Brother needs a shave…

I love morning walks, especially Sunday morning walks.

The Avenue had a big block party last night. There were hundreds of people crammed onto the sidewalks. I’m surprised to find the streets clean. The only sign of the reveling: a few abandoned chairs and several trash cans overflowing (but somehow tidy in spite of steady breeze out of the north). A pair of road closed signs lurk in the dewy grass.

There’s no one about, just like any other Sunday, but the memory of the big block party gives the whole place the feel of a town hung over. I suppose it’s the chill in the air too.

Even for late Spring it’s a bit cold.

I picture people snuggled up in bed with windows cracked open. They’re sleeping and dreaming and maybe just lying there thinking of getting up to make coffee or nothing at all or maybe making love in the way that you do when it’s too cold to throw off the covers.

The sun feels good as I cross out of the shadows on one side of the street to the other. I walk down a winding street, toward the edge of the big hill (upon which I am at the top). A cat watches me from the third story window of a hundred year-old house. The house gets painted every year and the trim looks thick and padded because the painters don’t scrape it down. The cat seems unimpressed with the world as cats often do.

As I walk down the hill, I slow my pace.

Everywhere there are signs of people getting ready for Summer. Porches are decorated with terra-cotta figures and strings of lights. Big, wrap-around porches are stuffed with white and chocolate-colored wicker furniture and all the cushions are bright red or yellow. Sprinklers are hissing and misting.

At the bottom, I cross the community gardens. There’s one lone person out working in their patch. One lone industrious soul breaking the pattern of a lovely lazy morning. Even the motorcycle cops roaring by look lazy, the bikes weaving just slightly in their lanes. Yet, this one person defies the world and claws up the weeds and carries some heavy thing or another and brings dangerous implements to bear upon the soil.

I cross the railroad tracks so that I can go back to thinking about nothing in particular.

By the time I make my return loop to the top of the hill, the Avenue will no longer be empty. The early birds at the cafe will begin to filter in and sure enough I see that they are there. The usual Sunday morning crowd. All waiting for the door to open, milling about in sun as the breeze blows puffy bits of poplar fluff around.

I think about the alleys I walked through and closed restaurants with their tables set for all those people who will come later today. I think about the empty shop fronts and the dusty squares of sunlight flickering across their floors. I think about the cat in the third floor window and I wonder what he’s looking at now…

And then, the lock turns in the door. In unison, we all watch as a bleary-eyed barista pushes open the door and scuttles back into the shadows. No one’s actually in a hurry to go in even though we’ve been waiting for this moment, but as soon as one makes a move we all head in that direction.

No, I didn’t paint this… but maybe I should.

Today I am thinking of Best Mornings…

—

I am in a mountain vale in Switzerland. The evening before we snowshoed up the mountain, had dinner in a village near the top, then took a 45 minute sled ride back to the bottom. The sky was clear and packed with stars, buffeted by the glowing slopes of night-blue snow. It was an exhilarating evening, but nothing really compared to the dawn.

I woke to the end of the stars. From my bed, I watched the sun come creeping around the side of the mountain. Not over the top, but around the side. I leaned over and cracked open the window to catch some fresh air. It was so silent and calm that I heard the sound of water splashing down the ice fall on the other side of the valley.

I stayed in bed for some time just watching this morning begin. Soon, there was the sound of movement in the house and some time after that I could hear coffee brewing (and then I could smell it).

—

We are at the beach in South Carolina. The breeze is mild as we pop out from the trees, and as we come out of the dunes we see the sun has already slipped up out of the ocean.

The water is warm. The children are quiet as they take in the sunrise. We stand in place for a moment and let our feet sink into the sand.

There are people walking along the shore. We join them, walking along in that silent shuffle one does when looking for shells between the ebb of muffled waves.

This spell of silence breaks when the sun reaches a certain point in the sky. A dog barks and then people are talking everywhere. We walk back to the place we left our shoes and then slip back through the trees towards breakfast.

—

I’m having a bagel in Chicago. The shop is a corner place. I couldn’t tell you the name or even where it is now, but I remember the bagel. I remember the bagel and the crush of sleepy-eyed people. I remember the warmth of the shop and the sense of the city all around.

