1.

This is the story of Anna. She sells books.

She thinks of the books as candy and she herself is handing out the candies. Each of them in a

different color. Stuff, meaning, packed in a wrapper. There is a picture of the person who made

the candy. An author, the photo of the author. Usually inside, on the book jacket. Sometimes on

the outside, on the back, in the lower right corner. Especially if the author is young and hip,

whatever hip might be in the mind of the bookjacketdesigner of the bookmaker, the

bookpublishing place. Anna thinks about the fact that bookmaker has a different meaning than

bookpublisher. Bookmakers are the people who take your bets on horses and sports teams, at

least they used to, when she lived in London, somewhere in the distant past.

Anna orders the books, the new shipment. The store she works in is next to a sushi place. The

street is busy but she would prefer a city that is even busier. She likes to look at people who walk

by, who rush to important places so that they can do their important tasks. It is all more

important than standing behind a counter and handing out books for money here.

There is a weirdness in being a bookseller. There is a weirdness to books. 300, 400 pages in

between two pieces of cardboard. Red books, green books, blue books.

Anna takes a sip from her latte, she should take her own thermos from home instead of getting

the paper cup from the coffee place on the other side of the street here.

Anna is old, she is 62 years old. There are people older, so she heard. In the community center

around the corner, there was a photograph of a lady who just passed at age 102. The other seniors

were sitting around a round table and playing cards.

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Sometimes Anna goes back to her old work place. The bookshop in the airport. It is really nice,

next to this place that sells phones and ear plugs. I-anything. There is a vino place in the

basement where she bought red or white and sometimes even ice-wine. She should stay away

from that place, one glass becomes half a bottle, even one whole one, ah so easily here.

The bookstore is nice because it has so many books in a really compact, condensed place. It is

like one of those big chain stores, but in a smaller place. There are displays you can walk around.

There are ever changing displays. Colorful displays.

Anna thinks about it, how is this place, that she works now in, different? It is but she cannot

really put her finger on where the difference lies. Obviously, the store in the airport is geared

towards people who want to board a plane and grab something to go, they usually have time

constraints. The bookstore near the sushi place is different. There people linger while being out

for a stroll, moms in jogging pants are there between yoga class and picking up kids. There is a

different vibe than there is in an airport. Here people linger linger linger.

Anna likes working in a bookstore, it has this non-urgency. The idea that people have enough

time to read through something like Moby Dick, Of Time and the River, even War and Peace.

The non-urgency, the antidote of rushing from place to place. The ample, indefinite amount of

time. Sometimes people come in and still have sushi. Which is frowned upon, finish your food

and then come in.

On the other side of the bookstore is a bakery. It is strange that the bookstore is nestled, wedged

between two food places. Eating and reading, huh. There is another bakery, next to the bakery, a

more elegant one, where you can sit and pay for overpriced artistic concoctions. A tea room, a

place to have salad. Where women of leisure sit, where men of leisure sit. Old people, rich

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people. The woman who is on the schoolboard and actually represents a poorer district of the

city.

Anna has taken the broom and cleaned in front of the bookstore. She did not have to do that

when she worked in the airport. Or in the mall. But here you have to clean the sidewalk, the

autumn leaves.

She wants to do something else in bookselling. Would like to go to conferences the world over.

The book fair in Frankfurt, the annual one that only lasts five days and where every major

bookseller is peddling its wares. Where there was a small riot, something between left leaning

publishers and right leaning publishers. Though people on you tube said that it was over-blown.

They put their versions online, something taken with an i-phone or a Samsung. Everybody is a

citizen reporter, citizen journalist these days. Everybody snaps pictures, videos, everything is

documented.

Anna ponders, how do books manage to survive in these times. Even thrive? But thrive they

seem to do. This very bookstore she works in was founded in 1974. In this very place here. The

neighbors were laundromats and sushi places. It changed, but the bookstore stayed the same. One

time she would like to work for a second-hand store, this one off Union Square. The one where

she got this red book by Philip Roth, the one about writing. She said to the young man behind the

counter that now she too can learn how to write like Philip Roth, he doubted it here.

Anna is thinking about getting a haircut. Her hair is growing grey. She is losing hair. Though that

might be only because her hair is thinner now and tangles easily, so when she combs it, she

pushes the hair strands out. If she cuts it, it will grow back stronger.

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A woman enters and picks out a book by a Scottish writer. Lost in September. She complains

that it is too expensive. Hardcover. She gets it anyways, even while she mumbles under her

breath something derogatory. She tells Anna about her phone number, but she is not up for a

discount yet. Buy more books. It is like getting twelve cheeseburgers and number thirteen is free.

Apparently, there is no difference between a book and a cheeseburger, they are both stuff to be

inhaled.

Culture and junk food, there should be a difference. A stark one.

Anna has a friend who now works in the library of the new art school. In the new building on

Northern Way. Well, books are books, there is not much difference. Or maybe there is. The

stacked books. Working in a library seems to be more trying. In a bookstore, life is easier. All the

books are clean and new. Well, except for, if it is a used-bookstore. Then it is all mothy and it

stinks a tad.

Anna and the bookstore. She should write a journal. There is ample amount of time anyways,

usually this place is pretty desolate, except for the high traffic times. When school lets out, on

weekends, especially Saturday afternoons when the weather is nice, when the sun is out and

people gather in the cafes on the other side of the street.

Anna looks at the thumb of her left hand. She fell in the mall, slid on her too slippery shoes. She

had to dampen the fall with her hand, and her thumb is slightly bent. The young doctor with the

funny name said give it some time it will heal. He was very young but very knowledgeable. He

knew how to impersonate doctordom. They all do, they all sound very authoritative. That is why

we believe them. He thought x-rays arent necessary and that is all Anna wanted to hear. She

ponders if she is politically incorrect if she refers to the doctors name as funny. Funny is not

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bad, it is actually good. Maybe it just means, non-English, non-Irish name. Annas last name is

very long and everybody says something about it. It is never ever bad, people just acknowledge

that her name is odd. But odd in a good way, exotic, out of the ordinary. An exotic bookseller,

which is obviously an oxymoron. Booksellers cannot be exotic, they have to be dull and boring.

They live around books, relicts from another time. They are surrounded by what dead poets

wrote. Old white men. They say, that all books of the world are written by men, well, 80 percent

of them. Still, even after the gals got the vote. And even now, Anna, a female, is selling the

goods, not producing the goods. Every now and then she does a reading, people clap, a woman

tells her to end it after seven minutes. An open mic in the place behind the art school, when the

art school was still on the island between downtown and the residential area.

Yes, she used to write and she still does. But these days she is more occupied with selling other

peoples words. Packaged in different papers, in different colors. Candy, just like Halloween

candy. With author photos, either inside or on the back in plain sight here.

Anna has to be here all by herself, until the owner comes at twelve. She then can go out for

lunch, for half an hour. She usually has a wrap in the caf on the other side of the street. The one

with quinoa, with dark beans, it is 520 calories, not much more than a fish burger. But more

filling here. Anna could have a big mac, but she is not sure if she wants to go for that. The

quinoa gives her the illusion that she rolls healthily here.

Anna sometimes feels her heart. She has to go for a physical. But apparently everything is fine,

maybe she will make it to 102 just like the woman on the picture in the senior place of the

community center. You never know. Some people get old while staying spry and bendy. They

can tend to their own hygiene. Anna does not know about the 102-year-old woman.

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Anna could pick up a book and read. But booksellers do not find time to read, they have to stack

and restack and use a broom to clean the leaves on the sideway in front of the store. They have to

display books about Paris, because apparently lots of the people who browse this store are

women who have a romanticized view of Paris and want to revive their stale marriages by

looking up at the Eifel tower. At least that is what the owner thinks, she thinks that that is the

demographics of book buyers. What, why dont you just sell Harlequin novels. But Anna choses

to not voice her opinion, maybe if all books here were STEM, math, science, they would not sell

and Anna would be laid off. After all, this bookstore is far away from the university, books about

math and science are sold in the university bookstore. There are two main universities in town

and ten lesser ones. Colleges, art schools, two year places that try to beget university status, to

become four year places here.

Anna would like to go to Amsterdam, they have different kinds of bookstores over there. More

niche, each bookstore just seems to cater to a certain kind of clientele. Anna likes travel books

the most, they are shiny, glossy, they talk about a lonely planet. They show that there is a world

outside of the existence of a lowly, lonely bookseller in her sixties or seventies in a bookstore

between a sushi place and a bakery. A bookseller who looks at pictures of dead persons in the

senior center of the community center nearby.

Anna will have a latte now, one with sprinkles that taste like salt and caramel. And three

madeleines, half of them chocolate. The owner is here, she is nice and she is on time. Half an

hour lunch break.

Anna goes to the donut place, it has nice sandwiches and all the students from the private all girl

school are there, in pleated skirts. In different shades of green. The students from the public

school go to the other places that are nearer to them. Or maybe not.

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There are lots of bank personnel, insurance people, law office personnel. The donut place is a

catch-all. It is fast, and the sandwiches are delish. And if you do not have any time to wait you

can just get a Canadian Maple and pretend you are a cop. Though cops these days usually go for

gourmet, all sophisticated, all defying the stereotype here. Booksellers have sugary donuts,

though, here.

Anna ponders, where her life went wrong. She did not want to be stuck in a bookstore at age 62,

she wanted to thank the academy for the prize that is worth one million dollars. She wanted to go

and see Stockholm or refrain from going like Bob Dylan or Boris Pasternak. Instead she sells

books like Halloween candy. It is not fair. There has to be more to life than this. Hers is not a

coming of age story it is a getting out of age story. Maybe she should get a ticket on an aeroplane

and get out of here. The Animals, Jefferson Air Plane. Or Sinatra, who wants to put on his

vagabond shoes because everywhere is better than Hoboken here.

She munches her Canadian maple, it is not good for her teeth, her right upper tooth, it does not

like the juice from the caramel. She needs implants because the hole in her teeth shows when she

smiles. But she has not that much to smile about so it is fine. She listened to this woman who

told her about her husband having implants and hurting like hell. She does not want that, better

to lay off smiling. Stay grumpy and do not hurt on the dentist chair here.

There is a woman near the window, well, actually at the table beneath the window that looks out

at the passers-by. She wears a funny hat. It is all knitted, blue, not very dark and not very light.

Midnight blue. Or more like Dutch Delft. Maybe that is midnight blue. It is a strange blue and

there are little glisteny glimmery shiny things in the knitting. She wears glasses and she herself is

knitting too. what she knits is more rainbow-colored, a shawl, maybe. She sits at the table where

all the school children sit. Teenagers, boys, girls. All in private school uniforms, though there

7
seem to be overlaps. Lots of them speak in other languages than English, Korean, Japanese. They

are very animated and very loud and very all-teenagerish. The woman just knits, she has glasses

and does look very old fashioned. Very out of place. This is more an upscale neighborhood,

everybody is a fashionista. Everybody is a walking eating disorder. Or maybe they are just thin

because they are young and have not had time to booze, to accumulate weight. The woman who

knits is chubby but not in a good way. More in a hoarder, cat-lady way. In a pissed-off at the

world kind of way. She knits with an expression of detesting everything around her. She seems

to detest everybody who is a non-knitter. She has a very accusatory expression on her face, Anna

watches her, observes her, is fascinated by her. She is so odd, so different, so seemingly happy in

her differentness. It is as if she lords this upon the rest of the funky donutshop which tries to be

more than a donutshop, a gourmet donut shop what with the map of the neighbourhood on the

wall, a very stylized very bauhausy map. Anna ponders if maps can be bauhausy, after all a map

is three dimensional and Bauhaus is a form of building three dimensional objects, houses. It is an

architectural term, an architectural school.

Anna used to go to art school, she liked it. It was fun, she painted, drew. It was different from

selling books, doing the poetry thing. She used markers, she made lines. Now she delves in

words here. she even used to make films, time-based media. Then she talked about films. Gave

inspirational talks about film. in front of an audience. She would get up and face total strangers.

Speak into a microphone. Pause at the end of her talk and wait for applause. Bend down ever so

slightly, tale a bow as if waiting for somebody to run up and hand her a bunch of flwers, red an

yellow, in cellophane, with a bow, a green one around it.

Yes, she liked art school, it was social, there was a community, a community of strange oddballs,

but a community nonetheless. People who had little lockers as offices, as storage. Hers was a

8
floor model, so one of her colleagues. Those days are gone, she finished art school seven years

ago, did not get into grad school, cannot even afford grad school here. The tuition is way to

steep, you have to have money left to pay the rent. Or be young enough to be able to repay your

student loan over a life time of work.

So she sells books, bug deal.

It could be worse, she could sit amongst loud laughing youngsters and knit, youngsters who

speak in languages that she even does not understand here. She could be the one who wears a

knitted beret with holes and glimmers, in midnight blue here.

Anna likes being in the donut place, there is so much to see. It is more interesting than a place

full of books. This is a place full of people. They wear different clothes, a lot af spandex. Yoga

pants. When did yoga pants become all spandex? Did it all start with Jane Fonda. Did she make

it en vogue? That was before Ted Turner and after Roger Vadim. She was married to that left

leaning congress person who was good looking and kind of sexy, sexy in a liberal entitled white

man kind of way. He had good teeth or something here.

Anna is good at snap judgements, it comes with the territory of selling books that you dont

really read. After all, she prefers to watch the movie, it is easier. She loves old black and white

movies, obscure ones like the long distance runner, the loneliness of the long distance runner, a

young Tom Courtney long before he played some Russian guy in uniform in doctor zhivago

opposite omar sharif, the doctor. In color here.

Anna will go to Amsterdam, once she gets a holiday from bookselling. Amsterdam is fun and so

very exotic, bikes rule the world over there, at least they rule the street, bikes cost more than a

Maserati, bikes are about to run you over if you are not careful here. They have long flat

9
pancakes over there and they eat their french-fries with dollops of mayo. The Dutch eat herrings

like people in New York eat hot dogs. In white buns with onions and relish. And mustard to top.

They drink beer and they have wine. Anna romanticizes Amsterdam, she does not really know

why. Anyplace is exotic if it is far away from reality. And Amsterdam is as far as it can be.

People speak in a funny language that she does not understand. And every language that she does

not understand is funny to her. Maybe she should go to Helsinki, where people speak Finnish or

Lap. Suomi, what does that even mean?

Anna has to go back to selling her books, the half hour is almost over here. The weather is still

nice, rain will come another day. She feels a strange tinge of dislocation, she always does that,

ever since she got that eye problem out of nowhere, that one that impacts her peripheral vision

and makes her stumble to the ground while walking by the store that sells shiny saucers and

shiny pots. Everybody her age is like that, some do not see well, some do not hear well, some

have thinning hair, some have grey hair. They all look like teenagers though, todays baby

boomers will die as hip teenagers. They all know the latest songs, they are hip even though they

can hardly hear. They drink a lot of wine to forget about their collective age and that they were

alive when some guy named Spiro Agnew roamed the world here.

Anna should really go back to the bookstore at a time when she still has a shred of dignity left

and not lost it all for everybody to see here. She is a respectable bookseller whatever that is here.

She should not think weird thoughts and she should not share her weird thoughts with others.

She likes to look normal and to act normal, whatever that might be here, whatever that might

constitute here.

She washes her hands in the bathroom in the back and then waltzes out into the sunshine, makes

sure that she does not jaywalk, and then she enters the bookstore that is wedged between the

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sushi place and the bakery in the upscale neighborhood of the city, whatever upscale might really

mean here.

The coffee was nice and the lingering after taste of the Canadian Maple subsides ever so slightly

until it is totally diffused with the other flavors in her mouth here.

The owner of the bookstore gives her a smile, she says that she has to go to the bank next door,

next door to the sushi place here, Anna is in charge of the books and the register and the little

books about Paris here. It is her domain, her territory, her dominion. She presides over books on

tables, books about art and Paris and new fiction and not so much old fiction here. She asks

people who buy books about their phone numbers and looks it up if they will get a free book

after the purchase of twelve items here. Books like cheese burgers, books like cheeseburgers

here. Her metaphors are wonky and off but that is how all metaphors roll here.

Anna thinks about her hair. If she should cut it or not. That is what you do when you sell books,

you think about the length of your hair. After all you have to be presentable, you are behind the

sale counter, you are front kitchen not back kitchen here. You should not have brunette hair that

shows flakes of dandruff here. You cannot masquerade the dandruff with sunglasses stuck up in

the hair. You cannot fight dandruff except if you are Gloria Vegara and have a Spanishy accent

that sounds very exotic and pretty and busty here. She ponders how accents can be busty, they

can if you are in Hollywood and your name is Gloria Vegara here.

Anna is full of bullshit, it is one thirty and there are not many people who stop in a bookstore

wedged between a sushi place and a bakery here.

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Anna likes Maxwell Perkins, the Editor of Genius. She watched the interview with A. S. Berg on

you tube. He is very articulate, yu, he is good with words. He is the guy who wrote the Max

Perkins book when he was still quite young. It took a long time to become a movie.

Anna has read some thirty book this year. She likes to read, though, well, she likes movies more.

Books are an acquired taste, especially if you stack them for a living, if you sell them for a living

if you put them in boxers for a living. Would be nice to work in a place where they have readings

in the basement, just like in the bookstore on Mott in nyc. Well, it is near Mott, it is actually on

Prince. She always visits that place in SoHo when she is over there on the east coast. There is a

certain vibe to that place, hipness, coolness. And you can have banana pudding in the Little Cup

Cake Store next door or a glass of wine in the place on Houston.

Anna and her books here. There is not much to say, booksellers have boring lives. Not much

drama, nothing, nada, zip. That is why they read stories. Anna used to like non-fiction more, she

does not like the idea of people that are made up. Real life is more interesting, better than fiction.

It is a value judgement after all. Last year she bought this book called American heiress which is

about Patty Hearst. She misplaced it somewhere before reading it. Same with this book by

timothy gaitner, it shuffles around somewhere but at least she went thru one hundred pages while

she was in nyc. It cost her six bucks, that is why she got it. Apparently nobody wants to read

about finance but it was actually quite a nice read. He was good with words, Anna does not know

if he was as good with numbers even though that was his job. He was very unpresumptuous

which is good and he lived all over the world, was raised all over the world here. Kind of just

like his boss, just like Obama.

Anna looks at books and sees colors. The book about Pattie Hearst and the book by tim geitner,

they were both black and white on the book jacket. Seems that nonfiction books are like that. A

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lot of books are green these days, they are usually light fare. She has this one red book, at home,

but it is an old book, the one that was published in the Eighties. Apparently, there are different

fashions in book design. Different eras, stages, different fads through the ages. Nowadays a lot of

titles, alot of book covers are in cursive writing that reminds one of handwriting. Handwriting

reminiscent book covers. As if the whole book is written long hand. It is kind of the antidote to

what we usually read, little textmessages, all printed. They want to sell the experience of

something old school, the idea of other, simpler times. Yup, let us go with that, that is what the

branders try to achieve here.

Anna has ample mounts of time to think about stuff like that. The weather is too nice for

booklovers, for bookbirds. They are all outside to get the last rays of sun before x-mas time sets

in here.

Anna has ample amounts of time to think about her hairstyle. Ah, life as a bookseller is so

boring, she might as well end it now.

The door opens, a man comes in. this is not really a bookstore where men come in. This is more

a neighbourhood where men go out and make the big bucks and women live at home. It is a

neighbourhood that is steeped in the fifties, a place that was left behind by womens lib. Nobody

knows how that happened, but it happened. The eastside in nyc is like that too. after all, there

have to be places where the people who watch soaps live. That kind of demographics.

Anna is full of self hate. Not only jews can roll like that.

Soccermoms can do it too.

She thinks in stereotypes and she is not politically correct ever. Nobody is. That is how Donald

Trump became prez. He tapped into the flavor of the time. Author stacks the new Hillary book.

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The dems made a mistake to not nominate Bernie. But Anna is not about politics, she is more

into her hair. Her greying hair. Her hair that she has in a bun in order to signal bookish ness,

librarian ness. That is how she landed this job. The owner liked her. She looked like a reader, and

she bought books here. It is like a donutshop customer who then gets hired to sell said donuts.

Anna ponders, nobody would hire a person who looks like a donuteater to sell donuts. Too

dangerous here.

Anna has nothing but bullshitty thoughts. It comes with being in retail. The life is so repetitive,

so boring. There is human interaction but so what. If push comes to shove she is not a people

person at all. She likes to sit in a corner and read. Or draw. That is how she ended up in art

school.

Anna and her life here. In November she will be part of nanowrimo. National novel writing

month. 50 000 words in one month. Typing up stuff while she watches Seinfeld after selling

books all day. More like hoarding books, rearranging books, not that much of selling here.

Anna goes out for another latte. Well, actually it is her first latte, before, she had peppermint tea

with her Canadian Maple donut. She likes the foam of the latte, the foamy feel.

It is now four oclock. The book place will close at six. She will have a glass of red wine after

she is finished. In the Canadian place. The Canadian coffee place, where all the patriots go, the

ones who have a problem with a chain that is out of Seattle. And there might even be a problem

with BDS.

She is not quite sure if they even have wine. Maybe she will go down to the pizza place on West

Boulevard. The pizza is all gourmet, so they might have vino instead of beer. Pizza and wine, a

weird and strange compilation. Anthony Bourdain would not approve, then again, he might. He

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is kind of whacky anyways he has tattoos and eats for a living on camera. A nice job if you can

get it.

Anna ponders, this sentence a nice job if you can get it was apparently part of one of the books

she read, a spy story. All the books she read these days mush into each other. All these novels

here. Nonfiction is so much better, everything makes sense here. There is meaning, whereas with

novels it is all made-up stuff. And not good stuff here, nothing funny here.

Anna looks at her watch, it is five after four. Tomorrow she will not take her watch, she will look

at the clock on the other side of the street. The old-fashioned one that goes with the pavement,

the cobblestones. Everything about this neighborhood signals Europe, leisure, times past. Old

fashioned as good. Most people here are old anyways. The schools are closing because people

with young kids cannot afford the prices. There are lots of big houses with old and decrepit

people who live in there and cannot manage the up keep, not even the downsizing because of the

difficulty of moving.

Anna thinks about the length of her hair. She talks to the male customer, absentmindedly. She

works on autopilot here.

Anna thinks a lot about the novel that she will write in November. This is what she thinks about,

the length of her hair, the wordcount of her writing, the donuts she eats, who took the rest of the

Halloween candy. She ponders if every bookseller is so much full of bullshit. Booksellers should

be people different from her, adults, mature persons, well-adjusted adults with intelligent inner

worlds. Her inner world is nothing but mush. It is now ten minutes after four. The male book

buyer is very good-looking. Mr. Clooney has nothing on him. But he seems to have a nervous

tic. Men who are very good looking are kind of suspect. They tend to reek of desperation,

15
apparently, to interfere with their rugged good looks. Anna thinks about that while helping him

find a book. She is totally objectifying him in the same way that Harvey Weinstein objectifies.

They say, that women are much much worse than guys. But they hold their hands to themselves

so you cannot really find anything on them. Theirs are crimes without witnesses. They just think

dirty thoughts, pure and simple. Ah, she is definitely losing it, she needs some ethanol in her

veins. The good-looking guy thanks her and is out of here. A women comes in with her kid. She

seems nice, though slightly underfed. Hungry. Bulimic. Well, she sure is skinny. But not in a

healthy way. More in a Dulcolax popping way. Her skin is too shiny, too white. One can make

out the veins. Eat something, lady, for god sakes, your hubby will not leave yer and if he does,

good riddance.

Anna makes snap judgements about everybody that enters the store. She is not nice when judging

her own gender, she is better with the opposite gender. Mainly because one knows the fallacies

of ones own gender and thus one endows the other opposite gender with better qualities. But in

the end, we are all human, apparently. Except for the little scruffy mutt that comes in. Sorry, so

sorry, all pets have to stay outside of the stores, she squeaks without much authority. There is a

sign though, so the young lady listens to her polite and reluctant order here. She feels like a

cupcake, a pink one. Or a big shiny cookie. Selling books sure makes hungry. The owner is back,

she is always very sure of herself. It is a family business, the bookstore. The owner is the

daughter of the original owner. She has a so very contended aura. Or at least she gives that

illusion of steadfastness. Anna tries to stay very polite, she is kind of afraid that underneath that

solid exterior, there is too much emotion hidden away, stored away. The problem with being part

of a family business, too many shattered dreams. At least the potential for that. Just as there

16
would have been if this was a pizza biz. A dynasty. Anything given from father to son. Amy

ponders if she is reading too much into this, overthinking, ah, overthinking here.

She still must have Halloween candy stacked away somewhere.

Anna waves her hand through her hair. The hair that might or might not get a haircut at Sukis

near Granville Island this weekend. Not the one in downtown, that one sucks. Though there are

two in downtown. One of them sucks, the other one is fine. Somebody told her that, but they

might have talked about a different hair salon here. She could always go to Supercuts. They are

cheap. Or Magicuts. Some kind of inexpensive cuts here. There is a barber too, who cuts hair for

men and women. He has glasses and is very old. She walks by his store when she gets a coffee.

He has a round face and wears blue scrubs. You do not perform surgery, you cut peoples hair.

You are no George Clooney here.

Because, you know, he was the guy who played a doctor on tv. Clooney, that is, ER.

Anna is really losing it, she still has an hour and a half to go here. Books ah books here. She

hates books. Booksellers all hate books, they cant stand reading. Just like people who work at

baskin robbins cant stand ice-cream. She used to love to read. That was before she did this for a

living here. and it is not even a living, it is a pittance here. Books books books books here. She

will take the bus and go back to her apartment near Oakridge. Her life sucks too. everything

sucks. She might take the Canada Line and go up to the casino. Have a drink there. Let the horror

of being a bookseller wash away from her. She definitely does not like selling books. And her

hair. What should she do with her hair? Short or long here. choices, ah, choices here. She rings

up the book, the one with the sidewalk, good choice, she tells the consumer. She makes snap

value judgements about the purchases of the people in the store. The owner told her not to do

17
that, it might backfire. Just keep on smiling, we dont carry Mein Kampf here, everything that

anybody buys here is a valuable piece of literature and not a piece of shit. We just carry good

books, preselected ones. No purple prose, no erotica, no racist stuffi muffi here. Stuff about the

Eiffel Tower and jazz music. Culture that makes you live in a democracy where the people that

are elected wage wars even though they look very nice and polite here. They definitely do not as

Anna herself would do here. They are never ever left leaning enough and never ever right

leaning enough, they always always do get it all wrong here. Any democracy is like that, any

dictatorship is like that. Any monarchy. All politicians are the same, they suck. And they are bad

for the environment. But so are books, the stuff that Anna sells here. She definitely will need a

glass of red wine, shiraz, once she is finished. She will go to the casino, it is full of old people,

people even older and uglier than her. Compared to them she looks like Sharon Stone here.

