A few snaps of the Inn, some of the jeans and hoodie clad guests, checked out and schlepping luggage to their vans, SUVs and compact Japanese cars. He wondered why they had come to Louisville.  Why they chose to stay in this particular hotel.  Convenience?  Economy?  Proximity?  Tempted as he was, he decided not to ask.  It was not relevant to his story, was it?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  Certainly not part of the mission he had set for himself. the self reference is weak

He conveniently, perhaps perversely, parked his Toyota at the curb exactly in front of the main entrance.  That’s where the family car might have been left overnight sixty-odd years ago – in front of 109.  Close enough to where the long obliterated address might have been.  It was a symbolic, if not precise, placement, staking out a bit of turf.

Planning to start at First Street and walk the five blocks east to Hancock, Bob had driven past the cleared and half developed ground in the 200 and 300 blocks, the new and soon to be completed construction of 400 and 500 East.  A contemporary version of the depression era housing projects they replaced filled both sides of the 400 block.  The Wayside Christian Mission stood at 432, where St. Michael’s Syrian Orthodox Church stood until razed in 1960. The Church, a converted synagogue, bound the community together for nearly thirty years until moved to the eastern suburbs.  Here his immediate and extended families worshipped and joined in social activities.  Many of the men – butchers, grocers, tavern keepers, restaurant owners, produce vendors – the future patriarchs whose faith and dollars purchased the building in 1934, met almost daily in late afternoon to play dominoes or card games, usually pinochle, hearts, rummy or a variation of Jacks.  The rhythms of commerce dictated their leisure.

Germany and Japan defeated, his father, a member of what we now call “the greatest generation,” had returned to Louisville and a postwar down turned economy in late 1945.  Not finding permanent employment or a good business opportunity, in June 1946 Morris packed mother Malvena, the three boys: Bobby, Ronnie and Habeeb, and Grandfather Habeeb into a new maroon Chrysler Royal, bought with savings from poker winnings and Sgt. Bilko like enterprises garnered in his role of Mess Sergeant, and headed for California.  He was following the trail his parents had blazed before the War, looking for a business opportunity in the Golden State.

There followed a six-month family grand reunion on Morris’s father’s fruit ranch near Fresno, where grew table grapes, plums, peaches, almonds and apricots.  The older grandchildren, none over fourteen, picked ripe fruit and, trusted to wield hook-bladed knives, cut grape bunches from the vines, which they either placed in baskets or laid out on flat trays to dry into raisins.  Nine-year-old Bobby managed to cut himself twice before being relieved of duty and assigned to spreading the raisin trays.

At one time or another Morris’s three brothers and two sisters, their spouses and children, together with sundry kinfolk, gathered either as visitors or part of the clan that had earlier fled west and settled either in the Los Angeles area as entrepreneurs or in the fertile San Joaquin Valley. The Lebanese thrived as merchants or as farmers continuing the agrarian traditions brought from the fertile fields in the mountains above Beirut.  Working for a wage was rarely an option.  Disappointingly, prospects in California were slimmer than in Kentucky.  Common dust, not gold pavers, layered the streets and highways.  January 1947 saw tracks retraced across the nineteen hundred or so miles of two-lane road through Arizona, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, mostly along legendary Route 66, back to Jefferson Street.

Back to Jefferson Street, the magnet.  Bob’s maternal grandmother, Selma Karam, had bought the building at 317 East, in front of which her produce stand stood and would stand until 1959 when the building, the stand and all the buildings and stands would be razed in the name of urban renewal.  Upstairs, Selma, her husband, Habeeb, and son, Eli lived in five rooms.  As did Bob’s family for a while.  The twenty-five street level front feet of 317 East became Metry’s Meat Market on one side and Karam’s Produce, run by Eli, on the other.  Morris was back in the meat business.  The Haymarket district still boomed.  The Church grew into an even greater force in the family’s life, just a block away now.  Grocery store on one corner.  Barber across the street.  Five and Dime six doors up.  Life was neat and compact.

The images in Bob’s mind dissolved in the reality of a chain link fence caging the remains of Produce Plaza, the “new hay market”, a square block developed to replace the original after 1959, after Bob’s 300 block had come down.  Now, cracked acres of asphalt and chipped concrete spread from Floyd to Preston, north across Congress Alley to Market Street, bereft on this Sunday morning even of commuters’ vehicles parked there during the workweek.

With a sigh Bob recalled recounting the history of the three north side blocks between First and Preston to a thirty something Vice President of the University of Louisville involved with developing a Medical and Research Center in the adjacent 200 block.  In response he got a weak, indulgent smile, a cock of the head to one side, hands buried deep in gray pin striped suit pants pockets, an impatient sidewise shuffle of shiny black-loafered feet.  The unspoken message: Old man, I don’t care what was there.  You just don’t understand progress.

Straight backed, index finger itching to jab the tidy puffed up buttoned down shirtfront, Bob might have replied:  And you, my myopic friend, don’t understand that activity is not always progress. Again it would be better to lead us into making that conclusion ourselves rather than spelling it out

Bob’s Jefferson Street existed no more.  Intellectually, he grudgingly accepted the successive changes as well intended, essential for the city’s modernization, and probably inevitable.  Emotionally, he struggled with thoughts of the culture, the humanity he believed had been lost.  Connecting cords, stretched and worn thin with time, still held him fast to the street and the city, however. His heart stayed tethered to its home base, even as his body and its constituent senses had journeyed out into the world. when it comes to making your point you become general, commenting rather than finding a situation, images etc that make us feel what you feel.

