Part 34-latest version

8/14/2019 Part 34-latest version

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fascinating, she looks at people, notices vaguely that there is no music in this place, which is a

first in all her constant travels, in ontario, in qubec and in new york, a place that does not need

music, that relies solely on visual entertainment, the noise from the street, conversation, music is

not part of the equation, then again, maybe there is some music somewhere, somewhere in the

distance, she looks outside where the world runs by, where life runs by, this place has a certain

unhappiness, a certain uneasiness, she suddenly can hear music, which was there all along, which

was there all along.

- - -

She ponders if simply repeating words will make for good writing. Of course not, it is very

skilful filing away at sentences that will propel her adventures here in literatureland, in the

linguistic landfill that she is dropping her insights into.

Outside, the city goes by, moves by, people are coming out of the subwaystation, there is a

beige stairway going up here. She should have a tea, but it does not really hault her cold. The

person at the other table is drinking a Red Bull, the author ponders if that kind of energy drink

would supply her with energy, she is tired, still full of pangs of fever, that make her sit here and

rest, that make her try to regain her strength, to go into a state of normalcy, where she can

breathe and swallow easily, again.

The person at the table opposite of her eats and talks to himself while eating, a fly bumps into

her face. Something smells, some foul smell. The Deli is situated at a very strategically valid

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corner, it must make a lot of business.

She wants to leave.

- - -


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She sits down on a bench in the subway. A woman with red nail polish is reading. So she, the

author, thinks, that maybe she should sit and write here. It is rushhour people rush by, transfer

between L, A, C and E trains.

The subway, breeding ground for musicians, visual artists. Looking at the writing pad, while

seeing all those legs rush by. Walking cycles, lots and lots of biped walking cycles.

All kinds of colors, red pants, brown shoes, black pants, wheels of strollers, of suitcases on

wheels, people rushing and running, striding, strutting elegant persons and non-elegant ones.

high grey heels, pumps, that were bought at a cheap outlet store. She writes away, Someone

wheels by canned fruit, behind him someone wheels by a stroller. Someone reads, someone

writes. Someone talks, someone listens.

The author smiles. Her observations get more profound, the more her surrealistic state of

tourisme, of dislocation progresses. Will she be able to adapt to normalcy, once she is back in

vancouver. She cant really sit back home at the Metrotown skytrain station and write like this.

She would feel weird, strange. Here, on the other hand, this seems normal, writing to combat

insanity, uncertainty, dislocation. That is what pens are made for.

- - -

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She just writes away.

- - -

she is now back in the dunkin donuts on 9th avenue at the corner of, maybe 24th., maybe 25th.

street, she cannot see it from here, she ordered 5 munchkins, or, actually, she wanted 3, but she

always gets 5, they always want to up her sugar and fat intake, here, take more, clog your

arteries, for free, its on the house, some person at the donut place has a bypass surgeon in her

family, it is just one big conspiracy, corporations and other culprits, organized anything, it is just


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horrible and it is getting worse, by the minute. She feels sicker by the minute, then again she

feels a tad better than before. That does not really make sense, but, basically, she would like to

feel really, really great. And this cold is just draining her, interferes with her creativity, her ability

to pen accurate illustrations of the world around her, substandard writing being the obvious

consequence. Sorry, we are not writing War and Peace here, we have a cold. The poet doesnt

know it, the cold makes her write down rubbish.

Outside New York happens. At this point, everything here seems ordinary, she has her favourite

hangouts, her favourite food, her favourite pastimes. She meets the same bums at the same time,

and they meet her. Useless lives. she is slightly pessimistic. She fishes for her cellphone. She

detests that she has no access to the internet, she has to walk for thirty minutes to get to the

nearest internet caf or take the subway, take the A or the E, and then change to the L and then

walk again. Too complicated, much too complicated. She will take the subway and go to Macys

where the world circles around what matters, fashion and the ability to fit into certain sizes. That

is what we are fighting for. Shallow ideas, clothes et. al.

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She ponders what to do. Should she take the train uptown and have fun. She wrote already

thirty-five pages, that seems to be enough for today. The more she writes now, the more she has

to type, once back in vancitay. The more trees have to go down, the more ink will pollute the

ground water, the more petrochemicals to make pens, the more blood for oil.

stop convoluted answers, stop convoluted answers. Stop simple answers. She thinks of the guy

with the grey t-shirt, whose T-shirt said I love Jahad, with the I written as I, the love as heart and

the jahad written in Arabic. Fusion, in your face. Take that, islamophobic US. She is mad, at a lot

of things. Ragingly, but then again maybe not mad enough. What is she doing here anyways?


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Talking like these people, walking like these people. Her alliances are multi-faceted. As if that is

an excuse. For anything.

A biker, a stroller wheel by. Life outside of the dunkin donuts window. Passes by, slow and

fast. A pigeon, two persons. And so many cars. Roaring, whooshing. Music on the overhead.

Rhythm, staccato. People talk behind her. Something Urduish or so. She has to leave, wants to

leave. This is getting unbearable. So much to write, so little, so very little time. So little time left

on this planet. For the myriad of things she still has to achieve. World peace, that kind of stuff. In

her spare time. While having fun. Lots of fun. And making a buck. And dreaming of romance.

That is always good, goes with anything. With any pair of shoes.

- - -

she sits down near the photographer who takes pictures of flowers. She looks up at skyscrapers

and wonders, ponders, whether she let go of what matters most, so very, very tall buildings,

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scrapers of skies, of clouds, buildings that take her breath away, that makes the gasp in her lungs

hault, for a second. Delirious Manhattan and The Manhattan Transcripts, buildings,

buildings, buildings. That have their own narrative, their own storylines. Midair wonders. People

rushing by, 2 kids discussing stuff in Arabic. The world, the world. A woman with 3 blue bags

walks by. She haults her writing. She watches the world. She writes, writes, writes.

- - -

she finds herself down in the cellar, the basement of macys, with a peppermint tea, trying to

figure out whether she should still keep on writing pure trivia, whether she should even be here,

whether writing is a vocation, the usual. The fleeting feeling of non-entitlement. The idea that we


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should all be trailblazers is some vague idea that moralizing individuals will bestow upon us.

Something like that.

She is deep in the heart of touristy big apple, a foreigner in a foreign country surrounded by

Strangers. Neil Young is singing some Neil Youngishy song. It comes with the territory of being

Neil Young. She writes in front of this glass partition that reflects her writing hand. She sees her

hand write, sees the shadow and the reflection. It is strange, weird visually. Writing times three.

It does not really make any difference, not for her, at least, whether she writes good or bad, 10

out of 10 or 0 out of 10, as long as she can watch her hand write in 3 different, shapes, the pen

being an extension of her hand, gliding over paper, leaving marks in its trail.

She looks up. she sees so much but does not feel like reflecting about it, on it. She longs for

quietness, when the urge, the obsession to leave ones mark seizes. Maybe that will be once she

is dead and ice-cold. Hopefully, that will be, when she seizes. Not before. Not a second before.

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And now to happier topics. To life. To happiness. To writing. To pens and pencils. To paper. To

dreams and hopes. That take us through life. Salute.

- - -

We drink to that. With a slowly coldening peppermint tea. In the basement in macys. In NYC.

In spring of 2008. Oh, and at the age of 52. The author tries to drown her stagnant inability to

pen down heavy, fluffy, sweetish prose by accumulating number after number. Quantify the

moment.

- - -

Quality might follow. Will follow. In this little basementy public space. Where the music is

loud enough.


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- - -

she wonders whether she should still write. whether she should still describe this place and

whether it has enough gritty-ness, enough dimension or whether this is basically the underbelly

of late capitalism, the basement of macys and whether she is even in a position to complain

about capitalism and whether capitalism is sheerly, purely a monster, we like to hate, the beast

that feed us, that builds us up and tears us down. The author listens to the music, brought about

by some loudspeaker built by some corporation, built by the man. She smiles, because if she ever

publishes this, the man will publish it. Anyhow, blame it on the man.