I remember the smell of newsprint and I distinctly remember telling myself I would not forget the name of this shop.

—

The plane leaves the runway. I’m crushed in the seat and I’m smiling. Behind us, Helios in his golden chariot gives chase but not even the sunrise can catch us as the plane goes up, up into the clouds and we cross time-zones going back into the hours that have passed, traveling almost through to the moment before I woke up.

I am in first class and I have five hours to do nothing but read.

—

It’s dark and I am running. I like to pretend that coyotes are following me in the woods. I know that they are not, but this is how my mind works when I’m running. I go down, down, down to the river.

There is no one other than me running in the dark. The sky turns purple then pink and then orange. I am miles away now, taking on a big hill. As I come to the top, the sun hits me full across my sweat-soaked face and shirt. My heart bursts with joy and exertion.

I still have a long way to go.

—

We hear the children giggling in the other room. They’re trying to stay quiet but it’s hard. Without moving, we can look up and see through the blinds that the morning is beautiful. We can smell it in the air coming through the open window.

We stretch, and then we pull up the covers and press our bodies together.

—

I am in front of the cafe, waiting on the dawn. I know that this is the right table to catch the sun at this time of year. It will rise in 3… 2… 1.

What are your Best Mornings?

This afternoon, I checked in on Twitter and found the tweet below by Tim Pratt:

… which in turn led me to this tweet by Neil Gaiman:

… which in turn led me to this this post on Neil’s blog:

A long, strange day. In the taxi downtown this morning I learned that there had been a sudden death in the family, and I went down to the sunshine of Union Square to phone people, and sort logistical things out, and breathe…

You must go, this moment, my writer friends, and read Neil’s post. Go on, click this link… I’ll wait.

Dedication of a Writer

Ok, now that you’re back, I’ll continue…

When I read that post, I remembered that I’d been watching this event unfold on Twitter. Yesterday, I saw this tweet by Pablo Defendini:

From other tweets, I knew the signing had been going on for awhile, but no one knew what Neil Gaiman was going through. He worked for eight hours, reading for the audience and signing hundreds of books.

My heart goes out to the Gaiman family for the pain of their loss, but also to Neil directly because I know how it feels to keep working through pain.

Working Through Pain

I know what Neil means when he talks about working through pain and the intense gratitude one feels toward everyone who keeps the work coming.

Eight years ago, my mother suffered a terrible accident. I was scheduled to head off to Europe on business just a few days later. It seemed like she was going to get better, so I went ahead with my trip.

Unfortunately, she did not get better.

While abroad, I received news that her traumatic brain injury had worsened and that she was brain dead. I explained to my colleagues that I needed to go home early. They were shocked because I’d been working at our usual crushing pace with no sign of the turmoil in my life. How could I do that?

I told them how much I appreciated their kindness. I told them how much I appreciated the opportunity to work, because working was all I could do. I had to keep moving. The pain would catch up later. It always does.

That’s really all I have to say in this post. No lessons or morals. No lectures or funny business. Life is like that sometimes…

Chi-Chi and Brains doing their best zombie impressions for the fans.

Today, while I was out and about with my boys, we needed to find a place to get our car washed. Everywhere we went it seemed like there were hundreds if not thousands of cars in line for washing. Admittedly, this was the first nice day in a few weeks so every good Ohioan is bound to think that they’d better:

A) Chip off any ice remaining on sidewalks, driveways, or gutters… because it certainly won’t melt of it’s own accord on a sunny, 50F day.

B) Get their cars washed even though it is going to rain like crazy in two days.

C) [Optional for convertible owners] Drive around with the top down and the windows up.

D) Any combination of the above.

But then I had an idea.

Close to my house is a little service station. Only neighborhood people go there. We dropped by and sure enough we got right in line.

While I was sitting there, it occurred to me that I ought to tweet the occasion. For those of you unfamiliar with “tweeting” I’m not talking about being perched in a cage and singing my heart out (although I was sort of trapped in a car and blabbing so perhaps the metaphor is apt). I’m talking about Twitter, a little social service where you can put up messages of 140 characters or less where everyone can see.