Unlike him, two of his brothers, Ronnie, who succumbed to abdominal cancer just past his fifty-fourth birthday, and Joe, seventeen years younger and a career high school special needs teacher, took permanent root in the city.  Ronnie had owned and operated the Brass Rail Tavern, corner of Jackson and Jefferson, succeeding their father, who had switched trades when urban renewal took the meat market, and moved two blocks east.  That building stands no more, the lot now for resale by a land developer.

As well, his eight first cousins who grew up in Louisville, the children of his father’s brothers, married, settled, and worked here.  In one way or another, through St. Michael’s Church, having lived or worked on the street, each of them had ties to Jefferson Street.  His cousin Raymond, slicing a ham, contributed the tip of his right index finger to the sawdust of Morris’s butcher shop at 317 in 1955.  In the ensuing commotion the severed flesh was not recovered and was presumed interred in the day’s sweepings.

Two of the cousins and brother Ronnie already were buried in Louisville, as surely and finally as Bob’s Jefferson Street.  Only brother Habeeb, aka “Hub”, settled away, all of seventy-five miles away in Lexington, his life still centered on “Big Blue”, the University of Kentucky.  Into his 60s he remains an unreconstructed Yuppie:  Brooks Brothers suits, chinos, button down oxford shirts and penny loafers – no socks.  Yet his ties to family and the ancestral church remain strong.

Bob had traveled to Louisville that first weekend in October for the Saturday wedding of his niece, Kristin, brother Joe’s older daughter, Hub’s goddaughter.  Having finished his Jefferson Street odyssey, he was going to join Hub, Joe and dozens of other family members at the home of his sister-in-law Margaret, Ronnie’s widow.

Before going to his car, however, Bob thought it fitting to use the men’s room, as both a biological necessity and a therapeutic homage.  Among the antique photographs lining the lobby and hallway walls he looked in vain for images of the neighborhood, finding only classic Kentucky Derby scenes:  Churchill Downs, thoroughbred horses, beautiful people.  No connection there.  With a shrug of mild disappointment, he headed out the lobby doors to the street.  Oblivious, preoccupied with thoughts of what he had – and had not – experienced that morning, he ignored the guests gathering out front to leave.

“Uncle Bob!”  He turned around instinctively, not expecting that he was being called.  “Uncle Bob, did you forget us already?”  His niece, Kristin, a broad smile lighting up her beautiful newlywed face, grabbed his arm.  Her new husband, Keegan, and Keegan’s brother and best man, Kyle, joined her in chiding him – gently and lovingly, of course – for passing them by.

“Did you stay here last night?” he asked.

“Yes.  We’re going to Dad’s and then to Aunt Margaret’s.”

“You don’t know why I’m here?” Bob said.

“No, but I was wondering.”

He briefly explained his exploration of the family’s past, then tied Kristin into it.  “Your Uncle Hub was born right here. In the 1940s we lived in a building at 109 East Jefferson Street, just about where you’re standing.  You can tell him and your dad about it.  I’m sure they won’t remember.”

These last words he said tongue in cheek as he threw his arms around his niece and her husband in a bonding embrace.

Driving away, Bob realized that he must not let his past encumber the present or impede anyone else’s future.  Recalling the lessons of Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again,” read more than fifty years ago, he resolved his new mission would be to bind the Jefferson Streets of yesterday, today and tomorrow together and not seek reasons to keep them apart.

it seems like you have come to realisation through the process of writing – which is great. it still feels a more of a thought than a feeling, the next step would be to embody that attitude

it’s a very readable piece up til the religion part, then I don’t know where this has come from or where it’s going. It’s like two separate texts.

Convincing dialogue, good sense of pace and the dynamics created by those two people talking. I didn’t find the people or the scenario particularly interesting but it was so well written that I was drawn into it and wanted to read on. I imagined it quite quickly as a film/tv script. Even though the characters are only making small talk there’s hardly a word that’s amiss here, which I’m impressed by for a first draught.

my comments are underlined, stuff in brackets I’d leave out

We grow up loving our parents. We soon start to judge them. Sometimes we forgive them.

– Oscar Wilde I’d leave that out, it weakens your beginning

It was half past five and L. stood near the fountain with her faced pressed into her pink phone. I don’t immediately get this picture, elaborate a little She could hear a two dog owners in the adjacent grass, exchanging their dogs’ names. “Joshua and Jennifer. What kind of names are those?,” she thought. She raised her phone voice to drown them out.  “Sweetie, looks can only take her so far, and she’s not even that pretty. She’s not going to make it as a writer or a singer or a photographer unless she gets more fire under her belly.”

L. held the leashes tight. Her two Cocker Spaniels were light but strong and they pulled her toward the grass. She almost regretted wearing her two-inch sandals. As she talked into her phone, Joshua stopped to greet the Spaniels, and his owner asked if the dogs could say hello. “Sure, sweetie,” said L. As the dogs sniffed, the man moved his eyes slowly from L’s metallic orange toes, to her tall gold sandals, to her khaki pedal pusher slacks, to her leopard print blouse that snuggly fit her small, lazy breasts. His eyes continued to move up her face, past the full orange lips, the ivory cheeks hidden by too much Mary Kay cream cake foundation, the large lids with blue eye shadow, and the yellow-white bouffant hair held in place by a thick gold bow. “Have a great day,” he said, and walked on. great build up to an intended anticlimax

L. noticed Michelle walk up the park steps and waived her over in excitement. L. hung up her phone, now covered in cream cake foundation really? is it not just smudged or smth like that?, dropped it in her bag, and dug for her orange lipstick. “God bless it, I can never find anything in this bag,” said L.

