book 1 - october

1.
Kerouac penned On the Road in three weeks. Does that mean that any text that is written in
three weeks straight will automatically make it into the pantheon of world lit? Hardly.
She is once more sitting in the coffee shop on 23rd and 8th, outside, Chelsea is happening.
She hammers away at the keyboard, she is definitely no Jack Kerouac. Nope, she is merely an art
school dropout like any other. An aspiring animator, an aspiring filmmaker. An aspiring writer,
an aspiring actor. She stares outside, at the Breadstix Caf on the other side of the street. Nobody
calls med students aspiring doctors. Next time she comes to this world she will vie for a job in a
different field.
Outside, it is starting to rain. New York in October, not as nice as it should be. She feels
sick to her stomach, all the cool whip and ice cream did not agree with her. She has heart burn or
something, she had way too much food. The ice cream was overpriced and kind of yucky.
Brownie and Cookie Dough, and the cool whip tasted artificial and disgusting. Her arteries were
clogging up while she was leaning forward to do her typing. She moved to New York City in
order to make it in the arts, well, that did not work out. So, now it is back to writing. Literary arts
instead of visual arts, at least, you do not need a storage space for your work. A USB port will
do, no need to rent a warehouse for your damn sculptures.
2.
The sixth floor in Macys, she loves it here. She is sitting in her favorite chair, sipping
coffee, watching people walking by, looking at towels and bed stuff. This must be her favourite

space/spot in New York City, this chair here and the Laundromat on Eighth. This is what she
should describe in her writing, the going-ons in a department store. This is as good a subject
matter as any. Back in Vancouver, she wanted to write about gambling, some kind of story about
debauchery or something. About gambling, people love to read stuff about gamblers, about
misery, addiction, lives gone wrong. Worked for Dostojewski. She hung out around the casino in
Richmond, she used to park her car in Oakridge and take the Canada Line to Bridgeport, pay
extra for the Two-Zone pass. She lost a lot of money while playing the slots and she did not pen a
book. At least not one about gambling. She wrote a book about writing, about the misery of
writing. Which is not as sexy, not as dramatic as the misery of gambling. And that is how she
ended up as a not-yet-published writer, a hapless one.
A man and a woman are walking by, they could be tourists, they inspect the towels by
Ralph Lauren. The Signature Line.
3.
She is walking down 23rd., by the Home Depot, she is miserable. She is not good at
writing or painting or drawing, she is one of those eight million who are not taking Manhattan.
This city will eat you alive, that is what the woman said to George Costanza. Author here
watched a lot of TV, back home, King of Queens, Seinfeld, Friends. You do not need to live in
NYC, just turn on the telly, every other sitcom is celebrating the city anyways, you can listen to
Sinatra on You Tube, you do not really need to put your vagabond shoes on, somebody else did
that already and lived to write about it. She ponders, if her thoughts make sense, these days, a
constant feel of confusion is her eternal state, her slight dislocation, her utterly deafening
dislocation. Reality is so overrated, you don`t need it, you need to always feel a tad off. That is

the new normalcy, the Doors singing on strange days, Bob Dylan serenading weird days, every
artist worth her or his keep investigates the state of alienation, the utter off-ness of anyexistence.
Yup, normalcy is overrated. Misery breeds great works of art. She still can feel the ice cream and
the cool whip, she feels like barfing, she ponders, if that is enough to make her pen great texts,
that will propel her into the pantheon of world lit scribes. The brownies are fighting the cookie
dough, she is walking by the Doughnut Plant, this must be the first time that she is not tempted to
go in there. Way too sick, ah, way way too sick here.
book 2 - december
1.
She likes Turin. Italy, pizza, the like and the like. Given, the city has the feel of anycity, any
European city at least. At this point, after all her years in North America, Milan, Turin, they look
the same as Zurich, as Hamburg. They are first and foremost non-American, they are far away
from New York, far away from Vancouver. They are exotic. She walks by the Swatch store, by
the Victoria Secret store. Ok, so it feels a tad like Metrotown, like Burnaby, like anymall. And it
does not help that the Christmas carollers are doing Jingle Bells, but it is still as Italian as can be.
The Bicerin in the magnificent coffee house, one of many, one of many. Each coffee house here
is arguably palatial, each coffee drink is amazingly rich. She feels homesick and she does not
know where home is anymore. She likes that, this feel of not belonging anywhere. There is
something to be said for being a fish out of water, eternally, eternally. According to Wikipedia, a
bicerin is a drink in three layers, coffee, molten chocolate, whipped cream in a glass. The cream
is not over-whipped, though the one in her bicerin is kind of flocky, in little knots of cream, kind
of lumpy, granules of whipped cream lumps. The name of the glass is bicerin, apparently that is

why the drink is called that. A specialty of Torino, everywhere she goes there is another local
specialty. She eats too much these days, she drinks too much these days. Life is tough. She is
slightly tipsy, too much alcohol, red wine constantly. So many people in the streets, wow, the city
is bursting at its seams. X-mas shopping, X-mas shopping. The woman in the agroturismo near
Alba, the one with the cute hairdo, was all `` You came to Italy in winter. Why`` Apparently this
is not high season, if you are not a skier, but it is definitely fun. So many people, the city, the
city. She is losing her way, finding her way, she tries to take straight paths, so that she can find
her way back to the hotel. She knows, she is somewhere near the Po, but she does not go near to
the river in order not to lose her way. It is slightly cold, but not too much. Everybody is telling
her that it is exceptionally mild this December, she is pondering that a lot of Italian women are
sporting really cute haircuts a la Jennifer Lawrence or Kaley Cuoco. Or maybe those actresses
are sporting haircuts inspired by what is in in Milan, in Turin, in Alba, in Asti. Author here has
not been back to Italy since what seems like the ice age. She is so much older, fifty, sixty years
maybe. But, hey, you feel ageless when you are travelling, that is what dislocation does to you.
And the constant supply of Barolo. And to think, that merely two days ago, she had not even
heard of Barolo. Tipsiness seems to become her.
book 3 - january
1.
Vegas, huh. Well, she overslept New Year`s Eve, Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin had to do
their spiel without her, the ball can drop just as well without her. She woke up at two thirty, made
her way down to the casino. Wow, everyone is still awake, lots of people are sporting HAPPY
NEW YEAR hats, glittery, sparkly. Author really likes this particular hotel, it is unpretentious,

full of people that have seen better days, just like her. The donut in the 24-7 bagel stop is utterly
greasy and yummy and artery clogging, just as we like it. Vegas, huh, Vegas. She ponders if she
should have watched THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, who knows when and if she will be
able to watch it back home. The hotel has a movie theater adjacent to the casino, but, hey, maybe
sleeping all thru Sylvester is the best way to go. She walks by the slots, watches the Russian
Roulette crowd, the Crap table crowd, she ponders what to write her book on, sits down and has
a cup of tea. Another year, still another year.
2.
On the telly, the news. Vacay time is over, time to pen the next amazing all-whichever country of
origin - novel, the next best thing since sliced bread. Or however the saying goes. She could
google it, nowadays you can google everything and anything. 1509 words down, we have to still
feed a tad more words to the machine here, we have to find antagonists and protagonists, after all
the writing cannot be all over the place or can it. Coherence equals boredom equals nonartsyness.
3.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT on the telly. Background music to her creative endeavour, the
laugh tracks that propel her words forward, might as well, might as well. Ah, who cares, the only
thing that counts is, well, the wordcount. And we are standing at 1595 here.
book 4 february
1.

Rain like always, it is Vancouver after all. Her art career is going nowhere, her writing career is
going nowhere. So this is how retirement feels like, retirement from soccermomdom. She starred
in a play at the local community center, she always forgot her lines. Apparently, acting is not her
thing, it is a life suited for individuals with better memories. The Argo Caf around the corner of
the artschool, she plays around with her brownie, sips her peppermint tea out of the oversized
cup. It is ten in the morning, rain is streaming down, not many persons are in this place. She feels
slightly nauseated, tinges of impending barfing mix in with the miserable weather, ah, this is fun,
this is fun.
2,
So maybe there is something to be said for being unpublished. Unsuccessful at what you are
doing for a living or as a hobby. A failure. You cannot have pretensions or maybe you can have
more pretension than suits you. In order to compensate. After all, you yourself are aware that you
have penned a ton of books, ten to be precise. More than the other mere mortals. You were able
to fashion ten texts, each 300 pages long. Ten dissertations. That all resemble each other. An
oevre. That rots in the basement, that klimpers away in the cloud. In some kind of storage.
Instead of being published and neatly bound to then rot away on a dusty bookshelf on the fifth
floor of the public library. Like Rosss dissertation, Ross from Friends. Anyhoo, she is back at
the typer, after a foray into the real world, an excursion into safewayland and YMCA-land.
Where boredom rules. Familiar faces, people slinging coffee or sweeping floors. Real jobs that
pay a certain amount of money, not just wasting your life fabricating words that are there for the
birds. Author looks at all the plants on the floor, the ones that are guarded by the person she lives
with. She is happy, she has a project again, hammering a certain amount of words into the
machine, an increment of 1500 words per day, for the next three months or so. Something to
6

keep her busy, to give her life structure. A raison detre, albeit a shifty one. And we have 1967 and we are outta here, were outta here.
3.
Itzehoe, once more. Back in the coffee house in Northern Germany, ten in the morning, Rain, the
woman at the fashion place across the street, in here, the waitress with the bored face, the three
women chattering up a storm near the window. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever ever changes.
She has 2075 words, well, at least her text marches forward. The wordcount changes, well,
maybe that is all we need here.
book 5 - march
1.
Back on the green couch, typing words up while watching Jeopardy. Nothing to write about, now
there is an ad for a deodorant flimmering over the screen. It has penguins in it, dont ask why.
Author here ponders how she can rationalize a book that jumps around between all kinds of
different locales, constantly, constantly. Each scene is in a different place, there is no real
cohesion between all of the scenes. Ah, might as well, might as well. And jeopardy is still
singing its songs, Alex Trebek is rocking away.
2.
The Macidees in Metrotown, a filet-o-fish and a cappuccino. So many people, so many many
people. You can describe them in detail, their attires, their mannerisms. You can make up stories
bout their lives, if you so please. Everything neatly typed up, the world, life, one letter at a time.
In order to make sense of this twirling planet, in order to increment her days.
7

3.
Back in the coffee shop in reykjavik, on a busy Saturday afternoon. Shoppers galore, she likes
hanging out in this space, listening in to conversation fragments that she cannot decipher. She
plays around with her coffee, twirling her right finger around the rim of the cup, silently, quietly,
pensively. Nice to hang out in an ah so busy place while you can rest because nobody bothers to
bother you, you can daydream as much as you want, you are a fly on the wall in this oasis so
very far from normalcy, from reality. Where everyone knows Icelandic exept for her. Where she
can hum silently to herself while typing up her text, while the servers clapper around, balancing
dishes in their starched aprons. Iceland rocks, kaffitar in bankastraeti 8, her home away from
home. The cheesecake is heavenly, the cappuccino has a heart shape inscribed into the foam, in
mokkacolor, beigeish. Life is good, ah, life is good here. good here.
4.
butter on mc kenzie and 33rd. an empire cookie and a chamomile tea. Afternoon, two-ish.
neighbourhood gossip, the stories of Vancouver. The day that rests in midair, that waits for
moments, for moments.
book 6 april
1.
The quiet sleepiness of a stroll around the neighbourhood, tree lined streets, the sun that is
shining. The empire cookie in the cutest little bakery, the peppermint tea in the white-ish china.
This is bliss or utter boredom, the bus at the station, this is a village street outside of the city, the
pulsating city, where everything is happening, where life is not at a standstill like it is here in the

rural oasis slash boonies, where nada is happening, where soaps are the only distraction or laughs
on Seinfeld reruns. Her typing is the only noise here, maybe she could listen in to sinatra, in
order to staccato up the silence. Human beings need motion, excitement, adventure, writing is the
quietest of all the artforms anyways, deafening in its utter dullness, in the mere prosaicness that
consists of pressing down squares with faded letters on them. Longhand would be good, the
distraction that comes with using up differing pens with differing inks, the interest that is
provided by using different pieces of paper, white ones, lined ones, the adventures of all the
coffee houses all over town, the nice ones, the ugly ones. You can write at night, when the city is
asleep, you can travel the world in order to find words to feed into the machine. Yup, this is
writing writing writing writing writing, huh.
2.
Union Square. new york city. The bathroom has a long line, she makes her way to one of the
benches on the second floor of Whole Foods, overlooking union square. Her notebook, might as
well, she can transcribe this at a later date, sometimes in the future. It is two in the afternoon,
sunny, Wednesday-ish. Nothing really happening, on the telly bill de blasio answering once more
questions about the snowfail 2015. Isnt that getting old, he stated it once better safe than
sorry, how come this is still an issue. Author here types and types, she will later on walk up 14th,
all the way to the apple store, your body needs exercise after all after all. She might hang around
the meatpacking, lick an ice cream on one of the chairs. If she has the energy, she might head
down to the high line, up to the high line, this is nyc after all, where you walk and walk until you
fall to the ground and disintegrate. Happily, happily. Her writing sucks, too much kitschiness, too
much schmalziness. No hibrow insights, no lobrow insights. They have all been penned already,
sung already. How can you describe the usual in better words, in newer words. Everything worth
9

observing has been observed already, everything has been done before. Nothing new under the
sun, that is how it is that is how it is. She should describe other persons, male ones, young ones,
old ones. Instead of deciphering what it is in eatery one, in eatery two, three, yelp describes the
vodka pizza in artichoke already, the one that is near to avenue A. She has lots of words now, her
right middle finger is starting to act up, she should spoon her hippy-mippy grain food out of the
ochre carton, she could go over the street to barnes and noble, look at all of the books that are
written by all those people that are not her. Her grammar is off, but who cares, this is how it is
how it is how it is how it is how it is. 3008, we are done 4 today, yay and yay and yay and yay
and yay.
book 7 may
1.
Once more in the coffee place in Reykjavik, her favourite hangout. It is a Monday morn, a weird
time to have coffee in a strange city. but, hey, the hotel is nearby, she adores people watching and
it keeps her from humming to herself while typing. In a coffee house youve gotta behave, sit
straight up, make sure not to drool, not to spill your food. You have to act in a civilized manner,
whatever that is. you have to stay awake, for moments, for moments. You have to dress up nicely
or borderline nice, wear lipstick, comb your hair and if you are lucky, you will be able to sell the
words that you are penning, eventually, eventually. It just takes a tad of planning, a bit of luck,
perseverance, the like and the like. Maybe even an antagonist to hiccup the story at hand. And
3372 we have and we have here, time to wrap this up, 4 now, for now.
2.

10

Once more, the coffee house in Itzehoe. It is over described, so many words to recreate thps very
same place. Author here has a chamomile tea, she could describe the whiff, the ornamental
steam. Not enough to carry a story, a gripping narrative. Writing is not all that it is made up to be,
author here has problems with the words, the sentences. The women near the window are
chattering away like always, something is burning in the kitchen. The waitress has her expression
of utter boredom mixed with slight contempt. Outside rain, yup, what else is new. Hardly anyone
is in the streets and this is the main street of this silent place. Maybe quietness will make author
here write better, colourful stuffi-muffi. It is ten, the woman in pink and blue opens up the
fashion store across the street. The day starts up for her, but how many sales will she really have?
Most of her customers are better off to make the train ride down to Hamburg in order to shop for
new clothes. Maybe, the fashion in/fashion out store caters more to the tourists who come out
here over the weekend, from Hamburg to boot. Nobody shops in the store next door, it is the old
switcheroo. Author ponders if she really has to fill the page with useless, nonsensical
observations about clothes shopping, with words about the steam coming from a hot beverage.
Who would want to read this? A mere exercise in expression, typing away until something good
crystallizes. That is not how writing is done, you have to have an outline, you cannot just type
away and hope for the best, let the words feed upon each other, let the narrative grow organically.
Or can you? A book chockfull with descripts of different coffee places the world over. Confusion
sets in, slightly slightly. And we have 3502 words here, well, at least this marches forward pretty
nicely pretty nicely.
3.
Butter, on 33rd and Mac Kenzie. It is nice, mayflowers, yup, the ones that follow April showers.
The woman at the other table is sporting a flowery dress and a straw hat, very summery, though
11

it is still spring, technically. Her friend is having cheese cake, with tons of whipped cream
thereon. Outside the bus stops, the one that is going up to Marpole. There is not much to describe
here except that time is standing still in this place, in here it is all about resting, about having a
respite against the real world. Where there are no flowery wall papers, no doilies, no sugary
desserts, no teacups filled to the brim with herbal tea.
4.
The coffee house near the Skytrain station, the one on Broadway. Hot chocolate, medium, with
whip. There is a choice of dark, white or milk, milk is by far the best. Outside, Broadway is
happening, utter busyness with a tad of drizzly rain. It is ten in the morning, office people,
construction workers, nurses on their way to VGH. Not exactly the best space for a writer, or
maybe the only space for a writer. Where words are sparkling in the air, only to be grabbed and
be put to paper. Where stories can be fashioned without even trying, where award winning books
can be penned easy-peasy. Outside the rain drizzles down, oblivious to anything.
5.
Once more, the seat near the window overlooking Union Square. A muffin, a roibos tea, a writing
pad, a pen with green ink. These are her days, motioning around, writing and writing and writing
and writing.
book 8 june
1.
in the art school again, a serious woman next to her. Author was at the dentist, at the Y, at the
coffee shop that dispenses hot choco with whip. Not for free, mind you. But chocolate
12

nonetheless. They destroy chocolate chips and mix it in with milk. An artery clogging
concoction. On Broadway, huh. It is a pretty depressing place, everyone seems down on their
luck. Before that, she was at the coffee house near her house. A banana loaf for breakfast. A hot
chocolate for lunch. A dental technician cleaning her teeth, making them hurt, slightly, rubbing
up against the nerve endings and saying sorry. Author here ponders if she should title this very
book from coffee house to coffee house. Seems like a catchy enough title. Would it attract the
wrong crowd, the right crowd? For her, anycrowd would be just fine. There is no target audience.
The target audience is the world. Anyreader would do, should do. Anyone willing to sit thru
reading her dribble. Those are our pips. She feels blue, melancholic. Roaming the planet while
being unpublished does that 2 yer. Unpublisheddom is hell. Or something like that. An artiste
without audience. Then again, it is highly debatable if she is an artiste, a wordsmith, a poet, a
writer. She ponders, each of those words has its own connotations. Her grammar is off, so much
she knows. A writer with off-grammar, well, good luck with that. Maybe it is good to treat the
language nonchalantly, rules are there to be broken, words are there to be thrown around. After
the dentist she walked into the coffee shop on 33rd, it was way too crowded for ten in the morn.
Yup, these are her observations, useless observations, non-insights. Her writing will not start a
revolution, not even a commotion. It just exists, one expression of someone on this planet. An
ant, a mouse. One of 8 mill, make that 8 bill. She ponders what else to feed to the machine. She
stares at the diet-ad on the screen, before and after, fatty in bikini, potential victoria secret model
in bikini. So weird. Who wants to wear a bikini anyways? It is way too chilly for bikinis in here.
People do not want to lose weight to wear a bikini, did Governor Christie have lap band surgery
to wear a bikini? Really. The only reason why people want to lose weight are health reasons.
Walking easier, breathing easier. Bikini, what a bunch of croq. Anyhoo, we have 4212 here,

13

pretty good for a book that did not even exist three days ago. It is still all over the place though,
jumping around weirdly and strangely. Author here ponders if she can use this place, it is after all
for students or/and staff. She is none of those, merely alumna. Well, might as well, might as well.
2.
Itzehoe, Itzehoe once more. Rain, reluctant one. After all, it is summer already. The waitress with
the bored face is smiling. What went wrong? The three women are chattering near the window,
do they ever go home? Is this their second home? What do they have to discuss here day-in and
day-out? The fashiony woman across the street is all in beige today, she opens the door of her
store, it is ten in the morning. Author here types up some lines, she will make sure to catch the
11:30 back to Hamburg. Her Danish has raisins in it today, not exactly her first choice. A cheese
Danish would have been better, but they were out. Itzehoe, huh. Author here hardly knows this
city, she just comes here to type up a certain amount of words, so that she can call herself a
writer. So that she can mimic a productive life, even if nobody ever reads this. We have to go
through the motions, that is where it is at. The end product is irrelevant, what counts is the
journey. The quest for perfection that will never be achieved. Unachievable goals, they are the
best. Reach out for the stars but make sure that you do not fall down. Or something like that.
Somebody wrote a poem like that in her scrapbook back in high school. The rain is coming down
outside, more forcefully than before. She is out of words, for now and for now here.
3.
nyc, union square, the seat overlooking the street. On the second floor of Whole Foods, the sun is
shining, a wonderful summer day in June. It is a tad too stuffy, too sticky in here, it is eleven in
the morn. She has 4566 words, by now and by now.
14

book 9 july
1.
Amsterdam, her favourite seat in her favourite caf. Well, technically, it is not a caf, it is the
chocolate bar in the high-end department store near Centraal. But she loves it here, she can watch
people rush by, the busyness of this very city. Amsterdam is where its at, her favourite city on
the planet. Just make sure to not get overrun by a bike.
2.
Reykjavik, the cappuccino with the heart shape on it, the cheese cake with the runny whip. Bliss,
huh.
3.
Copenhagen, a beer in the middle of town. On a sunny day, outside. Being a writer is fun, she
heaps on the words onto the paper, while sipping her beer. Well, more like chugging, beer is not
there to be sipped.
book 10 august
1.
4747 words, somehow this text is running away, vying for a life all its own. Galloping thru a
year, galloping all over the planet. Coherence is so yesterday.
2.

