Atrium

The Atrium is a hidden area at the back of a building (name?) that not many know about. I asked a gentleman about how to get in since I kept getting lost because one or the other door would be locked, but he told me no one was there and asked if I were a teacher there or what. Inside the Atrium is a beautiful wood lined ball room hung with white draperies. The photograph to the left shows the path to the inner Atrium area.

Classrooms

Classrooms were large enough for a whole group with the usual sort of student tables. Or they were is small rooms suitable for a close knit workshop with a door to keep the noise out. Our workshop room looked out over a small patio. Below is the main lecture hall

Botany Bay #13 Photograph above is the Building

My room was pretty comfy, although I didn’t spend much time there. Most nights, I’d get on the internet and wait until my husband showed up while reading then crashed. Wi-Fi was delayed for a day, upsetting me a great deal because it was my primary way of letting Bob know I had arrived okay, I even ended up crying when I finally got it because I was so relieved. I did mention that at UCF, WiFi was free on the entire campus. I think this surprised the Trinity folks but they soon got us all on WiFi for free. Everyone relies so much on WiFi anymore, it seems impossible to be in an educational facility without it.

One desk with bookshelves above provided my work space. The chair was adequate.  Across the hall from my room, I had a sitting room with chairs and tables, a kitchen table with chairs, and cooking surfaces (small kitchenette) that I didn’t much use but occasionally sat in for a change of air and light.

The bathroom was utilitarian, one shower, one toilet, one sink, and two shelves. The shower had a rack for toiletries. My roommate and I were very careful at first but soon spread our junk around more freely.

Breakfast and Lunch at the Buttery

The Buttery is found down a set of stairs from the main plaza. It’s a cafeteria with a salad bar, sandwich bar, hot food bar, serves up breakfast either full or continental. I was happy with the continental featuring an Irish biscuit with raisins and the size of my fist, cranberry juice, and an apple every day that I ate (most of the time). They prepared cookie platters and coffee and tea for our breaks, too. What did I eat most often? Chicken strips and chips, also had fish and chips, diet coke and candy bars and popcorn. They had several places to eat, lots of tables and chairs, plus some wood block tables and benches, plus a line of padded chairs more suited for sitting and writing along a back wall. Plenty of room for everyone to eat together but I mostly sought a break from everyone and quiet.

We ate at the Buttery via a pass that offered us the continental breakfast but the later upgraded it to the Irish breakfast. I paid for lunch when I ate here, although the first day, before they got the

Buttery Vault set up, they okayed up to 9 Euros worth of food.

Buttery Vault

Many times our group had meals ordered up at the the Buttery Vault. They serve hot food in a more formal setting specially for our group. I had beef and potatoes once, often ate salad, had broccoli, green beans, and cauliflower on different occasions. I had chicken twice, cooked different ways.

This was free, no pass necessary but set up for our group.

Graduate Memorial Building

We got to experience a musical performance in the conference hall, it had pretty good acoustics. The band we saw performed traditional Gaelic music, including acapella Gaelic songs, dancing, fiddling,  More about that in another blog.

Front Gate

The Front Gate was often a meeting point for us students when we ventured as a group out into Dublin city for events, dinners, etc. The Front Gate and other gates can be closed for security reasons such as when Mrs. Obama visited the Book of Kells. The photo shows outside the front gate near the street.

Irish Writer’s Centre

The Irish Writer’s Centre is a beautiful building where local writer’s present their work to audiences. It’s off campus, about 1 mile away, straight down the main thoroughfare.

1592 Restaurant

Is a special, formal rooms where they set up dinners for our group and where many of the students held readings of their work.

Nassau Street Gate

The Nassau Street Gate was where we often picked up buses when we went on events outside of campus. This gate is close to where the Book of Kells is housed.


Below: On Campus looking toward the Nassaue Street Gate and Book of Kells exhibit.

I sent in and got feedback on my next 20 pages on my third assignment packet of scenes but now need to get my essays done. Part of the delay is finding adequate support from the reading, so it involves a lot of cut and paste from a lot of 300+ page books. I'm hoping to find several examples from several texts that show the principle being discussed.

In the process of doing the one essay, it grew into four essays or articles, since some tend to be just facts and data.