The Day of a Bookseller, maybe that should be the title of her November nanowrimo

novel here. The day of a bookseller, the sucky sucky day here. A novel with only one

protagonist, antagonists may not apply here. Others write sci-fi, fantasies, they have a lot of

superheroes. Anna is way too jaded to write stuff like that, stuff of that kind here. And her

fingers hurt from too much typing already.

Her hair, short or long, that is the question.

Anna and her books, her books. Lots of books she reads online, you can do that, especially if the

book is really old and there is no copyright anymore. She read Moby Dick online. The Jungle by

Upton Sinclair. Of Men and Mice. Two Tom Wolfe novels. One by George Orwell, another one

she read online a long time ago, that one by George Orwell, too, the story about a bookseller in

London. Let the Aspidistra Fly.

18
And now she sells books, is surrounded by books. She kind of fell into this and it might not be a

good choice of lifestyle here. All of these books, all of these books here. They seem so archaic, a

lifestyle that is overwrought. Nobody who has a life has time to read. People do not have books

on their night stands anymore. Maybe if it is your job, like professors of literature, Celtic

literature, Irish literature. If you teach at Bard. Maybe then you are an avid reader. But the

general population, nah. They scroll thru Instagram pics instead here. And eat bonbons here.

Anna might go to the chocolate store. There is one on the other side of the street. They close at

six just like this place here does. But the one in Oakridge will be open.

The bookstore has a lot of cookbooks. Travel books. New fiction books. Art books. Novelty

books. And a lot of books about Paris, not many about Tuscany. The clientele likes Paris. Not the

South of France. Not Ibiza, not Capri. Anna thinks about this kind of stuff. Books and lifestyles.

She read two books by Emma Straub, too by John Updike, two by Thomas Wolfe, one by Philip

Roth, one by Zadie Smith, one by Zadie Smiths husband. One by this guy who always writes

about China. About rich people in China. She could read something by the Japanese-British guy

who just won the Nobel prize. Last year it was Bob Dylan and deservedly so. It is November, so

she should go home and type up her obligatory 2000 words here, so that she will finish the novel

by the end of the month. You know, after all, youve gotta pen 50 000 words in one month here.

Or she will have red wine, vino in the casino. Shiraz. Or latte. Either way, she will drink stuff.

With alcohol or with caffeine and sans ethanol here. Or she might go downtown to the Irish pub

here. There is always something going on downtown. She could have a salad in Nordstrom. Or

ice cream. Or something nice in the bar of the fancy hotel next to the Y. Anything and everything

that has nothing to do with all of these damn books here. Bookstores, they are all colorful, all

stacked with books, all kind of spines. The fetishism of books here. There are all of these

19
pictures online of different bookstores. The two lions outside of the New York public library

near Bryant Park. The one on forty-first or forty-second or wherever that is. She can google it,

but books were at a time when there was no google and no Wikipedia here. A planet sans

Facebook or facetime here. Different times and different lives.

Anna and her hair. It is five now. She is definitely pooped. But she smiles at all the new

customers and at this time of the day, there are many many customers. Too many, after all, this

store is so very small and too many people, means that it gets sticky in here.

She might work for a different bookstore. Bookstores are as different as night and day. Even

though they all sell books. Maybe she can get her old job back, the one in the airport. She liked

that more, everybody was in motion. People were leaving arriving. Well, more leaving, to see the

world. It was a better place than the bookstore wedged between the sushi place and the bakery.

She could work in a second-hand bookstore, there are several all over town. But they are usually

stinky, old books are smelly, no way around it. There is that one in Kits that smells like incense.

But one never knows if the whiffs are not there just because of the old books, to overpower the

mothy moldy smells. The slight pot smell, but then this is British Columbia, pot is free (from

litigation, maybe). The day before she had to move on the bus because the person next to her

emitted a strong stench of pot here.

Anna and all of these books here. She did not want to become a bookseller. She has a friend who

wanted to become a fashion model and she has now gained a lot of weight and sells frumpy

clothes to frumpy women. This is not good, the morphing of aspirations here. With books it is

ok, it is still debatable if this is good or bad. With fashion, nah.

Anna does not need to stay longer, the owner is fine with her leaving at six. I will lock up.

20
Anna is finished for the day. She catches the bus. So many people on the bus. She has to stand.

She gets out at the Canada Line station in Oakridge. She lets go of the idea to go up to the

casino. She has a burger in Whitespot. And vino, red wine. The waitress arches her left brow up,

who the fuck would combine wine with burgers? One burger? And fries. Well, the customer is

king, we can do what we want here.

She is pooped, she will drink and then go home and roll over and sleep. Bookselling is tough, at

least it is tough for her. Tough on her body. She knows that she should go to the Y and bike on

the stationary. Or walk around the block. But she does not have the energy. She has merely

enough energy to booze and glutton around. The burger is good, juicy. Usually she hates meat

though, but today ketchup makes her feel good. Comfort food, though it is more like junk food

here. There are lots of people in this place. It has a pub atmosphere mixed with whiffs of

wholesomeness. Very strange though here.

She has dessert too. Apple pie and ice cream and coffee. People chatter around here. There are

others too who are all by themselves. Usually she goes to the food court where everybody eats in

a kind of solitary, well, not confinement, solitary bliss, maybe. In a restaurant it is different, one

is uncomfortable as numero uno. They definitely do not know how to do business. Foodcourts

are better at accommodating the feelings of the solitary customer. It is all a matter of branding.

Anna just read a book about branding, a marketing company in Chisholm in London. That is why

she all the time thinks about branding, this is branded well, this is branded badly. She makes

snap judgements about the branding of different businesses here. The applepie is very good,

wholesome, flakey, whatever. There are better ways to describe this. She watches foodshows,

where people describe the consistency of food items in poetic terms. It is a science, an exacting

one. Flakey and wholesome are definitely the words of an amateur foodie. She takes a pic. She

21
could yelp. Write a book, whatever. She is losing it here. such a long day filled with books. The

coffee is too harsh, even for a decaf one here.

She pays, tip of twenty per cent here.

She could go home, but the mall is open until nine. It is now seven, it is dark outside. The mall is

fun, it is a Wednesday. That is why this place is still open here. Walking thru the mall is fun,

though she slipped here, twice. That happens when it is wet on the ground. It becomes very

slippery and there is nothing one can do. She fell, and her thumb got bent. So now she walks

very cautiously, not fast. That is why she does not mallwalk anymore. Downtown would be fun,

but it is too much. She has to open the store the next day, at ten. The routine of working in retail

here. You have to fashion your life around the opening times of stores. Could be worse. At least

hers are nice times. No graveyard shift here.

She did like to work in the airport though. The excitement, the whiff of exotic. The whiff of

glamour. People in uniforms that fly away to places far away, the illusion of hipness. She

ponders if hip and glamorous are the same or whether they are mutually exclusive. She will

ponder this just like Kant used to ponder the deeper questions of this planet of ours here.

The scholarly dissemination of the questions of our times. She takes a cup of tea out of the tray

that the young chubby lady in front of Dannys Tea offers to the passers-by. It tastes too sour and

she knows that it is way overpriced. Everything in the mall is. It is that kind of mall here. One

day she will purchase ingredients and cook for herself. It doesnt really go with being a

bookseller. The working in retail here.

Anna has to lose weight. Pie and icecream and wine is not conducive to that. Sometimes she sits

at work. Standing is better, it has to do in lieu of exercise here.

22
The mall is interesting. She likes malls. Lots of her friends hate malls. Not Anna. She sits down

on one of the comfy couches. They really look like the couches in a domestic setting. Not like

benches in a public place. They are green and go with the plants that are next to them here. There

is an old man with a walker who talks to himself. A woman and a small baby that she nurses. A

young man with a toque and a toddler. People walk by, with determined gaits. Shopping is a

serious undertaking. There is no bookstore in this place here. There is a public library though,

but it is closed on Wednesdays. There used to be a movie theater but it is now a furniture store.

Actually a Tates and Matle here. They have stuff other than furniture. Their furniture is

overpriced. Or not. Who knows here. One woman helped her to find stuff. She was annoying.

Annoying is not good here.

Annoying and presumptuous. Anna is not that kind of retail person. She does not have airs. Most

retail people do not, they are trained to be polite. So if somebody is annoying, it sticks. Because

it is atypical for north America. People in retail know how to behave, the customer is always

king. You cannot really pull an Al Bundy here.

Anna goes home to go to sleep. There will be still another day to sell books, lots of books. She

starts to dream of books, lots of books here.

Thursday morning. The usual, shower, makeup, the bus. Coffee in the coffee house and a banana

loaf here. Cars that drive by in front of the window of the coffee house. Her doctor comes in and

gets his coffee and goes to his office. Sometimes, Anna sees her dentist here.

She still has time to kill till ten. Till the new day in the book place. Surrounded by books here.

Her coffee is not hot enough. Just warmish. Ah, what can you do. She will not start a fight. She

never is that kind of customer. She hates that kind of people who start fights in stores over the

23
quality of the service. Those people suck. On this planet, there are two kinds of people. Those

who suck and those who do not. She should write a book about that, on that. A treatise, a

dissertation. The research about what sucks, which people suck and which ones do not. It is

called psychiatry, psychology and you have to live in old Vienna to do research on that. Or

Zurich, what does she know here. C.J. Jung, Sigmund Freud, whatever. Skinner.

The bookstore, my country for a bookstore here. She hates it. Selling other peoples books, she

should sell her own books. Be a famous writer. Go on book tours, give interviews, be on Charlie

Rose. Do book signings. The works. Get a Nobel Prize for her literary pursuits. The world got it

all wrong here. every now and then she queries some lowly intern in nyc and each and every

time she is rejected. Utterly rejected here. Maybe it is her name, Anna. It does not have gravitas,

it is not the name of a guy. A white guy with a beard. A white beard. A guy who is near to death.

Or already dead. Actually, the ethnicity is not important, the gender is what makes or breaks

your publishability. Your marketability. Let us face it, who are the persons who buy books?

Girls. And they buy books written by boys. If boys were the purchasers of books, the majority of

published writers would be girls. One gender is always interested in what the other gender has to

say. The Other, but in a good way, in a celebrated way. THE OTHER as in THE BETTER. Anna

ponders, maybe she should really write a book, share her insights. Instead of pondering if she

should have a haircut. Short hair or long hair? A bun? There are lots of policepersons in this

coffee place here. They usually are here at five in the morning, after work or before work. They

usually sit at the long table in the corner and are usually very loud and they laugh a lot. Why they

are here at nine thirty in the morn, nobody knows here. It makes people feel unsafe, such a stark

police presence in an otherwise inconspicuous neighborhood. What is wrong here?

24
Well, Anna does not care here. She is getting ready for her stint in the bookstore. Her lot as a

bookseller here. She still has half an hour, half a precious hour here.

A woman comes into the coffee place. Anna knows her from somewhere. Ah, she remembers,

that woman was on the city council. There was a scandal or something. She was married with

three small children. She fell in love with the party big honcho who was married, too with three

kids. It was all over the news. Some twenty years ago.

All of their kids are adults now. The jilted spouses remarried. The main characters married, each

other. She now lives with a husband who is too old for her. He must be in his eighties.

The woman stll looks very good. Pretty but chubby. Chubby can be pretty actually after a certain

age a woman has to decide whether to have a pretty body or a pretty face. Some French actress

said that. Catherine Deneuve. And she should know. In pure medical terms., wrinkly and thin

always wins. The heart works better, can pump the blood through the veins and the arteries with

ease. It is pure thermodynamics, I tell yer.

Anna ponders about stuff like that. She will go to the bookstore in fifteen minutes. Come ten

oclock here. Ten on the big cock in the street outside of the coffee place here. Next to the

cobblestone pavement in the nice neighborhood of the town the city on the west coast of north

America here.

Anna has more pressing issues here. Short hair or long hair. She is a brunette after all, the day

before, she saw a woman on the bus that was wearing a sweater that said brunette on it in cursive

lower case letters. The woman herself was actually a brunette. Anna was wondering if that would

fly if you are a blonde gal. Probably here. Anyways, with brown hair, maybe, short is better. She

is not quite sure why, but she throws out here, brunettes, especially those who go grey, do have

25
to wear their hair short. Short locks. Her hair is straight though. She always wanted to have curls.

But she was blessed with straight hair. Anna ponders if she would have had a different life if her

hair was curly. Or read. Or blond. Well, her main issue was always straight or curly. Those were

the times when this woman opposite Marlon Brando had curly hair. Curly became the rage. After

that, it all was forgotten and Marlon Brando played in this Mafiosi movie. Godfather. Nobody

cared about the curls in womens hair anymore.

It is now ten to ten. The bookstore will be opening in ten minutes here.

At twelve, she goes to the burger joint. Lunch and junk food. So we die with a smile on our face.

We die early but well the smile is there. The American cheese. The two patties. The sesame on

the bun. The ranch, the mayo, the ketchup, the pickle. She has a strawberry milkshake too, but

foregoes the fries. We do not need a coronary as of yet, not quite yet here.

There are so many people in this place here. ah, the golden arches. Lots of cars piled up outside

in front of the drive thru. They still have the Halloween stuff up, even though it is by now

November second here. Lots of kids from the high school, lots and lots here. She takes her food

and goes up the stairs. Puts her tray on the seat near the window. On the table here. The table that

overlooks the street crossing, the busy one. The ketchup tastes good, the cheese tastes good, it

tastes like America. This is a line from Seinfeld, uttered by Elaine Benes. Or maybe by old

Christine here. who really keeps track here. Maybe Veep. Anyways Julia Dreyfus said it with a

pause in front of the AMERICA. Tastes like nod nod America (said with emphasis). The self-

deprecation of America, that is what is part of its success and its downfall. We know our secret

vices. If you put a man on the moon then you can do that, you can criticize your own

shortcomings. Well, America is an obese nation, but apparently, Mexico surpassed them. What

are the data of the World Health Organization here? Can one even measure this? Such high

26
numbers of people. Statistics are wrong lots of time. They have to be. There was this saying in

the old times that you can prove everything with statistics.

Anna munches on her burger. French fries would have been so good with this. That is why they

always ask if you want a meal, - do you want fries with that? The food is supposed to make you

happy happy with clotted arteries, but happy nonetheless. She sips in the milkshake, inhales it, is

more like it. You cannot sip a milkshake, you are all taking it in. sipping is way too timid.

There are lots of young people here, it is the high school next to the ice-rink. Hardly any

adult in here, except of two pensioners in the corner here.

Later, it is back in the bookstore. Books books. She is not very good at her job, but apparently

she is friendly. Well-adjusted. Anna is not quite sure how long she can keep this up. Maybe she

should work in the hat store. What can go wrong with hats? Retail is retail here. she does not

wear hats, so she will never tire of hats. Because she has no affinity towards hats whatsoever, no

alliance. With books it is different. She loves to read. But bookselling is counterintuitive to

reading here.

The weather outside is nice. A sunny November day. The stillness before the storm. Though it

never ever gets that cold on this side of the continent here. Well, once there was a very snowy

winter, sometime in the last century here. Anna was much younger then, prettier, less wrinkly.

Fatter, though than she is these days. She sported more kilos, she can remember that. You can do

that when you are younger here. Once more, short hair, or long hair here?

Anna gives info to people who ask her. Books about Paris. Books about art. Books about Italy.

Cook books, baking books. Children books. Dr. Seuss. She even giftwraps a book, though not

27
very professionally here. It is a busy day, a Thursday. There is no long weekend in sight, is

there?

The owner has a dentist appointment. Anna cannot really do it all by herself. Another bookseller

comes to help. He is an on-call guy and he lives two blocks from the bookstore. He is very nice

and very knowledgeable and very bookish. He is an English major, last year, undergrad in the

university in the other city, the one next to this town here.

Anna is happy, though tired, the adrenaline is rushing. Bookselling can be exhilarating, the

buzzkill of the bookselling, the bookselling-high here.

Well, what do you know here?

At six, she locks up the place and goes down to Oakridge, only to get the train up to the casino.

She sits at the bar in the hotel, the one in the big lobby. Sangria, please. She ponders, bookselling

does not become her. Too much ethanol, inevitably. Maybe the life of a bookseller is too much

for her here. Especially bookselling in a residential area. The bookselling in the airport was much

much tamer, more innocent. Must have been the mobility of her customers, all the uniforms

around her. The air cabin crew people here. All of those valises. Everybody had a bag with

wheelies. It was such a different vibe when compared to the yoga vibe of the bookstore wedged

between the sushi place and the bakery here. The sangria has nice fruit in it. She got white

sangria, though apparently red one is more potent or more elegant or more of something, so

google or Wikipedia stated here.

Sangria is not that good, it makes you tipsy much faster than pure wine does. Apparently, the

reason is the higher sugar contents. She googled it and google is never wrong. All she knows she

knows from Wikipedia here. It is seven, she makes sure not to finish the sangria. Sangria on a

28
stomach that is empty, it will do her in. it is seven as said before. Anna goes to the casino, to play

the slots. A gambling boozing bookseller. Yup, beware of those boozing librarians here, they live

the high life apparently. Books are not that innocent anymore here. Debauchery and books go

hand in hand, that is why frat boys and sorority girls are the most avid boozers, apparently.

Books and alcohol, a strange and funny mix. University and alcohol or maybe life with books is

so dull, you have to drink to make it interesting, anyways, she loses money, not much though, at

eight, she takes the train back home, tomorrow it will be still another day in bookseller land here.

So now, dear reader, you read about two days of Anna, the bookseller. November first and

November second. What will happen next, what can happen next? More descriptions of the

redundant life of one lady named Anna? Is this enough for a novel? Merely one protagonist? One

whiny and complaining protagonist? The woman versus the books. The books she sells and the

books she reads. Woman versus world. In the evening she curls in her armchair in front of the

TV. She is writing a tad, the novel that she produces every year in November. On the telly, it is

the Last Man Standing show. Pretty right-wing stuff. And laugh tracks. But it is Hollywood,

what can you do here? She looks at the images on the nyc wrimo feed. Two pics on the twitter

feed. People sitting around tables on the second floor of the Whole Foods in Tribeca, all with

laptops. When Anna lived down in the States, eons of years ago, there was not even a Whole

Foods anywhere. Well, the one in Austin was in existence, the first one. Anna once visited it,

when she was in Austin some years ago. It was a very big Whole Foods, a massive one. They

had a program for bike riders, too, on the roof. A community gathering or something. A super

market as community center. Just like what they now do in Tribeca, hosting a nanowrimo

meeting. Or maybe they are just like any other restaurant that hosts a nanowrimo meeting. Anna

29
watches TV, still ponders about the length of her hair and tries to accumulate words for her

novel. She is not a fast typer, but she is adequate enough here.

She will still read the new books that she purchased. Both books were written by female writers.

They both seem to tackle very muted themes. Muted story lines. Nothing full of drama. One is

written by a Scottish writer. It seems to be a historical novel, something that happened in

seventeen hundred and something. Something in the seventeen hundreds. Both books have a

muted green book cover. And both writers live in small cities, far away from urban areas. There

are definitely similarities, at least aesthetical ones. Anna is kind of distraught, she has to read

through some 600 or 700 pages here and she has to type up some 50 000 words here while

holding the bookseller job in the book place wedged between the sushi place and the bakery. In

some countries like Germany you have to go through an apprenticeship in order to work as a

bookseller. You get a diploma and then you are certified to sell books. In north America it is

different, apparently. Anyways, her life is determined by words these days, the ones that she

herself writes and the ones that she sells to others and the ones that she has to read through, the

ones that she herself consumes here. She definitely has morphed into a bibliophile since finishing

art school. She left the world of the visual and entered the world of words here, for better or for

worse.

2.

And here we have more about Anna. She still sells books.

It is now February. Chilly and cold. Christmas time is over, the holidays, all the books that were

bought as presents. Books are a nice present, small, compact. The ideal stocking stuffers. Well,

at least for roomy stockings.

30
February, on the other hand, is a month were not many books are sold. People read the books

that they got for Christmas. Students read the textbooks that they got from the bookstore on

campus. Anna likes this time of the year, she has not much to do. She is not in charge of the

ordering of new books, her job is just to maintain the store itself. It is cold though, she always

has to take the bus to come here to the bookstore. The bookstore is always cozy and comfy and

well-heated. Full of books. Pretty books, ugly books, new books, old books. She sometimes feels

as if she gets deranged. It is a tad claustrophobic in the store. She usually goes to the sushi place

for lunch. They are really good, she usually has an avocado roll and a yam roll. And then it is

back to minding business, minding the books to be precise. Minding the books so to say here.

Anna still did not have a haircut. No short hair for her here.

It is a Tuesday. She is once more in the coffee house on the other side of the street. It is nine in

the morning. She will open up the place at ten. Until then, it is coffee. Well, until half past nine.

She could go in sooner but there is nothing to do. Everything is nice and ready to go. Usually it is

fixed the evening before, after closing up. That seems to be the new routine. When she worked in

the bookstore in the airport, it was totally different. Each store has its own mechanism, its own

system. She ponders if she should not work for one of the chain stores in the mall. Maybe she

will learn something new. A different perspective would do her good. And maybe the on-call

manager will take over the work in the independent bookstore. He seems to be better than her,

anyways. More eager. The work seems to suit his temper more than it does suit somebody like

Anna. But what does she know, she has to take it up with the owner. Maybe she should vie for

being a barista. Service industry versus retail industry. Maybe she should sell shoes. Or hats.

Anna and the books. At ten it starts. Customers will not really flock to this place on a Tuesday in

February. It is a small bookstore, quaint, charming. She looks through a new cookbook. Dijon,

31
fennel. Beets. Risotto. Red wine. Grapefruit. It is a diet cook book. Anna likes the recipes. A

woman comes in. She searches for a travel book, something about Finland. Nice, there actually is

one copy in the back.

At lunchtime the owner comes, Anna goes for lunch to the Sushi place. And so it goes. The life

of a bookseller here.

Fast forward, May seventh. New books in the store. Anna still works here. Maybe she will stay

here forever. The on-call guy graduated from university and is off to this place in Baltimore for

grad school. So Anna is staying on in this place here. Forget about the bookstore in the airport.

Forget about the places in the malls all over town. It seems to be this very bookstore where she

will work if they want her. And they seem to like her too. A marriage made in heaven. Her

writing does not go very good, though.

Anna is writing this story about a woman who lives in Amsterdam. Which is kind of tricky

because Anna has been to Amsterdam just one. About fifteen years ago. So everything is

basically made-up. She does not speak Dutch. She does not know anybody who speaks Dutch.

She does research online. And hopes for the best. It is a love story. Boy meets girl. Or girl meets

boy, potato, potahto. She tends to write 1000 words per day, each and every day here. She types

it up, though longhand might be better. Typing is an acquired taste for her. Because longhand

can be done in a coffee house and the people around her somehow influence her writing in a

positive way. The vibe writes the story, automatically here.

So this is what she does. She writes. She does her book selling. And another new thing she does

is baking. Southern biscuits. She watches this show out of Nashville. These two women talking

endlessly about how their grandma used to make biscuits. With buttermilk. And butter. And

32
yeast. Apparently, there are certain tricks. And then they make that dough into waffles with

mascarpone in the dough, the batter. Italian and Southern. A different kind of fusion. It is very

rich food. The two women who do that are rail thin. Something is wrong with this picture. They

talk about a hollow leg. Anna does not know what that even means.

So this was May seven. Work, writing, baking. And watching the food channel. And the two

women with a stark Southern accent here. Now they talk about grits. Now grits spell out

Southern cuisine here. Anna had never had grits, though. As of yet here. There is a first for

everything.

Her story about the woman in Amsterdam is stuttering along. She ponders if she can build in a

subtext that has somehow to do with making grits. It sounds very farfetched. Southern cuisine

and Holland. There is no connection whatsoever. How can you mush this together somehow?

And would it gel? Grits and a love story in Amsterdam.

The women on the television now make collard greens. And something called tomato gravy. And

now they eat. And the show is over. Apparently, the show is called Trishas cuisine. Apparently

this is Trisha Yearwood. She noticed it when Garth Brooks came in. Arent these people

musicians? Now they teach cooking? Something is off. They must have more than enough

money to hire the best chefs. Anna here is definitely confused here.

Maybe she can make up a story about a musician who moved to Amsterdam from Texas. And

cooks grits. And sings songs, loudly. Most books have very weird stories anyways, storylines

where nothing goes with nothing. Stories about nothing. A la Seinfeld. And why will people read

it? Because it is in a bookstore. Not yet, to paraphrase the director of NBC in Seinfeld.

33
Maybe there should be a superhero somewhere. A guy with a cape. And it is still May seven

here.

She watched the food channel show, she wrote some 1000 words, she did the work at the

bookstore. It is pretty late, nine thirty but it is still too soon to go to sleep. Anna goes to the

coffee house that is opposite of the bookstore that is wedged between sushi place and bakery.

The coffee place is still open and it is usually open till eleven. There are many people in there,

mostly students. But others too, all ages. It is a nice safe place to have a hot chocolate with whip.

And that is what Anna does order. She used to run into a friend of hers, a long time ago. The lady

has moved since, so Anna just has to have her chocolate by herself here. Which is fine, this place

is that kind of place, full of people who do their own thing. When she was an art student, she

always stopped by. It has the feel of a pub without serving alcohol. People work on their laptops

or work on homework. It is more fun than watching musicians cook on the tube. The chocolate

and the whip. She asked that there will be no drizzle because it kind of drains the flavor of the

whip. And not in a good way. Anna ponders, maybe a career as a food writer is not in the cards

here. The mellow chocolate taste is very good. Chocolatey, yay.

This place is filled with people who drag out the day. As much as they can. None of them seems

to have to be wide awake at six in the morning. They all seem to work to meet a deadline, an

essay, some math stuff, biology, chemistry. These are all procrastinators. Young ones, old ones.