15

on the flight out of JFK en route to Milan. The food is good and way too rich. Hardly any
turbulence as of yet. On the telly, THE DESCENDANTS. Who would cheat on George Clooney,
who in her right mind, that is.
3.
Once more, a Bicerin. Outside, Torino is happening. Author here travels a lot these days not that
that translates into good writing. It kind of numbs yer, overstimulation does not translate into
fantastic choice of words. After a while all your senses go dull.
book 10 november
1.
4287 words, somehow the chaptering of this text got a life of its own. She is once more back in
the art school, in the place where it all began. Where she suddenly noticed that she is better with
words than with forms and shapes. Somehow she has to go back to visual stuffi-muffi, it is more
up her alley. If that makes sense, if that makes sense. In drawing you can be much more forceful,
with words, you have to tread lightly.
2.
4908, 4908. So near to 5 thou, write on and type on here.
3.
How to not become an artstar a manual for failure, now there is a catchy title for this text.
Anyhow, she was in the safeway next door, the whole high school crowd of PEE OH DOUBLEYOO descending on it, lunchtime, lunchtime. What will come of all these youngens, will they

16

end up in a writing job like yours truly, an unpaid one? Will they eventually expire in one of the
two retirement homes around the corner of the high school? Cycle of life, ah, cycle of life. author
is back at the typer, it is ah so sunny outside, not exactly the atmosphere in which to sit in a
darkened room and let the hunched overness flow into words on a monitor, writing, a solitary
confinement job, a hapless one. An unthankful one. words that may or may not have meaning, an
exercise in futility. Author checked out the titles, the headlines near the,well, check-out in the
grocery store, one of the kardashians, bruce jenner becoming a woman, kim is furious, or is it the
mother with the short hair, not the booty, then there was something about a tv-rerun of a show,
breaking bad-spinoff, something about weightloss, how the weight just falls off, and a smiling
woman in a blue flowery dress next to that headline, the check out girlwas extra perky, author
had coffee and banana loaf, and she is now shopping for two tv-dinners. Have a nice day, I will,
after all, I will just pop my food into the microwave just like it is intended to be. have life spans
increased or decreased since the advent of microwaving, now there is a question that should be
researched, that should garner some grant moneyfor questioning, author is very bad with her
words today, she knows what she wants to say, but will any reader be able to follow this? 5233,
maybe, we should propel this down to 8 thou by the end of this glorious Friday, while the sun is
shining outside, while she is sitting in here contorted at her work bench, at the typing machine.
The stark plants against the window, the paper basket on the floor, the sound of keys being
pushed down, irregularly but incessantly nonetheless. life is happening somewhere outside, the
writer sits in here oblivious to all that is going on out there. the world, the world, with all its
facets, far away countries, far away sights. and 1327 it is and it is here.
4.

17

Ah to describe the familiar, the coffee house in itzehoe, the rain, the fashion woman, waitress,
women near the window, cheese danish crumbling away whilst one pokes the fork into the
mushy, gooey part of it. strange familiarity of a fictional place, one that one can easily look at on
you tube, reality mushes with illusion, just like it should be, just like it is. we always live part in
our thoughts, in our own little world and part in what is around us, concretely, realistically.
Author ponders, the danish is kind of stale, weirdly so, she has to catch the train back to
hamburg, eventually, eventually. nope, she did not become a visual artist, yes, she became a
writer and god only knows how that relates to her description of this coffee house. Seems that all
her thoughts are dancing around, she has to have a real story for this, maybe, different writers in
different places all vying for the same goal, writing a readable text, and then some kind of
intertwining of lives, people meeting up, interacting, author ponders, she is more the kind of
writer who loves to describe concrete stuff, a danish, a curtain, the rain. Anyhow, the wordcount
stands at five five four one, short pangs of feels of accomplishment set in, set in here. she should
walk through the november rain in this city, feel the wetness against her scalp, her nose, her face,
freshness will automatically translate into newer words, better words. it is ten to eleven, the train
will leave at twelve oh five.
5.
Once more, reykjavik. Bankastrati, the coffee house on bankastrati. Bliss or something. two in
the afternoon, make that three thirty. on a Friday in november. You have to peel out of your outer
layers, after all, this is Iceland. Where everything is icy. But come to think of it, it is pretty
mellow here, it is actually seven degrees Celsius, and everybody is telling her that that is a pretty
good temperature for this time of year. the sun is shining so that makes everything happier, more
on the mellow side. Besides, isnt it fun to say REYKJAVIK. Author here does not know the
18

meaning of the word, but she sure knows the meaning of the word cappuccino and she is having
one right now, all foam and heart shaped picture on it. yup, her writing has come to this,
describing coffee pics and coffee houses, no pressing issues for her. the everyday, that is where it
is at. Though, trechnically, having a sip of coffee in Iceland is pretty damn exotic. She listens in
to the chatter around her, the background music that she cannot decipher and that lets her
concentrate on her typing. The place is full of middle aged women, getting some respite from the
tough task of shopping. anyhow, write on and write on here, we have 5815, pretty good huh,
pretty good. yuh.
6.
A short drive to the Y, then down to arbutus to fuel up, then a drive to the coffee house on 33rd.,
they are out of empire cookies, so it is a sugar and butter cookie, pretty overpriced what with 2
bucks for one lousy cookie. But it is damn good. she[ponders, why does she suddenly use bad
language, damn and lousy, she looks at the trees while she drives, in one street they are all
crooked, whereas in the other one they are all straight. Comparing tree forms now there is a
subject matter that keeps on giving. Back into the tiny den to her space at the computer, her neck
hurts, contorted typing does that to yer. and 5946 it is it is here.
7.
On the telly, big bang. Laughtracks, the like and the like, a car commercial, a soap commercial, a
barbecued wings commercial. An afternoon like many, repetitive words like many.
book 11 - spring
1.

19

Way too foggy outside. she drove up to the coffee house, it was not open as of yet, she drove
down to the other coffee house which was open. Women behind the counter, men having coffee.
Gender lines seem to be intact, nothing ever changes. She ponders, writing is basically a female
quest, what with the stereotype of women to be overly chatty. This chapter is about spring, which
is weird because her first chapters were all about different months. There should be a certain
cohesion in the way that a text is organized, you cannot really get away by calling it artsy if there
are inconsistencies in the logic how you organize the different parts of a text. There should be a
symmetry, which mirrors the logic of the text. It there is no order in the way a text is arranged
then we have only chaos, only anarchy. Author ponders, this is really shitty, All she writes about
is the outer form of the text. That happens when you do not really have anything to say but you
have to come up with a certain amount of words before you start up dinner. And today is cooking
day, she will have company over so there better be some kind of edible food. Something
borderline good, not too salty. There is an open house in the fitness center on Dunbar, we could
check it out, maybe that in itself will result in a higher degree of fitness. The driving there, after
all we will push down the gas pedal with the right foot or is it the left one? anyhow, 6258, outta
here and outta here.
2.
Itzehoe again. women near the window, danish, waitress. Rain, fashion store lady in pink and
blue. Quite a fashion forward combination, her stockings are two-colored. Rings around her legs,
green and orange. Somehow it is an overload of colours, especially because she is wearing a
white pillbox hat with feathers. All and all it looks more like a style disaster than a fashion
statement. Seems that even the three chattering women are noticing, they usually are just talking
away oblivious to what is happening around them. The door opens, two construction workers
20

come in, order something in German. Author ponders what else to write about, she has to
produce a certain amount of words before heading back to Hamburg.
3.
The coffee house in bankastrati, people talking in Icelandic, the utter bliss of dislocation. Today
she is having a way too rich chocolate cake, torte with ample amounts of cream. Too rich food,
you will die laughing and happy. And way too young, grease and sugar does that to you. Your
heart will give out ahead of time, even though you are not doing anything tough, no manual
labour here, merely typing, merely typing.
4.
The seat near the window overlooking union square, she is waiting for words that can be put
neatly together in interesting sentences. Her fight with the words, the eternal struggle. No
accolades for her, not even a seat in the MFA program at Columbia. Her creative writing
excursions only take her to this place where she is sipping lavender scented tea and is having a
dry muffin with too much bran in it. With the lovely taste of stale cardboard, well, at least it is
healthy. New York in spring, she should write something about that. As if there are not enough
writers who have eternalized this very place, have sung its accolades, have demonized her. New
York City in spring. Author knows that her grammar is off, it always is, functioning grammar is
for the birds. Her back tinges hurtingly, typing does that to yer. 6601, write on and type on here.
5.
The coffee place in Oakridge, in the mall. All the regulars, all the individuals in their golden
years. This is not a space that makes for poetic writing, lyrical stuffi-muffi is so very antithetical

21

to a typical mall. She is having coffee and a muffin, maybe a donut would be even better. More
mall-ishy.
6.
A rainy day in Vancouver. February second. it does not quite go with the title of this very book,
this very chapter. But it is close. Author here woke up, brushing of teeth, shower, getting dressed,
a comb thru the hair, the usual. Outside, greyness, the rain, the usual. Starting up the car, driving
to oakridge, parking next to the BAY. A coffee in safeway, a banana loaf. Taking the Canada line
down to broadway, paying taxes in city hall, after that is done, a hot chocolate in blenz. With
whip. A table that looks out at broadway, ppl walking by thru the drizzling rain. This is next to
vgh, so you see ppl. who look as if they do there or come from there. and back to Canada line,
she goes downtown. Has a filet ofish, then a donut and a cappuccino. Calorie overload. Then
back to the Y, a weigh-in, then back to this space in front of the computer. this is what writers do,
they roam the city only to end up writing about it. a very weird excursion, observing, looking
around. What are you looking at? Inspiration, what kind of artiste needs inspiration, should you
not have ample amounts of inspiration from the get-go. The idea is that you are a creative genius
and that is what sets you apart from the other noncreative geniuses on this planet. The persons
who do other things and then come home and pick up your book for entertainment. Author
ponders, she is not quite sure if this is how it works. she is tired from basically roaming the city
aimlessly, for four hours straight. There is this idea that motion and movement translates
automatically into good writing or into good drawing. There are all these philosophies about how
to maximize creative output. Author here is kind of sceptical, if you need that, chances are you
are not that good at what you do in the first place. anyhow, it is still so very rainy outside, so very
very grey. There is an artist forum at six, a woman talking about her stuff. mostly sculptures, she
22

is pretty famous in town which kind of is a turn-off. the most famous ones in this city are usually
the most boring ones. the ones that merely conform to the zeitgeist and whatever goes with the
political agenda of the ruling class. it kind of is bad for art, as if artists are some kind of jesters,
some kind of handmaidens of kings and queens. Anyhow, be that as it may, it is raining and
raining and raining here.
6.
The coffee house in reykjavik. The one on bankastrati. Her favourite seat, today it is cheese cake
with raspberry sauce. A cappuccino with a heart in the foam, a white heart in beige foam.
everything tastes delish. Which might not be that good for writing, isn`t suffering the stuff that
makes for excellent words. not cheesecake and foamy coffee in a nice enough konditorei in a
nice enough part of town, in a town you took a nice jetplane to get there, fly emirates. She flew
out of jfk, to Milan, then she took the train, then a ferry. A nice voyage, nice food all the way,
how can this possibly translate into good enough writing. maybe she should try her hand at
travelwriting, something a tad more sophisticated than yelp reviews or trip adviser reviews. Or
google reviews, or trivago reviews. She listens in to sinatra belting out new york new york, she is
using those green ear phones that kind of poke her ears. Weird to listen to a song about new york
while you are in reykjavik. The women at the other table are showing each other what they
shopped for, hunters after the hunting and gathering is over. Around the fireplace, make that
around the coffee klatschy place. with doilies and cheese cake and lots of whipped cream. author
has 7387 words, she feels a tad happy, her words might not make sense but they are definitely
accumulating. Nobody can accuse her of not trying, of not logging in the hours. maybe that is
how writers should be judged, by the amount of hours they spend at the typing machine. Kind of

23

like pilots, such and such flight hours. same for crew. Anyhow, still typing, while the rain goes
down on reykjavik.
book 12 summer
1.
The little writing place off 14th. on the third floor. All these aspiring writers in new york city,
none of them successful as of yet. the future fame and fortune persons of america, the struggling
nobodies of today. Obscure and obsolete. Author likes it here, there is a whiff of hope and a whiff
of desperation, equally distributed, she will attend a reading in THE STRAND, it starts at seven.
So she can still kill time, eat the three mini cupcakes she got from BAKED BY MELISSA
downstairs. The one with carrot cake taste is good, though the pieces of carrot dislodge in
between one`s teeth. Anyhow, it is nice here, chilly from the air conditioner, outside, the city is
way too hot, nyc in july, wow, wow. Talk about heat wave. She types and types, maybe she
should go out onto 14th., she can wander around for moments and then flee from the heat into mc
donalds or the drugstore on the other side of union square. big corporations usually have good air
conditioning, tiny shops not so much. thus it is kind a atypical that this writing space has such
good air conditioning, author ponders if that is something to write on, waste some more words on
insignificant observations, try to stretch the sentences as much as you can. a writer is a person
alone in a room who has too much to say and nobody to listen to her. or him, for that matter.
Anyhow, we have 7659 words here, time to wrap this up, for now and for now here.
2.
Butter, on 33rd. and Mackenzie, two in the afternoon, an empire cookie and a green tea. The street
outside is happening slowly, the hours stretching sleepily. Later on she will catch the 22,
24

languidly taking her by kits beach and spitting her out in front of the big hotel. The Meridian, the
Sutton Hotel, it always changes names. The tall one on Burrard, though there are more than one
tall ones. anyhoo, back to sinking the tiny shiny fork into the empire cookie, raspberry filling,
shiny almond marzipan glaze. The women at the other table are busy with gossip, they are
sporting flower dresses and sunhats. They look like caricatures of women of leisure, though they
might have other more substantial occupations. Something a tad more gritty than forking over
your husband`s millions to some willingish merchants. Author ponders, does anything she writes
make any sense. nah. Coherence is not her thing, that is not the kind of writing we do here. that is
not how we roll. creative writing can be borderline stupid, that is what makes it charming. Or
nonsensical, for that matter. It is supposed to go with the doilies in this too over flowered space
here. a bakery at two in the afternoon. and we have 7883 words here, type on and write on and
write on here.
3.
A basement in Brooklyn. Williamsburg hipsters, open mike. Seven minutes of poetry each, there
is a sign-up sheet, you have to be there in time. the lighting is sparse, it starts at seven. Author
here feels out of place, she just wants to listen. She has done readings back home, twice, no,
make that three times. was pretty good, with varying success, though. depending on the words
she read. Obviously, you get better reviews for better words. they will laude yer or chide yer
depending on what you present to them. after all, they are total strangers, thus you should go for
it, prepare to read your bestest words, the foolproof ones, the ones that fly with any audience.
any place, anywhere. anyhow, today she is just here to observe, a fly on the wall with an artsy
chapeau.

25

4.
Still summer. even itzehoe has is sunny days, sans rain. The fashion store though is still
happening, the cheese danish too. the city is kind of charming, sun makes it blossom. Italy in
northern germany, a funny mix. Sunny days in this part of the world are so atypical, at least that
is how author here sees it. She usually is in this place when it rains down, her words are usually
propelled forward by the motion of the raindrops, somehow, the sun is anticlimactic to her way
of writing. summer in itzehoe seems to make her lazy, more prone to languidly weird words,
overdrawn sentences with too many adjectives in them that are of no use whatsoever.
5.
8155.
6.
Pretty drizzly and grey for summer. author here gets thru the motions, gets ready, has breakfast in
the coffee house, goes to the gym, has a cookie in the bakery pondering that this is definitely not
what you would call a nutritious breakfast, she drives back home and turns on the telly which
sings to her while she types. This is how writing works, you get ready and finally end up in front
of the typing machine hoping for the best. for inspired words or something. a very prosaic
undertaking more like physical amassing of certain units to build up a bigger unit. She will do
some readings, eventually eventually. listen in to the polite clapping of hands, get a participation
medal. On the telly, king of queens, laugh tracks here.
7.

26

union square, brooding and hot. the farmers market, lavender ice cream made in Vermont. New
york city happening, she flees from the heat into the Duane Greene. Walks the aisles, gets tooth
floss, waxed, thin. The heat is doing her in, is doing this city in. summer in the city, definitely.
Walk by sprinklers, by lawn sprinklers. Any kind of sprinklers. 8351 words, type on and type on
here.
8.
Bankastrati coffee house, reykjavik in july. Pretty hot given that this place is called Iceland. The
raspberries on the cheesecake, the heart on the cappuccino.
9.
And once more, itzehoe. The repetitiveness gives her life structure, her writing structure. Maybe
structure to the ying yang. Time to catch the train back to Hamburg.
10.
Turin, the Caf de Torino. The hot drink with whip on top, hot chocolate, coffee, cream beaten
just to the point of solidifying. In a glass so you can admire the three distinct layers of dark
brown, light brown and egg shell white. hmm, yum, yelp will like it.
11.
Sitting in the back of the library in the art school, near the two copy machines, the black and
white one and the color one. thinking about all of her rejection slips, nobody wants to publish her
dribble. Which is not interfering with her ability to write and/or her want to write. gotta thrive on
negativity, on disillusionment. What else can you do. dust yerself off and start marching, soldier.

27

8508, ten times this and we have enough words to call this a novel. yeah, why not and why not
here.
12.
The movie thater in the mall in Burnaby. a rerun of the theory of everything, the movie she
wanted to watch in winter but never came around to. people sitting in the dark, munching on
popcorn, watching eddy something. an oscar winning performance. Author here had raisinettes,
chocolate and raisins therein. next time she will have nuts with chocolate around it. she is having
her sweets with a hot tea, peppermint flavor. She is not concentrating on the stuff that is
happening on the screen, the sheer experiencing of the movie theater is more gripping, more
interesting than the eeriness of the disease depicted on the screen. There is something frightening
and unsettling about seeing someone that disabled, it makes you thankful for being able to come
here to the cold theater in the hot of july. To come here on your own two feet by your own
volition. Anyhow, the sounds of people chewing on their kernels mixes in with the sounds of the
movie. Later on, she will get back to the typing machine to feed her words to it.
13.
8710 eight seven ten.
14.
THE WIRED MONK in Kits, she gets up in front of people and starts reading from her paper.
she tries to make the right face, hit the right pauses, intonate at the right moments. After seven
minutes the nightmare is over. Clapping, reluctantly. she walks back to her seat on the far left.
15.
28

On the telly, mike and molly.

book 12 + 1 spring
1.
it is rainy, she rolled outta bed, picked out something that fits and is clean enough, lets the brush
glide through her hair to evoke the illusion of detanglement, makes her way downstairs, out of
the house into the drizzly mass that is pouring down thinking if drizzle can really pour down or if
that description is oxymoric. Oxymoronic. The day is blah and blue, she fires up the car,
somehow it makes its way to the parking space in oakridge, she glides out, thru the department
store by the dresses in neat rows, the escalator is still not working, you have to stumble down the
stairs. A coffee and a banana bread, actually the chain of events was totally different. She had
her coffee in safeway on arbutus, she went to oakridge later on in the day. She bought an empire
cookie in butter on 33rd and Mackenzie and she went to the y in order to weigh herself. Then she
walked over to langara by the display thingies, she then had her cookie there. Finally, back to the
Canada line station, getting out at broadway, a hot chocolate with whip in blenz. Then taking the
bus down to the art school and now she somehow ended up in front of a computer, her writing
shift begins. Yup, that is how we are functioning here, logging in shifts in order to amass
enoughish words to send out to potential publishers. And the rain is still drizzling down and
drizzling down here.
2.
9059
3.

