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So maybe this is the right place, the write place, the right space to write. The keyboard is

definitely not the right one, it is slightly filthy and the keys are resisting touch, you have

to push extra-hard when typing, when feeding your ideas to the machine. A woman with

a pissed-off face, three Japanese tourists in the back. A not-so-sunny day on Granville

Isle, stickiness, white cloud in the sky. July seventh or third, Vancouver Vancouver. A

man opens the lid of the grey recycling bin, it is actually blue but the lighting in the art

school library here makes it seem grey. Author feeds her words to the machine, this

machine. A vignette maybe, a poem maybe, one page of Times New Roman, double-

spaced, Point 12. Something borderline epic, borderline musical. We paint with words

here, someone coughs, short short hiccups of flam. The greenery in the sky, the

majesticness of the Ocean Factory. Her days have withered away in this art school, she

feels tinges of melodrama grapping her by the throat. A man in red and black comes in

with a small cup and a brush in it, something like an inkpot but not a inkpot. We have

some words here, two hundred and eight, to be precise. It is lunchtime, after-lunch

maybe. Author had a mille feuille in the quaint and overpriced place down in Yaletown,

that should do for lunch, that is how we clog up our arteries here. We will all die

eventually, anyways, anyhoo.

Yup, so this is her first vignette here, she is starting up a new genre, one-pagers that are

slightly poetic, slightly angsty. Slightly this and/or slightly that. Vignette, huh, vignettes,

huh. Pretty, deep, informal. Short songs that are informed by the bus ride over the bridge,

by the funny conversations that make the author’s day. Yup, something like that, ah,

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something of that kind here. 317. Yup, 317 words it is it is it is it is. Make that 331, it

changes all the time. With each peck at the keyboard here.

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nyc, the songs of the meat packing district. Author sits down on one of the dark-green,

slightly wobbly chairs across from the apple store. At the corner of 14th and nineth. It is

pretty hot, way too hot, maybe. Two mta-officers are having lunch at the other table, all

dark-blue indifference. Two women in elfin dresses, with elfin hats. Tourists, non-

natives. They speak something Scandinavian, which does not really go with their Chinese

features. How many Japanese Vikings do you know? Anyhoo, they should be tourists, not

New York born and bred.

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So finally this computer worked. It is way too sunny to come down here and type up the

obligatory two pages but if you call yourself a writer you have to do this, you have to

plant yourself in front of any of the computers around town and you have to feed your

words to the machine, have to let your mind go blank and type up a certain amount of

words, feed yer poetry to the machine, while you are still sweaty from your long trek thru

the too hot city, the summer city. And any hot summercity will do, should do. In her case

it is Vancouver, but come summer she lives here like a touriste. The tourist in your own

town, yup that one that one. See the everyday thru the eyes of a stranger, hang around ppl

from places far away, see how they see this place of yours, the urbanity, the typical

citylife. Downtowne ah downtowne. The sun, the way too hot sun. The too much of

walking, the stands around town where you snap up a bite. The mc donald’s where you

can look out at Granville, as if you are somewhere near herald place. Gotta be a tourist if

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you are a writer. The fake tourist, yup, that kind of stuff here. Her writing ah her writing,

her two pages, each and every day. She is not that driven these days, we are slacking off

on the job, sleeping on the job, the idea of writing words that will wither away

unpublished, that will not be in a nicely bound tactile tome, that idea kills the aspirations

of the writer. The filmmaker who makes films that nobody will watch, the playwright

who stages fake shows that nobody watches. The artiste without audience, the drummer

without a band, can there be anything more dreary? Well, yes, hunger, starvation, death,

if your only misfortune is that you are sans success, then life is tolerable. After all we

have our health, still our health, that is nothing to sneeze at. Just keep on writing away,

filing away at your little sculptures, just keep on producing. If you build it they will

come, so keep on building. Fields of dreams ain’t wrong, now is it, is it? Her grammar is

off, her spelling is off. The wrong punctuation marks at the wrong intersections of words.

It is ten and thirty, still morningish, she will have a pannekoek at de dutch on Granville.

The one with whip and peach compote. With tea, chamomile tea, peppermint tea. She

will order stuff in a restaurant, which is ah so weird, to sit and eat by yourself there.

Anyhoo, typing, ah, typing.

She ponders if she should insert a page number into this, it kind of is weird when you put

all of these texts together in the end. The chronology has to be fitting, you cannot have

chapter 7 after chapter 11. Writing is ah so very precise mark making, everything has to

be just so. If you make up words, they too have to have an inner logic. That is what made

Seinfeld ah so successful, there is an inner logic, that is easily understandable. The

narrative has to make sense, in a very physical way. Just like the plumbing of a toilet has

to function. Poetry and plumbing, yup, they are alike and are alike here. Author ponders,

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she needs some more words, in order to feel that she accomplished something. Her car is

parked in oakridge, luckily the parking police there is so very lax. Her car looks like one

that belongs to a shopper, not to a thug. Though there is of course the viewpoint that all

consumers are bums, the shopper-as-thug idea. Anyhoo, time to wrap this up, time to

have lunch, to spellcheck, to save. Not necessarily in that order.

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