She listens to Simon and Garfunkel on the overhead, here in the basement of this very

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tourist-oriented store, all the songs are so very recognizable, all top ten hits of, well, actually,

since she was born. She holds her phone to her ear, because she thinks that she missed calls and

she does not really know, how to work this piece of new-fangledness, she must be the last

dinosaur who is totally clueless about the workings of a cellphone and decidedly so.

The less she can be reached, the more time to pen words. Every woman is an island. At this

time of the day, platitudes have to suffice for intellectual insights, clichs propelled by listening

to loud but light music, songs, she can hum to, she has heard before, she writes her days away for

nearly all of the last month, putting down all these words and watching the notebooks pile up on

the brown, rustic coffee table in the small apartment in chelsea, between 8th and 9th, in the street

so reminiscent of the street she grew up on, so many, many years ago. This is a far-away country,

a far-away city, but the street is still the same, so very much the same, the eeriness is palpable.

Then again, it is not really eerie more ironic, utterly ironic in a funny, visceral way.


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She likes this place, each and every song she knows and that is what is important, continuity,

the feel of community in a strange city, points of recognition. She does not really care about the

no-tv, anti-everything crowd. Viva commercialism.

She ponders whether she managed to pay lipservice to basically all different viewpoints, that

exist. Or, on a lighter note, whether she managed to offend friend and foe.

She has to go now. It is getting late here. People eat their food and stare straight into the front

of them. She writes her days away. It is fun and it is a tad tough, it is difficult to find the right

words, the best words. Night must be near, she ponders, whether to stop and make her way

home. How much longer can one person spin a yarn? How much longer into the night? She feels

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like a train careening into the night, racing by points of orientation, signs of whereabouts, she

shoots by hoping to get somewhere, hoping to get a moment in time, something like that.

Something so very kitschy like that. She writes her days away. Writes, writes. And stops

abruptly. This is far too exhausting.

- - -

Time to find her way home to her apartment in chelsea.

- - -

It is april 15, 2008. She is sitting here in harvard square. It is 10:10 in the morning. The sun is

shining. She is meeting someone at eleven, so she still has 50 minutes left. She is sitting here

near this grey, golden thingie, statue-sculpture creature behind her, looking up at the cambridge

savings bank, is writing, kind of like a geek, but this is what she does these days. Yesterday was

fun, she was all over Boston, a woman with a Yale handbag walks by. Well, Yale bag. A Fed Ex

truck drives by. She balances the notebook on her lap, aha, you might call that Laptop. She did


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And, to take this further, what is wrong with brash statements in an essay, that do not pierce the

status quo? Brash without being brash. Cookie-cutter brashness? She still has twenty minutes to

wait. She did not have cannelloni. She ponders and looks at her new shoes. Her so very pretty

new shoes. She will go sightseeing, museumhopping. It is better than writing. So much safer.

Consumption versus production. Consume ideas, do not produce ideas. When ideas mean

scratching power. Power that manifest in scholarship. And is so utterly debatable. And Galileo

went home mumbling under his beard. The very nature of scholarship. Since the beginning of

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time, to the end of time. So very, very sad.

Maybe evolution will bring us further, when we do not dare to do revolution. We dont do

revolution. We do not need the blood, splattered all over these walls. Of capitalism.

She is sick of writing in sickening metaphors. She will get ready to sightsee. Now. In spring 08.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts. At a quarter to eleven. AM, which means before noon.

- - -

so i am sitting here in front of MIT, looking at a red bike, feeling scientific and hot, eating a

cliffbar that is too gooey, writing, writing, thinking that I have not what it takes to be a scientist.

Daydreams take me away.

She notices that she uses the wrong tense, the wrong, pronoun.

She should go back to NYC.

It is hot, so she soaks up the sun. a lift truck drives by, all scrunched up. She likes it here. The

steps are very dusty.

She feels scientific. She reads the words: couscous-couscous- falafel kitchen on the truck on

the other side of the street. She writes away, trying to pinpoint down, where poetry and science


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meet. They, of course, meet in the pen she uses, applied science materialized, used to construct

word figments, that might go somewhere, might not go somewhere. Like a scientist

experimenting. Or something like that. It is too hot.

- - -

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she sits down in this store and tries to write. It is not easy, because there is no table. This is not

conducive to writing. She ponders what to say. The name of the store is garment district. She

stops. She leaves.

- - -

she sits down in the train that leaves Boston at 6:45. Her feet are so very tired, she sightsaw

every second for the last two days, which is, of course, an exaggeration. But so it seems and her

right knee seems to quiver and exhale and inhale and something inside is knocking to get out.

She is happy to finally sit down and write, the blue interior of the train is soothing in its

graininess, the air conditioner commands respect. Penn Station, here I come. She paid 59 bucks

and she thinks the bus might have been cheaper. But she came by bus (yesterday morning) and

she now wants to go back by train. This was a lot of adventure, though today just stretched

forever and forever. She liked the sailboats on the charles river, when the train drove, rode over

the bridge from Boston to Cambridge. She toured Harvard, a tiny bit, and MIT, more. A Frank

Gehry building she saw.

Outside, Boston, says good night, dusk, reflections of the sun against the grey of the concrete,

the train, grey and yellow, beauty of industry. city through dramatic bridges. Au revoir, Boston.

Loved yer. For two days. Mysterious fascination, funny, fine accent. The city is so very majestic.

South Station Back Bay Station. The train goes on. Luckily nobody sat near her. As of yet.

Tunnel Yellow lights.


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The train stopped and now goes further into dusk, further near to the night. She looks at the sun

like a golden dollar, bright behind the trees. Or silverdollar or golden coin. trees swirl by, she

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tries to write. Outside feathery trees, flying by, branches dark against slight white. She writes

away. There is no time to sleep, is there?

- - -

She would have never chosen to write. It is an obligation, a chore now. She has stopped for too

long. Life happened. Writing had to wait.

- - -

she shivers. She cant really hault the beauty of this trainride, pin it down and draw an image,

pour the very peaceful, very visually silent surrounding onto a surface, the dark that flies by,

orange lights, the rumourless springnight, the rush towards New York, the commute, the moment

in time, the moments in time, she can take notes, but the dream evades. Restlessly, peacefully.

- - -

Outside, the shadows draw reflections, the lights pass by, she writes all these so very short

lights of observations, curly orange light floods by and down on her notepad, cities like

providence and pawtucket flood by, the night of the Eastern US rolls by the train, the spots of

lights roll by like a suspended firework, frame by frame, on a long timeline, on a neverending

storyboard. Some city outside, she wonders, which one.

- - -

she looks out the window between new haven and stamford and grapples with selfdoubt,

should she and could she, can she write? Genreless narration, lines of thought on paper,


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motionless narratives, suspended storylines. Negativity encompasses everything, stomps her

lingo in the ground, flattens the words, hinder their flight into the spot, the spots next to the sun,

above the moon.

Words are so very difficult, so plain, so hard to paint with. Crayons theyre not.

The train slides her from side to side, roaringly it tugs along towards Penn Station.

Relentlessly.

- - -

she drives by a place called port chester, the train drives by other stations, cars on a freeway

drive towards the train window, outside lights, outside a truck, fog, lights, sparkles in the dark,

for nanoseconds, splitting by, parked cars, a place called Harrison trees, houses, a silent city, her

reflection in the window, her image, she writes, while others read, outside the fly-by-world, a

freeway, a truck, an underpass, a station, the world flies her by. Boston was so very beautiful, so

easy to miss. It is just a city, a city, though, with very distinct songs, its own rhythms, its own

drummer. Beauty personified, mystified. New York seems to be here already, the city lets you

arrive. A place called New Rochelle on its way to New York.

She stretches her legs, wanders what time it is. Outside business, dreaminess. A powerstation,

bridges, underpass. Lights.