Michelle laughed to herself as she walked up. She liked L.’s  southern accent, and how L. was always getting mad at herself. They’d met in the park several months before, when L. had just arrived to San Francisco from Oklahoma. L. had moved to be near her daughter, but then her daughter had recently moved to Los Angeles for a job.

“Hi, sweetie! You ready to go look at that couch?”, L. said.

“Sure. Where is your place?”

“See that big ugly high-rise right there? That’s me”, said L.

“I love that building,” Michelle thought, “but it’s probably very different from her house in Oklahoma.” As they moved toward the high-rise, L. told Michelle that she was leaving for her “Mary Kay reunion” in two days, and needed to get the old couch out and a new one in before her daughter arrived after the reunion.

“Mary Kay reunion? As in cosmetics?”, asked Michelle.

“Yes, it’s something we’ve been planning for a while, me and the girls. All of us who worked the Dallas Fort Worth territory in the 70s. It wasn’t just about pink Cadillacs, you know. We put those book clubs you girls have to shame. We’d meet twice a month to talk about what we’d read. About sales and strategies for pushing our products.”

They entered L.’s building. Michelle mumbled under her breath that book clubs were annoying, and she’d rather be living in the 70s. L’s hearing was surprisingly good for a 69-year- woman. “I’m not sure what that means, sweetie, but ok.” Michelle wasn’t really sure what she meant by that either. Her opinions (and frustrations) tended to change depending on the moment.

The inside of L.’s apartment was covered in brown paper and sheets—the cabinets, the floors, the furniture, everything. Except for the couch she was selling. “Don’t mind the sheets and paper. It’s for my husband. If I don’t cover everything up he’ll make a big mess, and then when I come home I’ll have to clean it all over again. And I want things to be nice when Christina arrives after the reunion. We’ll fly in the same day and drive back from the airport together.”

“Christina your daughter?” Michelle asked. (And then in the same breath she said, )“Your husband doesn’t mind?”

L. chose to ignore the question about her husband and answer the one about her daughter. Yes, she’s the one in L.A. She’s my baby. I just wish we could all live together, in the same city. I thought when she got her divorce she’d want to be near her family, but I guess not. She’d rather live in L.A. where that stupid Sandy, her friend lives. I mean, L.A.’s ok. At least you can drive there. And park. And people appreciate fashion. I wish she’d told me she was moving to L.A. before we sold our house and moved here. I don’t think she realizes what it took for me …to do that or smth like that. But oh well.

“Pumpkin! You leave my sheets alone!”, L. said. Pumpkin was L’s orange Cocker. It was the third Cocker with the name of Pumpkin in L’s family.

“You know. I went to the vet last week,” said L., “and I just happened to ask how much he would charge to de-claw Pumpkin and Midnight. I don’t want them scratching up my tile floors. Well, he looked at me with this look, and he started talking to me as if I was an idiot, telling me about the tendons and the pain it would cause. They do it to cats, I thought, and how was I supposed to know? We’ll, I’ll never take my dogs there again. I swear.”

Michelle listened to L.’s story, tried to sympathize with her, but couldn’t, and ended up siding with the vet. She changed the subject and said, “Let me try out the couch”.

As she hit the couch with her weight she smelled a flowery, powdery smell,  rising up from the cushions. Probably something to do with Mary Kay, she thought. She wasn’t crazy about the smell, didn’t really like the paisley print fabric, but told L. she’d take it because it was comfortable, free, and would be delivered that evening by L.’s husband. He had a truck with a bumper sticker that said, “Yes, this is my truck, and No, I won’t help you move.”

Michelle left L’s apartment and walked past the park. “I need a drink,” she thought. “I’m in the mood for…what am I in the mood for? Not scotch. Not beer. Not wine. I think I’m in the mood for a vanilla vodka on the rocks.”  Michelle looked up at Grace Cathedral. too quick, cos I don’t know where you are, where you’ve come from Huge, gothic, pale, stone and beautiful, the church confronted her with the guilt of not being pious enough in her teens and early 20s, with the dissonance created by reading Bertrand Russell in her late 20s, with her anger about the too-close relationship between religion and American politics in her mid 30s, and with an appreciation for the symbols, comforts, and traditions it offers to the world, now, in her late 30s.

But religion still caused problems for her, especially when she went home. Something Michelle had always thought, or at least something she had come to think in the last ten minutes, was that her mother was like most mothers. They all played movies in their heads that defined their realities. And Michelle could recite her mother’s movie scripts by heart. Michelle’s father was one of the staring actors in those movies. Whenever Michelle tried to open up to her about her own relationship problems, it was a cue for a scene from one of her mother’s movies. And it was never relevant. you move very fast from one big subject -religion-to the next big subject-family-they seem to be connected in your mind, lead me there a bit

Michelle blamed her mother for most of her failures. For not encouraging her to read beyond the requisite Are You There God It’s Me Margaret?, for not talking enough about politics at the dinner table, for not using colorful vocabulary around the house so that she might comfortably use words like proselytizing during informal conversations. Even though dad was absent, completely absent, Michelle’s mom got all the blame.

I guess this is a temporary ending

.

There are too many characters for me to be able to follow, expecially as the narrator figure is not  established enough for me to have a sense of who the person might be. Also how are all these people connected to the narrator and the current situation of the narrator? It’s like an historical account which people, say of one particular family, could easily follow cos they know all the context. Throughout the text the narrator sticks to one point of view and one argument so there is no sense of discovery or an experience the reader can share in. How are all the memories, all these lives connected to the progress idea in the narrator’s sensibility- that might be a way to explore this subject. How could you talk about your feelings about progress without using the word progress? Is there progress in the narrators life, or not, and what’s that like, how does that manifest itself?