29

itzehoe, the repetitiveness will do her in. the Danish with a cheese filling, a quark filling. The
peppermint tea, its whiffs. Three women chattering up a storm near the window, a waitress with
an everbored overbored face. Fashion woman in pink and green, opening her store at ten in the
morn. This is the city that makes author here write, relentlessly, reluctantly. With whiffs of
disillusionment, submerged in an air of despair. But, hey, the words accumulate and that should
be good enough for any writer, for any reader. The audience can disappear, we will still give our
concerts here to empty seats, to tomatoes and eggs that fly towards us. the show must go on,
something like that, something of that kind here.
4.
bankastrati, reykjavik. Nice to be in a place called Iceland, ah so nice. The romanticism of a
space named reykjavik, it is especially bohemian, especially romantic when you have come from
far away. If you are not born and bred, if you are a lowly foreign element that watches her
surroundings, observes, takes notes, a self-proclaimed journalist that is busily hastily talking
notes in her notebook. Author sinks her upper lip into the beige heart inscribed into the
cappuccino foam, she plays with her cheesecake, makes it crumble under the silver plated cake
fork. Reykjavik makes her happy. Makes her observe the ritual of writing.
5.
union square, the seat near the window looking out at the square. Her laptop, her letters emerging
outta nowhere on the monitor. Her writing shift starts up, she could care less if she will ever be
published. There are zillions of spaces on this planet where she can just read to a crowd, open
mike spaces, artsy basements, university foras, panel discussion spaces, art galleries, art schools.
First time she did a reading was on the fourth floor of the south building on Granville island, the
30

painting studio is a good enough space as any. She just arranged the chairs in rows, then she read
to the other students. She kept them entertained for ten minutes then she told them to look at her
artwork. Works every time, make people sit down, read your words and then either let them get
up to look at images on the wall or feed them something nice that does not crumble, finger food,
chocolate, cookies. They are polite, they will clap at your stuff, because, after all, you clap at
their stuff. This is how it works in the arts nowadays, it is all reciprocal. Reciprocal.
6.
she is now at the other computer in the art school. First she was at the middle computer in the
back, then the librarian asked the people at the computers to leave because there will be a class
that starts at one, she did not really shoo the users of the computers away, she made it more
sound as if the class will disturb the users of the computers, anyhoo, whatever the intent was,
author made her way to this computer over here facing the ocean factory, though if push comes
to shove she would have loved to listen in to the class, it was all about Stefan sagmeister and
other graphic design icons. Anyhoo, anyhoo. Let us digress here, let us digress here. Seems the
class is about artist books because the librarian is arranging a ton of artist books on what used to
be the big square light table in the back of the art school library, the one that is actually obsolete
now because nobody uses slides anymore. Anyhoo, save this, type on and type on and type on
here. Into oblivion.
7.
who knows how many words here.
book 15 some city on this planet

31

1.
well, it is actually book 14, but maybe throwing up the chapters into the air and making them
jump onto the page in weird illogical succession, maybe that should be her thing what with
creative license or something. After all, the main objective is to fill the pages, to accumulate a
certain word count. A person is next to her, with baseball cap and grey black sweater, using the
oversized scanner, the sing song of the scanner is deafening. Author here is not quite sure if it is
legit that she uses the computer in the library of her alma mater, well, to be technically correct,
she knows that it is non-legit, this place is only for staff and students, not 4 alumns. Meh, shmeh.
They really had to put a sticker on each monitor that states that the computers are for student &
staff use only. Please have your ID card available. Author ponders, she has an ID-card, it just has
expired. And she does not really feel like renewing it, only to use the library here. One thousand
bucks per year so that you do not get embarrassed if someone asks you 4 your ID card. The
librarians will not ask her, hopefully. After all, there have to be hapless writers like her to
produce books that have then to be stored in a library that then requires librarians. Yup, that is
how it works and that is how it works here.
2.
her allowance for using the parking space in oakridge is expiring, she always parks more than the
four hours, luckily she never got towed as of yet. In the morning she used the train without
paying, which was actually an accident, her pass has expired and she just forgot about that.
Anyhoo, nobody asks an old woman for pass, if you are old and female you can get away with
murder. That is how society is built up. Weird, huh, strange here.
3.
32

a man or a woman on the top of the ocean factory. A bird against the white of the sky. Author is
not happy about the woman with the curly hair who sat next to her, she gave her a look, that look
is the one of a person who will go to the bath room and ask her to watch her things. Anyhoo, type
on and write on here.
4.
32 pages, she has to produce ten times this in order to send it out.
5.
itzehoe, bankastrati, union square. Northern Germany, nyc, Iceland. Somehow this should all
make sense, eventually, eventually. Artworks have to have inner logic, or else, it is all anarchy.
Somebody laughs, it reeks in here. 10 140, this better be good, this better be good. The printer
behind her sings its songs, first the card reader and now the shimshimmying of the printer, the
whistling of the papers.
6,
yep, we are next to eleven thou, though not quite not quite.
7.
still sitting in the art school at the computer that faces the ocean factory, the one near the big
scanner, the oversized one. Contemplating that scribd apparently has 60 + million uploaded
documents on its website. Sixty million plus. And you thought that you have uploaded such a big
amount of docs, 309, give some take some. A fraction of sixty mill. How many times goes 300
into sixty million. 60 000 000 divided by 300. Like 600 000 divided by 3. Aha, make that 200
000. So her input of documents is one two hundred thousandst of the whole amount of
33

documents uploaded to scribd. One in two hundred thousand, huh. Mindboggling, huh. And we
type and write and write here. There are two hundred thousand just like her, who publish their
stuff in the cloud. How do you compete with two hundred thousand, how can your voice be
heard. In that sea of writers and publishers. How can you possibly make money with your
writing when there are two hundred thousand individuals trying to do exactly the same. Meh,
who cares, you just keep on truckin. besides, not all the docs are creative writingish texts, there
are court documents and dissertations, anything and everything that is in written form. One in
two hundred thousand, well, better than one in a million. And we type and type and type here.
How can you compete with that?
8.
a woman will give a talk. There is not much time. Only fifteen minutes. It is 5 and forty five the
talk will start up in fifteen minutes. Gotta run, gotta rush. Ah to stay an art student long after
skool is over. Now there is a title for this very book.
9.
Now back in the tv-room, Seinfeld plus laugh tracks. The one where babu is getting deported.
Kramer is doing his antics, author ponders what else to say. what else to write about here. we
have 10 512 words here. slight pangs of accomplishment, slight pangs of accomplishment here.
11.
The best thing about sitting in the mid-morning coffee house is when sitting next to three young
lads talking, one of them telling a story in what seems to be an Irish accent. You get a glimpse
into a culture where the gift of gab is valued in a way that it maybe not in other cultures.

34

Storytelling, huh. which makes author think that she herself is merely a gatherer, an archivist of
all the different stories that have been told since the dawn of time. yup, why not, let us look at the
persona of THE WRITER as a gatherer of different stories. And all stories have links to each
other, they are all more or less the same. the fate of some kind of struggle and the overcoming of
it. but at its essence it is more about mortals combating mortality. Yup, having to smush loads of
laundry into the wide-gapping mouth of the machine does that to yer, you start to let some halfbaked philosophical thoughts take you on a spin ride, while the weather is as grey and uninviting
as it was the day before. it is ten fifty-one in the morning, wonder what the coffee house looks
like now, who the people are that are crowding it at this very moment. the construction worker
crowd giving way to the local high school crowd all linked together by the want 4 coffee, by the
link together to break bread in a common public space. There is only one writer who makes her
way back to the typing machine to document it, one person to write about it for generations to
come. she might go out to the space on 33rd and mac kenzie, get an overpriced cookie with
raspberry filling, write about the sights and sounds that she encounters there. after all, she still is
not able to weave a narrative, even now, after eight years of constant writing she is still the one
that amasses descriptions of different scenes that are kind of unrelated. Little short vignettes each
of them illustrating more a certain state, a certain feel of a certain situation. She takes a stab at
recreating it for the text, but there is no ascending, accumulating narrative, her writing is more
like beading pearls so that you get a chain that does not start anywhere and does not really end
anywhere, it is just ongoing, no beginning no end - kind of like paint on a slab of plaster. Author
ponders, arguably she is kinda bullshitting, better to go out into the drizzle in order to get the
overpriced cookie from 33rd and Mackenzie, we can wrap this up later on and later on. the washer
is still roaring, there is new water flowing in noisily for a second rinse, still time to kill until

35

heaping the load into the dryer. Might as well go for the sugary cookie here. stop and save and
save here.
12.
The sojourn into the eleven o-clock tea/coffee space, so many women of leisure, so many stories
to be told. The all-female crowd humming like a bee-stock, there is no difference with the all
male gab fest author here witnessed earlier on in the other coffee house. So many stories waiting
to be told, engagedly, forcefully. while the quiet of the day engulfs the city, while life pulsates
forward. we need all those words to keep time still for moments, anyhoo, it is back to the kitchen
table, to the typing machine here.
13.
While pushing the car down thirty-third, author here was thinking about the genre of her writing,
housewife stuffi-muffi, not exactly the stories of heroism and warfare. The everyday in its
evergrowing shades is so much more gripping, the slower moments, the whistle of the teapot, the
plants starkly against the window. The sensing of the world, the wish for the ability to sense it
perfectly. Over a lifetime you are bound to lose that, eyesight, hearing ability, walking ability,
chewing ability. You are crouching forward to your ultimate demise and there is a happy thought
to be written about, sung about for generations to come. maybe having the empire cookie with a
cuppa tea is more fun, yup, seems so and seems so here.
14.
11 231- one one two three one
15.
36

The repetitiveness of doing laundry, now there are tons of stories to write about that theme.
There are photo books of Laundromats in nyc, glossy ones. there is the solitude of a washing
machine in an apartment, of the wash kitchen down in the basement, the reverberating through
an empty big house. Different ways of doing the wash, of smushing clothes, fabrics against each
other, against suds. Author adores the Laundromat existence, the being cooped up against total
strangers from all walks of lives. usually transient lives. students, tourists, others that pass by to
do the wash for moments only to join the bigger world, the more exciting world, the one on times
square, the one over the Brooklyn bridge. author ponders, if what she just said makes sense, if
she went out on a limb, while the clothing hammers around upstairs, swirling against the
machine. Whatever made her into a writer on suburbia, on domesticity, her world is the pulsating
of urban life, there is more fodder there, more change of scenes. A washing machine and the twirl
of clothes, there is just the static the stagnation of going on in circles. Anyhow, we have 11 434
here, time to save this save this, time to have tea with the empire cookie with raspberry filling
therein. 11 463, 11 463. Eleven four six three, yuh and yuh here. 11 475. 11 477. Itzehoe wits to
be described here.
21.
The rain is just coming down, without relent. In the room nearby, the telly is singing its songs to
empty seats. The writer heaps some more words onto the machine, that is how you entertain
yourself during a downpour. She could or she should scour the city looking for stuff to describe
later on in front of the typing machine. Stories worth reading. Stories worth for the retelling.
book 1 - october
1.

37

Kerouac penned On the Road in three weeks. Does that mean that any text that is written in
three weeks straight will automatically make it into the pantheon of world lit? Hardly.
She is once more sitting in the coffee shop on 23rd and 8th, outside, Chelsea is happening.
She hammers away at the keyboard, she is definitely no Jack Kerouac. Nope, she is merely an art
school dropout like any other. An aspiring animator, an aspiring filmmaker. An aspiring writer,
an aspiring actor. She stares outside, at the Breadstix Caf on the other side of the street. Nobody
calls med students aspiring doctors. Next time she comes to this world she will vie for a job in a
different field.
Outside, it is starting to rain. New York in October, not as nice as it should be. She feels
sick to her stomach, all the cool whip and ice cream did not agree with her. She has heart burn or
something, she had way too much food. The ice cream was overpriced and kind of yucky.
Brownie and Cookie Dough, and the cool whip tasted artificial and disgusting. Her arteries were
clogging up while she was leaning forward to do her typing. She moved to New York City in
order to make it in the arts, well, that did not work out. So, now it is back to writing. Literary arts
instead of visual arts, at least, you do not need a storage space for your work. A USB port will
do, no need to rent a warehouse for your damn sculptures.
2.
The sixth floor in Macys, she loves it here. She is sitting in her favorite chair, sipping
coffee, watching people walking by, looking at towels and bed stuff. This must be her favourite
space/spot in New York City, this chair here and the Laundromat on Eighth. This is what she
should describe in her writing, the going-ons in a department store. This is as good a subject
matter as any. Back in Vancouver, she wanted to write about gambling, some kind of story about
38

debauchery or something. About gambling, people love to read stuff about gamblers, about
misery, addiction, lives gone wrong. Worked for Dostojewski. She hung out around the casino in
Richmond, she used to park her car in Oakridge and take the Canada Line to Bridgeport, pay
extra for the Two-Zone pass. She lost a lot of money while playing the slots and she did not pen a
book. At least not one about gambling. She wrote a book about writing, about the misery of
writing. Which is not as sexy, not as dramatic as the misery of gambling. And that is how she
ended up as a not-yet-published writer, a hapless one.
A man and a woman are walking by, they could be tourists, they inspect the towels by
Ralph Lauren. The Signature Line.
3.
She is walking down 23rd., by the Home Depot, she is miserable. She is not good at
writing or painting or drawing, she is one of those eight million who are not taking Manhattan.
This city will eat you alive, that is what the woman said to George Costanza. Author here
watched a lot of TV, back home, King of Queens, Seinfeld, Friends. You do not need to live in
NYC, just turn on the telly, every other sitcom is celebrating the city anyways, you can listen to
Sinatra on You Tube, you do not really need to put your vagabond shoes on, somebody else did
that already and lived to write about it. She ponders, if her thoughts make sense, these days, a
constant feel of confusion is her eternal state, her slight dislocation, her utterly deafening
dislocation. Reality is so overrated, you don`t need it, you need to always feel a tad off. That is
the new normalcy, the Doors singing on strange days, Bob Dylan serenading weird days, every
artist worth her or his keep investigates the state of alienation, the utter off-ness of anyexistence.
Yup, normalcy is overrated. Misery breeds great works of art. She still can feel the ice cream and

39

the cool whip, she feels like barfing, she ponders, if that is enough to make her pen great texts,
that will propel her into the pantheon of world lit scribes. The brownies are fighting the cookie
dough, she is walking by the Doughnut Plant, this must be the first time that she is not tempted to
go in there. Way too sick, ah, way way too sick here.
book 2 - december
1.
She likes Turin. Italy, pizza, the like and the like. Given, the city has the feel of anycity, any
European city at least. At this point, after all her years in North America, Milan, Turin, they look
the same as Zurich, as Hamburg. They are first and foremost non-American, they are far away
from New York, far away from Vancouver. They are exotic. She walks by the Swatch store, by
the Victoria Secret store. Ok, so it feels a tad like Metrotown, like Burnaby, like anymall. And it
does not help that the Christmas carollers are doing Jingle Bells, but it is still as Italian as can be.
The Bicerin in the magnificent coffee house, one of many, one of many. Each coffee house here
is arguably palatial, each coffee drink is amazingly rich. She feels homesick and she does not
know where home is anymore. She likes that, this feel of not belonging anywhere. There is
something to be said for being a fish out of water, eternally, eternally. According to Wikipedia, a
bicerin is a drink in three layers, coffee, molten chocolate, whipped cream in a glass. The cream
is not over-whipped, though the one in her bicerin is kind of flocky, in little knots of cream, kind
of lumpy, granules of whipped cream lumps. The name of the glass is bicerin, apparently that is
why the drink is called that. A specialty of Torino, everywhere she goes there is another local
specialty. She eats too much these days, she drinks too much these days. Life is tough. She is
slightly tipsy, too much alcohol, red wine constantly. So many people in the streets, wow, the city

40

is bursting at its seams. X-mas shopping, X-mas shopping. The woman in the agroturismo near
Alba, the one with the cute hairdo, was all `` You came to Italy in winter. Why`` Apparently this
is not high season, if you are not a skier, but it is definitely fun. So many people, the city, the
city. She is losing her way, finding her way, she tries to take straight paths, so that she can find
her way back to the hotel. She knows, she is somewhere near the Po, but she does not go near to
the river in order not to lose her way. It is slightly cold, but not too much. Everybody is telling
her that it is exceptionally mild this December, she is pondering that a lot of Italian women are
sporting really cute haircuts a la Jennifer Lawrence or Kaley Cuoco. Or maybe those actresses
are sporting haircuts inspired by what is in in Milan, in Turin, in Alba, in Asti. Author here has
not been back to Italy since what seems like the ice age. She is so much older, fifty, sixty years
maybe. But, hey, you feel ageless when you are travelling, that is what dislocation does to you.
And the constant supply of Barolo. And to think, that merely two days ago, she had not even
heard of Barolo. Tipsiness seems to become her.
book 3 - january
1.
Vegas, huh. Well, she overslept New Year`s Eve, Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin had to do
their spiel without her, the ball can drop just as well without her. She woke up at two thirty, made
her way down to the casino. Wow, everyone is still awake, lots of people are sporting HAPPY
NEW YEAR hats, glittery, sparkly. Author really likes this particular hotel, it is unpretentious,
full of people that have seen better days, just like her. The donut in the 24-7 bagel stop is utterly
greasy and yummy and artery clogging, just as we like it. Vegas, huh, Vegas. She ponders if she
should have watched THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, who knows when and if she will be

41

able to watch it back home. The hotel has a movie theater adjacent to the casino, but, hey, maybe
sleeping all thru Sylvester is the best way to go. She walks by the slots, watches the Russian
Roulette crowd, the Crap table crowd, she ponders what to write her book on, sits down and has
a cup of tea. Another year, still another year.
2.
On the telly, the news. Vacay time is over, time to pen the next amazing all-whichever country of
origin - novel, the next best thing since sliced bread. Or however the saying goes. She could
google it, nowadays you can google everything and anything. 1509 words down, we have to still
feed a tad more words to the machine here, we have to find antagonists and protagonists, after all
the writing cannot be all over the place or can it. Coherence equals boredom equals nonartsyness.
3.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT on the telly. Background music to her creative endeavour, the
laugh tracks that propel her words forward, might as well, might as well. Ah, who cares, the only
thing that counts is, well, the wordcount. And we are standing at 1595 here.
book 4 february
1.
Rain like always, it is Vancouver after all. Her art career is going nowhere, her writing career is
going nowhere. So this is how retirement feels like, retirement from soccermomdom. She starred
in a play at the local community center, she always forgot her lines. Apparently, acting is not her
thing, it is a life suited for individuals with better memories. The Argo Caf around the corner of
42

the artschool, she plays around with her brownie, sips her peppermint tea out of the oversized
cup. It is ten in the morning, rain is streaming down, not many persons are in this place. She feels
slightly nauseated, tinges of impending barfing mix in with the miserable weather, ah, this is fun,
this is fun.
2,
So maybe there is something to be said for being unpublished. Unsuccessful at what you are
doing for a living or as a hobby. A failure. You cannot have pretensions or maybe you can have
more pretension than suits you. In order to compensate. After all, you yourself are aware that you
have penned a ton of books, ten to be precise. More than the other mere mortals. You were able
to fashion ten texts, each 300 pages long. Ten dissertations. That all resemble each other. An
oevre. That rots in the basement, that klimpers away in the cloud. In some kind of storage.
Instead of being published and neatly bound to then rot away on a dusty bookshelf on the fifth
floor of the public library. Like Rosss dissertation, Ross from Friends. Anyhoo, she is back at
the typer, after a foray into the real world, an excursion into safewayland and YMCA-land.
Where boredom rules. Familiar faces, people slinging coffee or sweeping floors. Real jobs that
pay a certain amount of money, not just wasting your life fabricating words that are there for the
birds. Author looks at all the plants on the floor, the ones that are guarded by the person she lives
with. She is happy, she has a project again, hammering a certain amount of words into the
machine, an increment of 1500 words per day, for the next three months or so. Something to
keep her busy, to give her life structure. A raison detre, albeit a shifty one. And we have 1967 and we are outta here, were outta here.
3.