The four books I'm using as the main source are my semester reading assignment selected by me and Evelyn Conlon:

1. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li
2. East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck
3. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
4. The Writer and Her Work by Janet Sternburg

I'm also using 4-8 other resources in support of these essays, so all in all it adds up to a lot of work.

I spent several days doing submissions and will hope to do some more after I've finished these essays.

Also finished reading Birds of America by Laurie Moore, she really uses dialogue to good purpose in these stories. Most have a distant portrayal of painful situations that affects the readers emotions.

My "volunteer work" or getting out and about these last weeks surrounds Zoouniverse, my work on my model, and this month I'm the coordinator for the Central Florida Golf Club. Also loved seeing Mama Mia at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center.

I also did some place setting research for the novel and worked on the keyword specification of my blogs. I may well start a new political oriented blog. 

I'm looking forward to judging my first poetry soup contest in two weeks along with a visit from my niece.

I almost have my twenty pages together for my next submission but they're in Chapter 6 instead of Chapter 5. I've done some additional planning so that I can go forward on the next chapters. I've written some in Chapter 5 and Chapter 7, also. And I found a few prompts that should get me going in other places. I'd like to finish 6 and do some more work on Chapter 5. I haven't approached the question of politics, I never want to be preachy, more just the sense of being.

This last week has been tough, coming home to a house that needed cleaning, bills to pay, and family a trauma as usual, dealing with two sisters, a nephew and niece and my mother 4-5 times, plus a son and daughter. Sort of like hail, hail, the gangs all here. October I'm on as the golf coordinator so I need to get that going tomorrow.

I've been working on some background issues related to pieces I want to submit. I guess I don't feel very certain of my welcome. Welcome may not be the best word for it, but that's how it feels. I feel like I always have a foot in three different worlds and don't know which foot to cut off so I'm normal. I'm close to quitting since I feel I will be forced out by competing publishers and the monthly mental strip search game, so I guess I'm not feeling very appreciated or that it is worth the trouble. But I still continue on, since I like my story and I have some pretty good thoughts about subplots--three I've identified so far.

In terms of reading, I'm almost finished with "The Past and the Punishments" by Yu Hua and "For a Song and A Hundred Songs" by Liao Yiwu and Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I've finished reading "Push Open the Window" edited by Qingping Wang, it was very delightful, thoughtful poetry. I'm well into Red  Sorghum, too, by Mo Yan. After I get my golf schedule ready I should be getting my essays, book reviews, etc. out. These will be added with my book assignment for my month, Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. I find it interesting to note how many Chinese writer's use pseudonyms for their writing. The poets I found inspire me to cross worlds.

In terms of Chinese Literature, these are just a few drops in the bucket. I'm working on reviews for two of Michael Coady's work and through several of Chris Arthur's essays.

I'm working on two poems,  one about churches and one based on a Mark Roper poem that needs editing and a few haiku.

Meanwhile, I've ordered some of the reading for next semester. 

Mary O Donnell presented a lecture about the poet writing novels and the novelist writing poetry, crossovers and dilemmas at the Irish Writer's Center. We walked through the streets of Dublin to reach the center, noting famous sites and getting our exercise.

Mary explained that she likes to write precise prose that offers revelations to the reader. 

In her first novel, the Virgin and the Boy, she has both the Virgin, rock and roll star Ginnie, and her love, the Boy, Luke both reach realizations about how their passion for each other changed their view on life and overwhelmed them.

Mary's first collection of poetry was published in her thirties  about 1990, a second collection of her poetry, then her first novel Virgin and the Boy. She thinks that it feels like you pray when write poetry.

She believes that form is dictated by what we read, what we welcome, what interests us. She read good classical poetry in school and as a teenager she sometimes would write a poem, not that seriously. Out of necessity, she also wrote stories.

I think that it also is a matter of mastering the skills necessary to do it in capable way--I have still to master flash fiction since I want too much of a story arc. Flash fiction seems more like a prose poem to me.

She never saw poetry, nonfiction and fiction as being in a pyramid of what is most valuable; she didn’t aim to write fiction, in fact, fiction intimidated her because of all the time required.

I don't think so either. I do know, that when you write too much in other forms, you sacrifice your output in the other forms to some extent, i.e. if you write poetry alone, you're more likely to be more prolific. 

She spoke about liminality in a work, from Merriam Webster, liminality means—of or relating to sensory threshold, barely perceptible. She explained that reason and temperament is not synonymous.