Why would I do this? Do I really need yet another distraction from writing?

Well, for one thing, I tend to drink to much coffee and Twitter helps me get out all those words and quips that would otherwise clutter my journals and stories. This is a double-edged sword though as most people will tell you that my quips and caffeine-laden screeds are about all I’ve got. Excuses aside, I think Twitter is fun and I’ve met a lot of great people there.

So, there I was tweeting away on my iPhone when it occurred to me that the service station where I was getting my car washed was also attached to a 19th century family cemetery. In fact, I’d written a nice post about it a long time ago. One tweet leads to another and before I knew it I was putting on a little show: my car wash, the bizarre juxtaposition of some hard-working (though thoroughly dead) farmers, and the power of the Internet to share it all in real time.

Now that I’m home, I thought I’d share this bit of fun with everyone else as a sort of example of how you can work social networking tools into your blog and maybe get a few people to read some of your favorite posts.

[Editor's note: The links below will open in a new window. In general, you'll see the pictures I posted live on twitpic as we were off and exploring our neighborhood. If you're interested in following me on Twitter, drop on by. I'm @hownottowrite (naturally).]

Oh no! Zombies! http://twitpic.com/1e8sc

“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.” ~ William James

Like many county seats in Ohio, Lancaster was once a vibrant agricultural center. A town with money. This source of revenue dried up in the late 1920s in the run up to the Great Depression, but in Lancaster’s case the effects were somewhat dampened by blue collar factory jobs which carried the town up through the early 70s. Since then, there has been a steady if not sharp decline in the prospects of those living in Lancaster and similar communities across Ohio.

Rural poverty is something few people from the city can hope to understand. It isn’t that city life is so very different, but rather that we are often at such a far remove that it is easier to make assumptions.

Distance also plays an important role in art. As writers, the further we are removed from a situation, the less likely we are to capture the truth. However, the closer we are the more likely we are to skew our impressions in the opposite direction.

In the case of rural poverty, it is easy for a metropolitan mind to picture people with no hope and no resources. People struggling without any sense of where they are going. While those immersed in the day-to-day of rural poverty know it is far more complicated. They know that poverty inspires a fierce sense of pride in the possessions that cannot be stripped away by financial hardship, namely pride in family and place. Such is the intensity of this pride, that a writer might be swept up in a wave of sentimentalism and fail to provide context that helps explain the reality.

Writing about subjects where your personal emotions are intense requires time to consider the wider picture and time for revision to add balance. This is nowhere more apparent than in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which in my opinion is so unbalanced that it weakens the central theme of the story. A writer cannot have all evil centralized in one class of character without creating a great sense of false good in the other.

My family comes from southeast Ohio and West Virginia, so I know a little something about rural poverty. At the same time, I live (and have always lived) in a very affluent suburb of Columbus. And so, I’m going to write a little about a recent personal experience to illustrate just how easy it is to fail from both sides of the equation.

Fairfield County Fairgrounds Round Cattle Barn (b 1906)

This past weekend, I took my family to the Fairfield County Fair in Lancaster, Ohio. This was the 158th anniversary of the Fair, and since my family is from Lancaster it was a fixture in my childhood, the bridge between Indian Summer and true Autumn. But it had been a long time since I’d gone to the Fair, primarily because going to the Fair meant paying a visit to my grandmother.

My grandmother suffered a stroke many years ago and spent her declining years in assisted living and ultimately in an institutional nursing home. Over time, a few missed visits became a barrier in itself which only widened in time. Birthdays missed. Cards not sent. Pictures of great-grandchildren not sent. It was all reduced to a state of inevitability where I knew that the time of death was near and it was simple to rationalize my absence by saying things like “well, she didn’t really know who I was anymore” or just “what is the point of that at this stage.”

As a reader, you may be wishing for something here which will lift your spirit, but I do not have a tidy ending. I did not have an experience where I went to visit my grandmother in the nursing home and she recognized me. Or even a moment where I gained some sense of closure for myself… You see, my grandmother passed away two weeks before and it was planned that we would have a family gather at the cemetery before going to the Fair.