- - -

The lights quiver in the water. The city is here. Tall. Majestic. Finally. The train stops. in front

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of a fence. wrought iron, line after line, a house, cars parked, street lights, a bus driving by,

turning, a car, another one. Silence. trees slightly ghostly. She anticipates the city, she looks at

the two red lights, that vanish once the train moves, a parking garage, the train shuffles, stalls,

then moves along, not that fast, more quietly, subdued, an Orchard Beach Highway sign, a

yellow stretched light, a glimpse of a light behind trees, a glistening truck, apartment buildings

en masse, the city, the city. She sketches what she sees, but knows she has to stop, find a place

for her notebook in the macys bag, she writes, she writes.

- - -

A super-deli, a mini- market. This mysterious city after the other mysterious city, Boston, New

York, somewhere on the East Coast, somewhere in 2008. The train rolls into Penn Station, there

is nothing more to write. Her hand puts letters on the white, the train toots its horn, it is

elevenish. The city is quiet from here, lights subdued, lights in rows. Like vines on a vineyard.

The trainstation opens its arms.

- - -

selfstorage signs and billboards say hi, she seizes to write. It is mysteriously, mysticly chilly.

The mist of the lights rolls by. The wagon has a lot of friction is so very heavy.

- - -

it is wednesday. it is april 16, 2008. she waits at the corner of 34th. and 7th.. In front of Macys.

The place is chokked full with people waiting for the 10 AM opening. weather is nice, sunny. No

showers, no flowers. store is at the brink of opening. Hop and Pops are rushing by.

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She smears ink on her fingers.

- - -


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she finally made her way down into the basement at macys, balancing a green tea, that is

supposed to be refreshing ( it said so on the package of the teasachet, thus it must be ), her bag,

her purse, her writing tablet, she scours all the brown tables for the best one, one is wobbly, one

round, one square, there are high ones, low ones, lightened ones, darker ones, some with noisy

neighbours, views of interesting, invigorating people, she finally sits down, someone moves a

blue kitchen cart by, that makes a lot of noise. She feels she has to catch up on her writing, with

her writing, she definitely has not done forty pages per day, she was busy with her life, writing

was somewhere on the backburner, a notebook tucked away somewhere in her bag, like her

knitting. Not that she knits, but she writes in knitting shops, she writes in department stores, she

writes in all kinds of places. A bright orange jacket over the back of a seat catches her eye, she

looks up at the sandwiches sign. When she was on the seventh floor at macys she noticed this

longwinded writing over a neatly made bed, writing in white on black, different lettersize, and

the writing resembled her writing, it was citytalk, very eary, very berlin alexanderplatz, she sat

down on the nicely made bed, knowing that everything has been done before, knowing that we

are merely clones, dollys, artist clones, poet clones, little numbers with souls. She misses

something, someone. So very much someone, that it hurts somewhere in her intestines, makes

her stomach turn, the void scratches from inside. She loves that, she feels alive because of this

her constant longing, her violent wishes for his smile, that make her stall in her stride.

A girl with long hair and a blue coat walks around with her breakfast on a tablet and tries to

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find the best spot in the restaurant. Her little brother and her mother follow her around. Tourists.

Everyone here is a tourist. She is out of ink. She has to find another pen. She finds her greyhound

pen, that she got from the bus station. It writes very thinly, she has to put on her glasses to read


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what she has written with it. She has to count her pages. She has to do this and that. So much.

She finished six pages already, which is good, given that it is not even noon. Six down, thirty-

four more to go. Everyone here holds a map. Or maybe she is seeing things. She should go

somewhere else, see something else. Change of scenery is always good. It brings out the writer,

inspires. That kind of thing. She has to force the ballpen onto the paper which interferes with

wordsmithing. big girls dont cry, sings Fergie. The author is not a big girl, she is a small girl,

feeling inadequate, non-strong, up against words that do not fall into place, that have no deep

insights to illustrate, no worldchanging thoughts to image down on the paper, nothing to say.

Nada. she scratches her head, maybe she should just roam the city, sightsee, figure out how to

make her way to the statue of liberty, to the Whitney, to Pentagram. She has seen so much of

New York already, this must be her tenth time to this city, in this city. Maybe more times, maybe

less. She has lost count. She writes. With the wrong ballpen. The inkless one. The one with the

stalling ink. She tries the marker again, but it is basically out of ink. The pen from greyhound has

ink, but the marks he leaves are barely visible on the white. She writes away. No one writes here,

whereas everyone writes or reads in Chelsea. The writing brigade does not gather at macys. her

tea is getting cold, it splashes all over her. She looks up at the sign that says Cucina & Co., she

does not like it in here, not that much. She feels her cold coming back. She feels like falling

asleep, she tries to listen to the music, she has heard it before, the singer is from Vancouver,

something about a bad day, but she cannot really hear it, there is too much noise here, she likes

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the music video, she looks over her tea with the tiny lights in it onto the writing that goes into,

onto the paper very vaguely, not deep enough, but still making a stand, putting down a trace,

cursive letters in line all nodding to the right.


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She can see the kitchen from here, the bakery, it is supposed to be a showcase, one can see the

big round clock over their head, everything is white and grey, all the breads are stacked on

shelves, it is sanitary and clashes with the brown of the tables in the eating area. She could write

here forever, no one minds, though this place is more a respite for shoppers. She has been here so

many times, that she ended up buying a pair of shoes, on saturday, the shoes are not as

comfortable as the ones, she is usually wearing, but they are prettier. Pretty uncomfortable. She

wore them in Boston, in Little Italy. She walked with them forever, until her feet could not carry

her anymore. She hardly made it back to South Station. She should do the same in New York, get

a map, start walking. Walking with a cause, not moving aimlessly from street to street. wherever

the wind takes her. But she likes that more, has found all the fascinating encounters. The knitting

store in Greenwich-village. The 12 chair restaurant. Pratt. The streets take her, invite her to

follow them. She came upon the new New York Times building by accident. She never saw

Le centre Pompidou, but she now saw this Renzo Piano piece. Yesterday she came upon a

Frank Gehry building. At MIT. To her there is no difference between a building that looks like a

box, and something that looks like motion suspended in midair, a dancing building. She draws,

she can make her lines dance more pronouncedly. She scatters words over paper and hopes for

the best. Magic, music. She misses art school, art class. She misses talking about form. She

misses listening to individuals talking about form. She sits here and writes. She should have had

the canolli in Mikes Bakery up on the hill in the Little Italy of Boston. There

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must be a little Italy in New York, a chinatown. Oh, and a statue of Liberty. Somewhere near

battery park, somewhere glimpsed upon from the Staten Island ferry. Shed rather write, listen to

the elevator music, shed rather sit here, safe and secure, where she can finish her writing for the


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day. Forty pages, forty pages. Until the pen drops out of her right hand and she keels over this

round, brown table, until she loses it and breaks down in tears. It is twenty-five to noon, the

lunchcrowd is streaming in. She has to count her pages. She should stop. For now. She makes up

random structures, random time lines, dead lines while she goes. Superimposing order, structure

could string the sentences along.

- - -

Like pearls, like beads.

- - -

Abba is singing, pretty loud, though the restaurant noise overpowers it, muffles it down, makes

it generic, too sweet, which is difficult to do to Abba music. The author wonders, if, whether she

should take her notebook and find another place to plant herself down and put down her notes.

She is getting tired, is gliding to the brink of exhaustion, she misuses words, she starts doubling

them up, tripling them up, interrupts the musical flow of the rhythm, the rhythms, the words are

so very reluctant to dance themselves into newer, higher, fresher configurations, she stumbles

over her own heavy-handed lingo, the clumsiness, that has to be worked through to jump into

elegant, eloquent pirouettes, above the soil, far over the ground, flying suspendedly, in muted

colors. She listens to the music which is artfully in a commercial, replicable, replicated sense,

more so because of the place, she is sitting in, a public place, a restaurant. This is not an opera

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house, where people listen in awe, it is a food place, where people gather to eat. The music has to

play second fiddle. She is tired.

- - -

She wrote too much already. Nineteen pages. And it is barely noon.