I think liminality is present in her first novel, Virgin and the Boy. Often, the characters are very much aware of the world around them, good places to see it is Luke's walk home with Kathleen and also the scenes at her apartment when he is very much aware of being male in a single woman's abode.

Poetry is about language, significance known in subconscious, and when writing poetry she finds herself hovering in one state. She was always happier writing, idea of the muse was valued.

I'd like to increase the amount of subconcious reactions from my characters in my stories.

As she turned toward language, poetry opened the world, and was an essential need. In her free time she’d work and dream. She didn’t want to be a feminist writer, found it circumscribing, but was a poet with others who were feminist and went around to readings. She finds the publishing world is not very welcoming to women, not many women represented in collections. She's not really open to writing to an agenda. Women she feels, would have trouble making their own archetypes. She believes that with lack of improvement of women represented in anthologies, that there is need for another all female anthology.

Yet, like many feminists, she shows in Virgin and the Boy, that sensuality is a major part of femininity. She mentioned that the sexual part of the novel was less accepted than the rest. I don't think any of the sex scenes are over the top--they don't offer a detailed experience of sex, just the idea that the characters were immersed in the sensations of loving someone.

I personally found the explicit language overwhelming even if it is common for youth to use it heavily in their conversations. I think a little raw talk goes a long way.

One thing I thought after her lecture that was presented at the Irish Writer's Centre was that I should try a voice collection of poems.

This week I learned how to work with some of my Kindle books. Some of the Kindle books didn't have a table of contents, some didn't have indexes, some didn't have useful links at all. 

So I found that if I book mark a page, and then click on the book with the bookmark, it opens up a page similar to the list you get when you do a search, but in the list, you have sentences from the page that was bookmarked.

In my Side by Side Chinese and English Grammar by C. Frederick Farell etal, published by MacGraw-Hill, I found that I bookmarked pages where the way the Chinese language differed from English as well as some pages useful for constructing my novel I'm writing. Also, in the MacGraw-Hill Chinese Dictionary and Guide, I found I had to book mark the English-Chinese dictionary by each page of the alphabet for ease of finding things. You'd think that they would want the online version to be as useful or more useful than the paper copy. This same version could use each of the broken mark page to be findable on the search, but this doesn't occur. I would recommend that each of these have a chapter mark. Sure, that is a lot of work since the broken marks count goes up to 25 marks and the number of words up to 2000, but I would find having both there very helpful. Some of the note making I used here will show up in my essay.

I also marked notes on the story I'm using primarily in my essay, "One Thousand Years of Good Prayers" by Yiyun Li. I found that when you copy and paste from a Kindle book that the Kindle reader automatically builds the reference for you, this is wonderful help. I also worked with paper, collecting references from "The Geography of Thought" by Richard E. Nesbitt, who writes on how attention, perception, language, and correlation by people from Asian countries differ than from Western cultures. He also talks about how the mind set of bilingual and people familiar with both countries could be set by using cultural prompts. He also talks about the errors one makes given one mindset or the other. For data and process analysts the differences between the two are akin to object-oriented programming versus process-oriented programming, which I think would probably alter the results for those people with training in these areas.

The essay is about 1500 words at the moment and Evelyn Conlon, my mentor for the semester, has said that I needn't turn it in until the last packet goes in. I have two other topic areas I want to cover as a contrast and compare that will help connect my notes from memoir authors Brian Leyden who wrote "The Home Place", Ross Skelton who wrote "Eden Halt", and some others and some of the political data I have. I think I'll turn in the start of the essay anyway just so I don't get thrown out for breaking rules or something.

I worked on finalizing the golf book, the index is a much more timely task than I supposed, but the good news was for me, that I could code the marks on each chapter then merge into a single document, then create the index and test it for completeness.

This week my reading mostly consisted of rereading previously read books, but I did start "The Wandering Earth" by Cixin Liu, a classic of science fiction. 

This week I worked on writing an essay for my Carlow University MFA program about voice in contemporary Chinese literature. So, I have 500+ words of my essays in fairly good shape for the next package to go into the university. I'm working on several since I'm finding lots of content and because I won't be at home with as many of my resources for awhile. So I will use some of my notes from my residency as posts while I'm away.