Anna thinks about the construction of her novel. Nothing makes sense in the story. Maybe, in the

end, she has to stop writing that particular text. It seems to have run its course and seems

unredeemable. After putting in all this work. Maybe sometimes you have to stop work on an

unachievable goal. Anna has the rest of the hot chocolate. The story in Amsterdam has to be

34
going on without her living to tell it here. So to speak, obviously here. It is time to go home and

sleep here.

May twenty-second. Anna and all the books. The weather is very very nice. She finally had her

haircut, and nothing changed in her world. She opens the bookstore at ten like every day. Well,

five days per week.

Anna has stopped the Amsterdam novel. Which might as well be. The story just lingered. There

are many bad novels out there, she did not need to add another one. She will learn from her

mistakes. Linguistically. Writing is a craft. If she could come up with the money she would sit in

a classroom and take notes and work towards a master of fine arts in creative writing. She

believes in willing oneself to fashion the great American novel. Even if one is non-American.

Masterpieces could care less about passports. It is the inner structure of a story that counts, good

stories are universal.

A woman comes into the door of the bookstore. All of these people that come in here somehow

morph into one person after a while. Into numbers. Anna does not really distinguish between

them. She works like a robot, goes through the motions mechanically, automatically. It is

becoming hot inside of the book place. She leaves the door open. There is something wrong with

the AC.

At lunchtime the owner, Anna has sushi, avocado, yam. Everything is predictable. The everyday,

ah, the everyday here.

In the evening, Anna goes home and sits at the computer and starts up writing a story, a new one:

This is the story of Anatoly. He lives in Pittsburgh. He watches what is on the TV. At this time

of the day it is a show out of Los Angeles, where they talk about donuts and then about these big

35
pizzas. They are all eating the food. And apparently this is about an app called Insider. Anatoly

does not know if this is an ad for the food or the app. Everybody seems to say something else on

the telly. But he will get into that later. At this time, he would like to write about how bad the

weather is. It really rains in buckets. It is fresh November and just pitch dark outside. There is no

other word to describe this kind of weather here. And the people on the telly are still eating the

food. Anatoly lives in Pittsburgh. Anatoly the writer. He is a writer, Anatoly is a writer. He tells

himself that, he tells others that. I am a writer, he exclaims at parties, in the same way as others

in his age group would declare: How wasted am I? Anatoly thinks that these people will grow

out of their wasted freshmen years and grow up to become responsible adults with families to

support and mortgages to pay. But what will they read, what will be on their nightstands once

they are said responsible adults? The books of Anatoly the writer from back when. Anatoly is not

from Pittsburgh and he is not that keen to see more of the city. He lives in the dorm, he eats in

the dorm. Ok, adjacent to the dorm where the other diasporic misfits hang out, in their own little

foreign enclave. They all are taking classes in different fields, some are in the sciences, some are

in the arts. Humanities. They still are planning their lives. Just Anatoly the writer knows where

he wants to be in the future, in Stockholm to thank his mentors and to talk about the process of

typing up long-winded stories. Anatoly works as a construction worker on his time off from

writing and studying. He drives a white pick-up truck and parks it in front ot the coffee house in

the rain, he goes into the coffee place in his bespeckled white overalls. Sometimes he works as a

painter, he likes that. House painting, anybody can pick that up.

The coffee place that Anatoly goes into is all rained-in, well, outside of the place it is raining like

buckets here. Inside, it is the usual ten oclock crowd with lattes and coffees and muffins here.

36
Three Japanese women are having a little diasporic coffee klatsch, their husbands work for

Toyota or Sony. Or Mitsubishi.

They are still young and have kids in school. One of them looks very housewify, the others are

more into casual elegance.

Anatoly has his coffee and sits so that he can see the outside. The display has changed. The

writing on the glass wall. The glass door. They put a different writing on said glass door. Two

paper cups, red ones with two hands holding them. The writing says Coffee good. It is kind of

different from the writing that was there in October. Leaves and the words FELL AGAIN, or

FALL AGAIN.

Anatoly comes to this place often, it is on the way. It is now November third. He works on the

nanowrimo novel, 50 000 in November. He will make up a story about two persons in a

retirement home in Pittsburgh. This is because he always drives by this retirement home when he

comes to this particular coffee house. There is always a man in a wheelchair sitting in front of

the retirement home and watching people go by and drive by.

Anatoly is not famous yet but one day he will be. It is inevitable mainly because he is very good

with words. He always writes the right sentences. Everybody likes to listen to the stories that

Anatoly writes. He is a natural, all his teachers in high school said so. And their job is to teach

Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut to youngsters. Ulysses, Finnegans wake. Well not Finnegans

wake because who knows what that is all about here.

Anatoly reads a lot and he writes a lot.

Anna looks at what she just wrote. She ponders if this story is even believable. A freshman

knowing what he wants to do with his life, what his profession will be till the end of his days.

37
How can any person know what she or he will do at age seventy from the fresh view point of a

twenty-year-old? Anna types up the description of the Anatoly person anyways. The story is as

fictional as the story of the two lovers in Amsterdam was. These are all fictional stories that

might delve into bigger stories, they might still morph, and morph here. The Amsterdam story is

on the backburner, but the Pittsburgh one is now at the forefront. There really is a writer who

wrote a novel, a break out novel that was situated in Pittsburgh. This story is the inspiration for

her Pittsburghian writer. Anna is that kind of writer. She gets her inspiration by surfing the net.

She copies the stories, the life stories of others. Apparently, Zadie Smith said that she gets

inspiration from reading other books and then sits in front of the typewriter and makes up her

own stories that she then sends out to publishers the world over. Anna is kind of paraphrasing

what Zadie Smith does but she is such an iconic figure that one tends to emulate her. As a writer

that is.

Anna is once more in the bookstore. She arranges the books on the display table. People pick

them up and then put them back, not necessarily very orderly. They mess up the display. In retail

one has to constantly rearrange the wares because the customers come in and pick up the wares

and then put them back skeweredly.

Anna looks out at the street. It is really raining buckets, torrents of rain are coming down on the

city. If she was still at this work in the airport, then she would be all dry. Not that she is not dry

in here, but she can see the dreary weather first hand. Inside of the airport it is all artificial light

here.

Anna is slightly bored. As a bookseller you are always waiting for stuff to happen. Somebody

will come in, somebody will leave. It is very transitionary, short interactions, one after the other

here.

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Anna writes about this Anatoly person. It is weird and coincidental that the made-up protagonist,

sounds like her alter ego. The first part of the name is. The protagonist is male, so there is a

difference. And he is a quarter of the age of the person who made him up. Anna thinks about the

connection between fictional character and the author who made up said fictional character.

Anna thinks a lot about writing and the person in her novel does the same. So she basically

sketches a self-portrait. A mirror image. Maybe that is too constraining a story. Or maybe she

can describe that person better because she knows what goes on in the mind of a writer mainly

because she herself is one. This is getting too complicated. She feels like having a latte, one of

those that have salt, caramelly sprinkles on the whip, sprinkles that crush under ones teeth and

sometimes go between ones teeth. She feels like having a glass of red wine. She always feels

like ingesting something once she is bored or confused or anything. She always looks for a

reason to eat and that is why she has gained thirty pounds, poundage that has to come down till

the holidays.

Anna thinks about purchasing shoes because there is a sale on in the big department store. She

might do that over the weekend when she does not have to be at work here in the bookstore.

A woman comes in. she has red hair. She wants to buy a book about Amsterdam. We do not have

one, but I can order it. Will be here tomorrow. No thanks, the woman leaves. Anna thinks that

she has seen this scenario lots of times. Every day seems to be the same as the day preceding.

The day before. Nothing new ever happens here in her world. She works, she has dinner, she

sleeps and then the same things happen to her again. It is very automatic, like clockwork here.

Actually, she likes that, because nobody likes change. Change is so traumatic, everybody wants

to know what will happen the next day. One wants to feel safe and sound here.

39
Annas hair is now growing out. She had the short haircut, but she does not really have a short

haircut face here. She has the face for locks but as she stated before that will not be happening.

She lived her life as a straight hair person and she is fine with that. She does not really like the

idea of some person drizzling bad smelling lotions on her air to change the consistency of her

natural hair texture.

The door to the bookstore opens. Do you have Run Rabbit Run by John Updike? No but we have

Rabbit Redux. Ok, I want that one then. Either one of the rabbits is fine. Ok, so here is the life of

Rabbit Angstrom then here.

Anna is happy, she made a sell. It is not on commission but still. We are in the business of

moving merchandise here, be it books, or be it hats. Anna always walks by the display window

with the hats, which is next to the sushi place that is next to the bookstore here. These little

houses where people work and pletsher away their precious time on this planet here. The raison

detre of the shopkeepers here.

Anna will go home and write some more about the writer from Pittsburgh. The man named

Anatoly. She will not write anymore about the woman and the man in Amsterdam. Mainly

because the story was stalling. But the Anatoly tale has potential. She will explore it, let it run its

course. Maybe it will go somewhere, hopefully here.

She ponders if she could write about a woman who wants to be a model in Paris. Something with

fashion. An exploration of the fashion world. And she could read books about Paris because the

bookstore has a lot of them. Anna ponders, Paris fashion gal or Pittsburgh writer boy. Which

story would be more interesting? Obviously, the Paris fashion gal story. Who really would care

about a writer from Pittsburgh except other writers?

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Anna thinks about her hair and highlights. Maybe she should put in red highlights. It looks nice

if made professionally here.

Anna suddenly changed her mind about the way, the direction that her life should go. She

purchases a one-way ticket to Belgium. She starts her life in a house that she rents and that

overlooks a lake. She will do her writing here while exploring the village next to the lake. She

called the owner and quit her job in the bookstore.

This went very fast, the sudden change of scenery. Anna likes it. Everything is new. The lake,

the calmness. It will cost a fortune so that is not good. She definitely has to open the mattress but

she is basically a heiress. Anna the heiress who can do things like that. Sudden impulsive things,

sudden impulsive moves. She is that kind of person, she has money to burn. In Belgium she

cannot work, she does not have permission to work. She can live here as a tourist. She is happy

that she does not have to sell books anymore and can now write a book. The book that is written

in Belgium about the writer in Pittsburgh. Or about the model in Paris.

Anna still thinks about her hair, the color of her hair here. The highlights here. The red ones that

are supposed to mask the grey here.

Anna thinks too much about hair and about made up stories. There is more to life. Maybe she

should write a spy novel. The drivel that is a spy novel. She ponders, a spy novel is a lesser art

form. A lesser literary form. James Bond, that is so misogynic. A guy with women in bikinis.

That smacks of the display that she saw in downtown Vancouver when she walked by on the

way to the Orpheum. There was a grave stone inside of the display and on it were written the

words: RIP Hugh Hefner, the only person who did not go to a better place. Now what can you

make of that? It is funny though, the way it is put here.

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Spy novel, huh. Sci fi fantasy. No, she has to write about the real world. But let us face it, any

novel is a made-up world. Even one about JFK. It is one persons version of what happened. The

authors version here.

Anna looks out at the lake. A quiet lake just like any other lake. She rented this place for one

month, the price was good. Anna feels homesick already. Belgium is too far from anywhere.

Maybe she should rent a place in New England. Near Sag Harbor. Or a place in Capri. Ascona.

Ibiza. There are a lot of destinations on this planet. What would a spy do? What would Mata Hari

do?

Anna looks in the mirror, the one near the entry door, the one with curly things above it. She

looks old with this hairdo. Maybe she should get red highlights. Maybe she should have some

wine. Vino is always the answer for Anna here. The village store must have wine. It is just a

small walk. She will talk Belgiumish with people. Flemish, Wallonish, French. Well, she will

speak English or do the sign language, universal international spiel here. They must think that

she is an eccentric old lady. Which she is. If you live long enough that will happen to anybody.

You will lose your ability to hear and your ability to see and your ability to decipher what is

going on. You will live in a house at a lake and you will read funny books and write funny books

here. Anna is not happy, there is more to life. She could move to live with the bush Indians and

eat bush Indian food. Kalahari. She remembers the talk between Elaine Benes and the Portuguese

waitress. Not the bush men of the Kalahari.

The writer of all of this is now sitting and watching Friends on the telly. Thats right there is a

person who types this up on November second in Vancouver city, Vancouver town, while the

telly is on. While the rain is coming down on the town here. Though it seems to have subsided.

42
On the telly, Rachel and her female boss and Chandler Bing. Bing, that is Gaelic for thy turkey is

done. Is he involved with anyone? I ask him for you if you want me to.

Watching Friends while making up stories about a woman named Anna and a writer named

Anatoly. All of these stories are interschachteld as the Germans would say. One story inside of

another one. Like Russian dolls here. In the end you do not know anymore what is real and what

is fiction here. That happens if you live in a world full of screens here. The oversaturation of info

and trivial info at that here. Yes.

At this point the title of this book is anna, the writer, the bookseller. Or maybe the writer, anna,

the bookseller. Or the bookseller the writer the anna. There are different ways to combine the

words. The title should be catchy, but none really is. And no novel is really good enough. And

the rain is coming down on the city here again. One cannot really decipher if this is the humming

of somebody mowing the lawn or working the leaf blower or if it is the rain. And on the telly it is

all about Rachel and her boss and Chandler who tries to call it off with Rachels boss which is

horrible for Rachel because she is afraid that she will get fired from her job in the fashion

industry. And then there is this other story which is about the two puppet houses, Monicas and

Phoebes. And then there is the story about Joey who starts something with a coworker who is

actually dating the director of the play that both Joey and the actress are playing in. And then

there is this other woman who is an assistant to the director or to the theater place and she likes

Joey because he was Doctor something on Days of our Lives. The pace in Friends is pretty fast

paced and maybe this should be the way that this nanowrimo novel is, like Anna moving to the

lake house in Belgium and then making up her mind to move to Pittsburgh and then to Ascona

and then to Reykjavik and then to Copenhagen and then to Helsinki. There is no logic to the

places that she moves to, and that is because she is an erratic writer who has to forge a writing

43
career come hell or high water. She does not have the luxury to stay still, stand still. Hers is the

quest for the perfect plot. Actually, author here, the author of these very lines came upon this

funny saying on the forums, or actually on the regional forum of Indiana-Elsewhere or some

other place. It was called plots for sale. And it referred to story plots, narrative plots and it

basically mirrored the use of the word plot when one talks about real estate. It is a plot where

something will be planted, something will be built. But a narrative plot is more clear, it is a word

that means story whereas the other one is a place of earth, a hunk of earth where anything is

possible, a potential bed of gardenias or a potential bed of roses here.

You must be prepared to work without applause always, so Hemingway. There is this picture of

him writing on hashtag am writing, and he is leaning over the notebook, diagonally, scribbling,

making a face of determination or a face of being engrossed at what he writes, sheer pure

concentration. Well, he had applause though. The Annas and the Anatolys work without

applause here. On the telly, it is Mike and Molly but maybe the writer of these words should now

fade away and we should talk about that Anna lady again.

Anna is back in the bookstore, she is of the opinion that this Belgium lake house story is just

that: fiction. She does not have the money to go to Belgium and she does not even know if there

are lakes in Belgium. The ones with lake houses. So she is back in her persona as the bookseller

in the bookstore wedged between the sushi place and the bakery. Next to the sushi place there is

the hat store that sells blue hats and next to that is the bank that has a bench in front of it.

It is one and fifteen, Anna had a chocolate cream Ferrero Rocher bonbon after her lunch which

was a quinoa roll in the coffee place on the other side of the street, the American one and not the

Canadian, patriotic one here. She now has actually red highlights which actually look good here.

She has a half long hairdo, she sports that one here.

44
She could be at home and sitting on the green couch and watch Mike and Molly and laugh at the

jokes, like the one where Samuel has a date even though he has no job and no money. Well, he

has the looks though.

But she is standing behind the register in the bookstore and watches people sit in the corner and

read thru books that they will not purchase. Moms who wait until it is time to pick up their kids.

Construction workers who come in here for a dose of culture before catching the bus home.

From their worksite.

And the rain is coming down, coming down here.

She too will be a writer just by hanging out around all of these books here.

It is now three and Anna can go out for coffee. The on-call person is here, he still has not

finished all of the course work for his degree. He thought that he did and that he can go overseas

for his Masters but apparently he has to stay in this country to satisfy the rest of his credit

requirements so he can be on-call in the bookstore still some more which works out just fine for

everybody. He knows everything about every book. He is a walking encyclopedia and he is good

at sharing what he knows. Some people know a lot but they cannot divulge their knowledge in a

coherent way so one is even more confused when asking them. Clarity is a vice and not every

speaker on this planet possesses it here. Which brings us back to Annas hair. It now is kind of

symmetrical which looks fine and maybe even sassy though Anna does not have that kind of

features that go with something called sassy.

So she orders the drink with whip. The seasonal one. With little crystals on top of the whip. It is

fun to blow into the whip. Seems, adults are just kids with bigger toys. More purchase power.

45
She could spend her money on Brussel sprouts but who would do that when one can order whip

with crystals.

Three thirty. She has to go back to the bookstore.

Move the books around. So that they look nicer in the display. So that potential buyers will

swerve to the idea that they shall pick up the book and fork over their hard earned cash here.

Not much happens in a bookstore. One looks at books. One can read books but not if one has to

guard them. Anna thinks about her hair and about the story that she is writing to be published.

About the Anatoly story. About Pittsburgh and how she has never been. She took the train from

Montreal to nyc, it was a long time ago. But, no, no Pittsburgh. She was with the train in

Baltimore. En route from Boston to nyc or from nyc to DC.

And then there is her hair. So either Pittsburgh or hair. It is good that nobody sees what she

thinks about in her pea brain. Especially if you are standing in a bookstore, you should have

intelligent thoughts. Ruminating the questions of the day. Well, seems she is not that kind of

creature here. She looks thru one of the cookbooks. Baked goods. The pictures are very good.

Mouthwatering. She is utterly bored. This is such a boring occupation. The only thing good

about it is that it is over at six in the afternoon. Evening here.

Outside, rain. That is how it is here. Everlasting rain. Never-ending one. The eternal rain.

Now it is four in the afternoon. Every minute counts. The slow slog of the day here. She has a

back ache. On the right side. Now there is something to concentrate on. Two teenagers

come in. In school uniform. One wears glasses, one does not. Yup, that is her day,

noticing who comes in and who leaves here. she is the doorwoman of the bookstore. She

guards other peoples ideas that are in book form and on shelves and displays. All the

46
 knowledge of the world. Compounded in this small place here. After this, she needs hard

liquor. Scotch neat. One old man comes in. a woman comes in. Green sweater. Old man

goes to one side, green sweater to the other side. There are just two sides in the

bookstore. There are books on the walls, on the shelves on the wall. Books everywhere.

Every little corner full lof books. All ordered in categories. She likes literary travel. It

sounds so interesting. You see the world and read. She ponders if that is what the owner

meant by literary travel. The owner is the one who comes up with the categories.

Sometimes the on-call guy with the English major helps. The one who is on the road of

English majordom. Three credits short. After this is finished it will be once more sushi.

Avocado and yam. It usually comes to seven bucks. She will then take the bus and go

home and roll up in bed with a warm planket all over her and a wooshely toque on her

head. She will sleep dreamlessly, and get up at five and go to the gym, have a shower and

come here by bus and have coffee in the coffee house on the other side of the bookstore

and open the bookstore at ten. These are her options. Nothing ever happens to divert this

routine.

It is five. The last hour of bookdom. The last hour for the day. Lots of people, too many for this

small place here. Blond ones, brunette ones. They all behave nicely and politely around

books. She will do some writing in the evening. It is better than watching what is on on

the idiot box. Maybe once more revisiting the tale of Anatoly here. she is out of ideas but

she always is. Writing is like that. You just have to keep on typing here. Her back

squeaks, well, hurts. But it is a squeaky hurt, she has no other way to describe this here.

47
Squeaky is about sound and hurt is about feel. Anna is not quite sure if one could mix the two

characterizations and still be clear. How would she describe this to a medical

professional?

Finally. Six. She can leave. Anything but this here. Run run and have a life here. Maybe

downtown would be good, Nordstrom has a sale. Nothing like designer clothes on a rainy

boring day here.

Afterwards, she is at home at the typewriter. Anatoly, let us tell your story. How you gained

weight and are now in an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. You tell them about your

problems with ice cream and chocolate, chocolate with nuts. Cheeseburgers. Macaroni

and cheese. All that kind of stuff. And after everybody claps you sit down and others talk

about their preoccupations with yumminess. They all swap ideas for dieting. They do not

really lose weight but they like the community of liked minded individuals. The

socializing while talking about food items here. One woman in the group watches a lot of

food network programs. Southern cuisine with Trisha. No, wait, Trishas Southern

Kitchen. All you ever wanted to know about green collards and grits, grits the right way

here. All those persons in Overeaters Anonymous are all well-fed. Hardly any wrinkles. It

is a lifestyle. Apparently. The ways of the foodies. Anatoly will write about that. And

pare it with a spy story. James Bond and grits and gravy. Somehow it is a tad too much of

fusion. Stirred not. Anatoly actually won a Pulitzer. He had what it takes.

Anna thinks that this is enough of Anatoly here. Now it will be the story of Annabelle. Annabelle

is very pretty. She moved to Paris from Nebraska. So that she can become a model. She is

twenty-three which might be way too old to start a career in modelling. It is Paris fashon

week. She stands in line with all the other models. The address is right, she always loses

48
her way in this city. But this time she is right on the money, right on time, right, well, in

the right place, everything is right. She gets an interview and she is casted. Nice. On

Monday, at nine. She walks the runway. She feels good about herself. She gets

compensated and people clap. She goes home to her apartment in the Quartier Latin. So

this is the story. Anna is not quite sure if this is enough. It is very non-gripping, very

wooden. If she was in a Gotam writers workshop, everybody would be criticizing this.

Describe Annabelle. Where did she study? Well, how about SVA. She majored in

classical animation. How does she look? She has freckles and red hair. You know, just as

all freckled girls have red hair. She is very tall because models have to be. She does not

really look like Nebraska, she looks non-corn-fed. She is that kind of Nebraska gal, the

atypical one. 17327, Anna wrote that many words about the Anabelle person. Her

animations are good. Line-based. She asked one of her friends to write the music for her

grad-film. Her parents came from Nebraska to nyc to watch her film in the SVA theater

on twenty-third, off-eighth. They stayed in this nice hotel in Chelsea. Yup, this is what

Anna has to say about Annabelle. She never makes clear where in Nebraska Anna hails

from here. Fatten the baby, the writer said in the writing workshop. Fill the pages with

details. You cannot just say: Girl move to Paris. That is just saying who does what. It is

not enough. What kind of hair does Annabelle have? Red, yes, but what is the

consistency? How about straight. What shampoo does she use? This nice one that smells

very good. There has to be more info. Nice how? Grapefruit? Ruby red grapefruit smell.

Sounds good. How long is the hair? Is it parted in the middle? Does she have bangs or

does she not?

49
17404 words of Annabelle specific info. Something is wrong wit the computer. The interface.

The beginning of each line is indented for no apparent reason here. She craves chocolate.

Anna, not Annabelle. Hersheys kisses. Because that is what is on the telly. Two big

kisses, moving and flaring their little papers at the top, to and fro here. Now she watches

this program with the two waitresses out of Williamsburg who work for Han. And now

they talk about the great Caroline Channing here. Anna is really bored, Her novels are no

good here. Not the one about Amsterdam and not the one about Annabelle and not the

one about Anatoly. She will come up with still another narrative here. And an adequate

wordcount. She is the one who reads and who writes, her neck hurts from sitting

contorted. It is all good all good here.

Another day in the bookstore. There is a new shipment. Boxes full of books. Storing them in the

backroom. A lot of bending. Later it is sushi, yam and avocado. Then arranging the books

and then taking the bus home. Watching big bang theory. And hardly any rain. She sits

and arites about Amsterdam and Anatoly and Annabelle. She describes Anatoly, brown

hair and glasses. With dark frames. He has a cheese burger for dinner. With fries. And

ketchup thereon. A pickle that is juicy. There is really nothing more to describe. Anatoly

goes to the airport. He flies to nyc. He takes the subway to Manhattan. Gets out at Penn

Station. Walks down to his hotel. Which is in Chelsea, on eighth. There are Citi bikes

next to it, in the side street. He goes out for dinner. In Boston something. She is not quite

sure what the name is, she has to google it. Anatoly is meeting his publisher. After that is

over, he flies back to Pittsburgh. Nothing to write home about. These stories cannot be

made fuller. People come and people go. That is not enough for a story. Anna has to read

books in order to figure out how it is done.

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She is exhausted and goes to sleep. Dreamless sleep. Her clock wakes her up at five, the alarm

sounds. She goes to the Y. stationary bike. There is a woman who always runs on the

treadmill and she is definitely overdoing it. She will scorch up her knees. She has to rest

every other day but she never does. The Y has weird scanners now, both in Langara and

in downtown. Anna takes a shower and dresses up for work, make-uo, mascara, lipstick.

She has coffee in the coffee place opposite of the bookstore. At ten she opens the place

up. She could write about herself, the woman who sells books. There is not enough of a

story. Nobody dies, no blood. No drama. Nothing salacious. Red cars and blue cars

outside of the store. On the street. Buses. Bikes. Not many though. People who come to

the exercise class at nine. She stocks the new Hillary Clinton book. The bookstore always

breaks even. It seems to never be in the red. Which is nice here.

She will have sushi for lunch, yam and avocado. Then a coffee with whip. And crystals that are

sweet and salty. And then the bus home and once more the writing. Maybe short stories

would be better. A compilation of said short stories here. Annabelle from Nebraska in

2000 words. She likes modelling. Walking over the runway with a serious face. Her hair

parted in the middle. A fast walk as if she knows where she goes. A walk with a purpose.

She should not run into the other models, everything has to be exactingly choreographed

here. In the end the designer comes out and says thank you. The designer is actually two

women, one blond and one a brunette. Thank you and thank you here. Anabelle takes the

metro home to her place here. End of story. All of this in 2000 words here.

So this is the story of the model in Paris. She might go back into animation and make artsy short

films once she is back in the States. Or maybe even draw fashion cartoons and scan them

51
 and make little cute fashion films that can be used in marketing. There is a lot of space

for creative minds, but you have to be exceptionally good.