43

Itzehoe, once more. Back in the coffee house in Northern Germany, ten in the morning, Rain, the
woman at the fashion place across the street, in here, the waitress with the bored face, the three
women chattering up a storm near the window. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever ever changes.
She has 2075 words, well, at least her text marches forward. The wordcount changes, well,
maybe that is all we need here.
book 5 - march
1.
Back on the green couch, typing words up while watching Jeopardy. Nothing to write about, now
there is an ad for a deodorant flimmering over the screen. It has penguins in it, dont ask why.
Author here ponders how she can rationalize a book that jumps around between all kinds of
different locales, constantly, constantly. Each scene is in a different place, there is no real
cohesion between all of the scenes. Ah, might as well, might as well. And jeopardy is still
singing its songs, Alex Trebek is rocking away.
2.
The Macidees in Metrotown, a filet-o-fish and a cappuccino. So many people, so many many
people. You can describe them in detail, their attires, their mannerisms. You can make up stories
bout their lives, if you so please. Everything neatly typed up, the world, life, one letter at a time.
In order to make sense of this twirling planet, in order to increment her days.
3.
Back in the coffee shop in reykjavik, on a busy Saturday afternoon. Shoppers galore, she likes
hanging out in this space, listening in to conversation fragments that she cannot decipher. She
44

plays around with her coffee, twirling her right finger around the rim of the cup, silently, quietly,
pensively. Nice to hang out in an ah so busy place while you can rest because nobody bothers to
bother you, you can daydream as much as you want, you are a fly on the wall in this oasis so
very far from normalcy, from reality. Where everyone knows Icelandic exept for her. Where she
can hum silently to herself while typing up her text, while the servers clapper around, balancing
dishes in their starched aprons. Iceland rocks, kaffitar in bankastraeti 8, her home away from
home. The cheesecake is heavenly, the cappuccino has a heart shape inscribed into the foam, in
mokkacolor, beigeish. Life is good, ah, life is good here. good here.
4.
butter on mc kenzie and 33rd. an empire cookie and a chamomile tea. Afternoon, two-ish.
neighbourhood gossip, the stories of Vancouver. The day that rests in midair, that waits for
moments, for moments.
book 6 april
1.
The quiet sleepiness of a stroll around the neighbourhood, tree lined streets, the sun that is
shining. The empire cookie in the cutest little bakery, the peppermint tea in the white-ish china.
This is bliss or utter boredom, the bus at the station, this is a village street outside of the city, the
pulsating city, where everything is happening, where life is not at a standstill like it is here in the
rural oasis slash boonies, where nada is happening, where soaps are the only distraction or laughs
on Seinfeld reruns. Her typing is the only noise here, maybe she could listen in to sinatra, in
order to staccato up the silence. Human beings need motion, excitement, adventure, writing is the
quietest of all the artforms anyways, deafening in its utter dullness, in the mere prosaicness that
45

consists of pressing down squares with faded letters on them. Longhand would be good, the
distraction that comes with using up differing pens with differing inks, the interest that is
provided by using different pieces of paper, white ones, lined ones, the adventures of all the
coffee houses all over town, the nice ones, the ugly ones. You can write at night, when the city is
asleep, you can travel the world in order to find words to feed into the machine. Yup, this is
writing writing writing writing writing, huh.
2.
Union Square. new york city. The bathroom has a long line, she makes her way to one of the
benches on the second floor of Whole Foods, overlooking union square. Her notebook, might as
well, she can transcribe this at a later date, sometimes in the future. It is two in the afternoon,
sunny, Wednesday-ish. Nothing really happening, on the telly bill de blasio answering once more
questions about the snowfail 2015. Isnt that getting old, he stated it once better safe than
sorry, how come this is still an issue. Author here types and types, she will later on walk up 14th,
all the way to the apple store, your body needs exercise after all after all. She might hang around
the meatpacking, lick an ice cream on one of the chairs. If she has the energy, she might head
down to the high line, up to the high line, this is nyc after all, where you walk and walk until you
fall to the ground and disintegrate. Happily, happily. Her writing sucks, too much kitschiness, too
much schmalziness. No hibrow insights, no lobrow insights. They have all been penned already,
sung already. How can you describe the usual in better words, in newer words. Everything worth
observing has been observed already, everything has been done before. Nothing new under the
sun, that is how it is that is how it is. She should describe other persons, male ones, young ones,
old ones. Instead of deciphering what it is in eatery one, in eatery two, three, yelp describes the
vodka pizza in artichoke already, the one that is near to avenue A. She has lots of words now, her
46

right middle finger is starting to act up, she should spoon her hippy-mippy grain food out of the
ochre carton, she could go over the street to barnes and noble, look at all of the books that are
written by all those people that are not her. Her grammar is off, but who cares, this is how it is
how it is how it is how it is how it is. 3008, we are done 4 today, yay and yay and yay and yay
and yay.
book 7 may
1.
Once more in the coffee place in Reykjavik, her favourite hangout. It is a Monday morn, a weird
time to have coffee in a strange city. but, hey, the hotel is nearby, she adores people watching and
it keeps her from humming to herself while typing. In a coffee house youve gotta behave, sit
straight up, make sure not to drool, not to spill your food. You have to act in a civilized manner,
whatever that is. you have to stay awake, for moments, for moments. You have to dress up nicely
or borderline nice, wear lipstick, comb your hair and if you are lucky, you will be able to sell the
words that you are penning, eventually, eventually. It just takes a tad of planning, a bit of luck,
perseverance, the like and the like. Maybe even an antagonist to hiccup the story at hand. And
3372 we have and we have here, time to wrap this up, 4 now, for now.
2.
Once more, the coffee house in Itzehoe. It is over described, so many words to recreate thps very
same place. Author here has a chamomile tea, she could describe the whiff, the ornamental
steam. Not enough to carry a story, a gripping narrative. Writing is not all that it is made up to be,
author here has problems with the words, the sentences. The women near the window are
chattering away like always, something is burning in the kitchen. The waitress has her expression
47

of utter boredom mixed with slight contempt. Outside rain, yup, what else is new. Hardly anyone
is in the streets and this is the main street of this silent place. Maybe quietness will make author
here write better, colourful stuffi-muffi. It is ten, the woman in pink and blue opens up the
fashion store across the street. The day starts up for her, but how many sales will she really have?
Most of her customers are better off to make the train ride down to Hamburg in order to shop for
new clothes. Maybe, the fashion in/fashion out store caters more to the tourists who come out
here over the weekend, from Hamburg to boot. Nobody shops in the store next door, it is the old
switcheroo. Author ponders if she really has to fill the page with useless, nonsensical
observations about clothes shopping, with words about the steam coming from a hot beverage.
Who would want to read this? A mere exercise in expression, typing away until something good
crystallizes. That is not how writing is done, you have to have an outline, you cannot just type
away and hope for the best, let the words feed upon each other, let the narrative grow organically.
Or can you? A book chockfull with descripts of different coffee places the world over. Confusion
sets in, slightly slightly. And we have 3502 words here, well, at least this marches forward pretty
nicely pretty nicely.
3.
Butter, on 33rd and Mac Kenzie. It is nice, mayflowers, yup, the ones that follow April showers.
The woman at the other table is sporting a flowery dress and a straw hat, very summery, though
it is still spring, technically. Her friend is having cheese cake, with tons of whipped cream
thereon. Outside the bus stops, the one that is going up to Marpole. There is not much to describe
here except that time is standing still in this place, in here it is all about resting, about having a
respite against the real world. Where there are no flowery wall papers, no doilies, no sugary
desserts, no teacups filled to the brim with herbal tea.
48

4.
The coffee house near the Skytrain station, the one on Broadway. Hot chocolate, medium, with
whip. There is a choice of dark, white or milk, milk is by far the best. Outside, Broadway is
happening, utter busyness with a tad of drizzly rain. It is ten in the morning, office people,
construction workers, nurses on their way to VGH. Not exactly the best space for a writer, or
maybe the only space for a writer. Where words are sparkling in the air, only to be grabbed and
be put to paper. Where stories can be fashioned without even trying, where award winning books
can be penned easy-peasy. Outside the rain drizzles down, oblivious to anything.
5.
Once more, the seat near the window overlooking Union Square. A muffin, a roibos tea, a writing
pad, a pen with green ink. These are her days, motioning around, writing and writing and writing
and writing.
book 8 june
1.
in the art school again, a serious woman next to her. Author was at the dentist, at the Y, at the
coffee shop that dispenses hot choco with whip. Not for free, mind you. But chocolate
nonetheless. They destroy chocolate chips and mix it in with milk. An artery clogging
concoction. On Broadway, huh. It is a pretty depressing place, everyone seems down on their
luck. Before that, she was at the coffee house near her house. A banana loaf for breakfast. A hot
chocolate for lunch. A dental technician cleaning her teeth, making them hurt, slightly, rubbing
up against the nerve endings and saying sorry. Author here ponders if she should title this very

49

book from coffee house to coffee house. Seems like a catchy enough title. Would it attract the
wrong crowd, the right crowd? For her, anycrowd would be just fine. There is no target audience.
The target audience is the world. Anyreader would do, should do. Anyone willing to sit thru
reading her dribble. Those are our pips. She feels blue, melancholic. Roaming the planet while
being unpublished does that 2 yer. Unpublisheddom is hell. Or something like that. An artiste
without audience. Then again, it is highly debatable if she is an artiste, a wordsmith, a poet, a
writer. She ponders, each of those words has its own connotations. Her grammar is off, so much
she knows. A writer with off-grammar, well, good luck with that. Maybe it is good to treat the
language nonchalantly, rules are there to be broken, words are there to be thrown around. After
the dentist she walked into the coffee shop on 33rd, it was way too crowded for ten in the morn.
Yup, these are her observations, useless observations, non-insights. Her writing will not start a
revolution, not even a commotion. It just exists, one expression of someone on this planet. An
ant, a mouse. One of 8 mill, make that 8 bill. She ponders what else to feed to the machine. She
stares at the diet-ad on the screen, before and after, fatty in bikini, potential victoria secret model
in bikini. So weird. Who wants to wear a bikini anyways? It is way too chilly for bikinis in here.
People do not want to lose weight to wear a bikini, did Governor Christie have lap band surgery
to wear a bikini? Really. The only reason why people want to lose weight are health reasons.
Walking easier, breathing easier. Bikini, what a bunch of croq. Anyhoo, we have 4212 here,
pretty good for a book that did not even exist three days ago. It is still all over the place though,
jumping around weirdly and strangely. Author here ponders if she can use this place, it is after all
for students or/and staff. She is none of those, merely alumna. Well, might as well, might as well.
2.

50

Itzehoe, Itzehoe once more. Rain, reluctant one. After all, it is summer already. The waitress with
the bored face is smiling. What went wrong? The three women are chattering near the window,
do they ever go home? Is this their second home? What do they have to discuss here day-in and
day-out? The fashiony woman across the street is all in beige today, she opens the door of her
store, it is ten in the morning. Author here types up some lines, she will make sure to catch the
11:30 back to Hamburg. Her Danish has raisins in it today, not exactly her first choice. A cheese
Danish would have been better, but they were out. Itzehoe, huh. Author here hardly knows this
city, she just comes here to type up a certain amount of words, so that she can call herself a
writer. So that she can mimic a productive life, even if nobody ever reads this. We have to go
through the motions, that is where it is at. The end product is irrelevant, what counts is the
journey. The quest for perfection that will never be achieved. Unachievable goals, they are the
best. Reach out for the stars but make sure that you do not fall down. Or something like that.
Somebody wrote a poem like that in her scrapbook back in high school. The rain is coming down
outside, more forcefully than before. She is out of words, for now and for now here.
3.
nyc, union square, the seat overlooking the street. On the second floor of Whole Foods, the sun is
shining, a wonderful summer day in June. It is a tad too stuffy, too sticky in here, it is eleven in
the morn. She has 4566 words, by now and by now.
book 9 july
1.
Amsterdam, her favourite seat in her favourite caf. Well, technically, it is not a caf, it is the
chocolate bar in the high-end department store near Centraal. But she loves it here, she can watch
51

people rush by, the busyness of this very city. Amsterdam is where its at, her favourite city on
the planet. Just make sure to not get overrun by a bike.
2.
Reykjavik, the cappuccino with the heart shape on it, the cheese cake with the runny whip. Bliss,
huh.
3.
Copenhagen, a beer in the middle of town. On a sunny day, outside. Being a writer is fun, she
heaps on the words onto the paper, while sipping her beer. Well, more like chugging, beer is not
there to be sipped.
book 10 august
1.
4747 words, somehow this text is running away, vying for a life all its own. Galloping thru a
year, galloping all over the planet. Coherence is so yesterday.
2.
on the flight out of JFK en route to Milan. The food is good and way too rich. Hardly any
turbulence as of yet. On the telly, THE DESCENDANTS. Who would cheat on George Clooney,
who in her right mind, that is.
3.

52

Once more, a Bicerin. Outside, Torino is happening. Author here travels a lot these days not that
that translates into good writing. It kind of numbs yer, overstimulation does not translate into
fantastic choice of words. After a while all your senses go dull.
book 10 november
1.
4287 words, somehow the chaptering of this text got a life of its own. She is once more back in
the art school, in the place where it all began. Where she suddenly noticed that she is better with
words than with forms and shapes. Somehow she has to go back to visual stuffi-muffi, it is more
up her alley. If that makes sense, if that makes sense. In drawing you can be much more forceful,
with words, you have to tread lightly.
2.
4908, 4908. So near to 5 thou, write on and type on here.
3.
How to not become an artstar a manual for failure, now there is a catchy title for this text.
Anyhow, she was in the safeway next door, the whole high school crowd of PEE OH DOUBLEYOO descending on it, lunchtime, lunchtime. What will come of all these youngens, will they
end up in a writing job like yours truly, an unpaid one? Will they eventually expire in one of the
two retirement homes around the corner of the high school? Cycle of life, ah, cycle of life. author
is back at the typer, it is ah so sunny outside, not exactly the atmosphere in which to sit in a
darkened room and let the hunched overness flow into words on a monitor, writing, a solitary
confinement job, a hapless one. An unthankful one. words that may or may not have meaning, an
53

exercise in futility. Author checked out the titles, the headlines near the,well, check-out in the
grocery store, one of the kardashians, bruce jenner becoming a woman, kim is furious, or is it the
mother with the short hair, not the booty, then there was something about a tv-rerun of a show,
breaking bad-spinoff, something about weightloss, how the weight just falls off, and a smiling
woman in a blue flowery dress next to that headline, the check out girlwas extra perky, author
had coffee and banana loaf, and she is now shopping for two tv-dinners. Have a nice day, I will,
after all, I will just pop my food into the microwave just like it is intended to be. have life spans
increased or decreased since the advent of microwaving, now there is a question that should be
researched, that should garner some grant moneyfor questioning, author is very bad with her
words today, she knows what she wants to say, but will any reader be able to follow this? 5233,
maybe, we should propel this down to 8 thou by the end of this glorious Friday, while the sun is
shining outside, while she is sitting in here contorted at her work bench, at the typing machine.
The stark plants against the window, the paper basket on the floor, the sound of keys being
pushed down, irregularly but incessantly nonetheless. life is happening somewhere outside, the
writer sits in here oblivious to all that is going on out there. the world, the world, with all its
facets, far away countries, far away sights. and 1327 it is and it is here.
4.
Ah to describe the familiar, the coffee house in itzehoe, the rain, the fashion woman, waitress,
women near the window, cheese danish crumbling away whilst one pokes the fork into the
mushy, gooey part of it. strange familiarity of a fictional place, one that one can easily look at on
you tube, reality mushes with illusion, just like it should be, just like it is. we always live part in
our thoughts, in our own little world and part in what is around us, concretely, realistically.
Author ponders, the danish is kind of stale, weirdly so, she has to catch the train back to
54

hamburg, eventually, eventually. nope, she did not become a visual artist, yes, she became a
writer and god only knows how that relates to her description of this coffee house. Seems that all
her thoughts are dancing around, she has to have a real story for this, maybe, different writers in
different places all vying for the same goal, writing a readable text, and then some kind of
intertwining of lives, people meeting up, interacting, author ponders, she is more the kind of
writer who loves to describe concrete stuff, a danish, a curtain, the rain. Anyhow, the wordcount
stands at five five four one, short pangs of feels of accomplishment set in, set in here. she should
walk through the november rain in this city, feel the wetness against her scalp, her nose, her face,
freshness will automatically translate into newer words, better words. it is ten to eleven, the train
will leave at twelve oh five.
5.
Once more, reykjavik. Bankastrati, the coffee house on bankastrati. Bliss or something. two in
the afternoon, make that three thirty. on a Friday in november. You have to peel out of your outer
layers, after all, this is Iceland. Where everything is icy. But come to think of it, it is pretty
mellow here, it is actually seven degrees Celsius, and everybody is telling her that that is a pretty
good temperature for this time of year. the sun is shining so that makes everything happier, more
on the mellow side. Besides, isnt it fun to say REYKJAVIK. Author here does not know the
meaning of the word, but she sure knows the meaning of the word cappuccino and she is having
one right now, all foam and heart shaped picture on it. yup, her writing has come to this,
describing coffee pics and coffee houses, no pressing issues for her. the everyday, that is where it
is at. Though, trechnically, having a sip of coffee in Iceland is pretty damn exotic. She listens in
to the chatter around her, the background music that she cannot decipher and that lets her
concentrate on her typing. The place is full of middle aged women, getting some respite from the
55

tough task of shopping. anyhow, write on and write on here, we have 5815, pretty good huh,
pretty good. yuh.
6.
A short drive to the Y, then down to arbutus to fuel up, then a drive to the coffee house on 33rd.,
they are out of empire cookies, so it is a sugar and butter cookie, pretty overpriced what with 2
bucks for one lousy cookie. But it is damn good. she[ponders, why does she suddenly use bad
language, damn and lousy, she looks at the trees while she drives, in one street they are all
crooked, whereas in the other one they are all straight. Comparing tree forms now there is a
subject matter that keeps on giving. Back into the tiny den to her space at the computer, her neck
hurts, contorted typing does that to yer. and 5946 it is it is here.
7.
On the telly, big bang. Laughtracks, the like and the like, a car commercial, a soap commercial, a
barbecued wings commercial. An afternoon like many, repetitive words like many.
book 11 - spring
1.
Way too foggy outside. she drove up to the coffee house, it was not open as of yet, she drove
down to the other coffee house which was open. Women behind the counter, men having coffee.
Gender lines seem to be intact, nothing ever changes. She ponders, writing is basically a female
quest, what with the stereotype of women to be overly chatty. This chapter is about spring, which
is weird because her first chapters were all about different months. There should be a certain
cohesion in the way that a text is organized, you cannot really get away by calling it artsy if there
56

are inconsistencies in the logic how you organize the different parts of a text. There should be a
symmetry, which mirrors the logic of the text. It there is no order in the way a text is arranged
then we have only chaos, only anarchy. Author ponders, this is really shitty, All she writes about
is the outer form of the text. That happens when you do not really have anything to say but you
have to come up with a certain amount of words before you start up dinner. And today is cooking
day, she will have company over so there better be some kind of edible food. Something
borderline good, not too salty. There is an open house in the fitness center on Dunbar, we could
check it out, maybe that in itself will result in a higher degree of fitness. The driving there, after
all we will push down the gas pedal with the right foot or is it the left one? anyhow, 6258, outta
here and outta here.
2.
Itzehoe again. women near the window, danish, waitress. Rain, fashion store lady in pink and
blue. Quite a fashion forward combination, her stockings are two-colored. Rings around her legs,
green and orange. Somehow it is an overload of colours, especially because she is wearing a
white pillbox hat with feathers. All and all it looks more like a style disaster than a fashion
statement. Seems that even the three chattering women are noticing, they usually are just talking
away oblivious to what is happening around them. The door opens, two construction workers
come in, order something in German. Author ponders what else to write about, she has to
produce a certain amount of words before heading back to Hamburg.
3.
The coffee house in bankastrati, people talking in Icelandic, the utter bliss of dislocation. Today
she is having a way too rich chocolate cake, torte with ample amounts of cream. Too rich food,
57

you will die laughing and happy. And way too young, grease and sugar does that to you. Your
heart will give out ahead of time, even though you are not doing anything tough, no manual
labour here, merely typing, merely typing.
4.
The seat near the window overlooking union square, she is waiting for words that can be put
neatly together in interesting sentences. Her fight with the words, the eternal struggle. No
accolades for her, not even a seat in the MFA program at Columbia. Her creative writing
excursions only take her to this place where she is sipping lavender scented tea and is having a
dry muffin with too much bran in it. With the lovely taste of stale cardboard, well, at least it is
healthy. New York in spring, she should write something about that. As if there are not enough
writers who have eternalized this very place, have sung its accolades, have demonized her. New
York City in spring. Author knows that her grammar is off, it always is, functioning grammar is
for the birds. Her back tinges hurtingly, typing does that to yer. 6601, write on and type on here.
5.
The coffee place in Oakridge, in the mall. All the regulars, all the individuals in their golden
years. This is not a space that makes for poetic writing, lyrical stuffi-muffi is so very antithetical
to a typical mall. She is having coffee and a muffin, maybe a donut would be even better. More
mall-ishy.
6.
A rainy day in Vancouver. February second. it does not quite go with the title of this very book,
this very chapter. But it is close. Author here woke up, brushing of teeth, shower, getting dressed,

