and amsterdam
nasrin khosrowshahi 2012
she sits down in the slightly sticky college cafeteria, she starts writing. Her pen is black, a not very comfortable ball pen. Next time she will opt for a slender model that fits perfectly into her right hand. She feels her hand cramping up already. But she goes on writing, writing, writing. This is what she will do for all of august, write and write and write some more. All thru her trip, her journey, her voyage. But today she is still in Vancouver, there are bags to be packed, passport and money to be put into a purse, there are loads of laundry still waiting to be processed. Processed, what a weird word for an utterly banal endeavour. She ponders, if she will still be able to write, as good as before, as bad as before. This will be her third book, as unpublished as her two previous ones. Well, she typed them out, printed them out, bound them @ kinko’s. She sent her first manuscript to a publisher in boston. She crosses her fingers, reluctantly. Last year she sent the same manuscript to two printers in town, one in gastown, one on main. She got two rejection letters. Hey, we are going somewhere. She ponders, how many rejection letters she will garner. Ah, there is always self publishing. There is “scribd”. Besides, with publishing there is the “editing” problem. She has to arm wrestle people over each comma, each and every apostrophe. Online she can do whatever she feels like. It is oh so very hot. Fuckin’ heat-wave. People walk by. She should describe them, but does not feel like it. Writing comes so very clumsily to her, like meat balls in gravy. She has used this metaphor before last year. There is a saying about artists stealing from themselves, something, something. Some Thing. She feels slightly nauseated, breathing is tough in this sticky air. She yelps. There is another more accurate word, sighing maybe, moaning, maybe. But yelping? She prefers “yelp”.
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