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