58

a comb thru the hair, the usual. Outside, greyness, the rain, the usual. Starting up the car, driving
to oakridge, parking next to the BAY. A coffee in safeway, a banana loaf. Taking the Canada line
down to broadway, paying taxes in city hall, after that is done, a hot chocolate in blenz. With
whip. A table that looks out at broadway, ppl walking by thru the drizzling rain. This is next to
vgh, so you see ppl. who look as if they do there or come from there. and back to Canada line,
she goes downtown. Has a filet ofish, then a donut and a cappuccino. Calorie overload. Then
back to the Y, a weigh-in, then back to this space in front of the computer. this is what writers do,
they roam the city only to end up writing about it. a very weird excursion, observing, looking
around. What are you looking at? Inspiration, what kind of artiste needs inspiration, should you
not have ample amounts of inspiration from the get-go. The idea is that you are a creative genius
and that is what sets you apart from the other noncreative geniuses on this planet. The persons
who do other things and then come home and pick up your book for entertainment. Author
ponders, she is not quite sure if this is how it works. she is tired from basically roaming the city
aimlessly, for four hours straight. There is this idea that motion and movement translates
automatically into good writing or into good drawing. There are all these philosophies about how
to maximize creative output. Author here is kind of sceptical, if you need that, chances are you
are not that good at what you do in the first place. anyhow, it is still so very rainy outside, so very
very grey. There is an artist forum at six, a woman talking about her stuff. mostly sculptures, she
is pretty famous in town which kind of is a turn-off. the most famous ones in this city are usually
the most boring ones. the ones that merely conform to the zeitgeist and whatever goes with the
political agenda of the ruling class. it kind of is bad for art, as if artists are some kind of jesters,
some kind of handmaidens of kings and queens. Anyhow, be that as it may, it is raining and
raining and raining here.

59

6.
The coffee house in reykjavik. The one on bankastrati. Her favourite seat, today it is cheese cake
with raspberry sauce. A cappuccino with a heart in the foam, a white heart in beige foam.
everything tastes delish. Which might not be that good for writing, isn`t suffering the stuff that
makes for excellent words. not cheesecake and foamy coffee in a nice enough konditorei in a
nice enough part of town, in a town you took a nice jetplane to get there, fly emirates. She flew
out of jfk, to Milan, then she took the train, then a ferry. A nice voyage, nice food all the way,
how can this possibly translate into good enough writing. maybe she should try her hand at
travelwriting, something a tad more sophisticated than yelp reviews or trip adviser reviews. Or
google reviews, or trivago reviews. She listens in to sinatra belting out new york new york, she is
using those green ear phones that kind of poke her ears. Weird to listen to a song about new york
while you are in reykjavik. The women at the other table are showing each other what they
shopped for, hunters after the hunting and gathering is over. Around the fireplace, make that
around the coffee klatschy place. with doilies and cheese cake and lots of whipped cream. author
has 7387 words, she feels a tad happy, her words might not make sense but they are definitely
accumulating. Nobody can accuse her of not trying, of not logging in the hours. maybe that is
how writers should be judged, by the amount of hours they spend at the typing machine. Kind of
like pilots, such and such flight hours. same for crew. Anyhow, still typing, while the rain goes
down on reykjavik.
book 12 summer
1.

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The little writing place off 14th. on the third floor. All these aspiring writers in new york city,
none of them successful as of yet. the future fame and fortune persons of america, the struggling
nobodies of today. Obscure and obsolete. Author likes it here, there is a whiff of hope and a whiff
of desperation, equally distributed, she will attend a reading in THE STRAND, it starts at seven.
So she can still kill time, eat the three mini cupcakes she got from BAKED BY MELISSA
downstairs. The one with carrot cake taste is good, though the pieces of carrot dislodge in
between one`s teeth. Anyhow, it is nice here, chilly from the air conditioner, outside, the city is
way too hot, nyc in july, wow, wow. Talk about heat wave. She types and types, maybe she
should go out onto 14th., she can wander around for moments and then flee from the heat into mc
donalds or the drugstore on the other side of union square. big corporations usually have good air
conditioning, tiny shops not so much. thus it is kind a atypical that this writing space has such
good air conditioning, author ponders if that is something to write on, waste some more words on
insignificant observations, try to stretch the sentences as much as you can. a writer is a person
alone in a room who has too much to say and nobody to listen to her. or him, for that matter.
Anyhow, we have 7659 words here, time to wrap this up, for now and for now here.
2.
Butter, on 33rd. and Mackenzie, two in the afternoon, an empire cookie and a green tea. The street
outside is happening slowly, the hours stretching sleepily. Later on she will catch the 22,
languidly taking her by kits beach and spitting her out in front of the big hotel. The Meridian, the
Sutton Hotel, it always changes names. The tall one on Burrard, though there are more than one
tall ones. anyhoo, back to sinking the tiny shiny fork into the empire cookie, raspberry filling,
shiny almond marzipan glaze. The women at the other table are busy with gossip, they are
sporting flower dresses and sunhats. They look like caricatures of women of leisure, though they
61

might have other more substantial occupations. Something a tad more gritty than forking over
your husband`s millions to some willingish merchants. Author ponders, does anything she writes
make any sense. nah. Coherence is not her thing, that is not the kind of writing we do here. that is
not how we roll. creative writing can be borderline stupid, that is what makes it charming. Or
nonsensical, for that matter. It is supposed to go with the doilies in this too over flowered space
here. a bakery at two in the afternoon. and we have 7883 words here, type on and write on and
write on here.
3.
A basement in Brooklyn. Williamsburg hipsters, open mike. Seven minutes of poetry each, there
is a sign-up sheet, you have to be there in time. the lighting is sparse, it starts at seven. Author
here feels out of place, she just wants to listen. She has done readings back home, twice, no,
make that three times. was pretty good, with varying success, though. depending on the words
she read. Obviously, you get better reviews for better words. they will laude yer or chide yer
depending on what you present to them. after all, they are total strangers, thus you should go for
it, prepare to read your bestest words, the foolproof ones, the ones that fly with any audience.
any place, anywhere. anyhow, today she is just here to observe, a fly on the wall with an artsy
chapeau.
4.
Still summer. even itzehoe has is sunny days, sans rain. The fashion store though is still
happening, the cheese danish too. the city is kind of charming, sun makes it blossom. Italy in
northern germany, a funny mix. Sunny days in this part of the world are so atypical, at least that
is how author here sees it. She usually is in this place when it rains down, her words are usually
62

propelled forward by the motion of the raindrops, somehow, the sun is anticlimactic to her way
of writing. summer in itzehoe seems to make her lazy, more prone to languidly weird words,
overdrawn sentences with too many adjectives in them that are of no use whatsoever.
5.
8155.
6.
Pretty drizzly and grey for summer. author here gets thru the motions, gets ready, has breakfast in
the coffee house, goes to the gym, has a cookie in the bakery pondering that this is definitely not
what you would call a nutritious breakfast, she drives back home and turns on the telly which
sings to her while she types. This is how writing works, you get ready and finally end up in front
of the typing machine hoping for the best. for inspired words or something. a very prosaic
undertaking more like physical amassing of certain units to build up a bigger unit. She will do
some readings, eventually eventually. listen in to the polite clapping of hands, get a participation
medal. On the telly, king of queens, laugh tracks here.
7.
union square, brooding and hot. the farmers market, lavender ice cream made in Vermont. New
york city happening, she flees from the heat into the Duane Greene. Walks the aisles, gets tooth
floss, waxed, thin. The heat is doing her in, is doing this city in. summer in the city, definitely.
Walk by sprinklers, by lawn sprinklers. Any kind of sprinklers. 8351 words, type on and type on
here.
8.
63

Bankastrati coffee house, reykjavik in july. Pretty hot given that this place is called Iceland. The
raspberries on the cheesecake, the heart on the cappuccino.
9.
And once more, itzehoe. The repetitiveness gives her life structure, her writing structure. Maybe
structure to the ying yang. Time to catch the train back to Hamburg.
10.
Turin, the Caf de Torino. The hot drink with whip on top, hot chocolate, coffee, cream beaten
just to the point of solidifying. In a glass so you can admire the three distinct layers of dark
brown, light brown and egg shell white. hmm, yum, yelp will like it.
11.
Sitting in the back of the library in the art school, near the two copy machines, the black and
white one and the color one. thinking about all of her rejection slips, nobody wants to publish her
dribble. Which is not interfering with her ability to write and/or her want to write. gotta thrive on
negativity, on disillusionment. What else can you do. dust yerself off and start marching, soldier.
8508, ten times this and we have enough words to call this a novel. yeah, why not and why not
here.
12.
The movie thater in the mall in Burnaby. a rerun of the theory of everything, the movie she
wanted to watch in winter but never came around to. people sitting in the dark, munching on
popcorn, watching eddy something. an oscar winning performance. Author here had raisinettes,
chocolate and raisins therein. next time she will have nuts with chocolate around it. she is having
64

her sweets with a hot tea, peppermint flavor. She is not concentrating on the stuff that is
happening on the screen, the sheer experiencing of the movie theater is more gripping, more
interesting than the eeriness of the disease depicted on the screen. There is something frightening
and unsettling about seeing someone that disabled, it makes you thankful for being able to come
here to the cold theater in the hot of july. To come here on your own two feet by your own
volition. Anyhow, the sounds of people chewing on their kernels mixes in with the sounds of the
movie. Later on, she will get back to the typing machine to feed her words to it.
13.
8710 eight seven ten.
14.
THE WIRED MONK in Kits, she gets up in front of people and starts reading from her paper.
she tries to make the right face, hit the right pauses, intonate at the right moments. After seven
minutes the nightmare is over. Clapping, reluctantly. she walks back to her seat on the far left.
15.
On the telly, mike and molly.
book 12 + 1 spring
1.
it is rainy, she rolled outta bed, picked out something that fits and is clean enough, lets the brush
glide through her hair to evoke the illusion of detanglement, makes her way downstairs, out of
the house into the drizzly mass that is pouring down thinking if drizzle can really pour down or if

65

that description is oxymoric. Oxymoronic. The day is blah and blue, she fires up the car,
somehow it makes its way to the parking space in oakridge, she glides out, thru the department
store by the dresses in neat rows, the escalator is still not working, you have to stumble down the
stairs. A coffee and a banana bread, actually the chain of events was totally different. She had
her coffee in safeway on arbutus, she went to oakridge later on in the day. She bought an empire
cookie in butter on 33rd and Mackenzie and she went to the y in order to weigh herself. Then she
walked over to langara by the display thingies, she then had her cookie there. Finally, back to the
Canada line station, getting out at broadway, a hot chocolate with whip in blenz. Then taking the
bus down to the art school and now she somehow ended up in front of a computer, her writing
shift begins. Yup, that is how we are functioning here, logging in shifts in order to amass
enoughish words to send out to potential publishers. And the rain is still drizzling down and
drizzling down here.
2.
9059
3.
itzehoe, the repetitiveness will do her in. the Danish with a cheese filling, a quark filling. The
peppermint tea, its whiffs. Three women chattering up a storm near the window, a waitress with
an everbored overbored face. Fashion woman in pink and green, opening her store at ten in the
morn. This is the city that makes author here write, relentlessly, reluctantly. With whiffs of
disillusionment, submerged in an air of despair. But, hey, the words accumulate and that should
be good enough for any writer, for any reader. The audience can disappear, we will still give our

66

concerts here to empty seats, to tomatoes and eggs that fly towards us. the show must go on,
something like that, something of that kind here.
4.
bankastrati, reykjavik. Nice to be in a place called Iceland, ah so nice. The romanticism of a
space named reykjavik, it is especially bohemian, especially romantic when you have come from
far away. If you are not born and bred, if you are a lowly foreign element that watches her
surroundings, observes, takes notes, a self-proclaimed journalist that is busily hastily talking
notes in her notebook. Author sinks her upper lip into the beige heart inscribed into the
cappuccino foam, she plays with her cheesecake, makes it crumble under the silver plated cake
fork. Reykjavik makes her happy. Makes her observe the ritual of writing.
5.
union square, the seat near the window looking out at the square. Her laptop, her letters emerging
outta nowhere on the monitor. Her writing shift starts up, she could care less if she will ever be
published. There are zillions of spaces on this planet where she can just read to a crowd, open
mike spaces, artsy basements, university foras, panel discussion spaces, art galleries, art schools.
First time she did a reading was on the fourth floor of the south building on Granville island, the
painting studio is a good enough space as any. She just arranged the chairs in rows, then she read
to the other students. She kept them entertained for ten minutes then she told them to look at her
artwork. Works every time, make people sit down, read your words and then either let them get
up to look at images on the wall or feed them something nice that does not crumble, finger food,
chocolate, cookies. They are polite, they will clap at your stuff, because, after all, you clap at
their stuff. This is how it works in the arts nowadays, it is all reciprocal. Reciprocal.
67

6.
she is now at the other computer in the art school. First she was at the middle computer in the
back, then the librarian asked the people at the computers to leave because there will be a class
that starts at one, she did not really shoo the users of the computers away, she made it more
sound as if the class will disturb the users of the computers, anyhoo, whatever the intent was,
author made her way to this computer over here facing the ocean factory, though if push comes
to shove she would have loved to listen in to the class, it was all about Stefan sagmeister and
other graphic design icons. Anyhoo, anyhoo. Let us digress here, let us digress here. Seems the
class is about artist books because the librarian is arranging a ton of artist books on what used to
be the big square light table in the back of the art school library, the one that is actually obsolete
now because nobody uses slides anymore. Anyhoo, save this, type on and type on and type on
here. Into oblivion.
7.
who knows how many words here.
book 15 some city on this planet
1.
well, it is actually book 14, but maybe throwing up the chapters into the air and making them
jump onto the page in weird illogical succession, maybe that should be her thing what with
creative license or something. After all, the main objective is to fill the pages, to accumulate a
certain word count. A person is next to her, with baseball cap and grey black sweater, using the
oversized scanner, the sing song of the scanner is deafening. Author here is not quite sure if it is

68

legit that she uses the computer in the library of her alma mater, well, to be technically correct,
she knows that it is non-legit, this place is only for staff and students, not 4 alumns. Meh, shmeh.
They really had to put a sticker on each monitor that states that the computers are for student &
staff use only. Please have your ID card available. Author ponders, she has an ID-card, it just has
expired. And she does not really feel like renewing it, only to use the library here. One thousand
bucks per year so that you do not get embarrassed if someone asks you 4 your ID card. The
librarians will not ask her, hopefully. After all, there have to be hapless writers like her to
produce books that have then to be stored in a library that then requires librarians. Yup, that is
how it works and that is how it works here.
2.
her allowance for using the parking space in oakridge is expiring, she always parks more than the
four hours, luckily she never got towed as of yet. In the morning she used the train without
paying, which was actually an accident, her pass has expired and she just forgot about that.
Anyhoo, nobody asks an old woman for pass, if you are old and female you can get away with
murder. That is how society is built up. Weird, huh, strange here.
3.
a man or a woman on the top of the ocean factory. A bird against the white of the sky. Author is
not happy about the woman with the curly hair who sat next to her, she gave her a look, that look
is the one of a person who will go to the bath room and ask her to watch her things. Anyhoo, type
on and write on here.
4.

69

32 pages, she has to produce ten times this in order to send it out.
5.
itzehoe, bankastrati, union square. Northern Germany, nyc, Iceland. Somehow this should all
make sense, eventually, eventually. Artworks have to have inner logic, or else, it is all anarchy.
Somebody laughs, it reeks in here. 10 140, this better be good, this better be good. The printer
behind her sings its songs, first the card reader and now the shimshimmying of the printer, the
whistling of the papers.
6,
yep, we are next to eleven thou, though not quite not quite.
7.
still sitting in the art school at the computer that faces the ocean factory, the one near the big
scanner, the oversized one. Contemplating that scribd apparently has 60 + million uploaded
documents on its website. Sixty million plus. And you thought that you have uploaded such a big
amount of docs, 309, give some take some. A fraction of sixty mill. How many times goes 300
into sixty million. 60 000 000 divided by 300. Like 600 000 divided by 3. Aha, make that 200
000. So her input of documents is one two hundred thousandst of the whole amount of
documents uploaded to scribd. One in two hundred thousand, huh. Mindboggling, huh. And we
type and write and write here. There are two hundred thousand just like her, who publish their
stuff in the cloud. How do you compete with two hundred thousand, how can your voice be
heard. In that sea of writers and publishers. How can you possibly make money with your
writing when there are two hundred thousand individuals trying to do exactly the same. Meh,

70

who cares, you just keep on truckin. besides, not all the docs are creative writingish texts, there
are court documents and dissertations, anything and everything that is in written form. One in
two hundred thousand, well, better than one in a million. And we type and type and type here.
How can you compete with that?
8.
a woman will give a talk. There is not much time. Only fifteen minutes. It is 5 and forty five the
talk will start up in fifteen minutes. Gotta run, gotta rush. Ah to stay an art student long after
skool is over. Now there is a title for this very book.
9.
Now back in the tv-room, Seinfeld plus laugh tracks. The one where babu is getting deported.
Kramer is doing his antics, author ponders what else to say. what else to write about here. we
have 10 512 words here. slight pangs of accomplishment, slight pangs of accomplishment here.
book ?
1.
The rain coming down. she is all made up, all dressed up but shed rather wait a tad until the rain
subsides. Her shoes are not that good with wetness and it is not fun to roam the city in over-wet
chilly shoes. So shed rather type up some more words here. in here where it is nice and warm
and dry. She has an appointment at ten ten, an injection into her eye. Yup, always fun here.
2.