Meanwhile, I've read through fifteen books on writing looking for various meanings of how voice is presented in literature. I've also looked for footnotes in One Thousand Years of Good Prayer by Yiyun Li. I've collected five other books on China related to voice, and a similar set on the emigrant experience.
I wanted a good comparison between voice in memoir and voice in fiction and so read Brian Leydon's Home Place since I remembered his readings containing tales of the experience of having family members who emigrated to the US. 

I also realized I didn't have any resources about plant life in China, ordered those books along with more Chinese fiction to read to have a fuller view about what authors are writing about China at home and in China.

Meanwhile, we've made our arrangements to go north to Canada, furthering my research about geology that will be used in the next book down the line and exploring more golf and escaping the anger of those around me that has me stressed out to the max. People don't realize how empathetic I am to the slightest signal.

Some are less slight, such as the Home Owner's Association showing up and wanting gravel previously given the okay to be stored on the side moved which leaves me having to do a lot of gardening.

Via A Broader View Volunteering program, I saw that I can work in China, but I would like to take my niece with me as a way of introducing her to travel outside the country. I'd like her to have some other opportunities where I can send her on her own, but there is so little time before she's off to college I might not get the chance to do so if I don't take her with me. I would go this year in November or December, but it seems like such a far way to travel for just two weeks of time. Bob and I are debating next years schedule of away from town and I hope maybe I will get to spend time in China then. 

I've also started putting together my packet of first scenes to send in to my mentor, finishing four scenes and revising an earlier scene to match up with the more defined outline. I've still one more scene to write and quite a few to edit. 

The edits add more scenery from China, alter names, foods, and other lifestyle issues in the book. I also had various ages for the main character and I'm altering those references so that the scenes fit together without conflict. I've also worked on expanding my villian's role into a side plot.

These scenes are still present time, I haven't decided on how much in the future I will change them to be. I've also worked on a new short story and one sonnet. I guess if it works out, I'll work on calls for submissions tomorrow and maybe the next day.

I guess if people were to ask me why I was taking an MFA program, it would be to quiet all the outrage about me writing books. I'm paying to write and learn, not to volunteer, not to play jump to my whip. I can does those without paying for an MFA degree. And no, the money would not go to someone else to write, I would use it to write and I have rights as a citizen and needs just like any other person.

So with my main assignment for my Carlow University MFA program residency complete, all I had to do is write, right? Sure thing, clear sailing, but then this little bitty niggly worry thingie kept plaguing me. Stare at the ceiling. Stare at the garden. Stare at the floor. Stare at the piles of books. What was I missing?

Eventually, I get it. I'm missing a plan. I know I have another essay due on the 7th along with 20 pages, but what pages?

Why am I uneasy? Is it because I haven't submitted anything recently? Yes, that, too, but what should I submit and where?

What if they all get accepted? Am I ready?

So I did accomplish something. I did figure out I needed to send the rewritten beginning, still in modern time rather than future. I always build from the existing because we may forgive and forget but we always have our roots. I collected data, invented a subplot, wrote 3000 words. I did pick out various stops along the main character's route and found pictures and background data about some of the cities, and some points along the plot line enhanced by history. I discovered I could go to Shandong Province in China with A Broader View Volunteers, too, which sounds fun but probably not possible until next year--this year is pretty booked up. A lot of my brainstorming comes out of longer range parts of the story where I need to backfill to the first part of the novel.

So then I had to wonder, am I ready for such a trip to China? So I bought MacGraw-Hill's Chinese Dictionary & Guide by Quanyu Huang--it focuses on teaching written Chinese via the marks and mark count. I bought the Tuttle Mini Chinese Dictionary by the Tuttle Editors because it has a word oriented way to find words and meanings. Finally I bought Side by Side Chinese and English Grammar by C. Frederick Farrell, Feng-hsi Lui, Xiaozhou Wu, and Rongrong Liao. I've wanted to check my names so that I don't inadvertently call something using a Chinese-English homonym that might embarrass me. Also the equivalent names in the languages especially sounds might create a sense of common knowledge. I also found a Pinyin Pronunciation Guide from the Centre for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language in order to understand how the different tones were sounded as marked by accents in various directions.

My reading consisted of my book that I'm reading for this month--One Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li--I'll have a review, soon. I also came up with some ideas of what to look for in writing the essay. 