Anna now works on the Anatoly story. He somehow managed to get the job of junior lecturer at

a community college. So he is writing a lesson plan and starts his teaching gig. He

assigns homework. He grades papers. He grows old. So much for the story about

Anatoly. Anna ponders all of her stories are very dry. They all lack mystery, drama, the

like, ah, the like here. They are nonstories.

Anna now watches CNN, she cannot come up with stories but she can watch the stories that

unfold. The real-life stories. A panel discussion about Papadapolous. They love to talk

about him, say the name here.

Anna should change her work and go work in the bookstore that is in the mall one town over.

Just for a change. But she likes the place that she is in, even if it is boring. It is a very safe

workplace. It is the kind of place where you can work until you die. So she is not quite

sure what to do. Safety versus challenge.

Anna now works on a story about a woman named Andrea. Andrea is sixty-five years old. She is

very athletic and well-preserved. She lives in Alamo, California. She moves for one year

to Texas, to The University of Austin. She is enrolled in a one-year-writing program. She

does not have to pay, it is all paid for. It is geared towards senior citizens. There are

seven persons in the program, all out of state. You have to be older than 65 to qualify. So

Andrea sent her 20 pages in and she was accepted. They liked her writing sample. The

program is tuition-free, but she has to pay for room and board. So this is what Andrea

does for one year and her writing is all about city planning. She has a background in

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 architectural theory so that all works out fine here. In the end, the university will gather

the work of all seven participants and publish an anthology.

Anna thinks about the story of Andrea. It is all made up and there are definitely logical fallacies.

Holes in the narrative. Why should this be free? Maybe because of the age of the

participants. That makes sense, most universities have programs where senior citizens

can sit in class without paying any tuition. Golden card programs. Maybe there is a sub

story of research about geriatric something, geriatric creatures who have something to do,

something worthwhile, they age better. Well, duh. Anna thinks about this story. All her

stories are peopled with persons that have a name similar to hers. They are her people.

Her inventions. They might as well have a name like hers.

Anna ponders if she should write a play. That sounds like fun. She is tired. She goes to bed.

Dreamless sleeping it is. Tomorrow, once more the seeling of books in the bookstore

wedged between the sushi place and the bakery. And the rain is blanketing the city, sweet

dreams, sweet dreams here.

Still another day here. Five oclock, alarm, then gym. Weight training, yoga stretches, shower,

dressing up, coffee in the coffee place. Same old same old.

But suddenly something is happening. Her Amsterdam story is accepted by a publisher. Who

would have thought. Anna did not even want to work on it anymore, she did not want to

pursue it. But a literary agent liked it and showed it to a publisher and yes, this is all

happening. She reads the galley proof and then the book gets published. She goes on a

book tour, a multi city one. Nice. In Europe too. She gets interviews. The guardian writes

53
 about her book. Charlie Rose interviews her. Wow. Everyone wants a piece of her. Just

like in the song. It is all very surreal.

Luckily this is a mere daydream. A scary on, actually. And she opens the door of te store. It is

ten, after all here.

She ponders, maybe she could make that her subject matter. Writing and celebrity. How does it

work. Is it even normal? The sudden life in a fish bowl. Anna takes the broom and

sweeps away the leaves in front of the store entrance. This feels normal, signing books

and talking to strangers does not. Selling books that other people have written, that is

normal, selling her own books, that is strange and weird. Besides, her stories are not

about men in capes that fly thru the universe and solve crimes here. Today the weather is

slightly drizzly but not really rainy here. Just the vibe of drizzliness here. A man comes

into a bookstore and wants to buy a book about how to make profiteroles. Here, that is

thirty bucks. Your phone number? Oh, I am from Portland, Oregon. I am just up here to

visit family. Ok. Why he wants to make profiteroles, nobody knows.

A woman in yoga pants. What is it about this store that it attracts the yoga pant crowd

massively? Profiteroles. What exactly is that? How is it different from cream puffs?

Italian for cream puffs here. She takes a rag and cleans up over the books. Where is the

feather duster thingie?

In the evening, it is TV. Modern Family. Sophia Vergera. And her child, the younger one. Well,

Sophia Vergera is the actress, apparently her character is called Gloria. And the fat guy is

playing in community theater. It is something interactive. And now it is Manny who

apparently is interfering with Glorias day that she has to herself here. Both children are.

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 Now it is a commercial for something called Paderno, cooking stuff. Paderno, its a

cooking thing. And still another ad. It is for an ad that makes you call for food delivery. It

is an ad called skip the dishes. And Anna is still typing up stuff for nanowrimo, even

though that is not for publishing. It is just for fun, maybe. For practicing the writing

chops, something like that, yup, something of that kind here.

Now it is Al Bundy. He makes closets where he used to sell shoes. Now Manny. I tried to find

it is part of the interactive theater that the two adoptive fathers of the little Vietnamese

girl are watching. The fatty and the thinny. Anna is not quit sure if saying fatty is ok, it

obviously is not. But you know whom she is talking about, not that that makes it ok here.

Anna has to clean up her language and maybe that is where the problem lies. The words

that one uses have to be above reproach. They have to pass the litmus test, so to speak

here. Vlad, come up here. It is funny, tis show. Even though it has no laugh tracks here.

Now the lady who is the real estate agent or the wife of the real estate agency talks. Apparently

she sells closets, closets, closets. And now Gloria and the closet woman. And now the

daughter who is intelligent got a job as a barista. And now Al Bundy and his goofy son-

in-law. Phil.

Anna knows that she has to come up with more short stories. She really wants to write a

compilation of different stories. Maybe even love stories though that is not really her

forte. She is not really into that kind of storytelling, the romance novel kind. And the

ones that are about spies, they suck too. her idea of a story is more the description of the

everyday. The intricacies of the everyday. Anna has a glass of white wine. She feels that

she needs that after such a long day of both writing and both selling books, ordering

books, rummaging around in books. She is definitely not a born retail person but it grows

55
 on her. She went to try on the blue hat. She looked ridiculous. Hats are not made for her

and she is not made for hats, that is for sure here. She gets through the day, somehow,

and then it is back curling up in front of the telly. Law and Order. And now it is the news

out of Boston. The governor who is in jail. And now again the anchors. Talking about the

documentation of the governor. The documentary. And now two persons, one woman in

red and one man in a suit. A robbery in Chinatown. And now the news out of nyc. The

ten oclock news here. A watermain that broke in Brooklyn here. Anna watches what is

on the telly. Tamsen Fadal. Or Fadel. She is very pretty. The PIX eleven news. From PIX

plaza, wherever that is. 19588, the wordcount for nanowrimo here. A horrible ad now,

and now an ad for dunkin, America runs on dunkin. And now a woman who is running

for mayor in nyc, but apparently Bill de Blasio will win by a landslide. He is very

popular. Anna types up her nanowrimo, she has near to 20 000 here.

And now still a different perspective here, the one of the narrator of the novel. Though that is not

that good, the narrator is supposed to stay invisible here. but we have to boost a tad, 20

000 words in a mere two days, yay. That is quite an achievement here and it is a crash

course in novel making here. and now back to Anna. Anna watches Tamsen Fadal. And

this short documentary about the L-train wagon that does not have seats, Anna does not

approve. Let the seats stay here. An add for an Albany politician, actually an anti-ad. Do

not vote for this guy, so the ad cautions. An ad for something called golden nugget. It

seems to be a casino. An ad for Mazda. And now an ad for something called spectrum. A

documentary about a getaway that was anything but. What went wrong and who is to

blame. So the name is Tamsen Fadal. And still another Weinstein accuser. Fifty women,

wow, he has energy.

56
Anna goes to sleep, sleepyland here. Another day in bookseller land, oops, tomorrow she will not

go to work. Wednesday and Thursday she has the day off. It is a five hour week after all.

She can stay home and she will. Do some novel writing. The Amsterdam romance or still

another one, this time, Rotterdam. Any city that has a dam. To keep the water out. She

will vacuum, it is about time, do laundry. Go downtown to see what they have at the sale

in Nordstrom. She might get highlights but sitting still and breathing fumes from hair dye

does not seem to be her idea of a day off.

Anna and her books, maybe she will even read a book. She always gets these books at ten per

cent off. Which is nice, very accommodating here.

And two days later, it is back to the grind of selling books here. Coffee in the morning, banana

bread. The sweeping of the colorful leaves, the opening of the door. Open for business,

open for business, exactly ten, and the weather is ok, so-so here.

Anna is working on starting her own business. She finally quit her job at the bookstore wedged

between the sushi place and the bakery. It is time to be her own boss. She is looking into

starting a bookstore in downtown Milwaukee. A store like Powells in Portland or Strand

in nyc. There is another one like that in Austin too, near to the first Whole Foods,

apparently. She visited it once, some years ago, so she recalls. Anna does not know much

about Milwaukee, but she knows this person who is originally from Capetown and who

can help her start the business. She will partner with him fifty-fifty.

She will not be the Jeff Bezos of books or maybe she will be. Amazon is an online thing or

something like that. What exactly is the nature of their business model, nobody actually

57
 really knows. But it sure is huge and reading thru the Amazon reviews is always helpful

if you want to know about a book.

Anna feels quite energized ever since she is starting her new venture. She should have done this

forty years ago, but it is never too late. Says Colonel Sanders or Grandma Moses. All the

old people on the planet, all the old entrepreneurial spirits here. Milwaukee. Huh. To her

it is the middle of nowhere. But it is a stepping stone, she will have bookstores in

Helsinki and Reykjavik. It all will go very fast. Go in and expand. All of the books, all of

the books. Stored in one place, ready to be snapped up by eager readers. She ponders,

Target moved into Canada and moved out just as easily. That is how it is with business

ventures. Pixar started in Vancouver and then vanished. That is how it is how it is here.

She feels happy, charged. She is having an eggnog latte in the coffee house on the street

near the gas station. It is very soon in the day, and there is even a tinge, a whiff of snow

out in the air. Some flakes all lonely, all dancing. People come into the store, they are all

extra bright, extra beautiful, much better looking than the usual clientele. All fresh, all

made up. Especially the men especially the women. Anna is happy, happy here.

She does not really need to write any more books, let others do the work. She will sell the stuff,

store the stuff. She will oversee it all. Joel, the guy from Capetown, will do the

accounting, the producing, the business side. Well, more the accounting. Actually, that is

not true. It is more a business model where she runs the show and he makes sure that

everything runs smoothly. And vice versa. It is a mutual thing, everybody does

everything. Or nothing, however you look at it. It is all about the books, anyways. It is

more like a play, a game. A happy game. A game where you juggle books around.

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Anna is tired from starting up the Milwaukee venture. After the grand opening with big fanfare,

she goes on a trip to this island in the Mediterranean. Just for four days. Actually, it is not

an island, it is a small city, a small resort town in Italia, overlooking the Adriatic. Rex

Harrison lived here with Lily Palmer. It has this old St. Tropez vibe, a time when women

were on Vespas and wore shawls around their heads. Very Roman Holiday-ish. You

remember the movie. Sabrina maybe. Anna thinks about the books, the store is fabulous.

It is big but not warehousy. It has the vibe of a small independent store and that is the

whole idea. There are always readings and signings. Everything is hippy-mippy but in a

good way, not in a hobo way. Well, maybe boho-chic. But not unhygienic yucky. The

bathrooms are all clean and shiny and aseptic here.

Anna as business woman, as entrepreneur. It is still another of her little Barbie dresses she wears.

All her incarnations here. and her hair is no half-length, not too long and not too short

here. And the sun is shining in the little city in Italy here. You know, Rex Harrison, Lily

Palmer. A place where time just stood still, stood still here.

Anna will fly back home, she will have to change her plane in Schiphol. Have this very nice tart,

pear tart in the terminal. She likes Schiphol, it is a nice airport. Light and fluffy here. her

favorite one is the one in Salt Lake City. But Schiphol is good too. Everybody speaks

Dutch, what more would you want. She is very biased towards everything Dutch. It is not

racist if you like their race. So Jerry Seinfeld here, she watches way too much Seinfeld,

she always quotes Jerry or Kramer or George or Elaine. As if those are the people who

dispense all the insights of the world here. The accumulated wisdom of ages here. She is

in Amsterdam, should it be Amstel or Heineken? She goes for Heineken here. The funny

thing is that there are parts of the city where it smells like the breweries, especially like

59
 Amstel. But she will not venture into town this time, she has to catch the flight into

Milwaukee here. Now that she is a captain if industry or something, she is thinking about

expanding into upstate New York. Albany, Sag Harbor. Smaller bookstores that have the

same independent bookstoreish vibe here. You cannot mass produce a vibe, but maybe

you can here. Everything is possible in Annas world here. Life is good, life is good and

maybe she should forego the Heineken here. Maybe sobriety is the way to roll here. She

takes out her notebook and sketches some ideas. She usually uses charts, round things

with writing therein. Little diagrams with numbers and letters strewn over them. She

tastes a tad of the beer, it is what it is, bitter but shaumy, foamy here. Maybe she should

have a glass of prosecco instead here. Or nothing, nada, no alcohol, after all, she will be

flying flying here.

Another scene: Anna at Charlie Rose. She is wearing a green top, light green. She talks about

what she likes about writing. Well, I do not do it that much these days, but I really like

that I can make up stuff, be jumpy. You can suddenly make up stuff that has nothing to

do with what came before. It is just words on a page, everything can happen out pf

nowhere, it is a fantasy after all. It is pure fiction. When I read all of these novels, in

2017, I was amazed with what really reputable writers seemed to get away with. It was

really a patchwork of events on the page, things that never happen in real life. At least not

in that kind of jumpy fashion. There were no superheroes that would fly but it was pretty

close. Things would happen out of nowhere. They say that reality is more surreal than

fiction, you cant make this up, but I think this has all to be taken with a gram of salt

here. But I am here to talk about my new bookstore in downtown Milwaukee. It is a big

success. I am just taking the idea of an independent bookstore and expand it. It is part

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 community center part library part country club, exclusive country club. The exclusivity

is supplied by all of those books, because each of them will take forever to read thru and

each of them signals the exclusivity of reading. I am not quite sure if that makes sense,

after all, I am not a scholar who does research on the subject of books and reading and

how it works with the minds of people here. But there is something to be said for all of

these little treasure troves of information that are all gathered in one physical space here.

Charlie nods and asks her a question that she does not quite understand, she is not even

quite sure if he understands it. Who would have thought that she ever would make it onto

Charlie Rose? There is this song, American Idiot, which says that everybody wants a

piece of you, and you are on Charlie Rose, it is about what it is like to be a celebrity,

apparently, she now is one and it feels weird, but it is all ok all ok here. She will go home

and start typing up things and that will keep her grounded grounded hopefully here. It

beats the hell out of getting all drunk with whiskey and vodka here, which was what she

did before she entered the work world, the business world. That was her Betty Ford phase

but now it is all good all good here. anna is very pensive about her life, but she has to

focus now on what Charlie asks her instead of being all scatterbrained Anna here. She has

to sit up straight and be all intelligent Anna here, Anna with the green dress, Anna who is

concentrating on the questions posed to her on national television here. And cut and go to

commercials here.

If we can intercept here, I know you are not supposed to peak behind the curtain, but I just want

to tell the reader that the character of Anna is kind of farfetched here, but you have to

remember it is all fiction here. Just like Anna told Charlie right here. And back to Anna,

this was just a footnote, a short one here. An insertion here.

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Anna is in the air on her way to Milwaukee. She was in Italy, she was on Charlie Rose. And now

she is in the air. Maybe life is way too hectic. Maybe slowing down is better. Italy was

slowing down, Schiphol was slowing down, maybe at this point her life is slower than it

was when she worked in the little bookstore and minded the business and had coffee and

lonce and a glass of wine after work here. She can go back to that again if the Milwaukee

thing does not work out. On the other aisles there is a young man, a kid, reading a book.

He has a blanket over his face and a very serious studious face with dark brimmed

glasses. Everybody is reading seriously, though, actually most people are sleeping. The

food was good, KLM always has great food. So is Cathay Pacifics. She actually likes air

fare, it is good, Anthony Bourdain might not approve, but what does he know, he eats on

camera. How can you possibly decipher the taste of anything here, while the camera is

rolling? You cannot chew and you cannot taste stuff. It is like swallowing in a fishbowl.

Humans are not fish, mind you here.

She is back in her place and on the telly, it is Judge judy. Boy is she a meanie here. Whatever ah

whatever here. now it is a crime watch show which is not nice and always kind of scary

here. The man who is the reporter is talking into the camera and he is wearing a blue and

white shirt with small little checkers and a blue jacket that has a funny color that is way

too bright here, Elmo blue here. And now a woman who is blond and sixty years old, her

hair must be dyed, she has short hair and makes her brows furrow, she has an expression

of worriedness and lipstick here. She has earrings that are small hoops here. This is about

a murder and Anna wants to change the channel but is sitting far away from the remote

control which is lying next to her new books that she bought but did not start reading as

of yet here. One of the books is much lighter than she remembers, lighter as in the color

62
 of the book jacket. She though t it was a dark green, at least that is how it looked when

she purchased it but she now realizes that it is a very light pastel color here. The mind

always plays tricks on yer here.

Yes, Charlie, I always was bookish. I read and read when I was a child. Books were my world. I

would hang out in bookstores, hang out in libraries. I liked that. And now I still am into

books. I read and I write. And I worked in different bookstores. And now I have a

bookstore, am the proud owner. Yes, Charlie, that is how I roll. Well, she did not say the

last sentence out loud, she just thought it.

Anna is thinking about adding another bookstore in Santa Monica. The franchising. Milwaukee

and Santa Monica. They do not exist next to each other but that is fine. She thinks about

blanketing the planet with words. She likes Santa Monica and it is a great place for

books. What else can you do when you have to rest from surfing or from going to

auditions or boozing, Ann thinks about Hollywood stereotypes which is not really good

for a reader or a writer here. But it is good all good here.

She walks on main street in Santa Monica. Has coffee in a coffee place, the one that is actually

one of a chain. She has a gingerbread latte, no, an eggnog one. It is really tadty here. and

very x-massy, cinnamon. It tastes very yummy and not very Santa Monicayee. The

weather here is way too warm for winter here. It is summer in winter. She used to live

near Oakland but it was never ever this warm in winter. It was warm, warmer than other

parts of north America. But it still was not like this here. She is thinking about books.

They have a very cute and very nice bookstore in town, it is even political, and it has a

crunchy granolaee vibe, hemp, very Californian. Santa Monica is the boozing capital of

California, its alcohol consumption is the highest in the state, by far, it wins out by a

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 landslide, at least, that is what the statistics say, and she is not quite sure how they call it

here in California. In Canada it is called Statistics Canada but what is the equivalent

down in the States here? Anyhoo, there is a very nice bookstore, the competition. So,

maybe she will just hang out here, soak in the rays, walk on the boardwalk and let this

business opportunity just slide here. She can look into the nanowrimo participation here

in Los Angeles County, especially here in Santa Monica, Venice Beach or Malibu. She

really likes Santa Monica, walking on the boardwalk here, looking at the Ferris wheel in

the distance. You always have a feel as if the person next to you walking on the

boardwalk is an actor or an actress, somebody that aspires to stuff. This is the place of

broken dreams and that is what makes it so romantic. The whiff of collective misery but

also the whiff of collective potential here. It is a place where people find solace in a book

or at the bottom of a bottle, whichever one comes first here. People make sure that they

are in tip top shape because you never know when a casting director might call here. It is

a place for a bookstore but she is not the one who will own it. She is more the type who

will hang out in a bookstore. Maybe the Milwaukee store was a bad idea, maybe she will

not cut it here. Maybe she should just be a solitary bookstore worker in this country on

this side of the border. She holds dual citizenship, so she could work here as a bookseller,

she has to think about that here.

The Milwaukee project might be too expensive. Maybe she is not a business woman, maybe she

is more cut out to sit in the corner and read stuff. Have her hair in a bun, have glasses on

her nose, glasses that slide down her nose and that she has to put up once that they slide

down. She reads this book about this city in the UK. It is not a very interesting subject

matter wise but the woman sure can write and use the language beautifully. She could

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 describe making pancakes and it would be a symphony, word-wise. The elegance of the

language, she has it pat down here.

Anna is still in Santa Monica, her hotel is so nice here. The bookselling business paid for her

being here, so she can even stay another day here, an extra day. She hangs out in the

lobby, the lobby is so pretty. So elegant. She reads her book, has an espresso. Everything

is fine here, the book, the coffee. Later she will have a sangria, but she has to watch it, the

sangria in this place is pretty strong here. She had been staying in this very hotel here, at

the time of the Oscars. There were Oscar parties, and the people were sitting at the bar

watching who won and who lost. There is a TV above the bartenders, so you can drink

and watch what is going on. And talk with total strangers about the film industry here.

Her book is fine but not that good. The story is boring and even her elegant style is not

enough to make her enjoy the read. There are lots of people in this place, it is the

weekend here. There are different persons here, it is a great place to peoplewatch and

take mental notes here. Very good looking people, people better looking than 0.07 per

cent of the population, anypopulation. Very good teeth, very nice hair, very good clothes.

Tasteful arrangements. It is near to Hollywood that is why people have this magic look

here. They make sure that their bodies or their faces do not go to hell, they work on their

looks here. They rest so that they look well rested here. The way they look is very

important in the film industry, apparently you have to look good on camera here.

Now there are no Oscars on the telly above the bar in the middle of the lobby but there is a show

on. Which is weird, should there not be something of general interest, something like a

news channel, CNN, Aljazeera, MSNBC, BBC, CBC, ESPN? That would make more

sense in a place like this. Anna is tired, she had a long day. She basically looked at

65
 bookstores, well, for the most part. Books books books, she really thinks a lot about the

book industry and her part in all of this. Publishing here. Maybe she should just work in

publishing, as editor or something. She jumps around too much here, never gets better in

a very specific part of book stuff. And let us face it, she is still a movie buff at heart. A

visual person more so than a literary animal here.

She takes her laptop out of her bag. She is having this small model, so that she does not have to

lug around too much weight. A small laptop is tacky, she knows that, but it is convenient.

And that is why she uses it. There is an outlet next to the sofa that she sits on, the very

plush one with the big green flowers that go with the big green leaves of the palm trees

next to her. The potted palm trees that make this place so park-like, indoor park-like. She

looks at tables on the monitor, numbers, but she is not that fluent with accounting, one

person once told her that she is not cut out for taking accounting classes in college, she

can hardly count the fingers of her hands, and she thinks that she has eleven fingers. It is

not that funny, but one can be sure that she is better with words even though that is

basically the stereotype of females, that the majority is not that good with numbers. Or

maybe, that is wrong, if push comes to shove, she knows more women who are good in

math than she knows women who are good with words. Actually, the idea of dividing the

genders of this planet, the sexes of the species into inborn abilities is actually wrong, and

besides, is it nature or nurture. One never ever knows but one thing is for sure, the

president of Harvard had to resign after remarking that the boys are better than the girls in

their ability to add and subtract. That kind of research is so yesterday here. It is politically

motivated. Her biology teacher was saying that this is actually science-based research,

not biased one. Like stating the height or the weight of people. But Anna is not that sure,

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 she did not think that her teacher was right but she did not feel like raising a stink

because, after all, who cares what people think. You have to pick your fights as they say,

you have to pick your fights here. She types a lot, and her neck hurts which is weird

because she is not typing with her head, maybe it is because she stares down at the

keyboard instead of typing while looking at the monitor which would be much better for

her neck and she would not need to bow her head in a sharp angle here.

The next day she has brunch in this place on Main Street in this really elegant upscale

neighborhood, well, if anywhere in the States can be upscale and sophisticated. Let us

face it, this is still the US of A, a new country, a fresh country, an outspoken country

where people are not very elegant, this is Walt Whitmans country more so than the

country of a woman in white who sits in her room on the third floor in Amherst and pens

her poems that will be discovered long after she has been in the earth, in the ground here.

Anyways, be this all as it may, she has a mimosa and this is her first mimosa since she

was born, her first mimosa ever here. She has coffee with cream in it and a pancake, a

stack of them. They have ricotta in their batter, and buttermilk too. lemon, buttermilk and

ricotta and they are really yummy. They have a blueberry sauce on them, and the

blueberries are whole and glisten and they are syroupy. It is all so good, and for some

reason, the sweets and the sours do not fight against each other, they complement each

other. She could artsy here in this place forever and take notes about her food, write long

descriptions on a legal pad here. The table is wood, and the wood is not in one piece,

these are different planks that make the table. The table is communal, and the bench is

communal. It is not Sunday so that is why there are not that many people here. On

weekends it is so full of tourists and other people from Encino or from Bakersfield, from

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 other parts that are surrounding Santa Monica here. The tourists that live nearby here. All

of the food is so delish and the waitress is so beautiful, she is a goddess. The men are just

as good looking or even better. That is the nice part of being near Hollywood, all the

waiters are fashion models. Nobody does ugly here. Well, except for the customers, they

are fat and ugly and old and they like to eat and it shows. These are not the people who

live on rabbit food, nope, these are all the people who will die young from a coronary but

with a smile on their faces. The music on the overhead is Bruce Springsteen, apparently,

light jazz is not their thing here.

Now a man with a camera comes in and he takes a film of the woman with the mic in her hand

and the white plateau shoes, who talks incessantly about this place and the mimosas and

the waffles and the fresh syrup and the ricotta lemon pancakes that are all top-notch. She

is very short and very young and very pretty and very enthusiastic. She has a white dress

with beige, glimmer flowers on it. Not too glimmery because it has to look good on

camera and too shiny does not photograph well here. Anna thinks of the woman who was

at her graduation and was filmed while talking into a microphone, her career tanked.

Hopefully that will not happen to this would-be anchor because she seems so nice and so

enthusiastic. The camera man is just that, a man, but there are actually lots of camera

women, especially nowadays that the equipment is really light, so any person can do that

job. And lots of women are very good at hoisting stuff, especially if they have a burly

frame. Women are just as good at lifting weights as men are. And lots of women are

fatter than men, so they have more strength than their scrawny counterparts here. But this

very camera man is very tall and very camera manish, if there is a term like that. He

follows the pancake-praising lady around and he has a baseball cap because apparently

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 that is the outfit-accessory that every cameraman has to have even if he is not good with

technology here.