General notes:

I get a good sense of the narrator, I can follow her

Text seems to be about opposite states, static, moving, control, chaos

all things I put in brackets I would leave out

all the things you put in brackets I would also leave out

the mix of I, she and imperative are ambitious, sometimes it works quite well but I’m not sure

why not make the car the pivot of the story, everything is seen from this context, car connecting then and now, life before car different

The Story of an Hour

(With Apologies to Kate Chopin)

Twice a week, she gets to drive an hour to and from work.  Twice a week, for an hour at a time, her car becomes her entire world.  It’s a 2001 Mazda Protégé, Black. for how long have you had it? It would be a good idea to make the car the chronologer of the text. it works very well when she talks about her marriage. An automatic, which she thought she would hate, until she drove in Southern California traffic(; then, it was a godsend.  How can you be in one place and moving all at once?  Get in your car and drive.)  This is her car, her first car, a place where she can move and (finally) find some sense of stability.  In all the moves, in all the traveling, (at least) the car has always been there.  First, almost like new, then filled with the trash of a cross-country journey. What journey The floor of a backseat could be a site of cultural discovery, archeology of the everyday.  That trip for coffee, the fast food, the receipts for gas, address, cities, (the most grammatically incorrect sentence ever.  Find a verb, God!)

(How cliché.  Writing about writing.  But this is what it is like for her in the car. ) Mind pulled in different directions, but she is in complete control.  Pay attention to the speed, keep it just under 80, (which is a bit of a challenge because the car is in kilometers.)  Look at the little numbers, not the big ones.  Check the rear-view.  Fog coming up. Lead us into the change from rear to front, what’s the road like?  or leave the next two sentences out for rythm and sound. Car about a half mile ahead.  Probably will need to pass.  Oh, she likes this song.  Sing along, loud.  Indicate, change lanes, accelerate, indicate, get back in the right-hand lane.  Think about high school when she first heard this song.  How far she’s come.  A PhD.  A husband.  Two kids.  A dream job come and gone.  A house.  A life.  This song, who she was.  This car, who she is now. not quite correct, has been since she had the car

When she first learned to drive, she was tentative, fearful, a shell.  So nervous.  No one wanted to drive with her, and she wouldn’t blame them.  But she didn’t have her own car, and the family car was not easily attained.  Attained?  Ok, then.  She was the permanent passenger.  Front seat, back seat, sometimes the middle spot.  Drive to school, drive to swim meets, drive to drive.  We’re free, within reason.  To a 16-year-old, a car is the sign of adulthood.  I wasn’t allowed to be an adult.  Keep moving.  Just because she didn’t have her own car, didn’t mean she wasn’t moving.  Just had no control over the direction. from drive to drive, I find it a bit confused

Slow down.  85 miles!  She knows there are cops all the time along this route.  It’s quiet in the car.  Even with the music blaring, it’s peaceful.  She is in control.  Her mind is her own, and so is her time.  The two car seats in the back seat sit empty. this is great, one immediately sees the children. She can think.  Think about anything.  Think about everything.  She is so relieved to climb into the car alone.  But she misses her kids, misses her husband.  That’s a good thing.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Two children under the age of three can make you insane.  You own thoughts are subsumed (subsumed?) by the demands of everyone and everything else.  What does that cry mean?  Where is this toy, that book?  What time is it? Time to eat?  Time to sleep?  Time to go outside?  There is no time, no time for thoughts, no time to spend in your own head.  That’s not that bad, she thinks.  Spending too much time up in here would be dangerous.  No time at all, equally perilous (perilous?).

sudden time jump here, use the car for bridge So for one hour, each way, she can live in her head, living in her car.  Get ready to teach.  What am I going to say today?  She remembers both of her grandparents are dead.  Why did she think of that?  The scarf.  Her scarf smells like her grandmother.  It’s a miracle she can smell it over the other smells in the car.  There’s some piece of food, somewhere, that’s slowly rotting.  There’s something else that’s musty.  And somewhere, an old shoe.  Or at least something that smells like an old shoe.  But, right there, under her nose (well, her chin), is her grandmother’s old scarf.  And that is all she can smell. you said the opposite earlier There’s a merge coming up, a car getting on the highway, indicate, check blind spot, move over, give them room, make your way back.

What time is it?  Where am I on the trip?  Which exit was that?  Calculate your speed vs. distance left to travel, estimate time left in the trip.  Descend back into the fog. Literally and figuratively.  Keep writing in your head.  If a conference presentation that takes 20 minutes to read is no more than about 10 pages long, certainly you can tell the story of an hour in six pages.  Surely.  If only she could write while she drives.  She has enough trouble reading a map.  Car rides were always a time for reflection.  She always gets car sick when she tries to read in the car.  She was so jealous of those who could read on trips.  She used to see the time in the car, traveling, as wasted time.  But then, she realized that quiet reflection was perhaps more valuable than any time spent reading, writing, studying.  And when she’s driving, it doesn’t matter.  Keep moving, keep digging deeper, because there is nowhere else to go. this paragraph isn’t very strong. why need say you’re writing in car

Always moving.  Move away to university.  Move even further for grad school.  Move away.  Far away.  Get away from those things that kept you down.  The wind is blowing you around.  She just goes with it.  Fall into things, situations, relationships.  Falls out of them again.  Keep moving.  Bring yourself with you.  Leave yourself behind.  Sit next to yourself, watch yourself.  (Ironic detachment.)  She is driving.  She is singing.  She is thinking, lost in thought, knowing exactly where she is going. ( Revel in the paradox!  Revel!)  When you go back, they will expect you to be who you were, and you will slip (uncomfortably) back into that role.  This is not who I am, you scream inside.  I have my own car now.  I don’t need to rely on you anymore.  But I miss you so much.  Can the person you are now still need the same people you did then?