Maple Grove Cemetery is a short way out of town. It’s a rural cemetery, though not a terribly old one. There are mature trees and a sense of quiet. Yet, it also feels as if things haven’t quite settled, though I suppose that has more to do with the way the cemetery sits beside the road leaving you feeling exposed to the traffic.

The gathering was small. My grandmother was 98 when she died, and she always said that she did not want a service. “Save the money!” And so that is what her three sons did. They saved money by having her ashes buried during the week so that they didn’t pay $200 for weekend overtime. There was no pastor, either.

She was buried next to my grandfather. He died in 1950, leaving her to raise three boys on her own. Seeing his name on the stone, I realized that I had never been here before. I also realized that I’d probably embarrassed my father when I went to the wrong cemetery (one in town) and called him to find out where we were supposed to go.

When I was a child, we would travel down for the Fair. I remembered the rides and the midway, but most of all I remembered the food. My grandmother loved the powdered waffles, and they had to come from the place under the grandstand that had been there since 1912.

At the gravesite, my family was milling around, talking and catching up. My father had placed a powdered waffle on the bouquet of flowers that covered the grave and everyone thought that was fitting. Everyone talked about going to the Fair as planned, that we might all go together like we did so long ago when my father and his brothers were the same age as my cousins and I were now. But those days are gone. There have been divorces and deaths. New wives and husbands replaced the departed. New children had replaced us, but unlike my cousins these new children were all strangers to one another.

We all left the cemetery individually and traveled into town.

In many ways, Lancaster had grown. There were more stores and more people, but the stores were further out from town located by the newer housing developments. The inner core of old homes had deteriorated and there was a density to the decline here because there were just so many people living in it. Still, while there are some things in Lancaster that were universally upsetting, the truth is that I saw more pain because I had other memories to compare them with and I had my own personal shame to contend with as well.

My boys were happy to go to the Fair, probably as happy as I had been. We walked together through the crowds. The boys called out to play the midway games and we ate powdered waffles from the place under the grandstand.

We had lemonade and cotton candy. We walked through the round cattle barn. Then, we went to ride the ferris wheel.

On the wheel, I sat with my youngest boy. He was so excited until we got going and then he was terrified with every turn. That feeling of falling backwards was too much for him, and no matter how I tried to distract him by pointing out the hills I knew or the places in town I knew he would not be consoled.

When we got off, we ran into some of my cousins. We talked for awhile, but by now the sun was setting and we needed to leave.

The traffic around the fairgrounds is crawled so I couldn’t help but notice the Fairfield Inn, a little beer joint across from the Fair, was still open. I remembered driving by that place when I was child and the sun was setting at the end of Fair Avenue. I remember seeing the tiny, red neon letters B E E R, and when we drove past I got a glimpse of the same figures seated at the bar. It made me wonder just how much, if anything, had changed.

Driving home was quicker than I expected, even though the road was more crowded. I may be wrong about a great many things concerning my memories of Lancaster, but one thing I know for certain is that the road between Columbus and Lancaster has always gotten wider and the traffic heavier.

I wrote this post in support of Blog Action Day.

Photo credit: drooo (Flickr)

I am on the Blue Line. I just arrived but it feels like I’ve already been here for a week. I should be reading, but I’m fumbling with my phone.

I thought I’d take the train instead of a cab, that I might lose myself a bit in the morning rhythm of the city. Instead, I’m listening to old voicemail.

“It’s just Chicago. Fly in, fly out. One day. Please!”

Any crafty salesman can get a foot in the door, it’s the beggar who closes the deal.

I force myself to read. For some reason, when I am reading in public places I always suspect that people are looking at me. Maybe that’s the only reason I brought the book, to be looked at. No, it wasn’t that. The book had promise, a promise that kept me going eagerly through the first chapter, the promise of a serious book.

The more I read, the less the author seems to care.

The story devolves into one emotionless scene after another: look at this; look at that; here is something you didn’t expect; here is something obscene; here is yet another thing which is completely unnecessary. It’s like being force-fed vacation slides. The book becomes nothing more than a pulpy mass moving through space toward its inevitable and flaccid conclusion. Each sentence, every word, devoid of potency.