So now the pancake anchor lady talks to a waiter and asks questions about food. About

strawberries and chocolate. The brunch hours. The demographics. Now that is not a good

question, a restaurant serves everybody and anybody who is willing to pay for nutrition.

For prepared nutrition, for food that is touched by others here. Now the camera person

takes a video of the food. He goes very near to the food. So, this seems to be it now, this

is a wrap. And cut. Now the reporter woman and the camera man are fed for free by the

establishment. Anna is very entertained and amused by the spectacle of the making of the

film, but nobody else cares here. And the reason why Anna observes is so that she has

fodder for her writing here.

Anna looks up at the screen because there is a screen. One cannot hear what is said on that

particular TV, but one can read the captions, so it is all ok. It actually shows a rerun of an

episode of Friends which seems to always go with anything and it definitely goes with

the color scheme of this brunch place which seems to be exactly out of Monicas

apartment. Well, maybe, Monicas apartment is more colorful, this place is a tad darker,

green and brown. Brown wood and the green is from the plants. And then there is the

black and white of the clothes of the wait staff here. The people next to Anna have a baby

in a stroller but the baby is sleeping which is good for the parents and the other customers

so everybody can eat in peace here.

Anna is reading this book that is written by a British writer. It is well constructed but confusing.

There are two persons who tell a story in the first person, so, that is confusing, at least in

the beginning and it is very unusual. But after a while one gets used to it, one knows that

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 there are two different persons who tell a story from their own perspective, kind of like I

number one and I number two. And then there are UK expressions like a fools

errand and 1000-mile-stare. There are no equivalents in American English or maybe

there are. But Anna has not come upon them. She reads her book while the pancakes are

getting cold. They are delish but she has to watch her weight. Maybe she can sit in this

place until it is lunchtime and then have her pancakes. Usually it is first in, first out but

there are hardly any customers here. So it will be good, she can read her book, daydream,

stay a little longer. Walking is good for her, but the weather changed and there is a slight

drizzle. It never rains in Southern California, but when it does, it pours, boy, it pours. Or

something like that. She gets all these lyrics mixed up anyways and even who sang what.

everybody does, Anna is much better with stuff like that, trivial memories. Memories of

trivia, she remembers that part of the Spice Girls movie where the other Spice Girls said

to each other that Gerry Haliwell or whatever her name was, was an expert on trivia, she

remembered a lot of useless shit. That is how Anna rolls here, too.

She has to talk to that Joel person, her partner in the Milwaukee business venture but she kind of

had enough here. She is not really cut out to be a businesswoman, she might sell her part

to Joel. He would be more than happy because that place is a goldmine and he needs it

because of his green card. So, either way it will work out for her. If she sells it, she can

put the money in the bank and if she stays on, well, then her investment will work for her

and pay dividends. It is not a risky business, it is a flourishing business, it is pretty

obvious, even though it is still in its infancy. The media attention has been phenomenal.

The hear-say that makes people flock to that place. There is a coffee place, always filled

with hipsters and senior citizens alike, multigenerational audience, old people young

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 people and anybody in between. There are readings, book signings, panel discussions.

There is a printing press where would-be-writers can self-publish and then sell their

works through the bookstore. The place is hip and happening, no way around it. It copied

the place on Mott to a T. Sorry, on Prince.

Anna feels old. She always does. She was born old. Every second decade of her life she felt like

this. When she turned 20, she thought that her life is over. When she turned 40, she

thought that her life is over. When she turned 60, she thought that her life is over. There

must be a term for that kind of angst. The every second decade syndrome. The manual for

psychiatric diseases should cover it. Maybe Anna can start to name this syndrome,

discover it, name it after herself and become world famous.

Santa Monica is her favorite place. So many winos. It must be Sheryl Crows favorite place too.

Plucked her out of obscurity and made her a household name. The funny thing is that it is

so true, after coming to Santa Monica, Anna noticed why the song existed. It is the only

place on this planet where people stumble around stock drunk at ten in the morning.

Without being harmful, very contended drunks. Not the kind that will attack you. The

best-behaved drunks on the planet. Well-behaved winos, better behaved than most sober

creatures in other places here. Anna should write a book and share her insights. People

are different when they are drunk depending on which country they live in or even which

part of which country they are in. It is a cultural thing. People in Britain are different

when they are drunk than people in Germany are. Others treat them differently. In

London you will see very well-dressed Savile Row types all drunk. In Germany you do

not see that, there they are outcasts that are in the gutter and groehl. Anna will write a

dissertation about that and then defend it. It will not hold up in a court of her peers. She

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 has to elaborate but she does not feel like it. Anything where you describe culture will

fall flat on its tummy anyways. You cannot say anything in polite society anyways

anymore. Which is tough for a writer because as a writer you have to make

generalizations if you want to make it. You cannot use sterile, non-loaded language

because then you cannot make sweeping judgements. And sweeping judgements are what

makes a writer. You have to offend or bust. You have to rattle the status quo. Something

like that, something of that kind. If you say that a Mars bar tastes better than a Milky

Way, that is a judgement. A Kit Kat better than an OHenry bar. Socrates has nothing on

her, her insights are deep, deep, I tell yer.

Anna has never ever sold one of her novels. And it is not for lack of trying here. Maybe the

market niches who are open for middle aged women are very narrow. There are just

certain things that 62-year-old females are allowed to say in this society. And those

things are usually controlled by 62-year-old males. Sorry, girl, you have not come a long

way, baby. Hate to burst your bubble here. Western society sucks, and so does any other

society. Anna thinks about her book business, her foray into the biz world. Yes, her

demographic is the biggest new business provider but only because they have done other

things and had to wait until they are old and decrepit to do stuff and then they are out of

steam anyways. Men rule the world, women, not so much.

She digs into the pancake stack, yay here. yay.

Later she walks on the Venice boardwalk. Every time she is here, she is reminded of Kramer in

Seinfeld when he rollerblades along the boardwalk. Everything Seinfeld makes her laugh

out loud. It shows her age, people her age like Seinfeld and can relate to it. Jerry Seinfeld

is a mere one year older than Anna. She even saw him perform live in the Bronx. Some

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 years ago, this was a five borough thing, but the last one was cancelled because of Sandy

and then was later done somewhere else. Or maybe people were just reimbursed. And

maybe it was not Sandy, but it was a hurricane, that she remembers. You can google it

because you might want to know the exact dates of when that all happened here. Anyhoo,

Anna is walking along the boardwalk. The drizzle has stopped. So much to see here.

People of all kinds. Yup, it takes all kinds here.

Anna might even walk all the way back to her hotel though it really is a long hike. A semi-urban

hike. There was a time when she could walk forever without blinking twice. Those days

are over now, gone forever here. There are 90-year-old men who run marathons. Maybe

if Anna starts training now, she will be able to do that too once she is ninety. A friend of

her trains each and every day and the benefits are multifold here. Maybe she too should

train each and every day instead of working on a book business. Those books will be sold

anyways and they can do it without her, there is no use in her throwing her hat into the

ring. Publishing will survive sans her. World lit will survive without her here. Somebody

else will win a Pulitzer, a Man Booker, any of those many accolades that writers win and

that are not worth zip. What is a prize worth anyways? Where to put the award? On the

mantle? Some more thing to dust and to hoist from apartment to apartment here. Queen

Liz does not have any awards and she still is famous for her hats. And her corgis. More

for her hats though. Which reminds Anna about the hat store. It went out of business.

Apparently, people do not wear hats anymore. These are bad times for hats here. She

walks and walks, makes sure not to be run over by a skateboarder, not been taken over.

The ocean is soothing, the air is clear and good for your lungs. There is this really

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 beautiful bakery with the most exquisite pastry. If she could only remember where it was

here.

Anna is still in a holiday mood and she loves it. California does that to you. The weather at X-

mas time. She will get back to writing, to selling books, but at this time she is merely

going out for a long long stroll, does the ricotta lemon pancake thing here. She could go

to the theater or to the Getty but too much sightseeing does her usually in, makes her

physically sick, her heart acts up, she feels sick sick sick. Hers is more rolling up with a

good book at the fireplace, hers is a very stationary pursuit. Watching tv. Something

without moving much here. Resting, sleeping. All the museums can do without her here.

maybe a beer, Valencia orange peel, blue moon. Anna might still fly to other places,

Paris, just like the women who buy books about Paris in the bookstore wedged between

the sushi place and the bakery. That was apparently the target audience of that bookstore,

which actually means that they were not very cosmopolitan, that they were a non-world

travelling crowd, that they were very American, maybe mostly draft dodgers that have

grown up and romanticize Paris because that is what was the intellectual climate when

they jumped over the border in the Vietnam era. And even now, when they teach

American lit at Canadian colleges it is all about the lost generation which let us face it

was a thing that happened some one hundred years ago and should not have any

significance in todays literary climate. After all, Hemingway was mainly one of many,

and one could argue that Nobels are bestowed on lesser poets and that the really good

ones are overlooked and get away scot-free. Maybe a Nobel is not exactly good for a

writer. Anna knows lots of very good writers who are not even shortlisted and really bad

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 writers that get awarded the Nobel prize. It comes with the territory of any award. It is

always very debatable.

Anna looks at peoples shoes. Some choose to go barefoot. Not a good idea, what if there are

shards of glass on the ground here. She wishes that she had eyephones and could listen to

music while watching. But maybe the music of life, the songs of life are even more

exhilarating here. Meditative, the meditativeness of the city, the city in motion, the city at

leisure, the city at rest here. The humanity. She loves walking in nyc, all those people,

this boardwalk is a more muted, more artificial, less urgent environment. It is a place that

invites alcohol and pot. It has this feel of fomo. and everybody should know what fomo

means, fomo, obviously here. Fear Of Missing Out.

Anna thinks about different things while walking. But, yes, urban studies were always at the

forefront of her interests. More so than the interaction of people. The interaction of

buildings, the dynamics of people rushing to and fro motioning in the shadow of really

monstrous buildings, there is a romantic vibe to that here. She never read Jane Jacobs

The Life and Death of the American City, but she should find the book, get it from the

library, read it finally here. She read this book about the city by this British architect who

now teaches at the Royal Academy of London here. It was really good here. She still does

the walking still does the walking here.

It is near noon. Maybe it is lunchtime. Just pancakes seems to be not enough here. This is what

you do when you are on holidays. You eat constantly. Late breakfast and then it is time to

have dinner here. Then high tea. Dinner, supper, there is no ending. And you develop a

hearty appetite because of all of the new things you see, the overstimulation. And after a

while you get all insensitive and jaded, nothing is new anymore. Everything has lost its

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 novelty here. She should pick up a Lonely Planet or a Time-Out, so to see hidden gems.

Sights off the hidden path, that kind of stuff here.

There is a ping pong table where people play, it is a free for all here. That and pot. The whiff is

everywhere, it makes Anna want to barf all over the place. But the sand, the sun, the fresh

air, it cant be beat. And if there are disgusting fumes you just walk by and have a laisser

faire tude because face it, what can you do, if you cant fight em join them, it is laid

back and Californian, everybody tries to live up to the hype, to the stereotype here. She

herself prefers nyc, New York minute, that kind of east coasty air. But maybe that is only

because she lived on the west coast for thirty years of her life. The grass is always

greener and that kind of stuff here.

There is this place that blurts out Country and Western, there are people who square dance. Nice.

People gather around and watch, nobody has to be anywhere, people have ample amounts

of time thus they can just hang and be spectators in the game of life here. this is such a

multigenerational place, very elderly persons with tons of make-up and big glasses here.

With walking sticks or with a walker. Though walking with a walker is not really

possible, somebody will run yer over with wheelies, bikes, skateboards, roller blades, or

old-fashioned roller skates. Somebody might hurt you with a hula hoop here. It seems

that this place is just forever staying back in the fifties here. Americana, definitely here.

Venice Beach, it is still what it always was. Places like this never ever change here. They

cannot. They stay the same. Under the patina of progressiveness. And she will always be

a poet, mainly because she has no other options here.

Back in the hotel, she plants herself in front of the telly. Golden Girls, Pussycat. The Hallmark

channel. Every hotel she ever went to has that particular channel. Seems to be part of the

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 package. This is what tourists watch here. Anytouriste. She makes herself a tea, mainly

because it is easier than coffee. She wished that she had a slice of fresh lemon here. She

could get a Mars bar, but those minibar chocolate bars are extra expensive here. They buy

the stuff from Costco and then charge you an arm and a leg here. Well, that is not how

this works, they get everything delivered. To housekeeping here.

Anna reads her book. She still has 200 pages to go through. It is quite a page turner but so very

long here. 450 pages. It takes forever to go through this here. And one wants to know

what happens. Whodunnit, it is some kind of whodunnit. Now it is the jerry Seinfeld

show. She reads and watches the telly here. Words on her lap and visuals on the screen

here. She takes out the laptop and starts working on the story about the man and the

woman in Amsterdam again. Maybe if she reworks it, it will all finally make sense, fall

into place, automatically here. She has a wordcount of 27237 words here, mainly because

she cut out a lot of passages here. She is desperate to make the storyline work somehow.

Maybe she just likes a Sisyphean task here.

Anna ponders if it is warm enough to swim in the ocean. Probably not. And do they not have

sharks here. Anyhoo, she does not have a bathing suit anyways. There might be a

swimming pool in this hotel here. She has to look into that here. They have a gym, that is

for sure. It is in the basement. They have a spa too. That sounds better, no exertion. She

walked too much along the boardwalk anyways here. So now it is watching TV and

working on the story of love in the city of love. Well, nobody thinks of Amsterdam as the

city of love here. It has no Eiffel tower and Woody Allen did not make a movie about it.

It has windmills and wooden clogs. Free pot. Those little pancake thingies, poffertjes.

French fries with mayo. Herring in buns. Like hot dogs. In city stands far away from

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 where the tourists roam. Bikes that might run you over. The University of Amsterdam.

The Gerrit Rietveld academy. A palace smack in the middle of town. An airport with pear

tarts, round pear tarts with sliced pears. It is quite a city, but she is not quite sure how it

can be the backdrop for a love story. What kind of love story should it be? And others

should write it, Anna does not do love, that is not how we roll here. She describes stuff

and the stuff that she describes are not human emotions. She does lines and colors and

forms. The description of buildings and bridges and cars and watches. Anything that does

not move, anything inorganic. Stuff, dresses, clothes in general. She is not the person that

will talk about human interaction. Human interaction is a mystery to her. Who knows

what goes on in peoples minds here. She is no Sigmund Freud here. And nonfiction is a

toughie, everything has to make sense. She has to do research and that takes patience, a

patience that she lacks here. On the telly, Pussycat. She ponders if she should wear her

pink t-shirt or if it is too girly here. She has two pink shirts, one lighter and one darker.

That is what she packed here. She likes to pack light here. Outside, the ocean. The view

is spectacular here. She eats a pear. Health food here.

Later she goes down into the lobby. This is her second day in the lobby, and that is so nice,

because the lobby here is spectacular. She takes pics with her phone, she will put them on

Instagram. It is very important to put the right pics on Instagram. And to think that some

five years ago there was no Instagram here on this planet of ours. How did we survive as

a species, how did we make it that far here?

There are so many persons here. It is a weekday but still this seems to be a very popular

destination. Maybe people come here to talk about how to make a movie, which movie to

make. Or maybe, this is a place way too glamourous and movie making is more about

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 camera angles and how to mix the sound. It is more something that is done in a dark

studio, animation sure is. She trained as an animator while she was at art school here. It

was such a great time. Life is just different when you are an animator. If you have to

choose between subcultures, animation is the best by far. Life is different when you are

an animator. It is a very exclusive club. That is how Anna here sees it. She could not

make it as an animator, nobody can, not even Seth Mc Farlane. And he went to RISD.

Now he has gigs as film director and musician and Oscar winner announcer. Well, he is

good at that too, and Family Guy still is on and it is arguably very funny. A Thousand

Ways to Die in the West was great, too, especially the scene with Patrick something, the

one who played Dougie Howser. That scene is hilarious, you can watch it on you tube if

you did not see the movie here.

Anna watches all of these people who are all dressed-up and then there are people in torn jeans

too and they are usually young and pretty and gorgeous, they can wear anything and still

look fabulous here. Anna wishes she had something to knit here, the problem is that she

is no knitter. She writes, that is the yarn she knits.

She still is working on her nanowrimo novel. Every day she tries to write ten thousand words

which is quite an undertaking here. She knows that she can go to the nanowrimo meeting

here in town. As a tourist. All this writing is so trying on her poor body here. She has not

really the body of a writer. They are more willowy, more sturdy. A sturdy willow here.

She ponders, how do real writers look? Are they men with beards? How many of the

writers in this world are men with beards. Is a beard a prerequisite for writing? Because

there is a resonance when they do a reading? She even has a strong foreign accent which

can be good or it can be bad here. Jean Chretien was prime minister of Canada with a

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 strong accent when he spoke French. Obviously not when he spoke French here. So, if

she has an accent when doing a reading this should be ok here. Not ideal but ok. Less of

an accent more of an accent. Everyone has some kind of accent, some kind of intonation

here. She still needs 1800 words till midnite. And any subject will be fine. The quantity,

the quantity here.

The next day she is in nyc. On business. She is taking the L-train and goes from the Meatpacking

down to Williamsburg. Has a waffle in the konditori next to Bedford station. She likes

their waffles that are so uneven in the edges. Artisanaly uneven here.

Later she takes the train and gets out at Sixth avenue. She goes to Pratt and looks at the pictures

in the gallery. She once listened to a lecture there. It was nice, all lectures are. She asked

a question in the Q and A. It was a long time ago. The lecture was by two persons who

design street signs. It was about the different regulations in different states in the United

States, in the eastern part of the country. The signs were supposed to reflect that. Or

maybe it was not like that. Maybe it was about the typography and the readability for

drivers, which font was more readable from afar and which one was not. What was

supposed to be the distance between the letters and the arrows. What was supposed to be

the colors underneath? Green or blue? And wat kind of green and what kind of blue?

These are questions that influence the way that drivers react to the signs on the highway

and where they exit and when they can decipher where the exit is. Pratt is on Fourteenth

street, at least the campus in Manhattan is. The main campus is in Brooklyn, of course

here. Anna has been to that one, too. it has a very impressive sculpture garden. Once

there was a poetry reading in the garden. People were clapping. The poetry was not very

good. Well, most students are there to train in the visual arts and that is their forte. It was

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 nice though, very informal and it was summer or maybe September. So, the weather was

nice and one could listen to poems and have a sandwich too while listening to poetry.

There once was a fire in the painting studio which was on one of the upper floors. Anna

would have liked to go to grad school in nyc because, hey, who would not like that? The

price point though is back breaking. But it is the right place to be if you are in the arts. It

is very difficult to make it in the arts if one does live outside of New York City. It is

virtually impossible to forge a career in the arts, any career in the arts. Anna once

participated in a project in New York City which was a lot of fun and very informative. It

definitely had a high impact on the way that she thinks about art. But that was it. After

that she tried to do something with books. But she mostly did the retail side and that is

just like any retail job. Retail is retail, it does not make difference if you sell books or

chocolate or hats here or shoes. You are selling stuff, merchandise. You are helping the

consumer to buy something here. It is all about the brick and mortar store. The idea that

all purchases are done online is basically a fallacy, most people prefer to do it the old-

fashioned way, they like to hold the merchandise, touch it , weigh it, inspect it and then

fork their money over here. That is how it is how it is here.

She looks through the bookstores in nyc too. There are three near Union Square. There is Strand

and then there is Barnes and Noble and then there is this quaint cute used book store in

one of the side streets. Maybe near the Hyatt, but she is not quite sure. There are always

tasters at Trader Joes. NYC is always so very entertaining here. One never ever gets

bored here. Anna is not quite sure if this is true, there was a time when she thought that

this is a very boring city. Contrary to common opinion. Now, however, she does not think

like that anymore here. Now she can keep herself busy in the city. She has learned how to

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 do that. Mainly by writing. There are places where one can write. There are writers

studios. That are very nice. And then there are the coffee houses that always brim with

people who are typing up their next novel, play, you name it. The main people in the

coffee places are people who do homework. Who write stuff. It is that kind of culture in

the city, well, in certain places near NYU. People have a coffee and hammer away at the

keyboard. The invention of laptops must have been very good for coffee consumers. Or

countries that plant coffee beans. Coffee houses. Coffee paraphernalia. Paper cup makers.

The problem with the world today is coffee in a paper cup. So the song goes, the one that

was sung in Kits here. The Kitsilano Showboat. She saw it on TV some twenty years ago.

A musical. That is how it is that is how it is here.

Anna is hungry now. She goes to this place named the Tipsy Parson. First, she has a glass of

wine. The wine is very good. Much better than in this other place in SoHo. And the price

is the same.

So Anna has dinner. And then she is tired and goes to sleep in her hotel which is in Chelsea. She

had a long day. The next day she will have a business meeting here in the city. She has to

rest so that she can be fresh the next day here.

The next day after the meeting she calls the office in Milwaukee and asks them to still let her

stay in nyc for two more days. She knows that she is the boss, but she has to coordinate

her whereabouts. This was much easier when she was merely a hired hand. So she goes

and does some shopping and then she has dinner and then she gets back to the hotel. But

the weird thing is that she cannot sleep as of yet. She looks for her book and does some

reading here. She still has 150 pages until the story is finished. In the end though it is TV.

The songs of the idiotbox are the best of lullabies here.

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The next day it is Citi bike, exploring the city on bike. She is very careful though and sometimes

uses the sidewalk which is actually illegal even tougabouth she is very careful that there

are no pedestrians. But still here.

After that it is the Whitney. Looking at art. Reading. She is getting restless. Bored. She looks at

her notes, the ones that are about the novel that she is still working on. She rearranges the

words. They are kind of muddled, not very clear. She can do it all, write horribly and

write eloquently. It depends on what time of the day it is. That kind of thing. Writing is a

hit and miss, always. Nobody is always good or always bad with words. Words are such

malleable units and they are never ever static. They change with the context. It is

different from bricks. If you stack them, they morph into a wall. With words it is a tad

different. But not that much, definitely not that much here. Smaller units that make up a

bigger entity.

Anna goes for a walk now. She goes down to the public market in the Meatpacking district. She

has a glass of wine. She reads her book. The day after this she will go down to

Milwaukee. She is going by train. She likes that. She can look out the window. That is

how it is how it is here.

She walks to her hotel. The weather is nice, still nice enough to walk. In her room she turns on

the telly. MSNBC. Three men talking. About politics. She slumbers off because it is so

boring.

The next day she takes the train and goes to Milwaukee where she meets with the employees of

the bookstore. She tends to business which is stressful, straining. She is not quite sure if

she knows how to do this. It is all very new and way too challenging for her. Luckily

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 nobody seems to notice her incompetence, it kind of gets lost in all of the stuff that has to

be done. The sheer workload. The physical one. Joel is very helpful and very even-

keeled. Which is very reassuring, it somehow makes the work feel less like work. He

definitely has a stake in this because he wants to start this business because of his visa.

His immigration status in this country. That is why he is very serious and committed to

the work and to figuring out how to do this. Even though his back ground is in urban

planning.

Anna seems to get used to how to do this. After some time, she feels that she knows her way

around this, the city and the store. She becomes very familiar with the task at hand. She is

a fast learner, the adrenaline is rushing. It is never ever boring and that makes her tap into

her reserves of energy. Use it or lose it that is so true here. And at this time she is using

her business sense, well, developing it out of nowhere, that is more like it here. She has

stopped to work on the novel about the man and the woman in Amsterdam mainly

because she never finds any time here. she has to make time though. It is tough to juggle

all the different requirements of her life, all the different commitments she has. Writing is

important, fashioning a novel. Mainly because she has put so much time in and she does

not want to give up and admit that it was a fools errand and that she does not have the

right stuff here. She does, she tells herself that she does.

In the evening she just relaxes. unwinds and watches whatever is on the telly, it is basically like

it used to be when she worked in bookselling, on the retail side, not in management.

There are only 24 hours in the day, she is good at prioritizing here. She makes sure that

she catches enough zs and that she goes to the gym and that she eats regularly and

healthily. It all seems to work out here somehow, in a good way, in a positive way here.

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 Milwaukee seems to be good to her. It is a nice city and she loves it here. And it is all

about books, which suits her here. If you love what you do, life is easy easy here. You put

in the time, but you see the rewards.

ANNA AND HER OBSESSION

Anna is now typing away. Well. She is sitting at her laptop, technically, in November. This scene

fits in somewhere between bookselling in Milwaukee and bookselling in the small

independent store, the one near to sushi, hats and bakery. It is November the third, never

mind the year. There will be a write-up, a meeting in the other city. In the library of the

other city. WRITING IN THE LIBRARY OF THE OTHER CITY. Something that will

start up at 13:00. Sharp. It will last till 16:00. Military time. There is something to be

understood from nanowrimo using this kind of numbering of the time. They are either

influenced by the military or by Europe. Anna will talk about that but later. Not now.

Now she just wants to describe the coffee house that she was in just now. Near to ten in

the morning. A man cut in line in front of her and he reminded Anna of this horrible

professor who gave her the worst grade possible in art school all out of his weird

spitefulness, his total lack of comprehension about what was going on. He was just a big

bully, a power-hungry bully who was way over the line. She was not good at the subject

but that is beside the point. Just because you stink at math does not give the teacher the

right to call you knucklehead. There are standards of comportment, of behavior. That

teacher treated a grown woman like she is a child. One could argue that this comes with

the territory if there is difference in age, an unfavorable, an out of the ordinary one. But

every other teacher was able to balance that just beautifully. In this case though it was a

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 disaster that toxified, poisoned what should have been a fruitful learning environment

here.

Anyways, Anna had her breakfast in the corner where she could oversee everything that was

going on in the coffee place. Those corner stools are like bar stools, you have to climb

them. You have to be physically very fit. Anna fell in this restaurant, at the buffet table,

on her bum. She could not sit for two weeks and it was sheer horror, sheer terror. At that

time sitting on a stool would have been impossible, to be precise, sitting was very tough.

It was either standing or lying on ones back or front or to the side here. But the body

healed just beautifully, no lasting negative impact here. The coffee place is full of people,

they are all in their weekend garb. A man and a woman and a child. A man and a child.