71

Rain just pouring down on this city, thr tea pot crackling up, some noise in the wood works. time
to feed words to this machine, time to listen in to the typing, to listen in to ones own humming
and spelling out the words loudly one by one. Outside there is a world happening even though it
is super wet here. At the crossing of 41 st and west, a young lad in glasses, striped shirt, striped
umbrella looked at her indignantly, but nothing had happened, no water was splashed on him.
anyhow, writing and writing here. the early morn in the coffee house, a kid in a green jersey, the
Saturday morning sports crowd, every child playing for a league. The coffee with too much
cream, too cold for a hot coffee on the first Saturday day of February. The Y as always, the
weight too high, two umbrellas in the back, skewered. The cashier in the market, the strange
headlines on the tabloids. Two tv-dinners and a marsbar, nutrition ah nutrition. And rain pouring
down on this city, tremendous rain, all-engulfing rain. In this weather you have to be inside, you
have to hammer at the typer, you have to reach a wordcount of 22 367. You have to wonder how
come you cannot fashion better words, more intelligent ones, more pressing ones. the rain still
coming and still coming down. the utter wetness of this day here.
3.
Rain in itzehoe, danish, tea. Not much to say and not much to write about.
4.
bankastrati, coffee with heart in foam.
5.

72

Union square, peppermint tea, Saturday morn in nyc. lazy or something, nowhere to go,
nowhere to be. which equals bliss, later on we will sit and listen to the hare krishnas down in
union square station.
6.
Some words, of a diary maybe, a journal, maybe. 22 467, for now and for now here. save,
spellcheck stop this up here.
7.
Too too four and one here. a marsbar and too thin tea are waiting.
8.
22 500. Merely 80 000 to go here.
9.
Eight Oh Three Ey Am. The sojourn thru the drizzle, driving around endlessly, slightly aimlessly,
the coming back to the seat in front of the computer. the wish for penning the perfect words, the
stab at it, the endless rearranging of the units of a language. Next to author, the fridge starts up its
songs, roaringly, something cracks in the wall. the stark plants against the window, the squares
on the keyboard, the ones with white letters against the black. 22 599 words, type on and write
on here.
10.
Itzehoe is happening, rain, waitress, fashion woman. ten in the morning, three women near the
window. danish, tea, fork. All the elements that make for good writing, for better writing here.
73

she is a slave to the routine, she mounts the train from hamburg in the morning, takes the train
back before twelve. Every day is the same as the day before, as the day after. The adhering
strictly to the routine, that will and should result in the perfect text. You do not need some sort of
plot, that will emerge automatically. You can will a text, that is how it is how it is. if the word
count is right, everything must and will fall into place. automatically, like magic maybe. anyhoo,
the crumbs of the danish are red and white, the raspberries, the cheese, and then there are the
beigeish dots from the baked batter. Describing what you see with weird words, that has to stand
in for artistic endeavour. Nope, author here is no gifted writer, she just says it as she sees it. the
choice of words is random, ah so random. and the rain is coming down and down here.
11.
Bankastrati. In november. Iceland at its coldest, at its wettest. The heart on the cappuccino, the
cheese cake, the street outside full of shoppers, the warm cosiness here on the inside of the caf.
The chattering around her, in words that she cannot decipher. The happiness of that, the bliss, she
can observe, listen in, can enjoy that nobody bothers here. they are discussing stuff animatedly,
to her right, to her left, author is part of community and part left alone, this is the right mix of
attachment and detachment, the kind of mix that will result in better words. always on the hunt
for better words, more accurate ones, more significant ones. and stop and spellcheck, spellcheck
here. 22 914, write on ah write on here.
12.
22 922.
13.

74

22 927.
14.
Not much left to 23 000. A forth of the book. each book should have 100 000 words, that is the
right amount of words, not too much not too little. painters have to look at the size of their
canvasses, animators at the length of their movies. Everything has to be in certain shapes, certain
forms. The volume counts, anyhoo, still writing here and still writing here. slight pangs in
between the shoulder blades, more on the right, more next to the neck. she uses the right hand for
typing, predominantly, that is why the right side gets sore sooner. 23 029, 23 031.
15.
Nyc, union square. the seat on the second floor of whole foods, the view of the street. the rain
coming down, hard. This is where writing should happen, this city here is awash with writers-tobe. aspiring ones, emerging ones, wanna-bes. this is where dreams are followed and dreams are
squashed. By high rents, by the high cost of living. the subway takes you in and spits you out. all
over the five boroughs.
16.
23 107.
17.
All of her writing, all of her writing. author ponders more about the situation of writing, where it
stands at at this moment in time. if you are an American writer, situate your stuff in new york
city, if you are british, write about London. She ponders, literature cannot be deduced in
simplistic formulaic ways, it is all about the songs the sights that are made vivid. It is about the
75

motion of the poetry. or some BS of that kind. Writing is so prosaic, it is about how many words
to a page and about nothing more. after all, you translate utterings, mutterings to visual marks on
a piece of paper, pixels on a screen. You smush sounds into sights. In the same way that you
smush the crumbs of a danish with your fork on the plate. Author is slightly hungry, she will get
out into the rain and get an empire cookie from the bakery on 33rd. yup, there is something to do,
something more diverting than this stupidity of stoic typing. Fly out into the rain, hunt and gather
and then come back to the keyboard here, some more words ah some more words still.
18.
Well, they were out of empire cookies, or maybe they did not bake them as of yet. so author here
got a big sugar for two bucks, overpriced cookie. a bag of Pepperidge farm, Sausalito or
Chesapeake, when on sale, goes for two bucks. Overpriced cookies make yer watch what you
eat, you cannot purchase a lot of them without tinges of guilt thus you eat less thus you maintain
your weight. although, in an ideal world, author here should loose weight not just maintain.
Thirty pounds, sixty pounds, something like that, she used to be so much thinner, in another time,
in another world. when she used to increment the volume, the mass of herself in kilograms.
Anyhow, the tea is cooking up, time to have the cookie. She ponders, this is what authors do,
they write some, they eat some and then they write some more. What an utterly boring life. And
the wordcount marches forward, forward here. 23 and 500 or so, we are making up for lost time,
yesterday and the day before, there was no writing, We did not write a lick here. You have to
write each and every day in order to move the muscles, energize those writingish chops, those
writers chops. And still some more words and some more words here.
19.

76

Some Judge Judy, some other judge, jerry springer, Ellen, the twelve oclock news in some other
time zone. The rain subsided, the tea pot crackles. Three and a half pages since morn, not much
to show for a morning of work. All of this has to be revised, to be hacked into pieces and sewn
together again. writing is so weird, so thankless. There are no rules, write way too correct and
you are boring, write too temperamentful and you are way too strange. There are no rules, the
way you mold the linguistic clay is so utterly random, so utterly random. outside, everything so
grey, inside here, the isolation of the writers lab. Stark plants against the window, maybe it is
time to foray into the world at large. Where people are happening, where life is happening.
20.
23 673.
21.
Maybe time to have a hot chocolate on broadway, with whip. In the coffee house near the
hospital, where everything is stale and stoic. Where people avoid each other, where there is a
whiff of impending sickness. Physical and mental. Where even the chocolate drink smells like
medicine, tastes like nauseating antiseptics. Where everything is weird and strange. where it is no
big deal to have a lot of calories because we will all die anyways. whatever we do, however we
do our lives. the coffee house in the shadow of the big hospital. Where mortality is palpable,
where everything is utterly morbid.
22.
23 781.
23.
77

On the telly, JEOPARDY. Apparently unique comes from the latin for one of a kind. Good to
know. Robert de niro is the movie narrator for taxi driver, Robert falk is the narrator for the
princess diaries. And, btw, wheel of fortune is next. Author ponders, watching tv is not really
what will inspire great writing. you have to venture out into the real world, have to observe,
watch what is going on in order to be able to write better words. you have to search for the
words, for the right sentences in order to type them up in the right sequence. Searching for words
as some kind of mushroom picking.
24.
She ponders if this book is way too long, there has to be a certain symmetry to all of the chapters,
everything should be ordered neatly.
25.
btw, 23 924.
26.
Vanna White, today the show airs outta Hawaii.
27.
Sitting and typing while watching what is on the telly is not good because you tend to get
sidelined, surfing the web for stuff like the theme song of welcome back kotter.
28.
A rerun of king of queens.

78

29.
Laugh track galore.
30.
One could go out for a walk though the weird weather is not really conducive to a dry walk. If
you like to have wet feet, well, maybe, you should go out. you can do the callisthenics stuff,
indoors, if movement is your thing. Or go totally retro, an aerobic tape, huh.
31.
24 033.
book, well, let it just call it another book. because somehow we lost count of all the books here
1.
A rainy February. Author here could describe it again, rain in the city, rain over the city. there is
not that much to say, it is merely rain. Water coming down from the skies. makes you feel
philosophical, author here ponders if rain is more conducive to writing than sunshine is. The
slight tinges of melancholia, weather-induced blues. I can hear the sounds of a harmonica
coming on.
2.
bankastrati. Given that author here has never ever been to reykjavik even once in her life, she
should look for youtube vids of bankastrati. There were yelp pics that showed the cappuccino in
the coffeeshop in bankastrati, so maybe that is as much research as we need here.

79

3.
Itzehoe, the video of itzehoe should be enough fodder for her writings.
4.
Well, at least we have been to nyc.
5.
Her head is starting to swim, sitting cooped up at a typing machine will do that 2 yer.
6.
24 217.
7.
No writing and no typing since February ten. Ten days of non-writing, that happens 2 yer when
you cannot use your right hand. ah, to be ambidextrous. With one hand in a sling, she has to
turtle through with her left hand. tortoise-like. with what seems like a letter per minute.
Definitely not 60 wpm, 100 wpm. Typing speed, ah, typing speed.
8.
Itzehoe, she has her right arm in a sling. Has to wear rain gear, make sure that the sling does not
get wet. She should purchase an extra sling, a rainy weather sling. Author here ran into a woman
at the entrance to the ladies room in a department store, who was wearing a sling just like her. the
woman mumbled dryly something about interesting where did you get yours as if a sling is a
fashion accessory. Slight hilarity, still another woman grilled author here with a q and a, what

80

happened, when did it happen, what did the doctor say, does it hurt. more questions than one
person can answer. Anyhoo. Itzehoe is all awash in its usual glory, the rain prasseling down, the
danish tasting as if it has seen better days, when freshness was king ah king. The gloominess of
this place is pervasive, all-encompassing, wrapping her in, hurdling her around. Her words are
off, ah, artsy artsy. Neologisms should propel her prose forward ah forward.
9.
24 451.
10.
Stop and save and spellcheck here.
11.
On the telly, the Oscars.
12.
typing, while sinatra is belting out new york new york. With you tube it is tricky, you have to
push the replay button each and every time.
13.
So the Oscars are over, so far author here liked it. nph had a pokerfaced ability to do quiet
remarks that kind of fade into the background and kind of keep on standing. Anyhoo, fly me to
the moon now, the software switches from song to song as it feels fit.
14.

81

Outside, the remnances of a silent day. maybe waiting to be explored, for moments moments.
15.
The telly is down, no background noise. the silence is ah so palpable. The ah so muffled sound of
sinatra, even on low volume the song still carries, especially if it is the good recording here.
16.
The telly the telly. outside, the sun is shining, glaringly. Inside here, the writing, the boredom. her
back is better, not acting up as insanely anymore. ah, words, words.
17.
Itzehoe, as usual. She is typing with her left hand, the right arm is in a sling.
18.
24 649.
19.
On the telly, modern family. Typing is still tough what with the right arm kind of out of
commission. But one can do the typing with the left hand, kind of slowly though. outside, the
day kisses evening, kind of. Tough to be poetic while following what is going on on the telly.
20.
The coffee house in Iceland, bankastrati it is. cappuccino with heart painted into the foam,
crumbling cheese cake. it is so nice here, the right space to shoot for the right words. this is

82

where writing comes automatically, dislocation does that to you. everyone is an innocent abroad,
what with not knowing even the simplest of words.
21.
Union square, april, whole foods, second floor. Typing ah typing. Not many people here, on a
Tuesday at two in the afternoon.
22.
24 787.
23.
Once more, modern family. A rerun. Now, Haleys friend will sing the song, yup, that song. And
now an ad for toilet paper. only purex is western canadas finest.
24.
24 821.
25.
Not 25 000 as of yet.
26.
Itzehoe is as fascinating or as non-fascinating as always. the city where she searches for her
muse, for inspiration, for this space here to write. where she feels comfortable to stay
unpublished, in this city here it does not really matter. In the end it doesnt really matter, linkin

83

park, in this line of work youd better be philosophical. The tea is still warm, the cheese danish
crumbles under her fork here.
27.
24 903.
28.
On the telly, a rerun, how I met your mother.
29.
24 917.
30.
An ad, j.c. penney. Now pizza pizza. Pediasure, hersheys miniatures. A diamond store, pet
smart. An ad for filetofish, iam lovin it. an ad for a hair dressing school in boston. An ad for a
boston furniture store. Hmm, somehow we get a feeling that this is a channel outta boston.
31.
24 971.
32.
24 973.
33.
24 977, somehow.

84

34.
24 981.
35.
So near to 25 000 but not quite there yet.
36.
Six more, 4 more, two more, 25 000 exactly here.
37.
25 007.
38.
25 009.
39.
Union square, the seat near the window, on the second floor of whole foods. Two in the
afternoon, aprilish, Tuesday. A rather lazy day, the lunch crowd left, the dinner crowd is not yet
in. Even the afternoon break crowd is not in here as of yet. This is the no-mans-land of time,
when this space is good for writing. The non rush hour, the in-between. That is when words
should come easily, languidly. When poetry should spring, when beauty should form. But how
can you write without a deadline, when there is no urgency for articulating rightly, accurately,
when you are free to use as many or as little words as you want. When there are no parameters,
your writing becomes globby as in a lazy glob, blob. She starts pecking at her donut, you do not

85

have a donut in this place, go to dunkins or the donut plant on 23rd. or get a cronut, after all, this
is new york. The craze is not over as of yet.
The writer is typing away, maybe writing long hand would be better. It is more tactile and you
can roam the city for different spots. You can write near the water, on a bench on the highline.
You can write down in the tunnels of the L-train, while the subway roars by. You can write on a
bus, any of the buses that start with an M. or you can go from coffee house to coffee house,
Chelsea is awash with wannabe writers. Author here will never be published, but that will not
slow her down. What might slow her down is her lingering shoulder injury, she uses her left hand
in order to make her still aching right shoulder rest. Dont overdo it, you have to find the right
balance between exercising the muscles and rest. Listen to your body, something like that,
something of that kind. Anyhow, it is getting late, she has to be somewhere. Somewhere in the
real world, somewhere far away from the typing machine here.
40.
25 355.
41.
On the telly, three designers talking about different ways to decorate a kitchen, more like build a
kitchen. Tiles, floors, doorknobs, textiles, wow, it is a science, an utterly boring science.
42.
On the telly, king of queens.
43.

86

And now, big bang theory. Kind of difficult to listen in to the goings-on on the telly while
keeping up with the typing. Chances are neither the watching of the laugh track laden stuff will
go smoothly nor the production of this world lit masterpiece. Multitasking is not authors thing
here.
44.
Itzehoe as always. sprinkles of rain, slight greyness. Cheese danish and tea. Three woman near
the window. waitress, fashion woman. author should have had cocoa instead.
45.
Union square, the seat overlooking it. staring at the monitor, searching, yelping for words. there
should be words mooch onto the keyboard, in a new york minute. Nope, language does not work
like that. author here is still reeling from her broken shoulder, humerus fracture thingie. At this
point in her life she garners up all these weird injuries so that she can learn all of these
anatomical words. Who would have known that the bone in her forearm is called humerus, the
back of her eye retina. Not her.
46.
25 467.
47.
Gotta feed all of these words to this machine, even if you have nothing to say. even if you can
only type with your left hand, maybe with enough practice you too will become ambidextrous.
48.

87

Itzehoe, once more. crumbs of danish, writers block so utterly palpable.

49.
The slowness of an Icelandic afternoon, the cappuccino with the heart therein, lighter, whiter
than the frothy foam around it. The cup, cute, flowery, feminine. Author here writes longhand,
somehow this seems to go with the rest of the day. Outside on bankastrati, shoppers, not that
many though. it is a weekday after all, in the morning.
50.
Walking on arbutus, trying to make it to the bus downtown. The weather is so so, not sunny
enough, not cold enough. somehow blah in the middle.
51.
75 701.
52.
Once more, back in whole foods, all of union square sprawling out beneath her. the words that
are not coming, the language that does not supply the right words. publishable words. she will
wither away in unpublishedland, which is fine, ah so fine. The journey, you knowm, the journey.
If you repeat it long enough you will believe it. Have to believe. The journey is more important
than the goal. Yeah, whatever. She feels like going down to artichoke and have a vodka pizza.
Getting high on pizza, yup, why not why not.
53.
Reykjavik, itzehoe, nyc. ah this better be good better be good here.
88

54.
25 817.
55.
Question: are writers with day jobs better writers than full time writers? author here plays with
her food, fork into cheese danish, crumbs to one side. The rain outside is coming down as always
when she is here in this godforsaken coffee house. Well, she does not have a day job, she is not a
full time writer either. At least not a fulltime published writer. She teethers around in some kind
of writerish no mans land. Maybe that is ok and besides there is nothing she can do. itzehoe is
happening outside, later on she will catch the train back down to hamburg.
56.
On an over rained day as this you just have to stay in and huddle in front of the typing machine,
this is the weather that makes anyone into a poet.
57.
The coffee house, the rain outside, drizzling drearily. Waitress, 3 women chatting, fashion lady.
Danish, tea, the struggle with the words. everything in place, everything in its own space.
58.
On the telly, peter, paul and mary. People were young at one time. outside, spring is happening,
well, not quite, not quite. This year the east coast is icy and the west coast all bloomy. Puff the
magic garden, this is some kind of pbs thingie.
59.
89

The coffee house in reykjavik, total dislocation. this is what writers live for, each scribe worth
her salt. If you are far from home, the words flow onto the page automatically, your book writes
itself. So much to see, so much to do. cheese cake here is so much more adventurous than back
home. ah, to listen to people talk in foreign. Bankastrati outside, slow, steady, languishing. A lazy
Saturday afternoon. this is living is living, the cappuccino throws its whiffs into the air.
60.
Itzehoe maybe. where words come silently, where rain happens incessantly. Where the fashion
woman wears golden.
61.
Union square as always. she will go out down onto 14th to get some of those Melissa cookies,
later on, later on. she might walk down to the meatpacking , later on later on. now, at this point,
she has to feed some more words to the machine here. she will pick up a shower curtain from bed
bath and beyond on sixth. Before words or after words, whatever, whatever.
62.
26 204.
63.
On the computer, sinatra. Not necessarily the good version, the sound is way too shrill, but hey it
is still sinatra serenading. If I can make it there. now, first we take manhattan, then we take
berlin.
64.

90

26 246.
65.
90 pages and it is still march.
66.
There should be continuity in the narrative, shmeh, there is none.
67.
It is getting cosily warm, maybe a tad too warm. It will not be long until the heat will be
unbearable in this city where the houses do lack acs.
68.
Still cohen.
69.
On the telly, there should be still the peter paul and mary bit. still gotta cut up the cucumber,
pepper and tomato. Now another song, she knows the intro. Closing time.
70.
26 334,
71.
You tube searches for the music.
72.
91

26 344. Two pages and were outta here outta here.

73.
And still some more words here. after a day roaming the city, she is back in front of the typer.
Using her right hand, taking it out of the sling. Using her left hand, wishing for ambextrious
orientation. The telly is singing its songs, outside the rain is coming down here.
74.
26 407. So there is another book here in the making, one that will eventually roam out into the
world in order to search for a publisher. she ponders how to describe her days on the skytrain, the
ever changing faces around her. how to weave that inside of a story. She ponders, do we really
need some kind of story here.
75.
26 471.
76.
On the telly, big bang. Outside, the sun is still shining. In here, two, two and a half pages have to
be delivered. Yup and save and spellcheck. Or the other way around. We have 26 575 words or
something like that. not enough to call it a book. author here went thru the wordcounts of
famous novels, it kind of started at 45 000. Thus we should pen still 20 000 words or so in order
to make this into a text worth to be published, bound in hard copy. A discernible narrative would
be nice too. it sure cant do any harm. An ad for food is playing on the telly.
77.