It’s not my favorite…

I can see the lake now, but I am busy with the dust jacket picture of the author. I take out a pen and draw a thin, curling mustache on his dour lip.

“There’s an ass,” says the man standing beside my seat.

I nod and the man turns away, which is not exactly what I wanted. I wanted him to attach some clarifying remark, such as:

“I couldn’t get beyond the first chapter.”

- or -

“I saw that ass on TV.”

The man is a Silver Fox. He is tall and well-dressed. His blue suit is of a superior cut. This suggests many things about the man, but does not necessarily recommend him as an avid reader. The identity of the ass remains murky.

I am at the hotel. Everything is dark. The bellman is dressed in black. His face is blank.

There are more black-clad stewards sulking in the lobby. They stand motionless behind the front desk, flanked by granite columns. Long streams of purple velour snake down the columns, which are covered in hieroglyphics. The dome above glows a disconcerting shade of red.

A sign for the conference calls beckons me deeper into the hotel.

Orange sconces flicker against blackened walls. The walls have the texture of steel. At the far end of the floor, a staircase leads up to the grand ballroom. A stout balustrade rings the space above.

The Cheerful Woman greets me at the registration desk. She looks up my name and hands me a badge. I take the badge off the lanyard and used the clip to affix the card to my shirt. The Cheerful Woman frowns when I drop the lanyard on the table.

“You’re supposed to wear the lanyard.”

The lanyard lies between us, coiled and still. The name of the conference repeated over and over in fat, white letters on what was really just a black shoelace. The Cheerful Woman’s face turns grim. It seems unkind to leave a shoelace before the Cheerful Woman, to reject her so completely.

I nod and gently take up the lanyard in my hands.

I am watching the Smiling Man. He is giving a speech by satellite to locations all over the globe. He talks about many things but what I can’t get over is the fact that he isn’t wearing socks. He’s dressed in a suit, a nice suit in fact. Nicer than any suit I will ever own. Nicer than the blue suit worn by the Silver Fox on the train… And yet, he isn’t wearing socks.

There’s really no reason for the camera to reveal the fact the Smiling Man isn’t wearing socks. They could zoom in on his face rather than show him at a distance, reclining in his chair.

The Smiling Man speaks of many things which mean nothing to the customers of the Smiling Man’s company. In the end, he waves good-bye and smiles. The Regional Sales Director takes the stage. He smiles less than the Smiling Man, but then he is wearing socks.

I am doodling on a pad of paper provided by the hotel. I draw little bats flapping around the logo of the hotel and a graveyard in the bottom right corner of the page. I write the names of the Smiling Man and the Regional Sales Director on a matching pair of tombstones.

The man sitting beside me laughs so I give him the paper.

I am sketching a villa. I begin with a graceful line of windows. The windows peek out above a tall hedge. Beside the villa, there is a winding garden filled with wispy perennials. Short fruit trees with knotted trunks frame the rear of the garden. As an afterthought, I add a terrace, knitting the old flagstones between a tangle of underbrush.

An invisible sun casts the dry light of late summer on the scene. The villa is a pale shade of lavender, the trim whitish-grey. Scrub-covered hills, brown and distant, rise up in the background. I add a rake to the garden.

My eyes are closed. I am listening for the sound of birds.

People move slowly toward the buffet, trying not to appear too eager for lunch. I head for the door. I’m almost free but out of nowhere my sales rep appears and cuts off my escape.

“Hey! You made it! Enjoying the conference?”

“Not bad, but I just got a call.”

“Oh yes, duty always calls! Well, why don’t you come and meet someone real quick?”

“I’d love to, but…”

“No, problem. Really! He’s right over there. It’ll only take a second.”

He points to a small cluster of people frozen in the gloom at the foot of the stairs. I cave and allow myself to be led away by the elbow.

The Formal Man watches us descend. He has black hair and wire-rimmed spectacles. He does not smile or nod, but I feel welcomed into his company by some strange shifting of his eyes. This is not the man I am supposed to meet. I am supposed to meet the Golden Boy, but he is pacing in the shadows behind the Formal Man, so it appears that meeting the Golden Boy consists of speaking to the Formal Man who is actually a consultant to the Golden Boy, though he himself preferred the title of Corporate Nanny.