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- - -

she makes her way up the stairs in a wendys near penn station, the floor here is carpeting, all

red and blue and beige shapes, out of the corner of her eyes she thought, it was all linear

triangles, turns out, it is more wavy, curly triangles, like curly fries, she is hungry, but is only

having a tea, for now, she should go more for salad and fruits, so she is snubbing fast food and

eats better stuff, though everything might be slathered in grease and absorbed into the veggies

without noticing it, without the end consumer noticing it, in the same way that her writing seems

to absorb tons and tons of trivia, smushed in with quasi intellectual musings, semi-scholarly barf,

nauseating shit. She feels that sprinkling her lingo with profanity might mask her lack of

profoundness, she is at a point now where quality rides on the back of quantity, her

neverstopping pen, her never-ceasing ink will, must eventually garner semigood results. She

looks out the window, she can see the Wendys logo plastered all over the windowpane, and the

little girly-face, too. On the other side of the street, there is a Fed Ex Kinkos, a nun is going

around collecting money for an orphanage, the author informs her that she is a muslim. No luck

here. The nun mumbles God bless you, or something, and walks to the next table.

The author writes, writes, writes. This place is very warm, conducive to writing. The words

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seem to flow onto the paper, with ease, without stalling. The music on the overhead is rhythmic,

rolling stones, should i go or should i stay now, it is cheerleading in a very inobtrusive, matter-

of-fact manner. The author likes it here, she numbers her pages and is now on page 23.

Doublespaced, doublespaced.

She puts down all her words, until she will finish thirty-six pages. The words have to come.

They just have to. Outside it becomes spring, there are blossoms, there is green on the trees. In


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the city, in mid-town Manhattan. It is spring now, time to buy flirty skirts, sandals. Fresher

colors, flowery fabrics. She will be fifty-3, come May. Old age, old age. The edge of the red wall

near the window is chrome, it shines and glistens, she looks at the plastic salt and pepper shakers

in front of her. Behind her coffeemug, which is brown and yellow. All of it matches the table, the

wall, indescript yellowness. So is the smushed-up napkin, with the used teabag. The author

ponders, wonders, how much longer can she go on covering her tablesettings, describe trivia,

banal surroundings, logistic layouts, spatial configurations ad nauseum. She is now on page 25,

she has only fifteen more pages to scribble. This book does not have enough pages, so she has to

finish this notebook and then buy another one and start filling that one. Her greyhoundpen now

comes into its own, the ink is flowing smoothly, this pen is outdoing all the other pens. Go

Greyhound.

She looks out the window, wonders what is happening on the street. This table is on the second

floor, she cannot really see the street, except the upper part of a Fed Ex truck. and half of a green

street light, somewhere cut in the middle, the upper part is non-visible, so is the lower part. The

midriff, though, shows. The chairs here are black and green, she thinks of all her days in the Tim

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Hortons in Kingston. She found more to write about, maybe, because the place was more close-

knit, where as here in New York City, there are people from all ways of life. The downtown

crowd, or in this case, the midtown crowd. She is slightly hungry, living on tea here. But first she

has to write this, force this through, finish this very notebook, she cannot really stop. people are

streaming in, talking, teenagers, telling each other their stories. Older people follow. The author

looks at her pen glide over the paper, all preppy letters coming out. The pen spits its words out,

demarking, highlighting the boredom of her existence. Someone asked her, so, what did you do

here for the last sixteen days, she answered: I wrote, but somehow that seemed not be good


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enough, not tangible enough. Not enough of an achievement, writing only as exploration of

where the words can take her, seems not to suffice.

But she knows that this is what she has to do, is forced to do. The words have to take her, will

eventually take her. On a flight, up the stairs, down the stairs. Into nonsensical territory, into

utterly sensical territory.

She might venture into Spanish Harlem today, rush over to Columbia. She has to do more than

just write, write. But writing grips her, and the pen does not let go. Only 29 pages, only 29. That

is far too little, not far too much. There are so many more sentences waiting in line, patiently, to

be put down. The overhead is playing something psychedelic, which is not exactly very

conducive to sanity, what with all the loud conversations around her, the laughter, the eating,

what with all the hunger pangs in her tummy.

She wonders what to do next, once the writing ceases, once the daily is filled, once the

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muses have, what they need, once the exhaustion is unbearable, sticky and gruesome. She writes,

writes, writes, mechanically, in the same way, she used to draw, draw, back in her animatordays.

In the animationlab on Granville Island.

She ponders, she wonders what time it is. Something way past noonish. Her fingers cramp up,

she should stop. Writing is not an end in itself. Or maybe, it is. A blessing, an obsession. A

marching-order somewhere in her head, that forces her to write, that proclaims: Write, write,

forty pages, forty pages. Everyday, until you die. Until you fall to the ground and disintegrate.

Into small scattered pieces, bones, nails. Disgusting.

There should be nicer, sweeter metaphors available, on a sunny, beautiful day like today. When

music is in the air, literally, when flowers shine, actually, literally, too. The blossoms on the other


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side on 34th. are drenched in haulting sunshine. She ponders whether she will ever be able to use

the language, any language virtuously, so that it can paint an image, replicate the truth, the

reality, that she sees from this her chair, from her vantagepoint.

She ponders how to use the language, sheryl crow wants to have some fun, that is all she wants

to do, the lady in the chair next to her is singing along, while dropping some white paper on the

ground.

page 33, give or take some, she might have miscounted, misnumbered the pages, she fibs ever

so slightly, she cheats herself, she does not know if her writing will ever go anywhere, if she

even wants it to. She herself likes to be a visual artist, make sculpture, make sculptures in the

middle of the town. Inscribe the world with her structures, splatter her suspended forms over

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town. Put frozen musique into the sun light, into the night lite. String blueprints into bricks, into

stone. Like Henry Moore. And that will never be. So words have to suffice. For now. In this her

life time. Page 34 is finished.

- - -

it is thursday, april 17, 2008. She finds herself first thing in the morning in the coffeeshop in

chelsea and is flabbergasted how many joggers, exercisers she meets. This being the city, people

still have very typical suburban lifestyles. For some reason city for her means still a place one

dresses up for and ventures to, not a place of living. But if this is your neighbourhood, you act

like that, decitify the city, transforming it into a neighbourhood, taking it out of the formality, the

elusiveness, the exclusiveness.

three women come in, a man with a suitcase, a woman in exercise shorts, a man with the

number 89, no, 47, on his shorts. Outside a pepsi truck, outside a rainbowflag, outside an


23/48

emagedental business, outside the new Venus restaurant. The day gets into gear, it should be

sometime between 7 and 8 in the morning. The street outside is predominantly grey, with all

these spots and dots of interest. The author just writes, jotting down, what she sees, remembering

the collage lesson, she took last summer. The task was to let all the images, all the fagments of

visual stimuli, all the fragments of overheard conversation, sound amalgamate into a visual

collage, something 2D or 3D that manifests the multifaceted experience, that is the city.

Something of that sort. The author remembers the animation she made three years ago, the one

she named downtowne, the one she submitted to the cineurbana at the Urban Forum in

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Vancouver. The author remembers the graduation projects in animation at Parsons, which she

saw four years ago and which all had The City as subjectmatter. And she remembers the

student who complained about the city being the overriding subject of each and every

gradyear, the problem being that there is only so much one can produce pertaining to the city.

But the author knows, that the city is endless, an endless inspiration for artwork, the epitome

of human existence, of human interaction, of man made structures and of tiny creatures walking

their little dogs in the alleys between slabs of concrete with tiny holes in them. The city is the

ever-pulsating existence of animate and inanimate together in close proximity. Longing music

wavers in the air, long lost lovers not hearing it, but the singer still has to tell her story about

drifting apart, still has to bemoan, why she cant be with him, for whatever reason, for whatever

fucking sad reason.

