Facts versus Romance, v.2

It was my first writers workshop. I had just come back from Japan six months back, putting an end to things yet unfinished, this another fit and start, another island. Everyone knew everyone else, either from school, or a previous workshop. And they quoted poetry to make their point, they chorused at all the famous lines by the famous poets. I knew them by name, the poets and the fellows. I didn't know the rules. It was like being the new girl at school again I thought.

I was arrogant of course. That's survival. If this didn't work out, it would be just another start: tried on for size but did not fit, one of many. I was beginning to think myself a quitter--or forever the scientist. This another experiment to find out yes or no.

***

"Yes, it is," the light seemed to say on the balcony seven floors up the building where I used to live. It was white now, that single CFL bulb. It was yellow seven years ago and incandescent; I had begun to write in my journal again, all the while thinking about being seven floors up and how quick the fall.

I stood across the street staring at that balcony for some time. I had been walking home, it was midnight. I could see it, midnight in another time: The little black table, its surface pocked with rust, the grey pages of the journal, the green cloth of the folding chair that cupped my butt like a chute but was hell on my back. My left hand cramping trying to write as fast as I could think, my right hand holding a cigarette. The smoke rising then curling and curling unto itself. Funny but whenever I'd look down from that balcony then, (a morbid anticipation of the possible out-of-body experience sure to follow,) I would always see shards of red clay and soil held together by thin yellow roots like hair, the green plant. Why is it still green I had always wondered. Where's the body?

I crossed the street and looked down on that spot now and, though I felt foolish, swept my foot over nothing on the floor. A quick swipe like trying to look for something in the sand.

***

"Because there are so many things I want to say but can't. Or won't," this my nervous answer to the question why I write.

He was a fellow of the same workshop some nine years ago, and has been coming back to the island every year since. I imagine him throwing the question at a newbie every year and every time, catching her by surprise. He had the look of a professor despite being my age. It was the eyeglasses, magnifying patience more than his curiosity. At my reply he nods a meaningless nod, teacher-speak for That's not the right answer.

It was the first Friday of three, our first real night off where we could pretend to be on vacation, a week of the work over. We--fellows, facilitators, visitors--were at a bar a block from the hotel. It was dingy under the murky sky, incandescent bulbs hung like Christmas lights overhead, like fake stars. I look at them trying to think.

"What is your problematic," he tried again, and ruins my concentration. I try to spell the word in my head, still looking up. Is it with a -c or –que if it’s a noun?

*****

To be continued...