The Golden Boy is short and blond. He wears fashionable clothes, accessorized by an expensive cellphone crammed into his left ear. The phone flashes blue and red, nearly in time with his continuous, rapid fire speech.

Once, in passing, the Golden Boy emerges from the darkness. He casts his face up to the ceiling. He sighs and shakes his head. Then he starts up again, tossing out jargon and channeling a series of new age business gurus one after the other.

“Is he always like that?”

The Formal Man smiled and leaned towards me.

“No one really wants to take his calls. Half the time, he just calls people at random to see if they miss him.”

I trade cards with the Formal Man. Instantly, the Golden Boy materializes. He jams a card into my hand and points to the flashing phone. He shrugs and vanishes into the shadows.

Behind the wire-rimmed spectacles, the Formal Man raises his eyes. He smiles.

“The kid’s on the bubble and he doesn’t even know it.”

It is raining. I am in a café across the street from the hotel. I have a cup of coffee. I pretend to read the wretched book.

A woman enters the café. Her black hair falls down around her shoulders. I’m going to romanticize this moment too much if I hold onto it, but I can’t help it. I pull out the picture of the villa. I see her moving across the terrace. She wears a simple yellow dress.

The light is so bright. I can barely stand to look at the devastated beauty of the rough countryside. I want my life to stop moving forward.

Miles away the sea rises and falls like molten lead. The wind picks up. The woman leaves with a tray of coffees, and the imaginary summer disappears as she steps off my flagstone terrace and into the rain of West Adams Street. I sketch her figure quickly.

I am in a room without windows. This is a private meeting. The low ceiling presses down on a corral of fold-up tables.

We speak in echoes, responding automatically to each other for almost an hour, promising things we both knew to be false. When the meeting is over, we agree to nothing except that we will share a cab to the airport.

In the taxi, the man pulls up his legs and places his feet against the window. He curls himself around a little device and checks his email. The man digs his thumbs into the keyboard. The meter starts.

We arrive at the airport. As I get out of the cab, the man calls after me. He is holding the picture of the villa.

I see now that it was a mistake to draw the figure of the woman looking away.

How I Almost Started Writing is a series of brief portraits focused on the times in my life where I found myself on the verge of focusing solely on the writing life.

How I Almost Started Writing

I am standing on a cliff above the Russian River. The green stone is in my hand and the sun has been setting forever.

Try as I might, I cannot find a good way to explain the fact that seals and cows live just a few hundred yards away from each other. The best I can come up with is:

“Seals or not, this is cattle country.”

…which is undeniably silly and surreal.

I found the green stone waiting for me on the beach near Bodega Bay. There is absolutely no reason for me to place any significance on the finding of this rock, but I know that I will carry it across the continent and across another sea. Years later, if I work at it, I will remember how cold the wind was the day I found it and that I took my shoes off anyway and walked in the surf.

I take a light supper at the Mystic Isle Cafe. Just handful of people here. The lights are off in the bar. Chairs stacked on tables. When I come out, the sky is filled with stars. The ocean is purple. Even now the sun is still setting.

I am thinking of other sunsets of mine along the coast.

I am thinking of Santa Cruz and of Point Reyes and also about that crazy road to half Moon Bay where you come up over the mountain top and then take a long swooping curve down the other side through the smell of burning brakes wondering if you can catch a glimpse of the sea which you can’t but you can fly off the road trying.

There are so many curves you can’t help but get a little dizzy… like the time I had to ask my friend to pull over at the entrance of the Zen center so that I could throw up. How many people find enlightenment at just this particular point in the road I couldn’t say, but I’ll never forget how hard I laughed at the friendly soul who honked.

Should it be strange that I mix all of these trips together?

Weaving between the redwoods, I can’t keep my eyes off the river. The green stone is in my pocket. At last, it is good and truly dark.

How I Almost Started Writing is a series of brief portraits focused on the times in my life where I found myself on the verge of focusing solely on the writing life.

How I Almost Started Writing

We take the night train from Zürich to Paris. We arrive at dawn. It is Sunday. The city is silent.

