The juice of the now

I should have been taking notes in NYC.

I started reading a book by Canadian writer Katherine Govier. Reading it is part of a self-education program mostly involving reading Canadian female novelists. I’m finding the particular novel I picked up, The Truth Teller, so tedious.

I loved David McFadden’s family oriented Trips around Lake Erie and Lake Huron but couldn’t relate to his later writer with film crew as rock star Trip around Lake Ontario. I gave the volume of the works as a gift at a wedding at which the bride and groom requested books for their gifts. I read Huron and Erie to my son last year when he was eleven and he loved them too.

Of course some of the jokes went over his head. Of course many of them still go over mine. Surely my not appreciating Ontario has all to do with my lack of sophistication.

I like how McFadden often portrays his wife as callous or bumpkin like and the fall guy. I love doing that when I write about my husband. But he hates it. It used to be it’s the problem of my lack of romantic-ness all over again. Now, it’s he’s waiting for me to become aware of my gentler sentiments toward him.

Nevertheless, sometimes he’s all paranoid and thinks I’m doing it when I’m not. Other times I’m doing it and he doesn’t realize. I think perhaps I may have outfoxed him. Or maybe he’s just not letting on, he knows. It’s a very delicate situation. And ironic.

I should have taken notes when I was in NYC.

I think there’s a place in David McFadden’s earlier Trips in which he’s writing about writing about writing notes. Was that one too many “writings”? The point is clearly he was writing notes along the way. Which is what I should have been doing.

For a while there I think I may have been losing myself in NYC. Jacob got sick right way. He had a fever. He was sleeping. He didn’t want us to leave him alone. We were thinking of killing him. I was. Larry left his bag at home on the bed and we had to buy him some new clothes. It was hot and sunny and I was wearing pants and a black shirt that was attracting too much sun to it, making me hotter. I needed to get back to the hotel room and change into some shorts and a lighter coloured shirt. Or get in the shade.

The pond in Central Park had all these turtles in it. They were sticking their heads out and looking at us where we were sitting in a Pagoda talking to a woman from Brussels. She was small and critical of American eating habits, their love of over-sized portions, their huge muffins. We were eating this amazing Spanish goat’s cheese on crackers that we got from Zabar’s, a tour book featured deli on the Upper West side. And some deli salads. We shared some with her and after two helpings, the correct amount of time to accept food offered by strangers, she had enough. I couldn’t stop eating the cheese and neither could Larry. It was so tasty. She brought up American eating habits again which started making me uncomfortable thinking maybe she was secretly trying to comment on ours.

Belgium is separating maybe and was without a government for six months recently. She quit her job as a personal assistant and is going to do something new, like take a course of study, when she returns from her trip. Her friends in America wouldn’t talk about their political beliefs over the phone with her when she was in Brussels. They were afraid. Her Canadian friend in Brussels didn’t feel comfortable expressing his opinions when he lived in Canada.

She had a problem with her leg which is why she had signed on to take tour busses around the city for the past few days. She had a wet hand shake when she got up to leave. It made me think she was sick.

Do you think Katherine Govier found writing The Truth Teller tedious? Personally, I don’t like writing when I’m finding the writing tedious. I stop. I am so bored. I don’t like recounting tales either. The energy of the story gets all big and large and sweeping and conventional and tedious. Whereas by taking notes the same day it’s easier for you to find your way right back into what was the juice of the now.

Although: it’s not completely impossible to remember these things too.