I also read, Chinese Intelligence Operations by Nicholas Eftimiades since I may have a thriller plot, I don't quite know how it will affect the story yet. I already know I have one character whose purpose is hidden maybe even sinister and I know that I need my villain(s)--how political is that? Sometimes character's don't even know their purpose so they act without knowing and only understand at the very end.

I also couldn't help peeking into Laurie Moore's Birds of America: Stories which I found quite charming, more eventually on that topic.

Note: Some of what I cover in this overall blog, especially reading materials, will be covered in some of the other blog sections where I talk specifically about stories, poems, etc.

Then I built a list of item I had close to ready for submission and matched them against a potential list of calls for submission. I worked on a letter for an agent but ended up not liking it.

I took a look at my marketing plan--matching up my blogs and other online activities against those products I had created and found some holes--these will come about eventually.

I made an error in my essay when I said I needed to write 600,000 words, like many who find connections I combined word count and page number so I really meant 150,000 words and 600 pages, divided into three volumes.

Good news--I received notice that Loconeal Publishing is interested in my short story "Death and the Fishbowl Pontoon" for their Pirate Anthology, more about that in later reports.

And I think I may be near agreement on the illustrations for my golf book.

The Carlow University MFA Program Integrative Essay was much easier and much more difficult for me to write than I expected. Part of the reason why was I wanted to get a first read of most of the writer's I met before sending it in. That was quite the cram session and budget expense. After it's graded I hope to publish it on this site.

My mind, I find, isn't as flexible as it used to be. Once I had the goal of completing the essay finished, I set down to write my novel, result: brain dead. It's actually quite like being on a roller coaster or time machine, you start thinking and look up and say, where am I? China? Ireland? Florida? Back in history?

My first step has been to isolate some of the specific places used in the story and collect specific place data. Some of the data affects only one scene, a few, two or more. I finished a new first scene, it's a bit more blunt and maybe a turn off, than I wish it to be. 

So where do I get my information about how people dress, what is modern, and what current events are trending in China?

This photographs shows a number of things about China:

• here is a family on vacation, probably Chinese rather than foreign, taking pictures of something their child liked. It's not the best photograph, but the clothing, the interests, the mobility, etc. of locals in China is well portrayed.

This second photograph from my visit to China in 2008, shows a range of fashion worn by locals. It shows how couples behave together. It shows local interest in photography.  

I also use a variety of resources starting with a tour book that is usually good for maps, city names, road and rail and boat routes and general local information. 

Following from there, I can do a search on a specific area, for plants, businesses, news, photographs, products, anything I might find useful for the scene I have in mind.

I've started reading "The Real Story of Ah-Q and other Tales: Complete Fiction of Lu Xun". The foreword of the collection of short stories explains the role that Lu Xun played during the transformation of China from the Qing Dynasty through to the era where Mao Zedong took over. He, too, wanted to change Chinese society, using fiction as a motivator to encourage leaders to take China away from superstitious behavior, into educating people about science and technology. He wanted to be a doctor, but he decided that it is impossible to heal people if they are first suffering from a lack of knowledge about the world. This theme is still carried on in China, the US, and around the world.

I've also read a few stories from Grace Paley's "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute", "Judas Kiss" by David Butler, and a few stories from Mary Costello's "China Factory", In poetry I've read "A Gather of Shadows" by Mark Roper and "State of the Prisons" by Sinead Morrissey. 

I'm beginning to get all of my notes consolidated and organized into a rough essay for my integrative essay in my MFA degree due very soon, already 6 pages long. The notes are 32 pages so far and I have several more to type up. I'm annoyed that I was discouraged from using my PC in class, it saves so much time. I get too bored trying to figure out my bad handwriting.

Still, I have some main ideas. I'm working on several supporting essays, too, ones that I might submit elsewhere as essays or articles, especially my China articles. I find footnoting materials extremely painful, especially when your sources of information span dozens of books, many of them 1000 pages or more. With poetry books or even short story collections, its far easier to do.

Meanwhile, I've completed reading Michael Coadi's "Going By Water" which is a collection of poems about a fisherman, a fishing village, important people, and the passages of life. I found his poetry went from the ordinary, day to day, into the eternal. Some of the poems were just heartbreaking.

I've also finished Pearl S. Buck's East Wind / West Wind and am eager to read more of her books. I found her story simple, but rich with detail and insight, very useful to read on my PC Kindle reader. 