92

The long trek from hamburg did not help, author here is outta words. digging the fork into the
cheese danish, nope, that will not do. listening in to the three chatterboxes, nope, that will not
make the words come to her either. and outside, the rain is coming down, just as always, just as
always.
78.
Bankastrati, ah, bankastrati. Iceland is so very very exotic, so far away from home. the heart in
the cappuccino foam, the cheesecake, the Thursday morning shoppers outside.
79.
Union square as always. still, it is a weekday morning after all. this is stillness for union square,
in one of the busiest cities on the planet.
80.
Still big bang on the telly, laughtracks mowing away.
81.
26 709.
82.
Not much to say.
83.
Maybe one more page is enough and we can call it a day here. after all, how much longer can we
wax on writers block here.
93

84.
Still writing at the speed of a turtle, using the right hand hurts, what with the broken humerus and
all. so, the left hand has to do, technically the left middle finger. On the telly, an ad for a car.
85.
If she had the energy, she could go down to the art school and listen in to a lecture. Seems like
more fun than typing comme des tortoises.
86.
26 814.
87.
Now, law and order. A murder victim in the water. eeek. Well, at least the theme song is catchy.
Though, nothing beats columbo. And now, AN ad for a tooth paste.
88.
Outside, still the shining of the sun. days are longer, daylite savings in action.
89.
26 864.
90.
An ad for an addiction treatment center.
91.

94

26 876.
92.
Seinfeld on the telly. bozo the clown. Yup, that episode. Author here can mouth the words, she
lives in rerun-land. She likes to think that this is good for a writer. The sheer repetitiveness is
somehow good, soothing. It creates the illusion of solidity, a safety net in uncertain times. Ohm.
Maybe.
93.
Union square, bankastrati, the coffee house in itzehoe. Three spaces for writing. kind of romantic
in their shared esotericness.
94.
An ad for an insurance company. an ad for hersheys syrup.
95.
26 963.
96.
On the telly, who wants to be a millionaire. Author here made her way to the coffee house in the
morning, the one in the village. After that taking the bus down to oakridge, a foray into the
market, groceries, they were out of the small size of plain yoghurt. after that, the trek back,
cooking of dinner which was quite an undertaking. So now she has to sit here and wait for an
hour so that the food cooks, after chopping, after assembling. Later on, she has to have still
another x-ray.
95

97.
Rushing all over the city, only to be ending up in front of the typing machine. She strives for
reminding herself of what she saw, but everything and anything dissolves into oblivion once she
is here in the stillness in front of the typer. The only thing overwhelming here is the muffled
constancy of the sound the laptop makes, well, then there is the typing, the clickaty clack and
there is this one short hiccup by the fridge in the kitchen nearby. All machine noises, electrical
sounds, there is a noise in the woodwork, a crack, ok, so not all the noise is produced by
machines. Author here had three meals within a span of one hour and a half, maybe if she does
not eat anything for the rest of the day, this can be still a weight loss diet, ALL YOUR calories in
one sitting. Something like that. The city was turbulent, the day between Good Friday which is a
holiday here in Canada and Easter Sunday, too many persons on the streets with nothing to do,
the faces could potentially inspire a writer, she took the bus, twice, more faces to inspire. And
now the stillness in here, the paper basket that is overflowing and waiting to be emptied. The
yellow flowers on the mantel, in a vase, the cuckoo clock on the wall. Describing what has to
stand in for idyllic, this is the antithesis of the explosions in the kingsman movie author here saw
the day before in metrotown. Thus there will be no publishing contract for this, who will want to
make a movie out of a book that whimpers about the stagnating, ah so dull life of a writer. Her
laptop is interesting, she could describe it, paint a picture of the fading letters, seems some letters
are used more in anysentence. in anyword of the English language. Vanna White would know
about that, anyhow, let us write and write and write here. outside, overcast meets sunshine, the
weather is not crisp enough and not hot enough, it is at a familiarly bland bla, where you do not
have too many expectations nor are you exhaustingly desperate, anyhow, she feeds her words to
the machine after quite a hiatus, there was no typing going on here for maybe three weeks, her
96

shoulder still acts up, twice a week physio, exercise in-home, this will heal silently AS time goes
on, apparently the body is a miraculous mechanism, you break your bone and it copies itself,
knows how to build something outta nothing, callus, cartilage, read up on it on Wikipedia though
you will not really understand a word. And still writing ah still writing, still writing here.
98.
27 514 words, back in itzehoe. Rain, three women chattering, the fashion lady opening her store,
the bored waitress in brown and off-white. danish, tea, the mix of crumbs and cheese filling
against the fork, the melodic whiffs dancing in the air above the tea cup. The strange
romanticness, the cosiness of this coffee house, the favourite of this writer. Some more words
and then she has to rush back to the train station in order to catch the twelve fifteen down to
Hamburg.
99.
Union square, a somehow desolate mid afternoon, this is desolate for this busy place here. the
lunchcrowd has left, the mid afternoon crowd is not quite here, it is two in the afternoon, cars
outside on the square, honking, slight splitterings of rain. Writer on the second floor of whole
foods, daydreaming instead of feeding the words to the machine, maybe the pauses make the
book, the words not said, the meanings somewhere hidden between the lines. The melody of the
words, the rhythms, cadences. Slight hiccups and slight hiccups.
100.

97

Reykjavik, the coffee house on bankastrati. The foamy heart inscribed into the cappuccino, the
too rich cheesecake, the afternoon crowd chatting, the shoppers outside. A lazy afternoon on a
Saturday afternoon, dislocation ah so palpable. 27 727 words, write on and type on here.
101.
Later in the afternoon, two and a half men on the telly. laughtracks washing over the talking
between Charlie and the psychiatrist, it is kind of a toughie to follow the goings-on on the idiot
box while trying to pen the greatest text ever. And, hey, let us face it, you always try to shoot for
reaching literary heights, it is a raison dtre for any writer. Even if you are merely penning a
grocery list. There is always a way to reformate the little units of a language, to rearrange them,
to choreograph them just so. Language as paint, as clay, so different from language as a medium
to describe an exacting picture. Language for arts sake like the notes of a symphony, a song, a
sonnet. Author here is slightly bullshitting, comes with the territory, watching Charlie Harper and
Bertha does that to yer. Authors shoulder is acting up here, maybe her humerus proximus did
not really heal, maybe there is a non-union in her bone. Which means that it did not seal up.
anyhoo, still typing still typing. Maybe she should venture out once more, maybe that is how the
words come to you. A strict regimen of walks and strolls, then food intake, a nap and voila, the
best words ever will appear on the monitor, just like magic. You cannot rush this, but you have to
type up words diligently, somehow, out of the blue, something good, reasonably poetic,
reasonably logical will appear, should appear. You cannot rush it, but you can will it onto the
page. 27 998, two words away from 28 thousand. Words that were not here last year at this time,
words that will float around somewhere in the cloud, just adjacent to all the other words. Author
here has a slight tooth ache, in the lower back half of the right side in her mouth, something to

98

make an appointment for, something to avoid sweets for. And we write and write and write here.
An ad for an adhesive on the telly. 28 079, type on, you can do it, you can do it.
102.
Ok, so there is still no plot here. it is just a literal description of what is happening while writing.
should be a story as gripping as any. Not every story has to have whistles and bells. On the telly,
two men in a truck. Their conversation. It is night time. On the telly that is, while the truck is
moving forward. Change of scene, a woman running to a drugstore before it closes. In her
bathrobe. And back to the two in the truck. Who are now outside, out of the truck, running.
103.
Outside, evening is nearing. not dark yet, but the sunniness is coming to an end. ah, the awkward
state between afternoon and evening. The letters on the typer seem crispier than before.
104.
28 219.
105.
Celebrity name game. The woman from taxi. Wow, she looks exactly the same, talk about good
genes.
106.
28 237.
107.

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28 242.
108.
The top of page 100.
109.
All day shoulder gymnastic. Pendulum exercise, rolling of shoulders, fingers up the wall. some
physio therapists say that one should warm the shoulder up, others are not that keen on that.
Anyhoo, this is all to work against the atrophy that was induced by wearing the sling. Author
here watches you tube videos about shoulder exercises. All she knows is that even typing seems
to be bad for the shoulder, she sure needs to get back the range of motion. Without overdoing it.
This week she will miss one physio appointment what with the Easter holidays. The weather is
nice outside, sunny, a beautiful day. The perfect Easter Sunday. On the telly, two and a half men,
rose and Charlie plus laugh tracks.
110.
Bankastrati, the cappuccino with the heart in the foam. The delish cheesecake, the languishing
Saturday afternoon. People talking in Icelandic all over the coffee house, words that she cannot
decipher. Does not want to decipher. The silent lullaby of all these sounds, the perfect
background music to write the great, well, you fill in the blanks. The greatest story ever told. The
musings of a writer. Her short moments on this planet. Her sketches on the computer, her words
that paint a silent picture. She is at 28 457, now she will write on until she reaches 100 000. A
long epic, one that someone might read eventually. Outside, shoppers and their shopping bags,
there is something about a city so far north. One day she will go sightseeing, geysers et. al., but

100

at this time, bankastrati should do, will do. And if push comes to shove, author here is so much
more fascinated by urban life, wherever that might be. Nature, ah, meh. Give me people walking
around anytime, the constantly changing features of passers-by. Strangers on the bus, the like and
the like. People watching gives so much fodder for writing, anyhow, her coffee is getting cold,
her cheesecake is getting dry. 28 571, 28 572, 28 573.
111.
The second floor of whole foods, a seat near the window, union square sprawling in front of her.
Well, to her right, the seats are sideways, at a right angle to the window. There is a lowly flower
in a homely vase, on the wooden surface of the table. author here is doing the longhandy thingie,
later on she will transcribe it. the weather outside is kind of eh, april showers bringing may
flowers. A nice day for writing, any day is a nice day for writing. you can write in any weather,
this is a profession that you can do day-in day-out. not like construction, some days are better
than others. then again, it is an iffy business, what if you cannot land a publishing deal, what if
nobody wants to read your words, your drivel. There is no income security, no job security, no
pension for old age. Yup, an iffy business it is here. she will go out to pick up one of the
cupcakes in baked by Melissa, across the streat, on 14th, yup, they are small, three for three
bucks, she will still retain her figure, no havoc with the figure. This is what she thinks about,
plot, narrative, who cares, ah, who cares really. 28 796, 28 797. Stop and spellcheck spellcheck.
112.
Itzehoe, itzehoe. Three women chattering near the window, the waitress with the ubiquitously
bored expression. Rain. The fashion lady, today it is orange and ecru. The danish, slightly stale,
the chamomile tea. She types away, oblivious to the stares of the other patrons. Some moments
101

later, some fifty minutes maybe, and she will make her trek back to the station to catch the
twelve fifty back to hamburg.
113.
28 877.
114.
Later in the afternoon, the good looking woman on Aljazeera. The news, the news. The noise of
the kitchen thingie that sucks the smoke and odours away. the kitchen fan, maybe. author
ponders, what is the exacting term. Will thingie do? 28 918, the words languish, splash onto the
keyboard, silently and sleepily.
115.
Still writing still writing. the agony of her shoulder is bearable, actually she was advised to use
her arms, her shoulder as much as possible, as aggressively as possible. Use it or lose it,
something like that, something of that kind. The cracks in her humerus and scapula are healing,
she is not quite sure if she is using the right terms. Nobody really showed her the x-rays, there
were several ones, and the battery of images by the cat scan machine. 29012, time to wrap this
up and wrap this up for today.
116.
Her day started out the wrong way, a ding in the routine. The dinged routine even though she is
staying in the same place. Not her usual coffee in her usual coffee house, how will her life
unravel if she does not do her trusted and tried moves in the morning. a voyage into the
unknown, this cannot be good. on the telly, some frenchspeaking adventurers in Cambodia, well,
102

maybe that is a tad more a split with the regular. But if push comes to shove not having her
regular coffee seems to throw her off her game so much more. how can we go on when there are
rituals that have not be done, ah, how do you spell OCD? Anyhoo, the day is nice and bright, a
tad too glary, too aggressive a sunshine, this is april 5 in Vancouver, bc. - ten seventeen in the
morning, 29174 words, funny music on the telly. some woman speaks in French. She cooks
something, onions chopped in a grey pot. Je suis and she looks into the camera and says her
name. music in the back, a slight beat of indefinable consequence. Now a bowl of soup and hand
with bread that dunks into it. where is the remote control, somehow this is not what is worth
watching. the sound of cutting of an onion, while a man and a woman speak in French, probably
about the cutting of the onion. This is a take on a cooking show, in between they venture into
nature, show fruit, different parts of the fruit. A man with very wide open eyes speaks to the
camerawoman. Author here looks at the paper basket on the floor that has to be emptied, it is
overflowing, somehow she thinks that she should write about more pressing issues, not just
sketch down what she sees around her, the goings-on on the screen, the interior of this room. on
the computer, sinatra belting out new york new york, well, actually it is the still quiet start of the
song, melodically going forward, he wants to wake up in a city that doesnt sleep. brand new
start, the sound of the trumpet to emphasize what is said, a short trumpet sound, a short start, a
clear break, anyhow, the words are going forward, somehow propelled forward by sinatra, she
left this place here only to come back to Louis Armstrong and a woman sing a jazzy tune, ah,
how did we live before there was you tube and what is weird is how the music changes on its
own, like magic, on the telly, a woman doing a painting and talking about it, while one sees her
dabbing the brush into globs of shiny red paint, now hands on the steering wheel, author here
still types up this stuff, conquering the banal, trying to recreate her moments on paper,

103

immortalize them for posterity, sometime later on she will venture out to the fast food joint at the
corner, have a cappuccino and a filet o fish, then come back to the typing machine, on the telly
someone talking in French, on the computer, a jazz trumpet, a woman singing, haltingly,
soulfully, this is what creates the right ambience for writing, for words that splash onto the
keyboard, into the monitor, once more Louis Armstrong, a duet with the female singer, long as I
can be with you something. and 29 588 it is it is.
117.
Bankastrati, dislocation galore. This is living, this is how poets, writers should live. Far away
from reality, it helps if you take a stab at creating new realities, texts that have not been there
before. then again, any text, any speech, any wording is new, made up on the spot. The
cappuccino has its heart in the foam, the cheesecake is rich, shoppers are walking by outside of
the coffee house. Somehow, this seems to be a very young country, this Iceland, or maybe she is
just frequenting a very trendy, youthful part of the city, yuppiland so to speak. Author ponders if
the word yuppy is an anachronism by now or if it is part of the vernacular of the lingo, anyhow,
keep on typing, typing. Her computer sings to her, no, no, they cant take that away from me,
Louis Armstrong, intercepting, anyhow, outside, Reykjavik is happening, happening here.
118.
The songs on the computer were by Ella Fitzgerald paired with Louis Armstrong, somehow
author here pushed the wrong button and the music got cut, interrupted.
119.

104

The moments of itzehoe, fashion woman, rain, waitress, three women chattering near the
window. tea, danish, words against the monitor. This is the life of a writer, especially one that is
struggling, that does not see her words bound neatly as of yet on a bookshelf, in 32 languages.
obscurity sucks, maybe, though it goes good with the rain, the melancholy, the bohemian whiffs
of failure, the non-success. They cant take that away from me Hamburg awaits, later in the
day, later in the day.
120.
Union square as always. laughing silently at her, she is arguably losing it here, how can a square
laugh? Persons laugh. She is not good with the language, her metaphors, her similes stink,
You cannot will poeticness. Anyhow, rain is starting to come down onto the square, later on she
will go to the third floor of this writing place on 14th. sit at her cubby, amongst all the other
wannabes, the potential literary greats, the ones that time forgot. She will rummage around in the
aisles of barnes and nobles and the strand, trying to figure out what it is with this city and its
fascination with words. new york city, ah, new york city. and we have 29 797 words here.
121.
Still writing against the songs on the computer, French now, who is the singer, edith piaf it aint.
We have 30 003, yay, ah yay.
122.
A walk, a stroll around the neighbourhood between 4 and 5, nope, make that 5 and 6. Leaf after
leaf on the trees, lush, some joggers, a roofing company. the day after eastern, somehow midstatuary. Now back in front of the telly, law and order. A homicide to be solved. Those are the
105

stories that sell, whodunits. Not descriptions of the everyday. The unusual the out of the ordinary
is what fills the bookshelves. Ah, the futility of her writingish endeavours, outside the sun is
shining, glaringly still, the last gasps of the afternoon. on the telly, violence. 30 117, thirty one
one seven.
123.
Outside, the sun, in here, the keyboard. The story that has to be told. Or the non-story, whatever
your take is. author is back from the physio in vgh, which is always such a production. Not so
much the time in the rehab services space itself, more the getting there and the aftermath. This
time she had hot chocolate in downtown, with lavender whip, lavender coloured whip. Then a
big sugar cookie in butter. And before that a banana bread and coffee, a weigh-in, which was
kind of ok, better than the day before. but she still has to lose three pounds at least, maybe four.
She gained five in the last week, apparently. Having too much grease and sugar cannot help, but
at least have restricted amounts of sugar and fat. this place in downtown seems to be better,
because the cocoa mug is smaller than where she usually has her hot chocolate. So is the cookie,
the portion is just so much smaller. Which is better than in the place she usually has chocolate
and cookie. Besides, she has to run all over town to get her sweet tooth fix, her sugar fix, so
there. exercise, the hunting and gathering factor. Anyhow, typing, typing. Maybe she should
write a diet book, after all she loses and gains the same poundage again and again. on the telly,
the news, something about police brutality. Ferguson, Rodney king, this is always news and
everyone is kind of involved, you do not want to be subjected to police brutality. Even if you are
a police person. Now, angies list, whatever that is. 30 390 words, on april nine, in 2015. 30 000
or so words, in four months, she usually does 50 000 in the first 15 or 20 days of november.
Once nano rolls in. anyhow, outside, the greenery, in here, the songs of the telly. her shoulder still
106

hurts when typing. She should do more exercise, often, for short intervals. Short pendulum
exercises, on the hour, every hour. On the telly, the boston marathon trial.
124.
Bankastrati, shoppers, a lazy Saturday so far away from home. a coffee, the heart in the foam, the
rich cheesecake here. the talking around here, everybody talks like bjork. Then again, bjork sings
in english.
125.
Itzehoe, ah, nice, everything is just so, rain, women, waitress. The writer and her words, her not
so good ones, her good enough ones. chances are there are better ones in anytext, thus the only
thing that matters is output. The sheer number of words that is typed in. others might differ in
their opinions, that is why they are not writers. they are critics. So it seems, so it seems here.
author here ponders, her logic is reluctantly smashing here. and she overuses HERE.
126.
Union square, slight, silent. An afternoon, sunny, but not too sunny. Her words ah her words
here.
127.
30 611.
128.
Outside the sun is so nice, what really makes a person sit in close quarters to type up a text. Well,
upstairs, the dryer is on and it is better to be at home when the dryer is on. the old dryer used to
107

activate the smoke alarm, this one is new, but still. besides, it seems that the smoke alarm is off,
it suddenly starts its siren in the middle of the night without any smoke. Ah, all of these
machines, they seem to have minds of their own. and we type here type here, type here and type
here. inconsequential statements, ah, that is where it is at, yup, why not and why not here.
129.
30 731
130.
Rainy weather outside, more like sprinkles though. but wet enough to inhibit the walk down to
the grocery store on arbutus. thus one has to sit in here, battle claustrophobia while the telly is
singing its songs. The paper basket is overflowing, the typing becomes tedious. There is still time
to take the bus and go to the mall, look at people, look at products. Anything to avoid writing the
book that will not sell, anything to avoid futility. The overcasty outside is not what makes yer
happy, you are more than ready to sing the blues, take out a harmonica, complain, whine, the like
and the like. on the telly, big bang, laugh tracks, Sheldon, it is a rerun, like each and every day at
this time. her life is very meticulously planned out, that is how you can comfortably sit and type.
Though a plot, a gripping narrative might help. and her shoulder is still acting up, her fall was
two months ago, exactly, the seven hours in the emergency room at Vancouver general. On the
telly, an ad for a car. 30 915, so near to 31 thousand here. the plants are crisp against the greenery
outside, dark silhouettes of the inside plants against the outside plants. It is april ten in 2015 here.
131.