Lots of youngsters in a coffee shop. People who do homework, one woman and one man.

Both very young and very serious. The woman has a piece of paper with writing and

darkened spots on it. She looks at that and at her laptop. She is comparing data or

something, referencing back if what she wrote is right. Cross-referencing, making sure

that what she has is right. She is being diligent here. That kind of diligence will help her

in later life, in whatever she will do for a living. That is what schools, universities teach.

Diligence, order, discipline, the scientific method. Anna tries to get the crumb out of her

mouth, the little pieces of walnut that get caught between her teeth. She tries to do this

elegantly but there is no way one can do it elegantly. It is all the fault of this one very

inexperienced dental assistant who ruined her teeth by taking too much away of the tartar

and damaging her teeth. Now everything gets caught in between and tooth cleaning has

become a big production here.

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It is ten and twenty-six and she is typing up her big nanowrimo novel here. Ten and twenty-

eight. She has 30675 words here, which is amazing. It is only day three or maybe day

four. Day four, yes, definitely day four. Going to the other city to write will take away

from her computer time. The commute that is counterintuitive. She will just stay put and

type here. No moving away to go to another city. Besides, it is raining here. Her laptop

will not be ok with that. No water on the machines and she does not have a protective

layer for this laptop here and no bag into which it will fit here. So she will stay just here

even if she has to forego human contact. The work is paramount, and it is one two more

days. Then she will have taken five days for a task that others fulfil in thirty days. She

will have run faster further. Ripleys, take notice. Guinness records book, take notice. She

is breaking the records here. Is it record or records? This is what marathon running feels

like. Outdoing the rest of the population. One lonely man from Kenia. Long after that

nothing and then the rest of the masses, the rest of the population. This is what Jerry

Seinfeld says when they are all watching the marathon, what is to see? It is one man from

Kenia and then the rest. This was true twenty years or so ago, it is true now. Though

technically Seinfeld is much older here, 27 years old. A life time here. and we are still

watching is as if it was yesterday, still referencing it here. The truths, the wisdom of

Seinfeld. The knowledge of the ages here. The myths that might or might not hold true in

todays world here. Seinfeld is like proverbs, like old wives tales. He sounds like Donald

Trump with his snap judgements here. Nobody knows if what he states is true. Popular

wisdom. Both Seinfeld and Trump do that. And Larry David. Anyways, we are typing

here.

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Well, she knows that there are people who are part of nanowrimo and who have already finished

the required words, all of fifty thousand here. There was this one woman in Iceland, in a

small place in Iceland, not the capital, and she finished all fifty thousand words in exactly

seventeen hours. Which is quite an accomplishment. She did it some years ago and she

wrote about that on the forum. All 50 000 words in one day. There are people who do the

same over the Labor Day weekend. So, 50 000 words in three days. But 50 000 in one

day is phenomenal. This one person who is the boss of the nanowrimers in this region has

done 13000 in one day, or some more than 13000. But that is nothing compared to 50000

in one day. Are these people famous writers? Nope. They are people who are able to type

very fast. 100 words per minute. So you have 6000 words per hour. 60000 in ten hours. It

depends on your speed in typing here. Your ability to do it physically. Your training as a

person who does typewriting. That is all. Usually these people stand. When they are

typing. These are physical tings. They use certain computers. Computers that stand on the

counter. Some manufacturer has designed that kind of type writer. Even type writers are

newfangled. In the old times people used pens that they dipped into ink. So basically the

physical stuff is what makes a bard a bard. The theater space. It is not about the words it

is about us in the world. Us as people interacting with physical things. And we ourselves

are physical beings too. not so much mental beings here. It is about the body and how it

holds up or does not hold up here.

Anna is reading through her book. She now has put it upside down on the sofa. It is creased

where she stopped reading. She did not use a book mark but opened the book to the page

she left off at. So now the book is folded open and lying down on the pillow, spine and

book cover up here. She could take a picture to show what she really means here. She

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ponders if that is good for the book. Probably not. There will be a dent, in the pages. The

pages will open to that particular page here. She is not taking good care of the book here.

It should be slightly used and not worn out here. A slightly used book that she can donate

or resell here. There is this place where one can donate books. It is very good and near to

Annas place here. There was a fire so that is why it is shut down, but it will reopen

eventually here. Next to it is a fast food joint on Forty-first that is here. It is now eight

after eleven here. She has to rush if she wants to go to Richmond. The problem with the

nanowrimo crowd is that it is so very young here. These are all kids writers and not adult

writers here. She feels like the odd person out and that is not good for being a writer. She

will now go back to reading the story. Let us see what happened to Abdi. He is part of the

story and he is missing in this city called Bristol here. Three one five seven six. This is

her wordcount here. Annas wordcount. On November fourth at eleven and thirteen. The

day is a dreary dreary Saturday and the sun is not out. Overcast is the theme of the day

here. The wordcount is just some number and there are different places to put it in and

apparently the counting is not accurate at all here. There are two different sites and they

both have the number and they are different from each other here. This is all based in

Oakland next to that place where all this data mining started, Silicon Valley here. It is

very obstruse or something like that. Ob something here. All our data are compounded in

this one place on the planet. She is misusing the term compounded and obstruse. She is

just making up words here. Because that goes faster here. She can still go out to

Brighouse, to the library but she will just observe people writing. People in the flesh. She

can do that in the coffee house too or virtually. On tv. It is eleven and twenty-three. She

has done readings. Lots of them here. seven years go. Everyone clapped and this one

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woman told her that she was good. A woman from Portland. Oregon. A woman with a

hat. You were actually very good and she sounded a tad surprised just like her teacher

was. So apparently, she looked like somebody wo is not good with words and then when

they listen to her stuff theyre surprised or when they read thru it. It is this element of

surprise that she has to mine. Look like a dummy but take them in with your eloquence.

Defy the lower expectations here. Go in without a bang but leave on a high note, with a

bang. You can do it either way, high expectations and then a put down. Or low

expectations and then awesomeness. Either way it should work here. The main thing is

that her work has to be good and hold up against all criticism and that it does not really

make any difference how and in what venue it is presented here. It is very tough to try to

make it when what you are doing is dealing with words because there is no real criteria to

measure, to judge. Who knows which words are excellent and which ones are just pure

mediocracy. The jury is still out here. The New York Review of Books, well, they are an

authority but they are one of many authorities in the country and nobody knows if they

are always getting it right here. Anna does not really know, that is why she sells books,

which are texts that are preapproved by literary agents and by publishers and by the

people who put money into books that they hope will sell. It is always a gamble, each

new voice is a gamble and somebody will take a leap of faith and invest in said voice

here. Tastes are very different but there are certain ways to know who is a good writer

and who is not here. You can separate the chafe from the straw and that is why we have

schools who mediate this, who measure this and mediate each individuals potential.

They are nonbiased and nonpartisan. Anna has always had top marks in essay writing all

thru her life. She should definitely make this her profession, there will be people who will

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 compensate her just like there were always people who would easily give her an A for

what she put down on paper, well, when it was paper and not online scribbling like it is

now here. But she has to go back to her book, to see where Abdi is in Bristol here.

Anna now has a book about Anna and a book about Gallia. One is proposed to go to 100 000 and

the other is projected to stand at fifty thousand words once that it is finished here. So 150

000 words and she typed up 200 000 more this year which will make the wordcount of

the whole year next to 400 000 words. So this is good, we have merchandise here that we

can package and then peddle to some takers, in an auction maybe. Why should Annas

words stand at less value than Hillary Rodham Clintons words? She is somebody, you

are nobody. So said Jerry to George when he said that Ted Danson makes so much more

than he does. He is somebody, you are nobody. You are worse. Much much worse. Who

is he? He is somebody you are nobody. It is funny and the joke gets totally lost in

translation here. It is bad if all we know of life is gathered from some joke show on a

screen here. But that is life, that is life here. Zadie Smith said apparently that she is

inspired by other books, we here are inspired by tv. Anna is, yup, Anna is here. It is not

quite clear where Anna starts and Anna ends and the author of this text here, these words

here starts and when and where she ends here. There are overlaps but they are negotiable

here just like they are with anybody who chooses to write for an audience here. It is

weird, it is strange, but it is weird in a good way here. She will now go back to reading

the book that she started, the one that is written by a woman named Gillie here. She

definitely has a way with words here. BTW, it is eleven and forty-seven here.

At this rate you will finish on November seven. So the pie-chart on the nanowrimo site here. It is

not a pie-chart, more graphs and numbers and different things that they automatically

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 measure with each input. It must be very expensive but there are a lot of sponsors

because they are very very good at working with schools and elementary schools and

universities, they have a knack of how to infiltrate the system in the same way that Steve

Jobs had a knack for this. It is not just all about getting accepted to Reed College and

about wearing turtlenecks, black ones. It is about being able to convince the gate keepers

and if you do that consistently, then you will get somewhere here and make the system

work for you here.

She is typing this up even though her back is hurting tightly here. Some more words here some

more words here. Nanowrimo rules, it is such a great thing here. She writes, even though

this is not even a story about a superwoman or something. It is the story about Anna,

Anna who likes books, who devours books, who puts books, all books, on a pedestal. No,

it is not about fetishizing an object. There is not just one book, there are thousands,

millions, billions of books and some of them are burnt like anybody knows who has seen

the movie with Oscar Werner and July Christie, Fahrenheit something here. She

remembers watching it in the Holi which was the movie theater in the Hoheluftchaussee

in Hamburg, in the country of what was then called West Germany because that was

either in 1967 or 1968 here. Long long time ago here. The night before, Anna here

watched this show on tv about the Goldberg family and it was all about this old song

called The Cat in the Cradle and she ponders if it was written by Cat Stevens who is now

Yussuf Islam and who used to have a Greek name when he was a kid here. This is all

ancient ancient history but it definitely informs our culture, our pop culture here. Only a

woman who grew up listening to Radio Luxemburg can write all this all this here. There

are so many influences that flow into her writing here, into anybodys writing on this

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 planet of ours. Everything is a meta work here. She could go to the Richmond Library,

but she would definitely lose valuable time here. It is by now one minute after noon here

in this city of ours here. She needs some fifty words more to have the third of todays

requirement here. And yes, she is almost there. She even wrote after midnight the night

before which is weird, but it is ok here. Ten more and then we are almost there, yay, one

more and 13002 it is it is here, nope, 33009 here, yay. Write or die, die here. rest food

food the like ah the like here.

50 000 in one month, it is very good, it is immersive. Obsessive too. it is doing something again

and again until you are really good at it. Practice makes perfect, strive, fake it till you

make it here. Some things you cannot improve, mainly because you have no knack for it,

no natural one, that is. The potential is that low here. She noticed that as an eight-year-old

when she practiced the throw a ball really far. She went to the Innocentiapark and she just

practiced but it did not get better. But writing is not like that, she is a good writer without

even trying, now she just needs the elbow grease whatever that is. The 99 percent of

transpiration here. Thomas Edison cant be wrong though it might have been Benjamin

Franklin or any other dead white man in America or maybe Isaac Newton here. some

guy, but look out you, the gals are catching up because after all they have to catch up,

there is no other way but forward here. 3202, here. 33202, yay.

Anna now sits in the room where there is vodka and there is whiskey. And there is snow outside

coming down on the city. She tends to overdo it with wine, but she never has wine inside

of the house. She has wine at parties. Period. Whisky or vodka is not her thing, luckily

and she does not want it to be her thing. It is her upbringing, her very religious

upbringing that makes her resist the temptation of doing something crass. Alcohol has

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 always been the devil and it has been even in the neighborhood where she grew up and

where it was permitted to have as much alcohol as you wanted to but it was expected to

drink responsibly, the upstairs neighbor who would come home at three in the morning

hollering, because he was all wasted, he was a pariah in the neighborhood. All the women

would get together and gossip, that he was responsible for the thrombosis of his wife. His

overdrinking. He might have had PTSD because remember this was in Germany after the

war. There were lots of those people in bourgeois Hamburg. Such nice neighborhoods

and such terrible lives under the surface. Everything was so clean and bourgeois, so

hanseatic, all the good people washed their cars on the weekend and underneath: Hell.

You know that is the idea of BLUE VELVET. That this is all a farce. The picture we

show to the world and under it, under the surface, it is all hell loose. But that is not really

how life is, let me tell yer here. The snow is coming down and something is cracking in

the woodworks here. Crackeling here. The library would be nice here.

Snow in November. Such a weird feel here. Such a strange sight. All of these very so very flurry

little flakes here that seem to be dissipated once they touch ground here. On the telly, it is Raj on

the telly while he is just really funny and says to the immigration lady not to send him back to

India and that he loves the rampant obesity in the US. Actually, she is not an immigration

woman, she is from the FBI. And now Lennard wants to have a date with her, and she says that

that is ok and she asks if her six foot two navy seal husband can come too to the date.

And still it is Big Bang Theory. The discussion between Penny the waitress and Sheldon

Cooper, theoretical physicist. About alcohol and drinking. Penny is now a barkeep and Sheldon

wants to take up drinking. As if drinking is a venture, an adventure. Something that one does if

one is on a mission. A mission to learn something new just like a new language. Finnish, for

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instance. Drinking as lifestyle that helps one forget things. Sheldon asks her how she copes with

her workaday meaningless life full of rejection and failure. You have to remember she is an

actress, one that left her home in Nebraska to move to Pasadena, so that she lives near to

Hollywood where all of the movies in the United States are made. She wants to live in the

physical proximity to the movie studios, the movie moguls, the directors, the producers. She goes

to casting calls, day in and day out. And she always gets rejected, well, most of the times because

there are so many actors and actresses who are living in the Los Angeles area to make it. The

competition is extremely steep. So many people want to be movie stars and there are just so

many roles to go around here. That is why Penny has to live with failure and work in the Cheese

Cake Factory as a waitress and now as a barkeep. Obviously, she does not like what the

theoretical physicist says to her but she answers candidly, I drink, that is how I cope. And she is

implying that Sheldon should do the same because he feels guilty that he ratted Howard

Wolfowitz out to the FBI lady, even if that was inadvertently.

Anna watches tv, and she is still working on her novel, the one that is due by the end of the

month. The national novel writing month. November here. She could go to Richmond, but it is

cold and wet in this city here and it is warm inside of this place here. Why would one go out to

write? It is just if you are not used to writing and you think that a community of writers will

make you write better. But writing is not a team sport like football rugby soccer volleyball or

lacrosse here. It just is not. It is one person toiling away in solitary confinement. Trying to up the

ante somehow here. It is what you do when you sit on the second floor in Amherst. 34016 here.

34016.

She could now write about the time that she lived in Reykjavik some three or four years

ago. That was fun. She had a lot of coffee in Kofitar. Kofitar is a coffee chain, the Starbucks of

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Iceland. Anna sat there a lot because she did not know anybody and did not speak the language,

she was a tourist. Well, a little more than that. She was part of this residency in a gas station. An

art residency. Yup, art and gasoline. A highly unlikely combination. Very Duchampian. You

remember that he put a urinal on a plinth. Putting unlikely things together.

And art in a gas station, that is kind of an unlikely marriage and it should be interesting, the

outcome that is. Anna just drew fashion models because that is what she always does here. It is

her signature style, her signature subject matter here.

It is now two and twenty-one minutes here. The coffee that she has in Kofitar is very nice. A

latte. She has her notebook with her. She sketches a woman that has her eyes closed. It is a line

based drawing, a marker on white paper. A marker that she likes to use. It has a 0.7 mm tip. She

usually prefers a 0.7 mm tip. It is thin enough for contouring and thick enough to make one fill in

shapes, flat shapes. It hardly leaks. Because it dries very fast. Thin lines especially dry very fast

and one makes sure not to smudge the flat forms. She listens to people talking in Icelandic. It is a

small country, just 330 000 persons living here. A small town. They are very interesting. Isolated

in the sea. No neighboring countries. Like the UK, but colder. People are good looking, healthy.

Must be the fresh, always fresh air here in Reykjavik. She has seen geysers but they all look the

same to her. Hot water that twirls. No biggie. She prefers to have coffee in Kofitar. The

residency does not take up much of her time here. Anna writes a journal too. it is slightly boring.

What she buys, how much money she spends. Which streets of Reykjavik she visits and takes

photographs of with her phone. Sometimes she embellishes the pics with the filter that this

software in her computer provides here. She feels like chocolate. Kit Kat. Mars. Milky Way.

Junior Mints here. It is now two and thirty-one here. She feels sleepy but it is still day time here.

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Words to finish in time per day, 533. This is the nanowrimo, though nanowrimo is actually in

November here. But she remembers nanowrimo, even though she is now in Kofitar in Iceland.

All of these stories in Annas life seem to intermingle here. Which is not that good, she has to

focus on her job in the residency here. There is a Q and A at the end of the residency, a

presentation, a discussion of what she was doing all thru the residency and how it is artistic. The

University in Reykjavik does provide a small stipend, they sponsor the gas station residency.

There are two persons in an office next to this particular Kofitar, they provide info and they are

basically the cultural hub, the art NGO thingie here in Iceland. They are both very nice and they

have different jobs. One is an actor and one is a translator. The translator is a grad student too in

Copenhagen, though she now does her grad work online, because she is back home to help her

mother in the boutique where she sells hats, blue hats green hats, all kinds of hats here. Anna

puts sugar into her coffee which is nice because the coffee is too bitter here.

Anna is thinking to go to Copenhagen just for the weekend. She has friends there,

Copenhagenish friends. People to share a meal with, to break bread here. Anna has a pet these

days, a small cat. She lives in a room near to Kofitar. The landlady is very nice and has a lot of

interesting stories. Her son lives in Boston. He works at MIT as a research assistant in electronic

something. The lady talks about his research a lot and Anna just nods because she does not really

understand what is going on and the woman has a very stark accent. And the scientific terms she

uses mean nothing to Anna. The woman is a great baker though, which is dangerous for Annas

weight here. The woman likes to knit too, very intricate stuff. The rent is very reasonable,

actually quite low here. Anna might just stay in town, because this place is so quaint. And comfy

here.

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Fast forward. Anna writing her novel in November. She is in the Whole Foods in Tribeca in nyc.

She is sitting next to those who write sci-fi novels and spy novels. She too works on her novel

here, she has 33 000 words already, so this is going very well here. There are all kind of writers

in here, all ages, all nationalities. People who type and type. Next to her is sitting a Swedish lady

who tells Anna that she is writing her novel in Swedish. It is a love story, actually a love triangle.

One woman and two men and she has to decide whom she wants to marry and live with until the

rest of her life. I kind of was taking that story from watching a rerun of Friends, she laughs and

looks with a twinkle in her eyes at Anna. I am not really a writer, but I am an aspiring one. I

think that everybody can be a writer, what do you think? Anna agrees, it is all about putting time

aside to do this here. I like the community of the writers and the write-ins that happen all over

the city, all over the five boroughs. The Swedish lady agrees.

Anna goes out into the city. Hers is bookselling, bookwriting bookreading. It is boring at times.

She has an ice cream. Somehow, she feels like an icecream even though it is November. Eating

reading writing sleeping. Her life is repetitive. So repetitive but that it is ok here. Tomorrow she

will take the train to New Canaan. She knows this lady there, she is a psychiatrist a very nice

lady. She will hang out with her for lunch. Socializing is Annas thing, getting to know so many

different persons and talking with them and listening to all of their stories. There are so many

different stories in nyc, eight million of them. And we are not even counting upstate or New

Jersey or Connecticut, which are the neighboring cities here. Well, New Jersey City is much

nearer to nyc than is Albany. Anyhow, there are so many different stories. Her ice cream is chilly

as iceceam is supposed to be here.

Later in the day, she once more works on the Amsterdam story. It is just about two persons who

love or do not love each other. A man and a woman, so it is straight love. Some writers describe

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other things but she just describes men and women. It is more about the different personalities,

the give and take. And the everyday, that is the same whether it is in Amsterdam or in New

Amsterdam here. She of course is talking about New York here. She has French fries in a Mc

Donalds. Junk food with ketchup. She might go and catch a movie. They have good ones in the

theater next to the hotel. Popcorn sounds good here.

The next day it is New Canaan. She meets the lady in a Starbucks. At eleven thirty. The woman

is very interesting, she actually does research at the local university. She is able to talk about her

research in very clear words. Anna is taking notes for her own book. It is fun and appealing.

They both have lattes for lunch which is not that healthy here.

On the way back to nyc, Anna thinks about the Milwaukee bookstore. Is it worth it? She does not

know. The store is next to the performing art center in Milwaukee. Or maybe it has another

name. They have concerts there and ballet and theater. A little bit of everything. The building is

very nice. With glass walls. Apparently, the architect studied at the ETH. In Zurich. Anna is

looking out the window, the everchanging landscape here.

When Anna was young, she lived in Prince Rupert. It was nice. Anna lived in lots of different

places here. And her thing these days is book-related.

Anna should have studied music. She liked music because who does not like music here. She

used to play the guitar when she was twelve. She started out young, but it did not really go

anywhere here. Sometimes she sang but she is basically tone-deaf. That is what the choir teacher

told her who was this tall skinny guy named Mr. Elsner and he always wore this suit jacket that

was checkered, blue and white, small checkers. He was not very enthusiastic about Annas

ability as a singer. She sang alto, apparently that is what he thought she should do. He had his

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favorites, apparently, the people with good voices. The school was an all-girl school and it was

situated in what was then West Germany. Some of the singers did make it to better, more

important places. One of the girls became an actress. She was in a parallel class, not in Annas

class. She won in a book reading contest over Anna. Which was not nice, of course. It cut short

any acting aspirations in Anna and quelled her acting aspirations. It did not hurt that her father

was a theater director in town here.

Sitting and reading and sitting and writing. This is what she does these days. While the telly is

singing its songs here. In between it is the coffee house and then it is back to this place and

staring down at the type writer, the keyboard here. It is the second time in the day that she is

seeing this Seinfeld stuff here, this particular episode, the one with the Bosco. And now

Peterman drives to the place where his mother is on her deathbed. And now it cut to Elaine and

Jerry who are on the phone with each other and once more the cut back to Mr. Peterman and

George and Georges mother. And now it is a commercial about this movie called Indian

Detective with Russel Peters staring in it. And now it is back to Seinfeld where George is telling

the mother of Peterman that his password is Bosco, and she yells it out several times. And then

she passes away. And now Peterman wants to know who Bosco is. You are a portly fellow, large

in the waistband. The cocoa bean. And now the funeral house. Peterman who tries to figure out

what this word Bosco means. You have my deepest sympathy. I am speaking at a womens rights

conference. Fortunately, I have George here to comfort me. And now Kramer and Seinfeld and

Leapin Larry. And the fireman. And the fact is we feel things are fine the way they are. Water

under the bridge. She now has 35903 words even though she did not go to Richmond. She stayed

in here and actually produced some 5923 words here which is pretty good here. Some six

thousand words. In three hours, though actually more from nine thirty or ten thirty to four thirty

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here. Seven or six hours to write up 6000 words here. One hour per one thousand words here.

While watching tv, reading, having a quinoa wrap, having tea, having corn flakes. And all of

typing all of typing here. Seven hours of typing. She still has to produce some four thousand and

then she has done the days work here.

Anna surfs the web and now is on this site about this place in Brooklyn that is called One Story.

They publish as it says, one story per month. They have a nice Instagram account here. With

different pictures. Pomne woman with a nice smile and brown hair, her hair is half long and

brown and her eyes are brown too. She might be the founder. They look for an intern in

Brooklyn a person who works in their office. What kind of place is that that has one story in each

issue here. And now it is Big Bang once more. She has seen it before. Raj who is pretty find. He

starts to sing My Country tis of Thee, its really great. Now it is Lennard who is funny and

cracks a joke that the FBI woman does not get here. Now she asks once more about Howard

Wolowitz. This must be the third time that this is playing today. It is once more the navy seal

question. I did not see the ring with my glasses off. it is five and this is the third time here. And

here is my Justice League membership card and laugh tracks. Eighteen years ago, I sent the FBI

a sample of And laugh tracks laugh tracks here. Visual aid. Responsible. Blue Ray. Anna

copies the words into her text here. He crashed the mars rover. Irresponsible. The mars rover.

Did I say mars rover? You did. Thank u, Dr. Cooper, I think I have everything I need. And now

Howard asking them about what happened at the interview. I feel awful. That is what Lennard

says. And now an ad for a shampoo. Herbal essences, new ones. And an ad for a car. This is fun.

She has 36302 words. She needs 700 words to finish this. A gorn sitting on the couch. Tank u for

filing a complaint with my superior. And Sheldon reads a poem. Witty, he is quick with a joke.

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26338. And now Neil deGrasse Tyson. The Dr. from the planetarium in nyc. Dr. Tyson. Or

Tysen. I retracted my statement. With gorninfested R.E.M. sleep.

Ur apology is not accepted. and once more Penny and Sheldon. The local barkeep. Alcohol.

Ethyl alcohol. 40 milliliters.

And now write on here. 3685 here. 36388. There are 27 days remaining, but we are way ahead

which is very tough on Annas body here. 36406 words here. She still has to write on here.

Howard likes the spot. 36420. She can hardly type here. and the song by the Barenaked Ladies.

Metro lrt, whatever that is. Edmonton. She can hardly move here. 36444. And now she is still

typing here. There is snow in Edmonton. It is really snowed-in. Snowfall. A very bad city street

in Edmonton. And a 21-year-old died because of the bad street. This is CTV news. It is horrible.

And the writing goes still on here. Snow and then sunshine here. She ponders if she will be part

of the write-ins. It is minus thirteen in Edmonton. What a chilly country. In times like that you

have to stay inside. Because it is too cold to be outside. It is nice inside but cold outside. Anna

ponders what she should write about chilly weather. Which words to use to discuss cold weather

and describe that? There is a lack of words to do that. Inuit seems to be better for that. Linguists

say so. A gate is dismounted in Edmonton. And that is what they show on the news out of

Edmonton. The woman on the news is quite young and she is wearing a blue dress. And now it is

about bullying of politicians. And now an urban design competition. That is nice. And now the

Oilers. Hockey. And now a journalist. And you can snap photos. We still have to do this here.

She is typing while the day lets out. 36661words.