The interstate highways are her favorite.  She loves to look at nature as she drives. more specific She is watching everything.  There’s that car that passed her a few miles back.  Is there a cop?  Adjust your speed, get in behind them.  You’re running late.  Keep driving.  The highway is about to become three lanes.  Almost there.  She loves this car.  Her first car.  She and her husband bought it just before they got married.  They drove in this car, together, to the mountains where for the ceremony.  They drove three days to start their new lives together.  He chipped it.  She got into an accident with it (not her fault!).  There is where she scrapped the side of the house.  There is where he dropped the water bottle on it.  There’s where they thing think they hit a raccoon.  Out to the dessert, over the ocean, up to wine country; the story of a marriage. the account of the marriage is great

Get off the highway.  Now comes the longest part of the trip: city street.  She wishes for another two cylinders on the car.  She knows the car well, but doesn’t trust it to accelerate fast enough when trying to beat city traffic, get that turn in on the red light.  The breaks are ok, though.  She knows the car, knows when it is faltering, knows when it’s time to get the oil changed, the breaks fixed I would not put that in brackets (that’s not true; she drove for a half-day with failing breaks, only mentioning it in passing to her husband.  Repair shop said they could have been killed had they left it any longer), How far they should get on a tank of gas depending on what kind of driving, how much gas will cost depending on where the meter reads.  All of this, she holds in her head, waiting to need to recall it.  (Subconscious.)  Just like knowing when her children are getting sick, getting hungry, getting teeth, getting scared, nervous, anxious.  It takes time to get to know a car.  She knows this car better than she will ever know her own kids, better than she will probably ever know herself.  (That is the challenge, isn’t it?)

Sit at a red light behind a long line of cars.  Know that it will take at least two more light cycles before you’ll get around the corner.  Did her daughter get to school alright?  Was her son upset she left before he woke up?  She is tempted to text her husband, but it’s a bad idea.  Traffic this slow, with everyone late for work, missing the light would be an insult (insult?).  Turn on the radio through her phone, now that there’s a better signal in the city.  She misses Southern California radio.  She doesn’t miss Montreal drivers, where she learned the laws of the road, survival of the fittest.  Pass, or get the hell out of the way.  Everyone always in a hurry because everyone is always late.  She will never be a laid-back driver.  Always needs to be in front.  If only in her car.  In everything else, always feeling left behind, needing to catch up (Time after time).  (Overwhelmed. ) In the car, with all that’s going on inside and outside, she is in control.  She knows how fast she is going, she knows where she is going, she listens to what she wants to listen to, and her mind is free to go wherever. but it doesn’t. it goes where she says she is not being herself. her accounts of being powerless, not being herself don’t ring true. dig deeper

And she finds herself in this place that she did not choose, in a situation she fell into, yet again.  No, that’s not right.  She chose her husband, knowing where it could lead.  She chose when to have kids, not quite knowing where that would lead, may yet still lead.  We never do.  She needs to put down roots, at least to try.  I will root herself in this car, she thinks.  I will sink into this seat, and the passengers may (will) come and go, but this car and I will remain together, she thinks cynically.  Too much moving has made her question what it means to make connections with people. is that true? See two lines later Don’t get too close, you never know when you will begin to move again.   She grew up in the same house her entire childhood; her mother still lives there.  But that feeling of uprootedness, of constant motion, has haunted her.  Those close to you will only hurt you.  Exhaustion or ignorance kept her immobile before.  She didn’t know how to protect herself, how to effectively move away, move on.  She’s still working on that.  These things haunt her, alone in this car, so far away, in time and space, from that time.  They live here with her in the car.  She can here her friends laughing, singing, her husband talking, her kids crying, her mom panicking, her dad fuming, her grandparents bickering, (semicolons?).  They live here with her in the car, because in the car, she can travel anywhere she wants, and everywhere she wants to forget.  (Revel in the paradox!  Revel!)

Find a place to park.  Turn off the car.  Pull out the keys, put the phone away, check yourself in the rearview mirror.  Deep breathe. breath It’s time.   You need to be yourself for a few hours, to teach, to read, to be a colleague, to prepare, to answer questions.  But don’t worry.  The car will (most likely) still be here when you get back.  Then, you’ve got another hour. smth missing in the last paragraph

(Kensington.  Calgary’s self-proclaimed “village in the city.”  It’s where I live, where I work out, where I drink and where I conduct most of the daily transactions of life.  All told, ) I would start here because then I immediately get an image of the person. I probably live three quarters of my life within a two kilometer radius of my house. street name, town, etc Considering that the physical footprint of Calgary is roughly that of New York City – with about an eighth of the population – I manage to carve out my life in a extraordinarily small part of it. well put

(Let’s start with a bit of context.) Perhaps start with the shape of it to connect to previous sentence. Calgary is a big, rich, car-loving, oil city.  It has a lot of things going for it, but the actual form of the city really isn’t one of them.  It’s covered with roads and roads and roads, most of which lead you to any number of monolithic, drab suburban enclaves.  Despite the exotic names – Tuscany, The Hamptons, Coral Springs, Inverness and New Brighton – a good portion of the city is covered in beige.  Beige houses.  Beige garages.  All connected by nice, new roads that speed you to work or to the nearest big box centre. I don’t quite understand the connection of Kensington to Calvary, I guess it’s a part of Calvary – and if you want to talk about Kensington, why harp on about Calgary? Also what comes across is a discontentment behind the descriptions that make me not really see the environment and not really connect to the cause of the discontentment.