The author scratches her head, tries to careen her writing back to describing bricks, concrete,

steel, tries to steer clear of notions of emotion, glimpses at romance. Rationalism, pragmatism

should soak and seep into her writing, not wishy-washy femininity, that only plays into the


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stereotype of woman as underling. A girl looking dreamily out of the window wishing the body

of the boy next to her, his skin within inches from her, that is not what will build the west, not the

spirit that will make us as species rule the world. You go girl. Do we really need those kind of ra-

ra-ra ish slogans still? Yes, we do.

The author looks at the schoolbus outside, she looks at the writing saying capezio on the

womans bag, she looks outside at the New London Pharmacy, she listens to a singer singing

about London and Tokio. The author wonders how many pages she put down already, kind of

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like a drunk would count the beers she poured down her throat. The pen glides over the paper,

while pigeons walk by. On the pavement. Someone sweeps the ground in front of the new venus

restaurant. The author has to go back to the little flat in Chelsea, she will write more later. This

has to do for now. A bike rolls by. This is spring. In NYC. In 2008.

- - -

And she put down seven pages already. Not bad. Or at least, good enough. For now.

- - -

she missed the train, so she sits down on the bench at the subway station, at the 23rd street

station, she fishes out her notepad and starts putting down letters, the person next to her starts

reading, letters fascinate us, guide us, to a place of higher contemplation, higher understanding,

maybe not higher, more as tool for more, more knowledge, accumulation of glimpses of

understanding, of making sense, of ordering stimuli, while the A-train rushes through the tunnel,

while the A-train rushes me by.

The author puts down her letters, while the mid-town bound train comes in, stops, then leaves.

From where she is sitting, she can view three tracks simultaneously, moles under the street,


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rushing to work. She wants to know if the person next to her is reading the book, she had to read,

but she restrains herself and does not ask. A woman with golden shoes sits down next to her, the

shoes are not all golden, only golden arabesques on shiny black. Another A-train careens by. The

reader fixes his shoelaces, jumps on the train. The author notices that he was really reading the

book she was interested in, it was heavily promoted anyways. It was written by this slightly

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controversial woman, who called Clinton a monster. She was nice and she was right. So much

for politics. The author is now sitting in a breakfast place in either brooklyn or manhattan, it is at

the foot of the brooklyn bridge. The author thinks she is in the brooklyn heights, in front street,

washington street. Something like that. The heater near her is way too hot. The author thinks that

she should not have really seconded Samantha Powers remark pertaining to Hillary Clinton,

who cares about politicians anyways. And Samantha Power apologized profoundly, so did

Geraldine Ford, when talking about Barack Obama. Politics are not that interesting for the

author, politicians come and go, regimes come and go, ideologies come and go. Marxism,

capitalism, who cares. Religions come and go. The only thing constant is the here, the now. The

moment. Of us, the people. The only thing constant is the pen scratching over the paper, the

words that feed upon each other, catapult each other into meaning, into scratching the surface of

understanding. The author tries to let go of the constant newspollution in her back, the TV

bringing down the news, the noise, the words that let not write her, the words that intermingle

with her writing. She is not able to listen to her own words, because the voice on the overhead is

talking about the Gucci loafers of the Pope. Her tea is getting cold. She looks out at people

walking by, she is sitting a tad lower than streetlevel, so she sees the legs of people walking by.

She has enough of listening to the rubbish on TV. She would rather listen to a lovesong. Politics


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and religion leave her cold, icecold. She looks at the sign that says Bon Appetit with the

accentegue on the e. Outside the street is beautiful, a tree is green, a tree grows in Brooklyn. She

smiles at her connotations, she looks at the sign that says Manja. She picks up the flyer of the

restaurant, it is something Italian. Her tea is getting cold, she tries to concentrate on writing.

Baseball talk on TV, which is nicer, it does not make her blood boil like other issues. She looks

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at the stacked spaghetti in the bottle near the Manja sign, which is actually a plate with the image

of a slice of pizza with one pepperoni, one mushroom and one green halfmoon reminiscent of a

piece of pepper, a slice sliced out of a green bellpepper. It could be cucumber too, it is something

green.

Three men are sitting at the other table and having breakfast. The applefrittereating one with

the earring talks a lot about food, sugar and grease, while packing on the fat and shovelling it,

make that, forking it into his body. They talk, some masculine stuffy-muffy. She smiles, trying to

figure out if her descriptions are even close to accurate. More legs are walking by, in socks, in

skirts, in pants, all kinds of legs, all kinds of walking cycles, wheels wheel by, up the hill, down

the hill, some lassie like black and white dog brings her owner for a walk. She writes and moves

her lips while she writes. Writing, why would she do that? Will it bring her anywhere, will it

become better and better or will the words take her down into a pitless abyss. Is this the right

language to converse in, is it the right medium for her. Why is she letting go of other modes of

expression, is this really the only mode of expression left for her. Can she not make it in the

world of images, the world of visual forms. Is this, where she stands after seven and a half years

of formal art instruction. She leaves the world of visual expression to enter the world of

linguistic expression. In a foreign language, to boot, in a foreign country, to boot, on the other

side of the planet, to boot. A stranger in a, oh, so strange land. Far, far away from reality, her


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reality. The only thing constant being her pen, her relentless, aching obsession with scribbling

words down. On some piece of paper, on some piece of surface. Could be sand, she could take a

stick, sit on the beach and put lines into the sand. That the wind will blow over. That is, who she

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is now, a crazy, oh, so crazy woman writing in the sand, marking her existence, documenting her

days on paper. Drink to that, the tea is getting cold. In the Restaurant on Front Street, the

watering hole that says Budweiser and serves tea in the morning. The so very versatile all-day

food place, where writers like her can and should hone their craft. Drink to that. Drink cold tea.

She scrambles at ending her writing in a perfectly virtuous way, but she is not able to do so. The

ringing behind the counter does not help, the discussions about motorcycles at the other table do

not help, the smoked whiff of something sausage like does not help, the woman in black leggings

and black pumps, the poodle strutting by does not help either. the white truck with the black bike

in front of it does not help either.

The author writes, writes. Forever. She could once more say: drink to that and hope that the

words fall into place, she can hope that she choreographed her lingo precisely and exacting.

Someone on the TV yells about a dog, on a talkshow, on Maury. The author ponders, whether she

can muster deep thoughts while listening to the Maury show. Seems like an oxymoronic

endeavour, she looks at the mannequin in the shopwindow on the other side of the street, the

yelling on TV is mind bogglingly stupid, she ponders whether the word oxymoronic endeavour

makes any sense.

- - -

It is now 9:11, the author has to look for a new place to sit and write, the constant yelling on

television interferes with her writing. She cannot write under these circumstances. She has to


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leave Front Street Pizza. She fishes out her phone, she checks the time, she finishes her tea. the

author leaves the store and puts her notepad on a newspaperbox that contains the onion, she

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starts writing while looking up at parts of the brooklyn bridge, which is such a fascinating slice

of the spectacularness of the bridge, the drama of the steelstructure between buildings. The

author does not have a camera, so she has to jot down what she sees, with words. She looks at

the sparkling motorcycle in front of her, she looks sideways at the steelstructure against the sky,

she ponders, whether she looks weird standing here writing. She ponders a little bit, watches a

red-clad woman walk by, she looks at the beautiful green recycling box with images of white-

grey garbage on green, a decorated recycling bin that yells recycle from the other side of the

street.

She plummets down on a bench in brooklyn bridge park, where people walk their little dogs,

where one can look at three different bridges, where the view is spectacular, where she can see

her hair, her silhouette and her writing hand silhouetted in grey and blue, shadowish, on the lined

paper, where cigarette butts are on in perfect ninety-degree angle, where a train goes over the

bridge to her right, very loudly, very noisily, very ebbing into quiet oblivion a moment later,

where a pigeon stands on the walkway, where a steel-fenced garbage can is standing next to her,

where the shadow of a tree paints the chequered pavement in front of her. She does not have a

camera, words have to suffice. New York is too grey, too brown, she does not even know if she is

looking at New York, at Brooklyn , at Newark, she is looking at Water, bridges and buildings, she

is describing the light and the colors, the sky is too beige-blue today, so all the colors are too

muted, the contrasts are not high enough. If she was a photographer, she would come back to this

place another day or use filters or retouche-techniques or photoshop, as a writer she can just


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whine and write, either this or that or both. As an animator she would use black lines on white, or

white lines on black, instantly conjuring up the image, the silhouette of bridge, of building. The

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manifestation of blueprint after blueprint, exacted against the sky.