108

Second floor of whole foods, a seat overlooking union square. ten in the morning, slight showers
on a Tuesday morn. Coffee pause people, office workers, construction workers, students
cramming for finals. And wanna-be writers, the ones pre-big-break. Actors learning their lines,
this is a city with 8 million who take a stab at making it. most of em will die trying, but it is fun
while it lasts, the communal struggle that will never go anywhere, everybody is a sysyphus in
this place, goes about her life, Laundromat, ready-made pizza, a hotdog from the hotdog stand,
sabretti. Everything in a new york minute, you turn into a caricature, happily. Author here
hammers away at the keyboard, later on she will march down 14th to the highline, walking does
her good. gotta move those muscles, especially if sitting hunched over at a typing machine is
your lot. 31 097, for now, for now here.
132.
Bankastrati, the heart in the cappuccino foam. she dunks the little spoon into the heart, sprinkles
sugar over it, stirs while daydreaming. Listening in to Icelandic voices, listening in to
conversations she does not get. The lullabies of a Nordic language, somehow guttural, somehow
cold. outside, shoppers walking by, shopping bags galore.
133.
Itzehoe, the coffee house, the ubiquitous rain. Chattering of women, fashion woman, waitress.
Danish, tea, today author here is opting for longhand. The inscripts of green letters on the paper,
slightly bowing to the right. Later on, the trip back to the station, back down to hamburg. Her
writing keeps her busy, gives her life meaning, gives her something to do.
134.

109

31 219 here
135.
Few and far between. when writing, you say something good just every now and then. Good
words, huh, they are few and far between all the fillers, all the words that are so utterly banal. but
you have to keep on writing in order to stumble upon thick meaningful sentences. on the telly, a
woman in lavender blue reading from a piece of paper that she is holding up in front of herself.
outside, the end of the day, still bright, still bright. It is april 13, definitely an april showery day.
author was at the physio in vgh, after that metrotown, after that the Y. or, wait, it was somehow
in a different sequence. She watched two episodes of law and order, now that is good writing.
anyhoo, we have 31 355 here, time to wrap this up, time to wrap this up here.
136.
31 373.
137.
An evening that is still in its afternoon moments, the telly singing, the weather is so pretty nice,
not like the lousy april weather the day before. Exceptionally beautiful sunshine, still there are
happy highlights on the cusps of the trees outside, lighter greens against the darker greens.
Author here is not quite sure if she is using the right words, the most poetic ones, the most
exacting ones. her writer career is non-existing, but do you really need recognition for what you
do? They say that the award is in the journey itself, something like that, something ,like that.
everywhere she looks she can see spear headed plants. Someone here seems to like those spiky
palms. The paper basket on the floor is pretty neat, not overflowing as of yet. her pinch in the

110

shoulder is finally easing up, she will be able to type more, feed her words to this machine. Each
and every morning she walks thru downtown, trying to gobble up as many impressions of urban
life that she can only to rush back home and spit them out all over the computer. The best
strategy for writing is to sit right smack in the midst of the rush and document it, you let the
speed and the motion of what is going on flow into your words right there in its immediacy. But,
hey, this is second best, you write from memory, while it is still fresh. 31 617, write on ah write
on write on. A Toyota ad on the telly. An ad for a mobile plan.
138.
The slowness of this coffee house, itzehoe in the rain. The warmness of this place, she knows
every corner in here, the Danish so familiar, the whiffs of the chamomile tea so soothing. Three
women chattering near the window, waitress making her usual face, the bored one, the fashion
woman on the other side of the street, in yellow and green, weird combination, opening the store,
it is ten in the morn. Still time to type this up, still time until the train back to Hamburg here.
139.
Bankastrati, another Saturday afternoon, laziness. The cappuccino with the heart in the foam, the
too rich cheesecake, the Icelandic words spitting all around her. The coffee house is happening,
all with its opulent decorations. 31 761, more words ah more words here.
140.
Second floor of whole foods, the seat overlooking union square. Though she is sitting sidewards,
the square is on her right side. She is having a tea, an unflavoured one. An oat raisin cookie, she
picked it up by accident. Peanut would have been better or some plain sugar cookie. Today it is

111

longhand, might as well, she will not publish this in the near future, there will be ample time to
transcribe this. Writing for writings sake, who needs recognition, publishing, awards. Gotta just
love the process, the ability, the physical ability to put words on paper. Writing as sport, as
exercise. Outside, the afternoon is happening, somewhere between the hecticness of lunch and
dinner, this is when it is sleepy for moments for moments in this so very rushed and hectic city. It
is sunny, she will venture out up 14th, later on and later on here. 31 920, 80 words more till 32
thousand. 31 927, thirty-one and nine hundred twenty-seven. 31 933 here.
141.
A slow afternoon, sunniness outside, the pAPerbasket flowing over, two and a half men on the
telly. her shoulder still acting up, tightness, it will be still a week until the next physio. She is
looking out for words, watching a plethora of sitcoms does not help. nonarrativeland, boredom,
too oversugared cookies do not help either. Anyhoo, just gotta feed a certain amount of words to
this machine here. 32 006, slow but steady easy does it. gotta tap yourself on the back, that is
how you write you write here. as long as we are not running out of platitudes, life is good.
142.
32 043.
143.
1- in the art school library on may 5
she is not quite sure how to doublespace this. she is sitting at the computer whose layout she
does not know, the format button is kind of off, it is hiding somewhere. author here is wide
awake since four in the morn, this cannot be good cannot be good. it makes for strange behavior
and subsequently strange and incoherent writing. unfamiliar writings. she ponders this is not the
112

pep talk a gifted writer uses, how can you possibly pen amazingish stuffi-muffi when you set
yourself up for failure. how can you win a medal if you tell yourself that you will fall? this is not
how you run a marathon, let alone win a marathon. you have to think positively or something
and then you will succeed, go get, rise to the occasion, that kind of stuff that kind of stuff. author
here still has pain in her shoulder when typing, for some weird reason she sees little blue lines,
one blue line near each white letter in each black square on the typing machine, maybe it is a
reflection from above, but there is no blue light above her, so where does the blue light come
from, aha, there is a blue light just below the monitor, below the VIEW SONIC logo, it has the
same blue tint, the same hue, tone whatever as the little blue specs on the keyboard, it is weird
how one blue very small light can speckle the black and white of the keyboard, how is this
possible, visual stuffi muffi works in amazing ways, huh, huh. author here ponders, maybe that
is why her career as a writer is non-existent even though she definitely logs in the hours at the
keyboard. it is the Stuffi-muffi-isms that bar her from entering the literary pantheons of this
world. worldlit has to do without her here, then again who needs a woprldlit that does not
contain yours truly. yup, we have to start up our owm worldlit pantheon, you know, the herstory
thingie versus the historythingie. rewrite history, call it herstory. build your own little world if
you can. selfpublish or something. invest in yourself, put your money where your mouth is.
nobody will publish this, you gotta publish and market it yourself. for sale by owner, well, it is
worth trying, but it seems to be doomed for failure. then again words are not real estate now are
they are they. anyhoo, the art school library is happening at ten in the morning, librarians talking
in the back. it is may five, 2015, author here has not put down words in what seems like ages. a
trip to Austin texas, make that an amazing trip to Austin texas stood in the way. anyhoo, still
typing a-typing here. her shoulder pinches away pinches away here.
2 still in the art school library
author here could write about her sojourns to itzehoe, to reykjavik, to the second floor of whole
113

foods in nyc, the one store on union square. there is no overlying coherence, no neatly arranged
chronology. in a text there has to be an inner logic, so that the reader can follow. you cannot take
the reader on a wild goose chase, that is not how words work now do they. you have to adhere to
orthographical and grammatical conventions, in order to make the text palpable, in order to
further and facilitate the enjoyment of reading, there has to be a certain ease in which and by
whichthe reader follows you effortlessly. poetic justice, my ,well, insert whatever expletive you
feel like here.
3 ahtskool
610 words here. the shoulder is acting up, short, short pinches that seem to move into the neck.
author has to tell her doc bout that, yuh.
144.
On the telly, big bang. Today, an eye injection, it is becoming routine, a you-know-the-drill kind
of endeavour. One day they will develop eye drops for this medication but at this point it is done
with a needle into your eyeball. However, it feels totally like an eye drop, what with the iodine,
the anaesthetic. Author here ponders if she should use the computer or not, nobody told her not
to use it. on the telly, the episode where there is a break-in into Sheldons apartment, laugh
tracks, author here has seen it so many times before. and now the guy runs away with the
suitcase in bozone, author here ponders if the day-to-days of a writer really have to be this dull,
this repetitive. Today there is a talk by Jacques Herzog at the vogue, tics are ten bucks a pop. Not
worth it, the trek downtown seems a tad too much. and now the closing credits for big bang.
145.
The tea in itzehoe, sharp whafts of peppermint. The three women near the window, the danish,
the waitress. Everything is just so, that is what makes her write all the right words. the fashion
114

woman is wearing green, mint green, peppermint green. Whatever that is. and later on, she will
catch the train back to hamburg, down to hamburg, or up to hamburg, whatever your perspective
is.
146.
Union square, SECOND floor of whole foods, an afternoon at two. the square is kind of desolate,
as desolate as a busy square smack in the middle of new york city could be. some more lines to
be fed to the machine, for a book that no one reads. Will read. Then again, the right marketing
will work wonders, that is how you move merchandise. And books, huh, just another kind of
merchandise. Words on paper, so yesterday, so yesterday. author ponders, with this attitude, wow.
147.
The coffee shop, the bakery in bankastrati. A lazy Saturday afternoon, people conversing in
Icelandic. The heart in the foam of the cappuccino, the languid day, the slow cheesecake.
Creaminess galore. Seems, it is way too salty for a cheesecake. And we write and write and write
here. 33 045, 33 047.
148.
33 053.
149.
We went to the rainforest. That is what the tourist said to the person who asked him on the
escalator of the four seasons. Author ponders, that is what she should write about. people who
explore the world, tourists, flaneurs. Tourist in your own city, tourist in somebody elses city.
constant change of scenery, that in itself is a rich enough subject matter. On the telly, a cooking
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show, chicken with spices, and now it is about dessert. Apple tart, ice cream, streusel with
caramel, and now everybody in the studio audience gets the cookbook written by the chef on the
telly, you know which one he is, he is clothed in white. author here is up since five in the morn,
this is brutal, she took the bus one time too many, she feels sick here.
150.
33 197
151.
Another day, another writing. the coffeehouse in itzehoe as always, waitress, three women
talking, the fashion woman on the other side of the street opening her store. The danish, the tea,
the typing on the keyboard. The words that appear on the monitor. Writing, ah, writing, she will
wrap this up in time to catch the train back to hamburg.
152.
Second floor in whole foods, overlooking union square. today it is longhand, she feels like
vomiting.
153.
Bankastrati on a lazy Saturday afternoon, outside the shoppers lugging their bags around. The
heart in the foam of the cappuccino.
154.

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The telly singing its songs, a sunny day in mid-may. Afternoon leaning into evening, casting its
long long shadows. Writing is a calling just like knitting, you do it without the want for rewards.
It is exercise, something to keep yer busy. Even if it stays merely mediocre, you will die trying.
155.
33 351. On the telly, deflategate. Yup, that is what is important in this world.
156.
On the telly, they talk about fencing. Now there is a popular sport for you.
157.
33 383.
158.
so, hopefully she can use this place until six. The art school library that is. It usually closes at
five on holidays but then again it is part of the grad show and the grad show is open until six. It
is the Sunday before victoria day here in B.C., memorial day down in the states. Either way, it is
a long weekend. Granville island was bustling, the market, especially. Author here hung out
around the grad exhibition, there is so much to see, 300 persons are showing their stuff. Every
time she walks around she sees new stuff. Which is weird, did someone just add stuff, why did
she not see it the first time around. Her shoulder is still pinchey, hopefully that will subside with
time. It is now four months since her dislocation, since the cracked humerus. How come this
takes so long? And she cannot see very well in one eye either. She needs to see a dentist.
Everything is slowly disintegrating, yup, and then we die, apparently, apparently. The show will

117

be over by the end of the day, she will go up and walk around one more time. But first she will
write some, make art of the literary kind. But is it art? Eh, shmeh.
159.
it is four thirty-seven. The best and nicest place of the whole show was this place upstairs in the
north building, where someone was and it was filled with crude architectural models. Where
people think in sculpture. Doodling in forms.
160.
words ah words.
161.
one day she might go back to visual arts, her utter lack of success in writing is deafening.
162.
she is once more sitting in the library of the art skool. there is only one hour left until this place
closes so she better hurry up and pen two pages under the gun. the problem with this very
computer is that there are problems with retrieving the text once it is saved so she has to finish in
time to figure out how to send this to herself. furthermore this very computer never capitalizes
the first letter of the first word of any sentence. yup, this machine marches to its own drummer,
that happens when the machines take over the world. the weather inside this library is nice, the
AC is doing its thing. a woman in the bus called this day a scorcher, the bus driver thought that it
is nice weather. ah, tomato, tomahto. Granville island is happening, the printer sings its songs
somewhere in the back. where the librarians are. so, apparently there is more than one printer,
one for the students and one for staff. anyhoo, it is may nineteen, author is working on her non118

existent literary career. you have to write each and every day, eventually someone will read this,
publish this. a so very futile venture, especially cause her shoulder seems to hate this typing
endeavour. she has to ease into this, typing a tad each and every day. so that the body gets
reacquainted to the idea of typing. tomorrow she will have physio, but, hey, the main thing is
using the shoulder. she is not driving as of yet which is kind of ok-ish, public transport takes her
all over town. there is nothing pressing going on that needs driving, she just takes more time to
go from place to place. author here showed those two ladies from the bus how to get to Granville
island, if nothing else works she might just start out as a tour guide. anyhoo, still typing ah still
writing here. 45 minutes to go. until closing time here.
163.
itzehoe, tea, Danish, three women chattering. she knows the drill, coming here is second nature
by now, later in the day it is back to the station, back down to hamburg.
164.
nyc, second floor of whole foods, her words ah her words here. union square as desolate as union
square can get, a desolate union square, huh, now there is an oxymoron if there ever was one.
165.
bankastrati, the cappuccino with the heart inscribed into the foam, the cheesecake with raspberry
sauce, a tad too fattening, a tad too rich. she listens in to the Icelandic sing-songs around her,
there is something so utterly comforting in the fact to be so very far from home, nobody needs
yer, you can devote your life to the muse. you can write and write and write and write. or draw, if
that is your thing here. everything goes with coffee and cake here.

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166.
it is about time to wrap this all up, time to spellcheck, save, upload, the like and the like here.
167.
34 166, when did she get this far in her wordcount? it happened over night like magic ah like
magic, magic. and it helps if you repeat the words at random, it is poetic but mostly it helps to
fill up the page. meaning should emerge, eventually, eventually. all these words have to fall into
place, they have to have to. author tries to will them into place, they are unruly soldiers under her
command. and save and spell check spellcheck here.
168.
34 253. 255, 256.
169.
On the telly, the one where susan Sarandon is a mad genius writer, yup, an episode
of mike and molly. Now, an ad for an insurance company. and it is pretty funny in
the end. and an ad for a car.
170.
Still sunny outside, still some more words waiting to be plucked down. the paper
basket is over flowing, but, hey, who is counting. And still another ad, this time for
bottled water.
171.
Another episode of mike and molly.

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172.
Itzehoe once more. the rain, the chamomile tea, the raspberry danish. the white
curtains with holes in them like swiss cheese. Lace. Yeah. The waitress and her
bored face, the three women chattering near the window. yup, everything is just so.
this is what it takes to be a writer these days, inspiration is for the birds. you just
have to stick to a routine and write words. eventually it will all morph into
something worth reading. That is how it is, yup, that is how it is here.
173.
Stuff on the telly, the end of a perfectly nice day. yup, summer came to vancitay, @
least it feels like summery weather. technically, it is still spring, which is probably
fine, no scorcher as of yet, everything is still so very pleasant. Author saw pitch
perfect 2, this is what writers do. they watch movies instead of reading books. She
had dinner in the whole foods on cambie, too many chocolate chips in the tea
space. Exactly 65 grams of chocolate, not good, next time she will have trail mix,
should have less calories. The weight has to come off, ever since the age of five.
That is what happens if you are preoccupied with your weight, you just end up as a
fatty with hurting knees. Then again there was a very thin man in the grocery store
walking with a cane. And her shoulder is once more reacting badly to her typing.
Not good for a writer, huh.
174.
So the wind moves the greenery outside, smooth, soothingly. Author rushed to the Y
downtown, did all her exercises, the ones for the shoulder, the ones for the knees,
apparently that is what old grey owls gotta do, so that the joints stay oiled, would

121

be better if you can just oil them from outside like the rusty joints of a door that
squeak. Apparently with the body you have to move it so that the joints produce the
lubricating oils themselves, author here has no idea how this works, then again
seems so does nobody else. each and every doctor has a different worldview, so it
seems ah so it seems here. author here should really write an op-ed for the times,
to quote Elaine Benes. The day is nice and sunny, burrard was ah so busy, then the
trek on the 22 along kits beach, this city has some nice sights to offer. that is why
they call it beautiful british Columbia, it is not just some wording on the car plates,
the licence plates. And we write and write and type until the pinging starts, until the
right shoulder shouts that it is here, it makes its existence known, yup, so there and
so there. writing at ten in the morn, this better be good ah better be good here.
175.
On the telly, one of those shows with a lot of drama, an ambulance, fire,
emergency, somehow all of these action movies are the same, interchangeable,
formulaic. Why the fascination with basically the same stuff. it is actually the show
blue bloods. Kind of like magnum p.i. but in nyc instead of Hawaii. Now an ad for a
real estate agency. An ad for a car. and typing still typing, the quest for the right
words, huh. huh might not be the right exactingish word here.
176.
Once more, once more itzehoe. The whiff of chamomile tea in the morning, the
crumbling of raspberry danish under the fork. Women chattering, fashion woman on
the other side of the street, in green, waitress with ah so bored face. make of that
what you want, the repetitiveness is not that good for fashioning newer words, new

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worlds. Maybe this her writing excursion has run its course, maybe she should call it
quits. The train for hamburg will leave at twelve.
177.
Union square at five in the afternoon, on a Friday. Woa, busee. Hardly a quaint space
anywhere, everyone seems to be in here to grab a bite. The whole city, all of eight
mil.
178.
Bankastrati, a Monday morn, still sleepy. The cap with the heart in the foam, the
way too rich cheesecake. On a morning to boot.
179.
Two broke girls on the telly, author should go for a walk, before the day ends here.
the greenery moves forcefully, pretty windy for what was called the unofficial start
of summer, on the telly.
180.
35 081 words, this is what she managed to put down, in five months straight. Her
speed in writing has definitely slowed down, this happens when you do not get
published and when there is no discernible storyline. on the telly, an ad for a jeep
Cherokee.
181.
she has not written for what merely seems like two or three days but apparently it
has been over a week. The computer would not lie. A bird flies by outside, she

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misses her glasses here, writing without glasses seems to be a futile undertaking.
You cannot really make out what is on the keyboard, it is hit and miss. Especially on
this keyboard here, it seems to be the worst, the letters are mere whisps, grey
shadows of themselves.
182.
still in the art school library, it is way too hot outside and not that chill here inside. A
yellow schoolbus outside, it is end of may in 2015. Maybe 27, 28 or 29. Not thirtiest,
so much she knows here. She met this new ice cream shop on fourth, she waltzed
into this big chocolate store on second. Make out of this whatever you want. And
still another yellow skoolbus is roaring by, wow, actually it is schoolbus galore. Her
shoulder is pinching, acting up. She should use it more in order to get used to
typing.
183.
the muscle has to relearn its functions, so it seems, so it seems here.
184.
It is night or at least night-adjacent. On the telly, the brady bunch, today seems to
be walk on memory lane day. author here watched SAN LAURENT in the fifth avenue
movie theater, the price was nine-fifty and nobody cared that she took her pear
something tea into the movie theater. And there were merely three persons
watching. after the movie it was really nice to walk through the sunny roads, while
the Friday afternoon traffic was breezing by. and now writing and typing here.
185.

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