I know it works for a lot of people, but living in that environment isn’t for me.  Actually, I think it wouldn’t take long to lose my mind out there.  Everything is compartmentalized in the suburbs.  Live here.  Work there.  Shop there.  Drive everywhere in between.  The lack of diversity, connection and interaction would drive me batty.  That’s why I live in Kensington – life just seems more interesting.

From here on for the next 3 paragraphs it’s like an article, travel journalism rather than a story

Let’s start with what is around.  Within a fifteen minute walk from my house, I can mail a letter, work out at a gym, drink a number of non-Starbucks coffees – although Starbucks is an option too, get physiotherapy on my knee, go to a movie, buy a book, pick up groceries, get my suit dry-cleaned and grab a pint of beer in a dozen different locations.  The latter is important – during Calgary’s glorious four days of summer, having a beer on a patio is a necessity.

Then there’s the food.  Kensington has a world tour of food choices including Japanese, Lebanese, Italian, Ethiopian, Indian, Vietnamese and Chinese.  Add to this any number of sandwich and burger joints, and it’s pretty easy to see why I manage to cook only a couple of times a week.  It’s a good thing that it’s such a walkable community so I can burn some calories just by getting around, otherwise with those culinary choices, I would definitely grow out of my pants in no time.  Not to say that I don’t drive at all.  It’s Calgary and it can be so cold that it hurts to breathe sometimes in the winter, let alone walk, but the point is that I have a choice.  Urbanist Jane Jacobs once said that the point of cities is multiplicity of choice.  Too many communities don’t give people choices.  Kensington does.

While there are the chain stores that exist in Kensington, what I appreciate is that the majority of the businesses are locally owned.  The buildings, the signage all has unique qualities that build on the existing architecture and history of the place.  An old brick building retrofitted to house a pub on the ground floor and a law office above.  A seniors housing complex over top of an optometrist and a health food store.  There is variety in the building forms as well as the uses of the buildings.  This really contributes to the feel of the community and makes it a real place – it gives it, what urban designers call, a sense of place.  I get this sense when having a coffee at Higher Ground and overhearing the owner-operator meeting with a local baker who is going to start selling her organic goods in their shop.  I get this sense when I’m having a latte at The House and the woman who works the morning shift greets a local homeless man with a smile, taking his bag out of the bag storeroom that’s been there since last night so he wouldn’t have it stolen at the shelter.  I could be wrong, but I suspect that the national headquarters of a chain coffee shop might frown upon using a storeroom as luggage valet for a homeless guy.

For many folks, living in a place like Kensington is too loud, too scary or too dangerous.  Sure, that homeless guy who had his bag stored isn’t as idyllic to see on the street as a Mom pushing a stroller and walking her golden retriever, but he’s not hurting anyone. Living in a place like Kensington, you see the side of things that is intentionally eliminated from the manicured and pastoral setting of many suburban communities.  Every yard is well kept.  Everyone has lots of space to themselves.  Everyone looks relatively the same.  In Kensington, that’s just not the case.  There’s a reason there are multiple tattoo shops in the area – their clientele live in the neighbourhood.  Walking around the area, you’ll see people all kinds of body ornamentation.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw someone with a bone through their nose.  One person’s local character is another’s threatening criminal. a commenting style, I’m not sure what you’re trying to convey

Reggie is a good example of perception and place.  Nearly every morning while the weather is accommodating, Reggie sets up shop on a bench on Kensington Road, his shopping cart of cans and his worldly goods always alongside.  Reggie is probably in his sixties, a homeless man who looks the part.  His hands, sleeves and cuffs of his pants are always between a shade of charcoal and black.  His face is weathered by his time in the elements of Calgary’s streets that range from scorching to life-or-death cold.

Throughout the day, Reggie undergoes his routine transformation.  If you pass him in the morning, he’ll be sitting on his bench upright, with a smile on his face.  He’ll likely greet you with a cheery “good morning” or a smile and a nod.  If you pass him around noon, he is still on his bench, but slouched over somewhat, the effects of his drink taking hold.  His cheerful morning greeting is now replaced by a slurred request for some spare change.  By mid-afternoon, Reggie is stretched out on his bench, an arm draped over his eyes as he sleeps the rest of the day away in a booze-induced slumber. I like this part about Reggie, I can see Reggie and I can see you. How about taking Reggie as a central figure of your story, leave out all the comments and see where it takes you, what the connection brings

This is the kind of situation that many folks like to keep out of their community.  While I understand that it’s unpleasant to see, the fact remains that people like Reggie exist.  If you don’t ever cross paths with a Reggie, he’ll likely scare the hell out of you when you see him.  When he’s part of the landscape of your community, the fear subsides.  Of course I wish that he got better, but my heart rate doesn’t go up when I pass him.  My heart rate goes up when I’m stuck on the freeway with nowhere to go. here you are “using” Reggie to comment again, it’s much more interesting if you get involved, the next stage would be to describe some interactions with Reggie and other people and through your more detailed descriptions of places in the context of real situations and people we get to know and appreciate Kensington .

So while I can hear the traffic of Kensington Road from my bedroom, I have to see down-on-their-luck folks like Reggie and I live in a house smaller than a suburban starter mansion, I also live in a community that I feel connected to.  Life for me is more than just accumulating the most, the biggest, the newest, even if it means being faced with some unpleasant realities.  These realities exist, even when we choose to ignore them.  There are homeless people in the world.  Sometimes traffic makes lots of noise.  That’s all part of the deal.