- - -

she sits down in this park called walt whitman park, on a green bench, birds are singing, birds

are flapping by, three hobos are talking, actually one is talking, the others are nodding, behind

her is the way over the brooklyn bridge, the author could do that, but she is afraid of heights, of

sunburn and of aching knees, especially the right one, so she sits here, looks down at her own

shadow and writes away. Me and my shadow, me and my shadow. He walks a lonely path, the

only one that he has ever known. . ., seems putnam does not listen to green day or vice versa,

the author looks at the red glistening ball on the other side of the park, a bikehelmet, the hood of

a motorcycle or the lights of a black car. pigeons abound here in walt whitman park, flowers

blossom in the distance, in red, orange, yellow and white. She plays with words, like a child

playing with sand. Like the child playing with colored glass. Isaac Newtonish. The days pass her

by, this new york spring passes her by, cars pass her by, life passes her by. The only constant

being her pen, scratching black lines on white paper. Inscribing her existence, documenting her

days. She could come back to the stranger in a strange land quip, but she knows, that we are all

strangers, on this planet for a so very short moment. Yusuf Islam, sing on.

The day smushes itself towards noon, she writes, writes, writes. The sun is shining, the birds

are singing, the hobos are talking, a tiny insect is flying by. bliss and trouble in paradise, the

dichotomy of both. More Ying than yang. She writes, writes, writes. Her days away. She will go

back to Vancouver, start typing and putting this into a bookform, a little box, an object to be


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1

moved around. She looks at the tiny plane in the air, she looks at the people in pink and black

passing her by, behind her. She has to catch the subway, take her notebook somewhere else. The

pigeons might start shitting. On her. Or her notebook. It is eleven-twenty-nine. It is actually ten-

forty, but she wants the day to march more ahead, so she mentally fast-forwards. The pigeons

scare her. Shell count the pages somewhere else, somewhere more sheltered. Without too many

pigeons, sun and hobos. Somewhere inside concrete, somewhere inside a building.

- - -

she sits down on a bench on the brooklyn bridge, somewhere near Manhattan. The bench

quivers, reverberates, trembles from all the cars going on the street, on the bridge, on the

platform below. The walking and biking area is on the upper floor. It is hot, sunny and

somewhere, some time around noon. Beauty, engineering, industrial structures, built, built, built

environment. A stroller rolls by, joggers jog by, cars move by and can be seen through the

wooden slits, motioning somethings. People talk, a British guy for a split second. Tourists and

natives, in perfect unison. She stops, some beautiful lady is raising money for scholarship,

something in East Harlem. I am from Canada, thank you, good luck. The woman is so very

friendly. The author loves New York. New York. New York. The sun is too hot, though. She stops

writing, she might get a sunburn. She looks at the very tall building. Then again, it is too hot

here. And the cars go on her nerves. Moodswings. We change our ideas by the second. Why not?

Life is fun as an accidental tourist, a professional tourist. With travellog in hand. April 17, 2008 -

Brooklyn Bridge, New York. She wonders what the Zip Code of this bench is. It is 11:48 a.m.

Others walked all the way to and fro Brooklyn, faster than she did one way. Oh, well. The


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author wrote instead. It is not a race, not a race. Everything is a race. Everything. And it is

getting hot, too hot. Much too hot.

- - -

She finds herself trying to decipher the music, excavation, elevator, U2, about seven years old,

so much has happened since then, so very much, she went through art school, which was quite an

experience and it is not over yet, her certificate, her funny piece of paper is not issued yet, she

needs still two, no, three more classes, actually two, because one class is six-credit, she will take

those, once she is back in Vancouver, she has to check out the website of Emily Carr, if and when

she can make her way to some internet caf somewhere in this city, but at this time she navigates

her way towards all these places with horizontal surfaces, where she can plant down her notepad

and start writing to make sense of her surroundings, it is becoming physically hurtful, this

obsession with holding a pen in between right thumb, index and middle finger and pressing it

down, hunched over, trying to avoid the woman, who might throw her out in this Mc Donalds

near Central Station, what with 30 minutes max. non loitering policy, hey, lady, i am writing

seminal and semi-seminal texts here, full of introspective insightful ideas, full of the

accumulated wisdom and knowledge of near to 53 years, that kind of stuff, that kind of stuff.

Stuff might not be the right word, stuff is too slangy, too colloquial, stuff, stuff, stuff.

The music whines longingly, she knows the song, but cannot really place it, besides, she is too

fascinated by all these people, the woman in the floor-length brown coat, the pink shoes of the

child hopping up and down, the tattoo of the old man. She looks at the tuxedoes to her right, the

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never be able to phantom how that is possible, she would rather write about lines, about curves,

about abstract, about concrete, about matter. Not about monsters, that lurk somewhere and might

suddenly abyss down. It is 1:56 p.m. She will leave. Try to find the Whitney. Look at art.

Whatever.

- - -

she wrote forty-one pages. While 7 hours passed her by. That could be, should be enough for

today.

- - -

She sits in the lobby of the whitney but she does not feel like paying admission, given that

tomorrow after six this place would be free. Her feet hurt what with all the constant walking all

over town. Visual arts is not that compelling anymore, it is like checking out the competition

while holding back pangs of jealousy, somewhere inside. And she has to pay, to boot. Oh, no, not

that. She wonders if the biennial is international or national. Probably international. She decides

to pay. Dearly. She might not like it. Actually, she is more afraid to see stuff that resembles her

own, thus making her stuff lacking novelty. Ignorance is bliss, as long as she feels that her stuff

is utterly unique, she can blame her aversion to marketing for her failure as an artiste, her

financial failure. And the green is what counts, the ascent to non-starvingness, a new state, a new

reality. She is going in. Finally. And then there is the guggs, moma, the whole enchilada.

- - -

225

she sits down in between the second and the third floor of the whitney, she really likes this

bench, more than all of the art, which was pretty crappy so far, the building though, is good, she

likes the walls here, textured concrete, more grainy than the Yale Art Gallery, but the same

concept, the very same concept. Let there be light. Let there be concrete. Someone painted on the


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steps. red and white. Like art school. She has to see more, she will manage to go up the steps.

She liked the elevator, that said the end on the doors, she liked a sound installation, though a

colleague of her did a better one in school, she liked the dwelling in between the floors. So,

there is some good stuff, far and low, sprinkled in between. At this point, she feels like an art

installation, live and in person, all writingy, all intellectual. All tired, with achy feet. So more

mix of tourist and scholar. Scholar tourist. Or, flaneur, as they used to say back in Paris, back in

sometime fin-de-siecle-ish. She has to go up and look, so that she can go back and catch a tea in

the museum caf. Art watching is quite an ordeal. Art. Art. Art. Go up, see more art. She is

feeling too hot and slightly sunburnt. From her surreal walk over the brooklyn bridge. She will

make her way up the stairs. Should not be too difficult. End of entry into Logbook, this is not an

excursion to the South Pole. Sure feels like it, though.

- - -

she is just tired, plummets herself down on this beige bench in a small room with images on the

wall, that she does not like, her cell phone goes off, she answers, nobody minds, all these people

who came here en masse, leave just as hastily, it is a ghostgallery now, nobody but the

intimidating museum guard, who looks suspiciously at the little old lady, who writes on a bench

in a gallery, hey, writing is art, non-visual, then again, one could argue that type is art, a book is

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a sculpture, thus we are expanding the definition of visual art, she is so very tired, the tourist

existence is quite trying, she should still do time in the guggs, in the moma, in the new museum.

But there is no time, no time. She will go down and have a tea. Tea is art, culinary art. The author

is ever so slightly losing it. Which is good. Or not. She really loved the installation lights over

new york city, that is what she likes and loves, simple forms, architectural lines in space.