This is the final day of the Tour de France. I had a choice between hiking in the Alps, going to Sicily to watch a Mt. Etna erupt, or coming to Paris for the day. I chose Paris.

We walk through the streets in the general direction of the Seine. A young man approaches us on the street.

“Il s’agit d’une question en français. Je n’ai aucune idée de ce que le jeune homme a demandé?”

“Non,” I reply.

“Non?”

“Non.”

He walks away a bit confused.

About half a block later my companion asks, “What did he say?”

“I have no idea. I don’t speak French.”

Behind the church of L’église Saint-Eustache is the Forum des Halles. We hear men singing there but we do not approach. It’s only seven thirty. We assume they are drunk, but there’s no basis for this other than the fact that their singing sounds a bit rough and it is seven-thirty on a Sunday morning.

We walk along the east side of the Louvre down to the Seine. I could spend a year with this view and never exhaust the possibilities.

Slowly, the world wakes up.

In the courtyard of the Louvre there are two Dutch cycling fans. They wave hello to us and disappear in the direction of the Rue de Rivoli.

People come and sit by the fountain in the Tuileries Garden. They read the newspaper. We look for food and further up find on the Champs-Élysées we find Paul’s.

Paul’s is a wonderful bakery filled with good smells. The lights cast a golden glow over everything and everyone. As I do in places where I do not know the language, I listen to others ordering, the cadence of their speech and then I do exactly the same. I end up with two croissants.

“I thought you didn’t know French?”

“I don’t. I’m just a good mimic.”

While we wait for the race to start, my companion decides to go up to the Arc de Triomphe. Now, why I am not going along is a bit of a mystery but I decide instead to go along to the other side of the street, which is now filling in with race watchers and take a seat at a cafe. I order an espresso and wait. The Moulin Rouge soundtrack is blasting from somewhere down the street.

The race is much longer than I expected. At first, it was exciting but then by the twentieth lap it’s a bit dull and it’s getting hot. We hang around until the end though.

The Metro is sweltering. I love it. I’m sad though because we’re only going a few stops down the line. I’d like to ride longer.

We are sitting in the Centre Georges Pompidou outside the museum of modern art. We are enjoying a beer. We’ve been joined by a friend of my companion and his roommate.

The two friends catch up while the roommate and I try to hold up our end of the table. While he seems terribly literate, I mention that I have just purchased Atomised by Michel Houellebecq and he pretends not to know the same. I try to explain but he retreats into French. It is only later that I find out that one does not mention M. Houellebecq in polite society.

We are in a taxi. I am afraid for my life, then I give myself over to abandon as enjoy the ride.

To quote my Swiss friends, the Montmartre is turistik. I am beyond the moment of accepting everything as it is though I can imagine others being disappointed. We sit on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

We fall into the sleeper berths on the night train back to Zürich. I’m sore from walking and burned to a crisp. We are due to give a presentation at 9AM.

How I Almost Started Writing is a series of brief portraits focused on the times in my life where I found myself on the verge of focusing solely on the writing life.

How I Almost Started Writing

Image credit: Thomas Hawk (Flickr)

I am in a hotel room in York, Pennsylvania. We are in York to pick up a tractor, but not until tomorrow. My two best friends are watching Desperate Housewives, while I am sitting at the table trying to concentrate on Montaigne.

That probably makes me sound like a snob but I hardly care. I enjoy Montaigne. He helps me to think and at the moment I am thinking about writing. Of course, I am always thinking about writing…

Earlier, we had dinner at the Greek restaurant across the highway from the hotel. We sat in the lounge.

The barmaid served us quickly while talking to a man sitting at the bar. Her conversation moved between Greek and English. The man said almost nothing. They smoked slowly from the same cigarette. Every few minutes the she looked up to see if we needed another round.

The next morning, it’s something of an adventure to get the tractor loaded. We really have no idea what we are doing. Ultimately, the kid who works in the yard takes pity on us and loads the tractor onto the trailer. In return, we agree to return to the highway using the most ridiculous route the kid could dream up. It’s long, winding detour through the country.