This is all just part of what makes Kensington interesting.  The variety of places, buildings and characters and connections in between make for a neighbourhood that keeps you on your toes.  All these things are within a kilometer or two from my house.  Come to think of it, this just might be a village in the city after all. last two paragraphs mostly comments again. I wonder what drives the narrator, it would be interesting to find out more what he wants or what he’s lost, without naming it, just getting a sense of it through this story about the place where he lives.

The Moment

I must begin in the future. interesting start, then fulfil your promise.  On Sept … a dispassionate  …will interview The present holds too many contrived motions to ward off the stillness that invites contemplation.  If I were to push aside the frivolous, it will be a free-fall through hell.  I refuse to dwell in this vacuum, as temporary as it may be.  I’m past fretting.  Nothing else to do but wait for the September 10th interview 4394.62 miles away.  At 9:30 A.M. a dispassionate American Consular will then interview a young married man who has not seen his wife in well over five months.  In fact, the couple has been together all of ten days since they got married in Queenstown New Zealand last December. I would break here  Then in the next paragraph describe how they were married in Queenstown, maybe in one paragraph since at that time they were together. That’s Queenstown, New Zealand – though he is from South Africa and I, his most unlikely wife, live in Hawaii.  He chose Queenstown as the namesake for his favorite spot in the Eastern Cape; an audacious town signaling happy beginnings.

I, on the other hand, chose New Zealand for practical reasons.  It was to help us meet closer to my home base, the closest one he could go to without a visa.  I guess when you live in Hawaii, measuring long distances is relative at best.  Cultures of time and space inform the most personal illusions of our lives – but I digress.

When Vuyani came from the Eastern Cape to visit me in the balmy December of 2006 – looking at this same ocean out of this same window – little did I detect a joint obsession for us to stay together this long.  Yes, we had already lived with each other for the better part of that year, but at my age I could just shrug it off as a fling.  In fact, I had warned him repeatedly not to get involved: “No way in hell will I get married again!” I had pled in earnest.  “And anyways, you need to think about the ruinous reputation of staying in my company while continuing to live in the most conservative neighborhood in South Africa!”  We had laughed it all off in 2006, even those overtly dirty looks we got all around; the icy receptions at hotels where suddenly there were no more rooms available. The harsh remnants of Apartheid; the harsher realities of the Xhosa tribe trying to live on their own land.  The impenetrable sorrow of a fragile country where anything at all can break with the gentlest touch of curiosity.  big political subjects - more detail, real situations, take us into this atmosphere

Time slithers mysteriously on the ruins of a past marriage, of a child growing up tap dancing her way out of this very home; weary of adult illness example which comes later and constant talk of death.  Looking out of the same window when she was barely twelve, she had put dibs on the front bedroom even before I had a chance to offer to buy the place.  “Phil can’t handle these steps so I may as well take the front bedroom!” She had referred to her father’s recently broken back and the two steps leading down to the sunken living space with wall to wall windows. The front bedroom opened wide into the living room – both with a full view of the turquoise ocean ahead. The remnants of old Hawaiian fish ponds were now the dredged waterways seemingly sweeping the low-rise houses below us towards the green mountains to our right. From our twelfth-floor vantage we had been so enthralled with these blue and red slate or cedar shingle rooftops that we didn’t even bother to look straight down or visit the gardens and pools, the whirlpools and the secluded barbecue nooks and the tropical gardens that would beckon us for years to come.  Twenty years later, to be exact, the scene remains enchanting and every new visitor brings me back to seeing it all over again for the first time. are you here with your first marriage and the child from this marriage? that’s not quite clear. good description of nature

Through the years, we could spot humpback whales cruising by in the winter months; oblivious of square time or round time; instinctively driven by the constant warmth of Pacific waves.  It seems I’m always looking out at sea – desperately in need of the unencumbered meeting of the sky with some emptiness below; of the comfort of my first home of innocents.  Not that I enjoy the salt water or even the thought of getting wet; rather it is simply a craving for visual relief. My devoted passion for any body of water, just as deep no matter where I take myself these days or how long I promise to stay.  Water is my anchor to continuity.  As well, the waning sun.  The same sun that warmed us in Engcobo and Bolotwa, up the Wild Coast, in Lesotho and Swaziland, begins to lighten the sky from this eastern-most point of O’ahu and sets behind the mountains to my right, adding a gesture of relief and respite.  I know it will always be there for me; more than I can say about my flighty companions. your relation to water is interesting, more detail or depth. Focus on water, where does it take you. Maybe the sun somewhere else.

In Port Elizabeth last winter the same sun and a similar ocean view out of a similar window offered their own delights.  Schools of dolphins greeting each other in the bay; hungry fishermen chasing carefree squids; undulating kids hanging on to the surf.  Looking out of our window, here or there, he is just happy to be.  No need to be taught the intricacies of meditation or the Eastern philosophies of living in the moment.  He just lives.  Not simply in the moment but also moment by moment.  Not always to reach a higher ground but perennially cautious to keep from sinking deeper into the mire of days past or the insidious promises of an uncertain tomorrow. I’m not sure who “he” is

He is now jogging 4394.62 miles away from home; his fate unresolved for another 70 hours, three more sunsets. He had been patient then as he is patient now.  As for me, I can’t wait to end this waiting.  Just three more cycles of the earth to his interview. good to come back to your promise from the beginning, perhaps more of that?