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linearity is what counts, geometry. strong statements in space. Or subtle statements in space. The

museumguard looks at her suspiciously, once more. She feels watched. She does not like that.

She feels watched. But she will not start screaming. Not this time. Must be tough to be a

museumguard. There is a bench here. People discuss art. Not very intelligently, though.

Definitely not. Oh, art. She sees herself leaving the artscene, then again, she saw really fantastic

stuff in individual small galleries in town. She loved the installation at Pratt on 14th. street, she

loved the installation by the three MIT guys, she loved the two-dimensional work, she saw in a

brooklyn gallery. She knows that free art is usually better, more edgy, more fresher. That is how

the cookie crumbles. She ponders if she should sprinkle her writing more or less with cookie

metaphors and words like stuff. She is tired. Her feet hurt. She would never discuss the shitty

work in this room like the two people are doing here. It is just gawdawful work, that should have

never made it into a museum. The museumguide stares at her. She feels unhappy. He leaves. She

writes. Maybe she should not feel selfconscious. and write away. It is 5:06. On a sunny afternoon

in Manhattan. Where she is glued down on this bench, writing away. While she is stared down by

the museumguard. In uniform. Well, life goes on. She puts her notepad away. Stops writing.

Starts watching the shitty art. That was not produced by her. Which makes it automatically shitty.

And she uses too much profanity. It is quiet here. She can hear her pen scratch over the

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paper. The author makes herself stop writing. Instead of obsessing over words, over text. Over

lingo.

- - -

she sits down in the lobby of the museum. At least, no one gives her dirty looks, when she

writes here. She feels exhausted, has hardly enough power to pick herself up and leave. She is


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hungry and tired. She has a meeting at eight. It is five-thirty now. Or something like that. There

is a discussion today at seven. Artist talk. She is way too tired. She needs fresh air. Sun. Love.

Physical would be good. Oh, New York in spring. So very Breakfast at Tiffanys. So very much

like a movie. So very tiring. And the sun shines on.

- - -

It is a golden day, sun shining, beautiful light, brightness outside. There is the new Venus

Restaurant with the three orange lamps coming down over the inscription, there is all of 8th.

Avenue smushing itself by, all these people passing by, going by, to the left, to the right, there is

the counter person behind the coffee machine singing, recognizing the author, there is the woman

with the button sprayed laptop behind her, there is life, happiness, a new day and Marilyn

Monroe upside down on her official visitor guide. This is New York, which is actually a line she

is overhearing from the man and the woman at the table right behind the column to her left,

analyzing the city, which seems to be a favourite pastime in this city as it is in any other. We as

individuals like to categorize, analyze our location, our choices constantly, laude or dismiss our

surroundings, put them into context with other parts of the world, other cities, other little

villages, with the pro and cons of other real estates. The author ponders whether her assessment

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holds true, she does not know, she just formulates a sentence and shoots it into midair, a

hypothesis, an inkling.

The day is sunny, the beauty grips her by the throat. Writing is her raison detre these days, for

better, for worse. April slouches ever so silently into may, makes its way into sunny, sunny

tomorrows. The woman with the hiplong braid sweeps the floor, loudly, diligently. Someone

talks about a satellite, nowadays that means television programming. The author smiles, when


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she was born, satellite did not even exist. The world was black and white, she remembers when

television became coloured, the author is a dinosaur. The sun shines outside, half of the New

London Pharmacy is visible. A white poodle walks by, a woman who looks like a poodle with

lipstick looks at the author. Marilyn Monroe is still upside down, an image near an ad for the

Moma. The author reads the caption on a truck passing by, executive cleaner something, then

another, whiter truck saying sher-del transfer. The author writes away, takes notes, takes note

of all the fragments of her surroundings, that randomly pierce the cocoon around her

consciousness. A beautiful red-shirted woman stands near the milk and half and half station, the

instrumental music makes strong statements in jazz without using words. The author plays

around with all the words in this foreign, strange language, all the words she can remember.

Arranging them, disarranging them, rearranging them. Just like the saxophonist improvising his

jazztunes, virtuously, randomly, for everyone to hear on the overhead, not that people really

listen, all of them being grappled by their own immediate decisions, to talk, to type, to order

coffee, to program their cellphones, to leave this interior, to mix and mingle with the city outside,

the on-goings on 8th.

- - - 229

she is standing near Port Authority, at the corner of W 42nd. and another street, in front of the

new New York Times building. Her sweater is way too hot. It is about two in the afternoon.

Writing does not come that easy. She saw a construction worker measuring something, at least

that was what he said. She is always fascinated by people using devices, machines that do stuff

that are mysterious to her. A mountain of a crane is sitting on the other side of the street.

- - -

she is now sitting in the subway, hoping to find her way. The door opens and closes, it is

slightly hot in here. She should have worn cooler clothing. The city is becoming sticky, moist.


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She looks at the sign that says: be part of the solution, not the pollution. She wonders, whether

she is in the right train. Her subway riding is basically hit and miss, the maps are very

incomprehensible, she will complain to Mayor Bloomberg. How come your subway map is so

utterly confusing? Constructed, utter confusion. No subway map is like this.

she ends up in grand central station, after taking the wrong train on its way to flushing. She

now sits near the steps that will take her down to the uptown 6 train and she will get out at 72nd

or 73rd. and find her way to the elegant restaurant that sells bite-sized sandwiches and miniscule

Cookies, where everyone is very elegant, except for the tourists, and railthin, where everything is

very park avenue and smells like old money, where thin housewives have to take care of their

children, while their well-educated husbands make the big bucks, where life is painfully

reminiscent of the authors own life twenty - thirty years ago, where time stands still and real

exploitation takes place albeit with charles jourdan shoes, cartier watches, jaguars. The author

ponders whether she should even go to that place given that she never really escaped. Never

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really will escape. Her funny little pedigree.

She smiles, because smiling is fun these days. She is alive, she sits in the subway in New York,

on a bench, writing her semi-scholastic observations, producing a book that might be, in the end,

be better than many and worse than many, all those tirades some individuals put down on paper,

in a fruitless conquest to hault time and space, to fracture the passing moment and all passing

motions into words, into letters, on pieces of paper, on papyrus, write in sand, until the wind

blows it away and distributes it all over this tiny planet.


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She is hungry, she will find the restaurant on madison avenue and 73rd. She looks up at the

yellow strips in front of the silvery-chromen column, she watches the old man with the toothless

stare and the white hat. A child rushes by clapping her sandals. Time stands still, time moves.

- - -

she sits down in the subway station at 77th. Street and Lexington, somewhere near a place

called Lennox Hospital, which she remembers from the day before, when she went to the

Whitney, when she went up to the fifth. floor in the building where the gagosian gallery was,

when she went into the chocolate store, where chocolate was art and where the pieces of

chocolate did not have prices on them, boutique-like. She has been to Geneva and Zurich, there

everything was only exquisite and snobby-posh, if it was geared to tourists. A woman with

dangling earrings sits next to her, another one, more plain-janey, follows. She ponders, what

would happen if someone reads this, some stranger whom she just describes.

On the other side of the platform schoolclass after schoolclass streams in, the fieldtrip set, the

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fieldtrip cloud. The train whooshes in, stirs up a breeze, swallows all those noisy creatures,

vanishes and leaves the station deserted, barren.

Another silver bullet comes in, soaks up people, spits out people. The lowly writer takes notes,

scrunched on her bench, documenting feverishly. From the frontlines. Of triviality, banality.

Another train rushes in. A woman with a T-shirt saying Manhattan East walks by, boards the

train. Manicured sandals walk by her, is it sandal time already? It is still spring, still april. The

author knows, there are lots of museums near here, Central Park, so much to see. She does not

feel like paying admission, she would rather go to galleries, where admission is free. The

platforms are full of people, talking, noise, lollipopeating. The author feels hungry. She should


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make her way up, leave her mole-like existence here in the subwaystation, underground, go up

the stairs, soak up the sun, sun, sun. She wrote the word sun one too many times, not sure, if it

sounds good, artistically sound. People walk by with bicycles, others come in, another train

whooshes in and makes her hair fly in the wind. She writes, writes, writes the day away.