Also started "China's Democratic Future" By Bruce Gilley, it seems highly speculative and tracked information through "The Search for Modern China" by Jonathan D. Spence.

Part of my problem with doing this essay is I want it to be very well written and use lots of references, both from the class and to the work that I'm doing on the novel. It's spawned useful information for scenes that take place in the novel, useful characters to include in the subplots and some good ideas about how to shape the future view of the world and setting, many of these undefined until now. 

Yesterday I delved through space vehicles, thinking about how much of this I will include and the exact type of science fiction to target: the alternate universe, etc.

Meanwhile, I've already heard of several writers glomping onto my planned work so I guess I need to keep the overall story extremely flexible until the very end. Its not that I think they'll write the same story, its just that readers of science fiction look for a new spin all the time, something to whet the appetite. That's the way I always read science fiction.

We've got an appointment to visit the lawyer next week about the contract for the illustrator and the drawings. I checked out the US Copyright webpage and the US Patent and Trademark page just so I know how to deal with the drawings and get a good grips on how copyrights, trademarks and patents are handled.

These are my thoughts on route to Ireland several weeks ago. Dublin is a lively city well worth the visit. An MFA program at Carlow University residency is a good excuse to go check it out. Like most of my travel, I find I have duty free and worry free time to read, write and examine the world around me.

Early morning wake up after stumbling around in the dark, putting away books while my camera battery charged. Airport is easy check in, although they can’t print my boarding pass for the flight to Dublin. At the security check, I’m selected for a spot check; they chat with me about my belongings, know I’m a writer, a science fiction writer.

The flight to Atlanta, Georgia is seamless, although Delta worries about group three not having space enough for their baggage in the small 757 baggage compartments, I’m nearly last and there’s space easily available. I need to move a couple with a baby covered up by a sack so mom can do breast-feeding unobserved. Mom resettles baby to feed on the other side, and the baby is annoyed for several minutes. By takeoff, sunlight suddenly blasts in, past my attempt to sleep. I look up, and baby is blinking and rubbing her eyes. I close the window screen and get a very surprised look from the baby. She has big blue eyes which I mention to Mom, and say, oh, mama is going to have to lock you up from the boys. Mom laughs and tells me her older children had blue eyes but they changed to brown after the ninth month, so baby is obviously younger. Baby decides she likes me and wants to hold onto my fingers and shake it around. Later we drum on the table a little. She takes my credit brochure I pick up to check out the American Express/Delta deal, but baby wants to chew it and Momma wants to keep it out of her mouth. When I can retrieve it, I hide. Later, I unhook my watch so she can grab on. Baby’s so surprised that she can’t pull it to her mouth. She tries several times. I try moving it up and down and around but she won’t chase it, simply happy to wait. I try peekaboo with her but she doesn’t know that game yet. Momma’s surprised I’m getting so much attention—I’m not, I’m usually good with children but I don’t usually pay attention.

At the airport in Atlanta, Georgia the first Delta representative I ask about boarding pass, looks my flight up and prints it for me. I arrive in gate B, will depart, she believes, out of gate E. I take the walk through the underground tunnel beside the train rushing forward and back. Between gate B and gate C, there’s a long history of the area around Atlanta—the native American Cherokee, early settlers, the buy into the railroads since Atlanta (once called Marthaville named for a leader’s daughter) is a major crossroads for trade. Wealth grows. Slavery is minimal for the south because of few cotton plantations. Then the Civil War and the destruction of Atlanta for supplying the Confederate troops. Post war, many black universities spur on black business leadership, but the early optimism about rebuilding the city is dimmed as Crow laws and a policy of segregation persists and is reinforced. On through the civil rights movement as it unfolds and the affect of WWI and II builds commerce and Martin Luther King takes action. By the time I get to E and walk its three arms and return it is time for lunch at TGI Fridays.

I read the Penguin Guide to Irish Poets while listening to GPS and the many takes on US-China relationships, Syria, Turkey, the mass shootings in California and Nelson Mandela’s illness. I’m cold. Stiff. Eventually, I go for a cookie and another diet coke and find a nook by the bathrooms in the food circus with tulips on the tables, a window view of the streaming rain and black clouds, that’s where I am now. I’ve tried to write one of the poems playing at my ears and fall back into games but am bored. I’m two hours, forty-five minutes to boarding time.