On the telly, it is now ice hockey. It is not what she really wants to watch because she does not

like it, it seems much too fierce and dangerous and cold. Too. Now she watches The

Honeymooners which is always nice. Who would not like Jackie Gleason? And the expression

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on his face is definitely something else. It is now in the apartment of the main character. The two

women are talking. It is not quite sure what is going on here. Apparently Ralph was on a tv

show. He comes in. Well, I learned something tonight. And not one person congratulated him. It

is funny. And now he wants to celebrate. And you have to see how different this furniture looks

in a Park Avenue apartment. 36789 words. The show is apparently like jeopardy. Spell anti-

establishment and then there is another word behind it. 36807. Two hundred words here. And

after this is finished she still needs some 3000 words more here. He is a bus driver. And he will

study music, every song that he can. When the smoke clears, we will have 99 000 dollars. Now it

is an ad. There are always ads in between the shows which is always fragmenting everything. We

will write some more and write some more here. She stopped for two hours which was very good

and now she has energy enough to do this whereas she did not have any energy before. Now she

can do this at a nice and steady tempo and she will then go back and edit all of this. Even though

the story is kind of all over the place here. And now it is the mother of the woman, the wife and

apparently she does not have anything good to say about her son-in-law because she asks her

daughter how is the brain doing? They sure do not like each other, Ralph and Alices mother

here. And she wants him to go on until he wins it all and she wants to see his expression when he

loses.

It is nice to write down that she has now thirty-six thousand words of this nanothing here. The

novel that will go somewhere here. She will find a nice publisher even though this is just a

novella, because it is pretty short here. Forty-second street is the name of the movie that this

song is for here. This is so funny, mainly because it is about the life in an apartment in black and

white and it is so nostalgic especially if you are the person who grew up in an apartment when tv

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was in black and white here. the other guy is playing the piano and he is wearing a hat inside the

house.

And now it is the Pix News out of nyc, which is actually the ten oclock news because that is

what the time is now in New York. This evening it is seven here and that is why it is ten over on

the east coast. This evening it is day light savings time change and so the time will be different

tomorrow morning, actually, it will change at two oclock in the night. So what exactly will

happen at two in the nite? How does this exactly happen here. Well, she will google it because

that is how it is here. She still has to type up 2800 words here to finish the daily requirement for

the nanowrimo here. The woman on the screen, she is always the anchor for pix eleven. And now

it is the Sierra Nevada where there is snow already now that it is November four here. She will

still type here and still type here. Tomorrow there will be the New York marathon. And now an

ad for some new sandwich by Mc Donald here, something with buffalo wings or something here.

Tomorrow there will be a marathon runner in nyc who is blind and will do the running while

guided by a GPS app here. He is a British bloke here and hopefully this will be working out for

him here. 37351 here. It is seven thirty-one in the evening on November fourth here. Christmas

trees prices are higher this year, both the trees and shipping is like that here.

Anna and the selling of books. She could write about that while the telly is on here. nbt at this

time she really wants to delve into the novel and the wordcount and how she is just typing away

though she could have done that much much slower instead of racing it forward without looking

to the right or the left here. But there is a thing to be said for the insanity that is writing a novel

anyways because nobody really knows how that works here. She was just reading about the

singer who sang the song Cats in the Cradle. And now it is Seinfeld on the telly. It is the episode

with the friars club. Kramer wants to open a restaurant called pb and js. and now it is Seinfeld

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and Kramer. And now Elaine here. 37515 here. Thank you. 37522 here. Words per day to finish

this in time: 472 or something like that here. She can obviously stop this now, but she really

wants to finish this in one big swoop here. There were pics on the twitter feed of nyc, and it

showed all the people that were in Paragraph which is a writers place on Fourteenth street in

number 35 on the third floor. Apparently, they had space for eighty persons which means that it

must be quite a roomy place here. 37606 here. It would be nice to be over there and do the

writing over there. And now the friars in Seinfeld here. How will she ever be able to finish this in

time here, this is quite a writing adventure here and one just has to keep on typing until one

reaches 40000 here. She just has 37661 here which means that she just has to keep on typing

here. 37677. Apparently, Donald Trump is now in Japan or he is on the way to Japan here. On

the telly, there is this one young woman shown, not at this point, but she was on the news, who

says that Harvey Weinstein assaulted her in 2010 and the NYPD says that they might have a case

against him because this was a recent attack and thus he is not allowed to leave the country and

apparently, they are closing in on them here. And she writes and writes. Still she has to type up

some more here. Time to finish, words to finish in time, the ones per day: 454. That is definitely

nothing, a sheer little lklcks here. A clacks. And still some more Seinfeld here. 37804 here. And

now there is still another Seinfeld episode and she thinks that she has seen it twice already, twice

today here. So this is her way of writing, the telly sings its songs and she types up whatever

comes to her mind here at the typewriter here. This is the show with josefvabbot. Jsef abud.

Well, whatever the name is here. it is this show where Jerry buys a suit and the person who is the

seller is a British guy with funny hair and very good looks and he is very funny here. Ean. That

guy here. 37904. And now it is an ad for houses or something here. The crest. And that is why I

said it. Come back with me to the store and I will try on the coat here. Kramer talks about Bob

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Sacramento. Seventy-five bucks per month here. and still now it is Kramer in the downtown

parking lot here. Craig who works for the store here. Nicole Miller. And now the wig master.

37799. Or something like that. 37892 here or maybe that is wrong. 36, 37, she kind of misreads

all of this here, but voil, we are there here. 445 words per day and then she will be able to finish

this in time here. At the end of the month here. That clothing salesman had a lot of nerve to hit

on Elaine just in front of me. Dont argue with the body that is a body that you cannot win.

Squires walking stick. Jiffy Park. Kramer talks to Elaine here. 38065 words and now we need

some 2000 words here and then this will be finished here. And we have to finish this in time

here. For spite. 38096, so this has to go up here. For spite. We cannot return an item purely for

spite. These are my friends. Jerry and Elaine. You have really great hair. Dreamcoat. Oh, it

seems it is just you and me, cowboy. 38137.

November 5, 2017. Anna knows that she is going crazy and that they might just as well

sweep her away and commit her. The life of a One flew over the Cuckoos Nester here. Not an

empty nester, nope, a cuckoo nester. She just made that term up here and she thinks that this is a

very, so very clever wordplay here. Just as clever as those terms and sentences and words that

that Gillie woman uses in her book on Noah and Abdi, the one that she is reading right now and

that does not really make much sense because there is a young man, a fifteen year old, more a

boy who takes one look at a man and knows that that particular man is his long lost father which

does not make sense whatsoever, how would he possibly know, but the story just accepts that he

has premonition and can sense that and it is totally wacky but somebody said we will publish this

dribble and bind it and send it to Canada to be in a bookstore so that Anna can pick it up and read

it and wonder what the f. is going on here. The writing is superb though, much better than all the

writings she just read this year with exception to that Max Perkins biography by somebody

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named A.S. Berg, he knew how to spin a yarn and he was so very good with words even though

he was American. Because it seems that the UK people are so much better with words, and so are

the Irish guys because there was an Irish writer too and he was good too or maybe even better.

And then there are really famous writers who are atrocious with words just from a literary

criticism standpoint here.

Anna was driving like crazy only because she was rushing home, heading home to type up the

rest of the nanowrimo here and she does not really care how she drives, maybe they should have

a legal thing that says that people who write novels are not permitted to drive, no nanowrimo

participants. It is much much worse than driving under the influence, the drunk person makes

sure to do the right thing, the writer is so obsessed with her words that she cannot make sure that

she does not drive over people or into people here. It is the idea that has to be pursued at all costs

and nothing else matters and the driver who is a writer feels that she might forget the idea before

she gets home and makes herself comfortable at the computer here. The coffee house was like

always, but not many people were there even though it is Sunday and people have not do be at

work, so they can lounge in the coffee place. The time has changed, it is now eleven, but the real

time is ten, because of daylight savings time, so where it was eleven the day before it is now ten

on the clock thingie which is very weird and very confusing here. She sits at the laptop but the

curtains are open and so the sun is shining onto the keyboard which makes it very weird and it

seems there is a film over the keyboard, a foggy film. In the coffee house the man who resembles

the teacher who gave her an F, is once more there and he has orange juice and creeps Anna out.

Obviously, he is not the one that gave her an F, but he resembles that person, which is weird

here. The person has done nothing wrong but maybe he too has the potential to hand out Fs that

are not needed and not deserved here. Anna ponders where there are write-ins, she could go there

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but the time it takes to get to a writing meeting could be done here and it could be full of tapping

at the keyboard here which might be so much more productive because who needs socializing

with total strangers anyways here, the community of writers makes not write her better words, it

might actually be counterproductive because we do not know how good the people are that we

talk to here. Are they better with words or worse with words here. Can we learn from them or

will they draw you down to their level? Are they Hemingway or Danielle Steels here? Do they

write purple prose or literary prose? What are their aspirations here? A nobel prize or an

anthology that is self-published? Laudings or dissings here? Anna does not know and does not

know here. It is ten and thirty-one though it might be eleven thirty-one in reality. She does not

really know this here what with daylight savings time and how does the computer know how to

do this and how to change the time in time, at two in the nite? Does the clock just stay the same

at two, how does this really work here? Questions ah questions here. It is definitely near noon

and she is very astonished when she sees that it is merely 10:33 and one can easily decipher that

this is very artificial here. Apparently, there are more accidents when the time change occurs

because the inner clocks of people are getting out of whack, everybody is isolated and

disoriented and thus makes accidents, though everybody tries to pretend that everything is

normal when in fact it is not here. 39055 here, she still has to type up quite a lot of words for the

day, 11000 here to be exact which is quite an endeavor here. She is typing fast typing fast here

and her neck is hurting already and so is her finger, the middle finger of the right hand here

which is the one which does all of the typing here. Maybe if the weather was better she could

type more and easier, if the weather was dreary because then there would be less glare and the

glare is annoying the heebie jeebies out of her here. Today it is the nyc marathon and she should

see where the remote control is so that she can look at the tv and get the footage of that race

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which is apparently the biggest marathon in the whole world at this time in history, in herstory.

Long gone are the days of the Punic war when the original marathon was run, though she is not

quite sure if that is true and if it does not have anything to do with Alexander the Great, and she

remembers her history lesson when she was in grade six and the book was blue, himmelblau or

something here. She now has 19222 or so words, or this cannot be right, it must be 39122 or

something here. People in five continents do what she is doing here.

She came to the kitchen table which was a delay and she could have typed up the story of the

woman who is a participant in national novel writing month, the one who now notices that her

glasses are the problem and not the glare that is producing the film. The glasses are filthy and

that is why there is a film and she does not see everything clear here. The glasses are the reason

for the film, not the sun glaring, so the reason for seeing this contorted is not exterior it is not that

something shines on the keyboard, the problem is with the distorted vision, the keyboard is not

filled with a film over it, the view is just fine and clear and the way that we look at the keyboard

is distorted. Anna is not quite sure if she is clear, the idea is that what we look at is clear and not

weird with the sun reflecting on it, it is just the thing that is in front of her eyes. The problem is

in the location of her eyes and not in the location of the keyboard. She has a lot of words now

and maybe trying to talk about technical things uses up a lot of words and thus it is best to just

describe physical stuff because it uses up a lot of words and in a contest where we have to be

extra wordy to make it, this is beneficial. In der Kuerze ist die Wuerze, this does definitely not

hold true for nanowrimo here, we need to use more words here not less, we have to overdescribe

and not underdescribe here. She has 36977 words here, so this is pretty good, because this is the

wordcount that she need on Thanksgiving Day and not on November fifth here. American

Thanksgiving which is around November 26, usually before Black Friday the Thursday before

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that biggest shopping day in the year in north America or at least in the U.S. of A. She still has to

make up some more words here and then she can rest some here. It is ten and fifty-four minutes

in the morning on a Sunday in early November and the sun is shining here. 39666, her other

wordcount was wrong, her previous one, because she always glances down at the word count

icon and sometimes she is getting it all wrong here. This is the story of Anna and it is the

nanowrimo story of 2017 here. The editing will take some time but we will do that too here.

39720 here. The page is 109 or 110 here. She had to drive this up to 40000 the nite before but

she was too busy consuming words instead of producing words, she was busy with that

pageturner written by that Gillie woman, the one that is about the life of two fifteen year olds in

Bristol, UK, actually, even the book that she was on last week was about the life of people in the

UK and Anna wonders why she always runs upon books like that that are in England. There was

a book that was in Ireland and then there was one in nyc and then there was one in Berkeley and

then there was one on the high sea and that was Moby Dick. And Chicago which was The Jungle

though it is called The Swamp in its German translation here. She could make a chart that shows

where her books were playing, there was one in Brooklyn by this woman who has a bookstore in

Brooklyn here and wears a dress that looks like the book cover of her book. The two rabbit

books were happening in a different city and the books by Thomas Wolfe were happening in a

made-up place that does not exist in reality. Apparently, that is what people did because in The

Great Gatsby the city does not really exist and it is a stand-in for nyc or for Manhattan,

apparently. Though she does not know but she thinks that she saw a movie in which Leonardo di

Caprio was playing but she is not quite sure and who is Zelda anyways here. 39991 and still

some more words and three, and 000, no, 40000, voil here.

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So, the write-in is in downtown in the Central branch of the public library and it just started up,

about seventeen minutes ago and it will be on until three. So actually, four hours of uninterrupted

writing and it is usually on the fifth or sixth floor in this big room with a funny name, those

rooms are usually reminiscent of somebody and want to honor that person. There is always an

Alice something Keys rom or Keyes and nobody knows who that person is that the room is

named for. Maybe an important librarian, the queen of the Dewey decimal system. And nobody

really knows what the Dewey decimal system is. In the old times there were little drawers with

index cards in them and you would look at the index card to know the number of the book. She

remembers those times fondly here. She could go down to the library in downtown but it is quite

a long way to go down to that building that was proposed by Moshe Safdie, who was the

architect and he used to be the person who designed habitat 1967 in Montreal here. 40197 here.

At some time Anna wanted to be an architect because that is what you do when you are in art

school, you think that instead of drawing little smiley faces you want to build stuff, draw little

smiley faces on a piece of paper and give it to a builder and say build this, though it should be a

triangle, because that is how pharaoh did it here. She ponders if she is clear enough and

apparently, she is not here. You cannot build a smiley face in a three-dimensional environment,

though one can argue that a smiley face is the flat depiction of a head, the face is just one part of

the bulbous head, the eyes and the nose and the mouth and they too are not flat, so the smiley

face is actually the flat depiction of something that exists and is tactile and three dimensional.

Whereas in architecture you first draw a blueprint or some diagram on the back of a napkin nd

then you say to a construction worker Build this. So one is a design of something that will be in

existence in reality, the other is a depiction of what exists already in reality. The lines and the

shapes, the forms. The sculptural element. 40409 here, she is still busy with writing this here up.

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She could be a writer about art or about design, design writing is something that they teach in

this place in nyc, in Chelsea on the second or fifth floor of the building in a side street near to

that little coffee shop that is situated in the street where the international hostel is situated here.

She really would like to study there, work there. They have a bench in front of the building over

there, she remembers it well here. She remembers those days when she stayed in Ziggys

apartment, that was a long time ago, nine years or so here and yes, that was ages ago here.

She now has 40 528 words here, a lot, yeah, a lot here. The problem is that every time she types

up what the number is, the number changes, because just the mentioning of the number of words

makes this have one more word, the number itself. Every moment passes us by here, everything

is fleeting and in flux here. maybe that is why we write because we want something to stay,

something to be eternal something that we can store on a bookshelf for generations and

generations to come. Once that we are cold and dead and six feet under here. And in the ground

here or dissipated into space here. Once that we are gone, ah gone here. 40547 here, she writes

about coffee houses and libraries and art schools in other places of the world. There was this

woman who had a sweater that said Juilliard, she might not know anything about music but she

knows about the place that is filled with good music, music theory, the best music of the planet

here. These really famous schools in the art world might not necessarily produce people who are

better versed in art theory or something, but they have learned how to put in more time tackling

the ideas surrounding art or music or ballet here. Anna thinks she too should just write about art

mainly because she went to art school and that is her world and she knows about art schools the

world over more so than other people who study medicine or law. In the same way that the so

very young doctor with the funny name and the serious comportment knew how to ask her about

how to wiggle her thumbs so that he can decipher in a split second that she does not need an x-

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ray in VGH, and she was so very happy because going to take an x-ray is quite a production

here. The same goes when you fall, they do not take an x-ray, they just look if you barf or lose

conscience here. She types this up and yes, she talks about art schools here. So, for her art school

just ended up her typing up stories and she does that in the privacy of her own place, at the

kitchen table here because that seems to be what artists do these days here. They concoct

something in the kitchen which is the only workshop inside of any room or house here. Even if

you live in just one room, there is a bed and then there is an outhouse and then there is a coffee

maker which is a kitchen or something. She is not quite sure if she is clear here because she just

wants to write about the way that humans dwell in this century, different human dwellings the

world over. Some people live in yurts and some people live in igloos. All of those are basically

one-room apartments. Sometimes they are called studios, sometimes they are called prison cells

but that has more to do with who is the user, an Inuit or a person in Nepal or Tibet or a glamour

person in Somerset in the book by Sophie Kinsella, the one that was not as good as one in the

shopaholic trilogy. It is actually a series, the shopaholic series. Anyhoo, this book was about

people who live in glamorous camp sites in Somerset in the UK. Glamping or clamping. And the

B and B people call the place Ansel farms and construct these yurts that should be very

interesting to the rich organic granola crowd out of London. And yurts are not regular tents that

you can get in a camping store and that are all plastic and manufactured, yurts, yurts are tents in

Nepal or in Tibet. Or maybe those are houses that are made out of the branches of a tree and they

are not wigwams. Because wigwams were the tents that the native Americans had in the

Americas before the British invaders came or any other person from Europe, Vikings, Spanish

Portuguese people, people from Africa though they did come there not on their own volition.

Eleven fifty-five here. So yurts are tents that are made by the people in villages in either Tibet or

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Nepal. They have diagonal walls apparently and have a round ground floor. These are all

speculations and we do not really know what is the truth about these practices of constructing

shelter. One thing is clear, humans everywhere live in rooms so that the water that rains down on

them does not go on them and drench them. Even homeless people sit under an awning. Anna

thinks that her way to write about human dwellings is way too general and does not really make

sense because how do you categorize human dwellings. And then there are the storage places

where nobody lives. Places like the central library where they are now typing away for

nanowrimo on the fifth or the sixth or the seventh floor and where they have done that already

for the last one hour and they just have three more hours left here and that she could go to if she

was not afraid to lose precious time here, precious time to write about human dwellings and

other related stuff here. So to get back to this, a library is a place where books are stored, and

where people can come and burrow stuff or do their homework here. Libraries are usually closed

during the night, there are exceptions though where there are public places that are open in the

night. Airports are, the apple store on fifth avenue across from Bergdorf and from the Plaza,

those places are open, seven-elevens they are open all day lone and all night, all 24-hour places

that sell groceries. The little store in the UK, the little store in Chelsea. Hotel lobbies. So these

are more like places of business, people live in their own rooms, or in their cars if they did not

pay the landlord or the landlady in time here. Anyways what writer here wants to talk about are

rooms and urban dwellings or human dwellings. She does not know much about igloos and she

mentioned yurts and igloos and prison cells which are places where they put troublemakers so

that they will not disturb the piece. It always gets very political who is the trouble maker, one

countrys troublemaker is another countrys hero. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned when it was

Rhodesia or when it was South Africa, after that after apartheid he became the president or prime

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minister. He was still the same person though. And this was all very political. But we are not

interested in politics here, we are interested in the places that people hang out in. She might even

go down to the coffee place one more time and type up her stuff there but there she has to behave

and cannot hum to herself here. She cannot get all drunk but she cannot do that here either

mainly because after a certain amount of alcohol she barfs and passes out because she has no

tolerance for copious amounts of alcohol and even if she did there are just certain amounts that

anyone, any body can tolerate in his or her veins here. Her writing is getting better here or at

least it accumulates here. 41764 here, she can go to the library and stare at people and look them

up and down, her fellow writers her 2000 other writers that live in the lower mainland and type

away. Somehow, she is so very arrogant and thinks that she is better than them because only one

or two will make it into being published here. Chris Baty is not famous for being an amazing

writer, he is not a literary light. He is the Steve Jobs of novel writing, he managed to talk other

people into doing stuff, but he does not ruminate about human dwellings just like Anna does

here. He is not a philosopher king at least that is not his day job here. But Diogenes and

Aristoteles and now Anna they are fulltime philosophers here. One day she will be on book tour,

Anna here, she will will herself into being the book touring kind here. It should be possible to go

from kitchen table up to make it big, up to the big time, up to being on Charlie Rose. And she has

written about being on Charlie Rose, tough at this time we have to divulge that the Anna on

Charlie Rose was nonreal, not real, it was just a figment of her own imagination or the

imagination of the writer of this text here, the one who writes weird and nonscholarly stuff about

human dwellings here. And we do not really know where Anna ends and where the author starts

but that is apparently how fiction and writing rolls here. It all mushes together in a weird and

strange way here. When author was sitting in the morning of November five to half past ten in

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the coffee house on the street that goes downtown and when she was having her coffee with

cream therein, there was a young woman with long straight glossy pitch black hair who was

sitting in the place in front of her and that woman was looking at her laptop and one could see

what was on the monitor. Which was a text, but the text was from a book and it looked as if

somebody just photographed the page of a book and it was not a word file or a pdf file, no, it was

the page of a book and there was shadowing, where the page was part of the spine. So we are

talking about that to show that books and computer screens are kind of working together if they

are not even deemed interchangeable here. So now we have 42188 words here and it is all about

books and dwellings and nanowrimo. So once more the man named Chris Bahy who apparently

started up nanowrimo in 1990 or something he just made sure that this is something that grows.

Maybe he started this up in 1999 and that was just before Y2K. Anna or author here will read up

on this and look what the history is here. 4256. So, rooms huh. They usually have a place where

a person can sit or lie down and sleep. All humans have to sleep to stay alive, they dream their

REM dreams and then they live thru another day. That is how they function here. 42300. Writing

is not good for the body, it would be so much better to use those contraptions where you just talk

into a microphone and the computer just writes up ur words here. Lots of people use those things

and they are called Dictaphones and that is how people can write so many books in a lifetime,

like one book per month and ten books per year and 100 books per decade here. She here is 62,

so until she is 72, she has to write 100 books if she wants to play in the big leagues here. Her

language of choice is English but more by accident than by any preconceived planning here. She

just ended up in an English-speaking country and that is not that good here because the

competition is really high, here are so many many writers who write in English and for an

English-speaking audience here. It is the lingua franca, well before it will be Mandarin or

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Cantonese. And her English sucks because all American English speakers suck and the brits or

Scots or Irish or Welsh, they are so much better with the language and the Irish, they drink hard

liquor and that makes a storyteller out of everyone. That is why the Russians are so good with

words, they consume vodka. Arabic countries do not consume alcohol, but the old Persians did

and all the poems are full of talking about mey, something called mey, which basically means,

ethanol, alcohol, wine, schnapps whatever that will change your way to look at the world.

Saghia, mey bedeh, that is what poets say. Poets that are worth their salt. Saghi is a female who

gives wine to a person, a female barkeep and apparently, she has to be a gal and the poet is some

guy. No poetresses in the old times, all the poets were women who stay in anderoon or on the

third floor in a room in a house in Amherst. Men are the ones who write and women are the ones

who read apparently. This nanowrimo can go down to the central library and see how many of

the nanowrimo persons are male and how many are female. We have to know if the gals write

differently than the boys here.

The night before there was Larry David on Saturday night. He was funny. He did this monologue

thing, this monologue spiel. He said that there are a lot of Jews on the news these days, and they

are all molesters. Well, that is not how he said it, he said that sexual molestation and rape

accusations are on the news all the time now what with Anthony Wiener the sexter-in command

and with Harvey Weinstein and the sixty women who have come forward and with Kevin

Spacey and all the others. And he as a Jew, that is Larry David, he as a Jewish person notices

that a lot of these people, and they are all male, no females are called out here, they are all males

and a big chunk of them are Jewish men, not all of them but a big portion, a portion bigger than

the general population and he as a Jew does not think that this is the same as Einstein being a

Jew and Doctor Jonas Salk being a Jew, so there might be a disproportionate number in scientists

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who are followers of the Jewish faith but there seems to be a disproportionate number of sexual

predators too and that is not the same, these are people who are famous for criminal behavior and

not for doing their homework in an excellent fashion. Well, obviously Larry David did not use

that many words but you, dear reader get the gist here. Curb your enthusiasm is not as good as

Seinfeld is, its different. Larry David said that the Jewish people have self-deprecation and

irritable bowel syndrome but what exactly do refoes he mean, does he have statistics. Well, later

on he obviously impersonated Bernie Sanders and that is always funny here. Even Ted Cruz said

something about Larry David when he was debating Bernie Sanders about tax reform and

everybody laughed because it is really funny here, 43001 words here. 43006 words here. If she

had the physical capability to walk down to the coffee place here, she definitely would do that

but she feels that she does not have that, she is very much muted in her capability to function

normally and that is because she is sitting here cramped up and producing so many many words

here which makes her uncapable of real good functioning, kind of like a surgeon while standing

and performing a seventeen hour long surgery on a persons brain. She is doing a surgery on the

word thing on her computer and is amassing all of these perfect wordings that have to be edited

and sorted at a later time in this world here. She should sit on the sofa and do this, mainly

because the change of position is good for writing here or so they say, maybe she should just go

down to the basement because basement writers are the best here. She is now sitting in the

former sewing room and it is not very good mainly because the lighting in here is horrible here.

She is now sitting on a bed and is writing but that will not work either because she is leaning

contorted just like Hemingway did in the picture. Actually, she is now typing only with one

hand, her right hand and she is using only the middlle finger and now the ring finger. She is not

quite sure what the English term for Zeigefinger is here (index finger, could be). She has some

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words here and a table would be so much better here. The basement is so very chilly here. She

could see if she could kneel on the ground and have the laptop on the bed but that actually is not

good on her knees here. The change of position is horrid here. She is back in the sewing room

and she does not know how to do this and how to have more light on the keyboard here. Maybe a

light would be good, one from IKEA that u just plug in and that makes u see everything noice

and bright, that will flood all of these letters here. She is back at the kitchen table because there

is something about a kitchen table that screams success. There is this idea that people who work

at kitchen tables, will go far. For starters there is this romantic notion of being a pauper here.