Relentlessly, obsessively. This is what she does with her days, authoring seemingly seamless

sentences, pairing metaphors with meaning, peeling away all the obstacles that stand between her

and the perfect line, the one stroke of genius the trace in the sand, that will quiver for a moment

like lightning in the dark, to be washed over by water, to be blown away by sand. The one hault

in the ever-changing glide of the dunes.

She ponders, whether this is worthwhile, her minutes, seconds, hours down here in the subway.

Where musicians have their very best performances, give their very best, where keith haring rose

to fame, long before his too early demise. He was 3 years younger than her. On the other side of

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the platform she sees a poster saying: mariah/ E=MC2, something here smells like melon. People

clap, she should leave. Get something to eat, soak up the sun, count the pages. To feel that she

has achieved something, anything. Quantify her literature output, the words, the letters. She is

leaving the sense of sanity what with all this noise, all the trains, all the commotion. Sun would

do her good, peace, quietness. 19 pages for now. And it is only 3:31 p.m. Quite impressive. The

author is happy with herself, she put all these silvery trains passing her by, all these feet

stomping her by, into words, pinned them down in black letters, on lined paper, soaked the world

around her into this tiny 8x11ish notebook, documented the images into signs and letters, the

visual, the motion into an ordered volume of neatly arranged letters, trying her best to draw, to

paint, to take photos, to record the sounds, the audio, the music, the never-ceasing motion of this


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city. Once back home, she will miss this, her moments in the subway station, while the trains

roar by, squeak by, while time stands still for her, while she watches her pen rushedly inscribe the

paper, fly over the lines, while insanity grips her, but is still contained. While she walks to near

to the edge, but can catch herself, letting the train fly by into the tunnel. She will still sit here,

take notes, while the world rushes by. And now it is time to hunt down that bite-sized sandwich,

stroll through Central Park, stop the pen. For the moment, this moment.

- - -

she sits on fifth Avenue and 77th. street, behind her is Central park and some grey wall is

behind her bench. She had a sandwich, it was overpriced and too fatty, the sun is too hot, too

many tourists are walking by. She looks through her visitors guide, she looks at the pigeon,

which is white and pink and grey and looks more like a seagull. She misses a place to have tea, a

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place to buy an orange. Or a tangerine. Something citrusy, something fruity. People walk by, she

feels alone. Her only friend is the fat pigeon on the ground with the shimmery pink around her

neck. Two others come, these pigeons all have pink feathers in the grey. They hover around her,

another one with green shimmer comes, they scare her with their beaks. Hey, I am not an old

pigeon lady, not yet. Not all old hag, yet. As of yet. She feels depressed. The Guggenheim is near

here, so is the Metropolitan. She has seen them before, three, four, five years ago. On different

occasions, with differing exhibitions. She does not feel like museum hopping. Or park hopping.

She feels like a cup of tea and a piece of fruit. Not necessarily in that order. She wants to leave

the outdoors, hover somewhere indoors. Her pen makes two shadows, one dark, one light and

they are opposite of each other. She will go for a walk, fly a kite, enjoy the sun. Which is a tad

too hot. She feels like whining and complaining. The words stick in midair, they do not flow in


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tree waiting for its summer leaves. She sees the coils of her note-book, a flag in the wind, a dog

with too much hair. people talking on phones, herself holding her pad against the wall, until the

ink dries up.

She sees a fire-hydrant coming out of a building, red against white. She writes, writes, writes

forever. A FedEx truck goes by. She writes.

- - -

She sits down once more on one of these brown benches and starts writing. The L-train comes

in - it is brooklyn bound. The author wonders what time it is, which station this is. She feels tired

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and her feet hurt. Her eyes are burning and her right hand is cramping up from putting down too

many letters. She could count the letters, but each line is different, each dot, each curl. She could

go down to Brooklyn, but she should make her way home. She should write some more. Even

more. She does not know how many pages she logged in today and how many more she should

put down. She feels squished between wheels, between rocks. She feels squashed, beaten-up,

chewed-up, spat out. It is 6 p.m. precisely. She hovers around down in subway stations, she

writes, she writes.

The author spits out words like blood, like mucus. She has nothing essential to say, nothing

more. So she starts spitting disgusting metaphors on the paper, horror-stuff. Instead of nice and

neat, it is time to demolish the beauty of the written word, subvert aesthetic values. Another

brooklyn-bound train arrives. A woman walks by with an ornate oak-table. Someone screams. A

yellow-clad woman walks by in black, shiny pumps. A sneaker person walks by. Black sneakers.

White laces. In the end it has the same effect as the shiny black of the pumps, black with

contrasts, black with highlights, with white dots.


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It is 6:17 now, she has to find her train. She has to count her pages. Drink tea. Rest. Shudder

off the exhaustion of a whole day spent searching for words. All over this city. All over New

York. In spring 2008. Her office is the street, the subwaystations and various coffeeshops. She is

tired. Exhausted. The words cease to come. At the end of the day, they all line up in some shelter

like buses in the parking garage. To be called out again, first thing in the morning, to march into

places. To soldier on and fight uncertainty, oblivion.

A woman inside a train looks at her, suspiciously, disgusted. The author once more feels out of

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place. Given, that she is sitting on a bench in a subwaystation and writing away, maybe, she

should feel strange. Especially, because she starts smiling to herself. It is getting late, the trains

are too noisy here. They disturb her train of thought.

- - -

It is 6:16 p.m. April, 18, 2008 NYC Subwaystation at 8th. and 23rd.

- - -

She is back on her favorite bench in the underpass at 14th., near the fruitstand or better, near

the fruit bonbon/ newspaper stand. And she is not even sure if this is 23rd or 14th., she just

knows that she has to take the Uptown E or the Uptown C to get to her small apartment, the

small apartment, because she leased it from someone who leased it from someone else, and the

real owner lives somewhere in Vancouver. These are, of course, stories that she makes up as she

goes, constructs narratives, that make her pass her time, fill up her lonely, abandoned life in the

big city, this big city.

A woman sat down next to her, she looks through her. A man rearranges his belongings, he

kneels down near the floor, his poloshirt is blue, black and white. Striped.


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The author writes her last passages for the day, her never-ending entries in to this never-ending

journal. Once she boards her train or her plane back to Vancouver, she will stop. May be. If she

can. Writing is strangely, mysteriously addictive. A woman in a red long coat walks by.

- - -

237

She filled thirty-eight pages, so she has still two more pages waiting to be filled. Writing is a

chore, a chore, she likes. More so than dishwashing, than digging a hole in the ground. A chore,

nonetheless. All those words, all those letters. While people rush by from train to train. She

missed a page, left it blank, she has to rip it out and use it in another context. Maybe, to make a

paperairplane, shoot it around, let it fly in Central Park. Let it graze with the green and pink

necked pigeons. Let it listen to the lowly, lonely bagpiper in central park. It was not a parade, it

was just one blackclad bagpiper in a bandana, standing on a hill, bagpiping away. He definitely

got better with each blow into the pipes, he improved tremendously. Writing is like that, the more

you write, the better it gets. Supposedly. There are no rules. It can just as easily descend into

oblivion, into an abyss of mediocracy and utter discordance, utter non-literature, total anti-

literature. That kind of stuff, that kind of existence. That kind of literary existence. It is the end

of this day, the author stumbles over her words. She scrambles to produce meaning, she stutters,

she stops writing. A woman in jeans and white top makes her way home. Tired, exhausted,

slightly fulfilled. That is life. So utterly sisyphian. So utterly in vain. Exhaustingly in vain. A

woman sits down near the author, people pass her by. And she continues writing. Into eternity,

into infinity. Happily, insanely, confusedly, blissfully. And evening descends over New York

City.

- - -


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