I wonder what it must have been like to fight on such rough terrain. My vision of the nineteenth century is invariably dulled by still landscapes and thoughts of men with flowing hair, but as with any time, it was alive with consequence. Soldiers charging up hills, bone tired, yet pressed on. A hail of bullets ripping the air about them, raining down from positions above. The agony and anguish of cannon-fire and the moments of triumph. Did that exist?

We’re having lunch at a diner. According to the radar, a heavy snow is coming. If we move quickly, we’ll stay ahead of it. I’m waiting for pecan pie and coffee.

In the mountains, it starts to snow. We’ve been together long enough that all of our conversations have worn through.

At first, the snow swirls and blows off the road. Eventually it sticks. The van has a hard time maintaining traction in the slush but soon we get beyond the reach of the snow and the road clears.

I sketch pictures of the landscape in my notebook. I think of the portraits I’ve gather on this trip, but there’s nothing coherent enough to be a story.

How I Almost Started Writing is a series of brief portraits focused on the times in my life where I found myself on the verge of focusing solely on the writing life.

How I Almost Started Writing

Image credit: rytc (Flickr)

I am in the town of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Schaffhausen sits on the banks of the Rhein. I am staying at a hotel in the center of town. Outside my window is a bell tower for the church. Each night, someone hits the bell on the hour. It’s a muffled sound, a kind of dead clonk.

I am here for a conference. The conference is taking place in an old hotel down the lane, but then everything here is old. Still the hotel in question is different. There is a a fireplace in the main entry hall. The fireplace has an open hearth, perhaps fifteen feet across. It’s only early spring so it’s cold enough to have a fire. The logs must be five feet long at least.

We have dinner in the hall. Spaghetti. I eat with the two Italians, who seem to have little English. They are amazed by my technique. I eat spaghetti with a fork, twirling it up without a spoon or a knife.

“You eat this way? At home?”

“Oh yes, how else?”

They gesture down the long table. The Germans and the Dutch have cut their noodles to pieces as one might a cutlet. I laugh.

“No, no. This is how we eat it.”

I demonstrate again for their approval. They invite me to come and stay with them when I am in Italy.

“We may not talk much, but we eat!”

I love them.

Night. I sleep. A priest or the monk steals into the bell tower and clocks the bell. It’s something that might have bothered me in any other place except here. At 5AM, I give up and go out for a run.

I run through the dark streets, down to the Rhein. I really have no idea where I’m going but I follow the river downstream. In places, I cross through quite neighborhoods. I skip back and forth across the river twice. Everything is dark until I come to a place where the houses give away and the trees rise up on steep hills.

Ahead, I hear the sound of the water moving faster.

On the other side of the river, the castle of Schlosslaufen clings to the rock. The castle overlooks the Rhein Falls. I cross over the falls on a rail bridge. In the center of the falls there is a massive stone, an island. The water rushes around it and roars. Mist hangs everywhere in the dawn light.

I keep wondering if a train will come along and crush me, but then I hardly care. I run back to the hotel and the town is alive with activity.

Later in the day, the conference breaks. We have a bus trip down to the Rhein Falls. I ride with my new friends, the Italians. I find I was wrong about their lack of English. One fellow was just being quiet at dinner. Now he cannot be stopped. He is intent on convincing me about his technical scheme and to demonstrate his prowess. His boss just shrugs in what seems to me the best gesture on earth and I decide immediately to steal it for myself.

Below the falls there is a cafe. You can take a boat from the cafe to the rock in the center of the falls. There is an iron staircase there and at the top the might of the Rhein comes blasting down on you. We take the boat. There’s no talking, just the pounding of the river. When we return, we relax on the deck and watch the other boats make the trip.

I explain to the Italians that I was here just this morning. I ran down here from the hotel. They are incredulous. The idea of running here seems fantastic. I have to explain it several times before they believe me.

One of the Swiss butts in, he says, “Ah but if you kept running, you would be in Germany within a few kilometers.”

“Good thing I didn’t go that way. I didn’t have my passport.”

“Oh, true. I should think that they wouldn’t have cared for that at all.”

How I Almost Started Writing is a series of brief portraits focused on the times in my life where I found myself on the verge of focusing solely on the writing life.

How I Almost Started Writing