***

Good thing I ate the last piece of opakapaka I had bought on Sunday afternoon… it turns out that I have not wanted to eat anything else since Monday morning and so, in effect, that Sunday afternoon snack of fresh fish and purple Okinawan sweet potatoes were my last solid intake for the week. It was now Wednesday noon.  Not the recommended way to lose weight, but by now I’ve lost more than a couple of pounds which I’m sure I’ll regain as quickly I get my appetite back.  I have learned that no feeling is ever final. this is not very interesting, doesn’t do anything for the story

I’ve had a glass of juice each day; mostly watered down by lots of water, hot or cold. Amanzi a shu shu!  Hot water please!  The first and perhaps only real phrase I learned in Xhosa because I was constantly looking for hot water to drink as we moved from village to village, with Vuyani training unemployed farmers how to catch bees and place them in hives to at least produce enough honey to stave off hunger or supplement a blank diet of mealie meal and samp.  Moving from the heat of Hawaii to the Fall months of the Eastern cape, I simply could not keep warm.  I kept asking for hot water at every restaurant and kept getting dubious looks which I interpreted as their not understanding English.  I would turn to Vuyani for help and he would repeat “hot water please!” and when I finally asked him “How do you say hot water?” he would dutifully parrot “hot water.”  It took me a couple of weeks to realize that he was making a joke.  We had only just met and I didn’t expect such a forward sense of humor from him.  He seemed like such a serious young man and I was clearly old enough to be his mother.  Eventually I realized I needed to ask: “How do you say hot water in Xhosa?” at which point he smiled: “Amanzi a shu shu” and I later heard white South Africans asking for “shu shu amanzi” which was obviously the direct translation from an English language perspective. good paragraph, the exotic phrase, the confusion generated by it give me a sense of the relation-ship. More of that, rather than describing the relationship/people

***

Today, as I enter the third day of having no appetite I finally sit down to write part two of my story:  how I came to lose my appetite looking out at my favorite view out my window where I had last imagined his arms around me.  My desktop computer sits nearby.  I’ve finally settled on this vantage point after months of rearranging the furniture to find a way – any way – to entice me to work sitting straight up.  I live alone so I have no external commitment to keep the furniture in the same spot out of habit or others’ proclivities.  This, my first desktop in a decade, has been sitting idle for years because I just can’t bring myself to use it.  I was so used to carrying my laptop to bed with me.  I lived in my bed.  I was teaching online courses so it didn’t matter.  In between exchanging hundreds of messages with students I would pull out my digitizing tablet and play with digital watercolors based on my photos.  Until I decided it wasn’t good for my psyche.  The last book I had published back in the early ’80s I had composed from a lounge chair, a long cord stretching from my desktop WangWriter, and then a PC.  I had broken my own prior records for speed-writing. good to hear of the narrators profession and the habit of working in bed, somehow the paragraph needs rearranging, leaving out the little comments, describe it in such a way that I know how she feels rather than telling me

This time it wasn’t working.  Neither the massage chair nor the comfortable leather sofa.  Neither the cordless keyboard nor the MacSpeech option to allow me to offer hands-free audio-wisdom to my desktop.  Nothing seemed to work and the idle computer has been sitting here patiently waiting for the right moment.  Whoever says technology forces us to work faster & harder has not met up with my iMac. I would cut that paragraph.

I find my way to the idle office chair as I struggle to reconnect with the hopeful feelings of last Sunday night.  Even as I imagined Vuyani jogging down Auckland streets thousands of miles away I had clearly misinterpreted his passion to run into the night air.  Not so much to reduce his adrenalin levels;  not so much out of his excitement for joining me soon.  I may have touched upon his moment-by-moment attitude toward life in an envious state of needing a balance for my own conscientious need for planning ahead.  Yes, I can be so spontaneous at times to scare my colleagues and students and  anyone within earshot.  Yet, now that I’m preparing for the leisure of a retirement lifestyle, I wanted someone in my life to help me slow down.  Who better than someone whose name literally meant Be Happy? Again this paragraph needs rearranging, the best line is “I wanted someone in my life to help me slow down.” Where could that line take you? The jogging is als good in connection with it. There are generally too many “sidelines” that diffuse what you’re trying to say

l had no reason to believe that now, at the core of his being, a new revolution was spinning off, out of control.  He was jogging to clear his head.  He was jogging to clear up his brain to getting a grip on his life; to getting up his nerve to write.  What he had to say couldn’t be casually tossed into space for the analog airwaves to carry forward on a casual phone conversation of the type we had had for weeks on end.  The words, though just symbols on a screen, weighed too much to fly on their own.  In the early morning hours of Labor Day 2009, before the sun rose and hordes of happy campers went frolicking into the holiday spirit, I began to read his lengthy labor of love:

“Hi Dinalee.  I am thinking of so many things that you have done for me and Oyama especially bringing or making a significant role to unite me and her family. She will always ask about you everytime that I talk to her on the phone and I know she loves you too. I never have any doubts about you loving her too…”

Sweet Oyama.  His child, regardless of circumstance.  A baby whose mother died after a long coma a month after giving birth.  A baby who remains at the center of our lives just as she remains the only connection that a grandmother can now have with her dead daughter.  A lifeline for everyone.  A golden thread that tied us all together so early in 2006, when she was only a few months old. don’t know who you’re talking about here

I must begin anew in the future.  The present holds too many contrived emotions to ward off the stillness that invites contemplation. how about taking a real example of the future event rather than suggesting it

Hello everybody,

I’ve been away but am now back in Berlin and looking forward to the assignment.

Regards, Nicola