You cook in the place and you eat there too, there is no dining room. So you are not very well off

and thus you have to know stuff because you are destitute, the Marx and Engels thingie, though

they were in actuality some rich kids with too much time on their hands and not looks good

enough to be playboys so they write books and become philosophers here. And then there are the

Bolsheviks that start a revolution and then they change the system of the country though an anti-

monarchist movement would have been enough here. It is all about monarchy versus democracy

here. Anna does not know if what she says is true and somehow she left the idea of writing about

architecture and rooms and kitchens and dwellings and the system of the nanowrimo here. Anna

is all over the place which is fine here because she just needs the wordcount and not much

meaning here and she wants to finish this here in time so that she can be happy that she did not

go down to the central library and was able to do even more work than the people who went

down to the library here. She wants to finish this all in the four hours that those library goers put

aside for writings here, they must have left in time to be there in the library at twelve on a

Sunday, so the time before the start of the write-in would have been the commute and not writing

or something here. So let us get back to rooms and what people do in rooms. They sit at tables

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and they write. So, kitchen tables are good because it means that you can use that table that is

usually used for other things and it means that you are so very nonchalant with your talents, you

can just make up War and Peace while you are doing other regular stuff like cooking and eating

and peeling apples and chopping vegetables. You are a regular person who is always also a

genius. You do not have to be a shut-in or a hoarder or a crazy cat lady here, not a woman in

white who sits on the third floor or the second floor in a room in Amherst and who has to die

first so that somebody finds those poems with the irregular signs in between the letters and

publishes it and makes yer famous after you are six feet under, your fame is posthumously and

then they make movies about you that famous men actors play in here. She does not remember

the name of that actor but she knows that he played in a movie with that famous actress who now

sells chairs, lazy boy somethings here. And who did not want there to be anything between her

and her Calvins here. The guy plays in Big Bang Theory too and he is Pennys father and he is

really funny and the woman who played the wife of Al Bundy is the mother of Penny here. And

this is what she writes about here while the day moves forward and she will call it a novel once

this is all finished here because Chris Bahy says that if you think that it is a novel than it will be a

novel in the eyes of the world and he cannot be wrong here because absolute statements like that

is what we all want to believe in in these uncertain times here, she still needs some more here to

round this up here and six words and the count stands at 44002 here. Oh those zeros those zeros

here. Words written today are 6005 and she has to write exactly the same amount here to finish

this all up and to wrap this up here. She has a wrap that she could eat and maybe she will do that

because sometimes a pause is good here. Even for amazingish awesome poets here. Overdoing or

underdoing, that is the question. One has to work intelligently her.

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So now she had sustenance, a wrap with quinoa in it. Nobody knows what quinoa is, though it

became fashionable in Europe long before it reached north America. It came to Canada via

Germany because when Anna read thru this magazine in 1989, or better, in 1998 and it was all

about quinoa and there were recipes that contained quinoa, a grain that is fun to say and that

sounds like something from Ecuador or from Peru here. Something that Aztecs eat or Inca or

Maya here. On the telly the woman talks about Larry David and his jokes that were about

picking up women in concentration camps and apparently people were offended and voiced that

online and then there was the news about the change of the clock here in this country here though

apparently not everywhere in BC so we have to google what is going on here. How did anything

get done before there was something called google or something called amazon or something

called Starbucks or Mc Donalds even here. It is now one and fifty-six here, she will not finish

this amazing novel here by four oclock or by three oclock. So apparently the library writers

will be there for five hours and not for three hours. How can they type up stuff when they cannot

move their mouths (in a public place) while they are writing because that is what our Anna is

doing here? Or more so the writer of this novel because she seems to have morphed into the

Anna character here. In the book that was written by Gillie all the persons in the first person

singular are men. So she has a male protagonist here, whereas this author here is describing a

female protagonist and that woman is actually so very different from her because she is a woman

who works in retail and the author of these sentences here has never ever worked in retail but she

knows that there is a woman who lives in southern California, in Newport beach and that woman

has the same name as author here and she works in retail according to her LinkedIn page here.

They always tell her about that woman in Costco and author remembers being at her wedding,

she had a bob that was her hairstyle and she must be seven eight years older than author here or

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maybe less. But that woman is not a writer here, but she would know about retail and how people

that work in retail feel and what is their mindset. Author here has been working as a volunteer in

this place in Burnaby where she sold stuff to people from sports teams and this kid who was a

Sikh boy helped her figure out how to do that, he was much faster with the coins and with math

and he just did it even though he was on the side of the customers, he just had a can-do attitude

and did take over which was really nice and funny to and all the moms laughed. Because the

saleswoman has to be the capable one and not the customer and the adult has to be the one who

can figure out stuff and not the kid, not the child, so it was definitely reversed power dynamic

and it was so funny because the youngster just took over here. A go-getter, an entrepreneurial

spirit. He will not wait for people to give him his space, he will just go out and do it based on his

competence and his belief in his own competence and his knowing that he is better than the

person at the register and because he wants to help and does not think that is is a big thing if

somebody cannot figure out how to work the register because he can easily do it and take over

without being arrogant about it here. And we have some 44726 words here and it is two and nine

here. Now it is Evan Solomon on the telly and he will now talk with Ali Velshi or Pat Murray or

Conrad Black, this is all CBC here or CTV here, no more CBC. Here. And it is ten minutes after

two and it is this weird and strange ad for IKEA that is so sexist and is not good for Italian

women who are Sofia Lorens and not cooks, they are famous for being the best looking women

on the planet here, like Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida here. And we type the rest of all of

this up here and hopefully this will be fine though author here has a tad of a tummy ache here

which is funny because the food is usually pretty good here. And now it is Trump who

apparently is in Japan here. 44873 here and Evan Solomon used to be much younger than he is

now but we all must have aged here because that is what people do here. And yes, Evan Solomon

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is interviewing Ali Velshi who is in nyc because he now works for MSNBC. Yes, this is CTV

and now Conrad Black is on the telly and all of them talk about Trump and the Papadopoulos

affair or something, Trump and the Russians and obviously Velshi says that Conrad Black just

does propaganda well, apparently one is more left and one is more to the right but they all agree

somehow because it is all pretty obvious what is going on with the Muller thing and in the end it

will be oley about money laundering because that is how it is here, end of story here. So Conrad

Black says that Trump will just sail right thru and yours truly thinks so too because he knows

how to find the legal loopholes because that is how he did his life all thru his life whereas

Conrad Black did not know how to do that and he got jailed when he did something illegal

whereas Trump seems to know how to play within the system or at least he knew it until now

until he will be impeached in the end which he will be but not yet here. But it really seems as if

impeachment is an inevitable thing and this time it will not be half assed like in Clintons case

with whitewater and after that with Monica Lewinsky. Anyways, nobody cares here, because

Anna is a person who sells book and writes and somehow manages to amass words here and it is

two and twenty-two here which means that she is losing it here in, @ 2:22. And now it was the

marathon run in nyc, fifty thousand persons who run and run and run and run here. And now the

Canadian immigration minister and the one million new immigrants and that is because

everybody needs skilled workers here. Well, Canada has a lack of skilled workers and the US

does have an overflow of skilled workers. Because one country is cold and the other is warm,

pure and simple here. 45247. Aging population. Are you expecting more asylum seekers?

Nobody can know that. So the minister, he is very young and he has an accent too. He is an

immigrant and that is why Trudeau made him the immigration minister. You know about

immigration because you were an immigrant. Trudeau is funny, he is prime minister because his

123
daddy was prime minister. So apparently that is how Justin Trudeau thinks, everybody does what

he does best because of family background and heritage here. Which is not really true here, that

is why we have universities where people learn stuff from scratch here. 45349 here. Well, my

personal experience informs that. Immigration et.al.

She still has to type up some 5000 words here and only then will this nightmare be finished here,

she is a writer but is she good enough here, does she have the stamina? The woman who wrote

the Manhattan Beach book that is not something special at all, she is very aggressively peddling

her work and she is everywhere in the US and in Canada and in the UK, she is like a musician on

a world tour and so is David Sedaris, they are really like the Beatles and usually the publishers

are behind that, especially if the book really sucks and the publishers think that if they peddle the

book aggressively it will sell, especially if it is the substandard work of an otherwise good writer

here. They want to sell all of the books of a writer. Whereas they can sell new voices, but they do

not want to do that here. They want to go with tried and true, just like Hemingway became first a

household name and then got the return business here. But poets are not like that, art is fickle.

You cannot churn out good stuff without burnout here. And Anna author here should know

because she really is pooped pooped here. 2564, this is way too tough here. 45571 here. Still

4500 little words left to type up here. Dictaphone, a country for a Dictaphone, my country here.

It is now two and forty-two here which is quite an interesting life here. The problem with writing

is that one does not move here and that is not good here. When one does animation, then one

moves a lot which is much better here, with writing it is not like that at all here. One sits at one

machine and gives input to that particular machine here and to nothing else here. Mothy. This is

very mty here. Mothy. She still has to write some more and it is now fifty-eight minutes after two

here and she is thinking about the rest of her words and whether this is a novel or whether it is

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not a novel here. On the telly, Evan Solomon and other panelists that he asks about the scientist

who went to space and has curly hair and a French name and is now something like a political

figure, the Governor General maybe of the whole country and Solomon thinks that she said

something controversial br we do not need to know if that is true or not here. And now there was

a mass shooting in Texas at a church service, in Southerland Springs near San Antonio which is

really bad if somebody starts to shoot up people at a church and we do not know more here. At a

church service here. And the shooter is dead now here. But they do not say who did it but twenty

people are dead. They must know who the shooter is.

And now it is about offshore assets in the Cayman Islands and this is very interesting, the

paradise papers and even the queen has money in the Cayman Islands. And it is all about trust

funds, and that kind of things, the one percent here. and Anna does not really write about that

because that is politics and she is more interested in rooms, rooms where stuff is stored and life

happens and which is different from being outside and walking around and running around here.

And now it is a man on the telly who talks into the camera and he is not wearing a suit and a tie

and he talks about offshore stuff in the Cayman Islands here. It is legal though the Bronfmans

and the Windsors, and this man says that this is not for you and I, because it is for wealthy

persons and author does not know if he should say you and I or you and me in this case because

it is a dative or an accusative, in the sentence structure, this is not available to you and I, no, it

has to be this is not available to you and me. Because this is the noun, that is the predicative

and then there is the verb, being available and then there is the object of the being available the

you and me here. And 3, no, 46073 it is here at three and eleven here.

CONCLUSION

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So this is the end of this book here and it will be some 2000 words long here. It is a novella

because the whole thing is a mere 50 000 words long here. Mainly because nanowrimo wants

you to just write a mere 50000 words which kind of is anticlimactic if you vie for something like

publishing by the big five, because everything that is in book form is at least 300 pages long and

lots of times, 450 pages long, mainly because there are not that many books that are sold and

thus they want you to buy a big thing and fork over twenty or thirty bucks here and you cannot

ask for that amount of money if the book is very slim here. So it is all about paper and

cardboards and the price of ink here and the storage place. Books are very physical objects just

like clothes are. Shoes are. 46200 words here. Actually, this conclusion will be 4000 words long

which is a tad too much here, because what will you write about here. Ann Murray, she is a

singer that nobody has ever hear about. Well, that is mean, it is more that Anna has not heard

about her. Anna thinks if she should write things that are controversial, Ann Murray is actually

very big in Canada, but she is not known outside of Canada, whereas Alanis Morrissette is.

Singers, musicians here, chefs. Painters. Actors here. Author here is very tired here. She has to

write so much more here. Ask the agents, and the audio is horrific here. 46353 here. She feels

sick because that is what happens when you are sitting and writing up a sucky novel here a that

does not really make much or any sense here. Off-shore tax havens and this is about that and

then it is about Michael Flynn and his son. And Texas and twenty people dead in a small church

outside of San Antonio. And we write here and write here. 46424 here. It is very tough if it is a

religious place. What if it is like the fighting between different religions like in the times of the

crusades? And once more the off-shore accounts and Bronfman. Even the queen. They say the

same again and say that google or apple uses creative book-keeping that is legal but does not sit

well here at home (or some company named appleby that cooks the books). And it is once more

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the same again, this off-shore trust and these families were together in this. Annas bookselling

will never be this big, she will definitely losing money because she is just not that money savvy

and neither is that Joel guy because he is very young and he is just starting out and his

background is not financial, it is literature and that is why he wants to sell books to people and

that is basically retail, even if it is about books and the quality of books because one can even

purchase books in the grocery store or in seven eleven so if you open a bookstore, the

merchandise there has to be good and valuable, it has to be a selection of informed books

whatever that means here. Who really knows which ones are good books and which ones are bad

books here. I mean books are books here and novels are novels here. 4655, 46652 here. Now it is

the governor in Texas and apparently he is a man that is paralyzed and he uses all the right words

here after a mass shooting that has 26 dead victims here. Anna thinks that this is not clear and

they do not tell the people who the shooter is because we do not want to glorify the shooter by

telling people who that person was who is now dead. He was shot here. It seems that somebody

ran amok. They do not say that it is like the shooting in nyc here. And now a person with a

Stetson wo talks and maybe he is the police chef here. 46754 here and now 300 words and they

say that they do not know the names of the victims but they must know who the shooter is and

now a woman talks, and the suspect was dressed in all black and went to a gas station. The

suspect had a rifle. 46812 here.

News is not what one should watch when one wants to do the writing here because it is

confusing. 46833 words here. The shooter was a young white male. With a rifle. Gun

control. Now it is question period. The governor says that he will release the information

once they have put everything in the puzzle together here. 46871 here. So sad. It is now

three and fifty-nine minutes here. It is eleven five 2017, November fifth, 2017 and it is

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four PM and we have46899 words here and this is great here, great here. 46909 words

here. And we have to write here and write here. And have to amass the words. And this is

the story of Anna and it is the novel that we write as a thing for the nanowrimo of 2017.

A nanowrimo text here. The writing in the library is over. Let us take out the champagne

the prosecco the sekt here. Four hours of writing in one straight line here. Author here is

fine with not going down to the library so that she did not lose any time here. And it is

four and twenty-two here and it is Sunday and we have 47014 here and on the telly it is

Trump here. Words per day to finish this text here is 115 per day which is amazing here

but author here is not quite clear about whether this is the right number. Yes, one more

look at the nanowrimo site here and yes, it is 115 here just one hundred and fifteen words

per day for 25 days which is a very small number here and let us just finish this here in

one big swoop here and then we edit this and can upload it and then we too will be a

winner here. The champagne is for when we finish this up here though author here will

not do alcohol in November, she had too much ethanol in the preceding months and it is

better to take one month off from boozing ah boozing here. 3000 words is what she needs

here and this is a novel about books and a book writer and a book seller and a business

woman and an entrepreneur which is not that much of a novel because lots of time there

has to be some drama, some controversy and this is not how this novel works, it is more a

linear journal, a travel log, maybe, and that is how she does her writing, it is a diary and a

diary too v can be a novel here. Chris Baty says that if you think it is a novel, then it is a

novel here. And now we have to type up some more words here. The library write-in is

over here. There are other write-ins though all over the world here and she does not need

to finish this today here. 4:57, 47296 here. November five here in 2017 here.

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It is now five and fifty-nine minutes here and it is the evening of November five and we have a

lot of words here but apparently not enough here but merely a certain degree here. 47399 words

are not all what is wanted and all that she wants to write-up here. She is the novel writer who

manages to type up a lot of words and then call it a novel and then make it into publishing

contracts and then make it onto bookshelves here. An island in the sun. This is what Anthony

Bourdain talks about here. Puerto Rico. And now Fareed Zakaria who says that the economy is

not good in Puerto Rico here. And then there is the die-hards who stay in Puerto Rico and this

journalist is one of them here. This show was taped before the hurricane, hurricane Maria here.

but the whole thing started with a short thing about the American dream which apparently is an

island in the sun. Well, not necessarily, because last time we checked the American dream means

wealth. Picket-fenced house, two cars, but yeah, the fascination with the sun is there too though I

would argue that the fascination with sunny weather is more a thing in Germany and the UK,

Italy, Mallorca. And now it is the Bourdain guy who talks with people about social stuff and

politics instead of talking about food which is what he does for a living here. A woman who is a

teacher talks to him now. She wants to live in Puerto Rico even if life is difficult here. 47571

here. Parts Unknown. That is the name of this show. And it is about travelling and eating. Stuff

that everybody likes to do. And they say travel like Bourdain. As if he is some kind of superman

of travelling. So how is he different than Rick Steves who has a travel show here. We do not

know here and it is six and fifteen here. A T-Mobile add. And an ad about moms. Eat like mom

or something. What does that even mean here? 47652 here. 91 words per day is all that we need

here. 25 days with 91 words on each day here. And now they are eating and apparently these are

crab foods, and he makes sausages from crab meat. A crab meat sausage here. Or maybe he

makes pork sausage here. 47701 here. Apparently, there were a lot of companies over there.

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Natural splendor. 47714. And now the environmentalists here. 47720 here. and he now takes

films of what the environmentalists eat the ones who camp outside of the five star hotel that they

do not want to go up there because they are against this resort and want nature to stay untouched

here, but as usually, only the guys talk. For some reason all the big honchos in environmentalism

are the boys and not the gals. Maybe it is macho or something here. 47794 here. six and twenty-

five minutes here. And now the doctor who is on tv. He plays a doctor on tv. He has blue scrubs.

He scrubs his arms and his finger sher and says that you have to do it overpronounced for the

camera. Apparently, that is actors lingo, the word overpronounced. Because it is not really

pronouncing when you do something with your hands here. You pronounce stuff with your

mouth and you change the audio and the intonation, so to speak here. 47880 here. And now they

eat a roasted pig here. 47889 here. The butcher is very fat. And he is the chef too. they all eat on

camera here. 47909 here. She still needs some more words here. Anna is about all of this, books

about cooking, books about travelling. Watching a travel show like Anthony Bourdain might be

taking people away from reading books about travelling. But usually people who travel do it all,

they buy books about travelling and they watch tv about travelling here. It is all interconnected

apparently here. And then there is yelp and food blogging but people who use social media are

the ones who read too and they read books, apparently. Who knows who does what here. words

to finish this on time, words per day: 77 here. you need to write 77 words and you need to do

seventy-seven words on each of the twenty-seven days here. Sorry, I meant twenty-five here. 25

times 77 equals how much here? She is finishing her amazing masterpiece here. They are eating

all of this food like crabs or like oysters and Anthony Bourdain says that he used to crack the

legs of crabs so that the crab meat comes out here. Now a woman with a yellow shawl around his

head is talking to Anthony Bourdain here. 48099 here. Words per day to finish on time: 74.

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Seventy-four words here. 48111 words here. She still needs some more words here and still some

more words here. It is six and forty-eight words here. Sorry, it is six and forty-eight pee em here.

Six and forty-nine in the evening on November the fifth and we are finishing this up here. This is

the story of Anna who writes and the story of the nanowrimo writer who writes about Anna who

writes a story about two lovers in Amsterdam and tries to find a publisher but cannot find a

publisher who wants to publish and market and do the book tour thingie for Anna here. Though

usually there are agents who do that and then you do the book tours and the book signings here.

You just have to know how to do that, how to do this. And apparently there are a lot of women

writers contrary to what this German guy said who said that eighty per cent of all writers are

male. We have to look at the numbers here and it is important which year you are talking about

here and which language here. and how big the market share of which book is here. There are a

lot of books that are written about science or about psychology, the humanities. All of these

scholarly nonfiction books here. Everybody who gets a degree writes a dissertation and then

wants to publish it and makes it into a book here. 48347 here. Words per day that we need to

finish this up here. 40 maybe, or maybe some more here. And now it is still Anthony Bourdain

here on the telly and all of these people who talk on the telly while having food together. 48391

words here. 48395 words here. And now a man is singing on the telly here. 48408 here. Sue-

Ellen Mishkie on the telly, the heiress to the O-Henry chocolate fortune here. And we have some

86 428 words here. Now 48 433. At 7:07 PM here. On November fifth in 2017 here. 88 444, and

write and write here. Words per day to finish on time: 60. To think that one would do that every

day for 25 days. Write exactly sixty per day here and then finish it up. That would be very weird

and strange here. On the telly a documentary. 48495 here. 48496 here. On the telly, a

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commercial for something called ensure. And now the Belgian guy who talks about the Catalan

minister who is now arrested in Brussels.

And now it is Columbo, lieutenant Columbo. It is so nice, and we know whom he thinks is the

murderer. It is the blonde woman. It is nine and four minutes here and we have some 88569 here.

That many words here and it is all about Anna who wants to be a writer or wants to be a business

woman or wants in short start a career which is not really possible because she is of advanced

age here, definitely the age when others retire here. You cannot start up stuff when you are this

age or maybe you can. Anna has to look up what is written in the book she has somewhere lying

around. It is called The Late Show and it talks about how one should live after one is sixty years

old here. It is written by Helen something and maybe she was the editor-in-chief of Vogue or

Cosmopolitan or something, Helen Gurney Brown and even Jerry Seinfeld talks about her here. I

want to know what she thinks about this and that here. Anyways, the book is called The Late

Show and it is quite nice and interesting. Though technically she had started her illustrious career

when she was a young gal here and not when she was all old and shriveled and decrepit here.

And now we watch the trailer for another show, Hawaii 5-Oh or something like that here. 48771

at nine and thirteen minutes here. Nine and fourteen on November the fifth here, in the evening

here. And now this weird ad which one does not know if it is for an escort service or something

here. And now a Canada debt line thingie and now toyo tires here. 48822 here.

Yes, this is the story of Anna and we watch Columbo while writing this up here, 88, nope, 48843

here. And now it is nine and twenty-six minutes here and now it is nine and twenty-nine minutes

here. It is Columbo and he seems to find out who did it. 48875 here, and now Columbo seems to

have found out something else here. 48886 here. 48888. And we still need some more words to

call it a day here, and even if this is all finished we can then stretch it still some more if we feel

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like that though technically there is this other novel that we are working on too here and we need

some twenty thousand for that or maybe eighteen thousand here because that is a novel that is

one hundred words long and not a different wordcount here. And now it is a trailer for a musical

that is really nice and interesting, Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons and it is only playing one

night here in town because it is touring the country, it is a Broadway show here. 49007 here.

Words per day to finish on time: 39. Thirty-nine words, each and every day for twenty-

five days here. And then this gets finished on the eve on November thirty. Well, we can do that

or we can type all of this up here some one thousand words and this is all done here and we can

sleep happily because the nanowrimo disaster is over here. And that is what it is here, it is a very

stressful undertaking but it is more like the Tour de France or an Olympic event or a marathon

run it is the equivalent of going up Mount Everest, it is an extreme sport, this nanowrimo thing

here and we just do it for fun, we exert ourselves for fun here and live and breathe this insanity

for five days straight because it fills us with joy and the joy of accomplishing something that a

lot of people do not accomplish because they just quit not because they are doing something

extraordinary like helping orphans or rescuing somebody from a burning fire or doing their daily

work here. Most nanowrimo people do other things during the day and just living to write is not

good because that is not how professional novel writers do it, they do it in a much more normal

way in the same way that anybody does something professional here. Author here just does it in

this weird and overexaggerated way because she thinks that in that way she will be able to

fashion a novel and construct a plot here and we can say that this happened pretty good here

because we made sure that we introduced the woman named Anna and her job and her daily life

and her idiosyncrasies though one could argue that she does not have that many idiosyncrasies

because we do not really want her to be some weirdo, she is more a number, a person who works

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in a bookshop and has very normal and middle-of-the road ideas about what she does for a living

and most people in her position would react like her to the professional demands that selling

books in a small independent bookstore entail here. So, she is a very predictable person that

reacts logically. The idea of her starting a new venture in a different city, that idea is a tad jumpy,

but we did that so that the story has at least something happening in it. Sometimes the timeline is

muffy and obscure but that is actually happening in most of the stories that author read this

summer, there is always something that does not add up because it is needed to make the story a

story here. 49456 here, it is twenty-four minutes after ten on November five in two thousand and

seventeen here. If there was no change of time because of daylight savings time, it would now be

much later, exactly an hour later and we would have written this in six days except for five days

but the change of date makes this possible to finish this within the timeframe of five days. After

this we will to have to go in and edit this but apparently one can load it up on the website

anyways with all the mistakes and everything here. Words per day to finish on time: 18. So one

sentence per day would be enough to run this down to fifty thousand words here and this little

novella would be standing at a wordcount of exactly fifty thousand words here. The problem

with nanowrimo is of course that it makes you use up a lot of extra words and that you become

really extraordinarily wordy here so that all of your sentences are very much like the sentences of

this German writer whose name was Heinrich Kleist and who was famous for writing all these

extraordinarily long long sentences. In English they do not like it and they call it run-on

sentences whatever that means here but author here always thought that it means that one is very

very wordy but maybe it has a different meaning here. Anyways, Annas story is somehow

coming to an end and it is by now ten and thirty-two minutes here. She will have a glass of milk

when this is all finished here and then she will watch The Honeymooners and then she will

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watch The Odd Couple and then she will watch Cheers and then the Mary Tyler Moore show and

then it will be this show with Suzanne Plechette and this man who is a psychiatrist and who now

plays Professor Proton in Big Bang Theory and his name is Bob Newhart here. Anna or author or

the nanowrimo novelist here just needs a little more than 200 words here and then she is all done

here, pop the corks though we just will have milk here, the popping of the corks is more a

symbolic gesture here. Apparently. Author is not quite clear at what she means but one could

argue that most storytellers are like that, a lot of things are not clear, there is a mystery but one

could argue that they themselves do not really know and that is why there is this tint of obscurity

in the story here. 49886 here. Words per day to finish on time: five. Five words per day is

enough and then this will be finished on November thirty here. The whole thing is so very

interesting here and the graph says it all, the one on the nanowrimo website here. 49933 here.

Words per day to finish on time: 3. Three words per day will do here but obviously if anybody

has come this far they or he or she will finish it in one big swoop here. She is not quite sure if the

sentence structure is right here but then again she never is, she never is. Anna writes a book, yes,

she did she does whe will do that here, and 50006 it is it is here. yay. Ah yay here. 10: 43 on

November 5 here in 207, 2017 here.

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