This weekend, I may have found what I was looking for. I took the train up out of the city to visit my grandmother’s cousin – He was the man who helped her and my grandfather get out of Germany during the war. A few years ago I had started talking to him about perhaps putting all of his stories down into a book, but it never came about. I still had Sarah Striker and Pharmacology in my head and heart and needed to put that out.

Now though, this time, I took the train back to Brooklyn with a purpose. This man had pretty much saved my family and myself – I would not be here writing if it weren’t for him, so I owe it to him, to my grandfather, to my father and, I guess in some ways, to myself to write this story. He was an amazing man, this man I went up North to see. I say up North because any time you take a train you are going North.

I’ve had glimpses inside the story over lunches and talks in an afternoon, but to get under the hood of this, I’m going to need to do a bit more. Tons more. Time will have to be sacrificed and life will need to be altered a bit, but I believe that it is worth it. What better way to spend time than to honor the memory of the person who made the time you had possible. Now comes to the process of doing something like this. The preparation and structure that I have yet to ever really produce.

That lives in fiction. I’m about to introduce truth and it feels so right. The book is now in my chest ready to fly through my rib cage and I have no intention of ignoring this feeling. Finally. I think I search for this feeling – it’s the only form of satisfaction that I truely get and really want other than laying next to my wife at night.

The margins are narrowing a bit. Yes they are.

Click here for this week's #sundaymorningstory

@sarahstriker continues to do a great job with the #sundaymorningstory. Having trouble keeping up with everything I need to write, so it helps that one of my characters has come alive and actually pitched in to the effort.

This week we got pictures from Portugal, Manilla, New Zealand, Australia and the Great Mid-West of America. Also, a little bit of drink from New York. Nice. Such a pleasure to see people joining in to this thing. Please jump on in next Sunday if you’re so inclined.

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That was the point all along.

Let’s see what happens in this world of click-throughs and Retweets – as that now determines how content is received and digested.

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Saviors of the Underwood 319 Typewriter Spool

Finally, the search is over. Much thanks to the folks at Brady & Kowalski writing machines who had that magic missing piece that was nearly impossible to find:

A Spool that fit on my Underwood 319 Typewriter.

Work to the unwise: Don’t toss out the spools your ribbons are on because they just don’t make them anymore.

Head on down to the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, which has moved inside for the winter, if you’re in need of any typewriter advice, parts or even a new machine.

I’ve had my Underwood 319 with me since Los Angeles, when I found her in a thrift store on Western Ave. for 12 bucks. Two novels later, I can’t write without her. Now that it’s winter and I’m driving everyone around me crazy with the release of Pharmacology, it’s best to just get writing again to preserve sanity.

As best as it can be preserved.

Can’t wait to hear those keys making their music again. If you have a typewriter and feel it’s a beauty, feel free to send me on in a pic and I’ll post it up.

Chat Obession

By Danielle Lynd

I was obsessed with chat scene back in 2000. I would sit up until all hours of the night chatting with people I didn’t know thinking they were my best friends. I became extremely close with a person that claimed to be a state trooper from my state. Turned out it was true. It was fascinating to be able to be so much myself with total strangers completely stripped down. There’s nothing to keep you from being you. It was pure if you wanted to be. He and I would chat for hours until we were both falling asleep at the computer from exhaustion. We’d talk about life, our favorite songs and music, what our families did to drive us crazy.  One day he disappeared, a few weeks later I got a call from one of his co-workers explaining to me that he would be in touch again when he could.  He had to testify in a case that was compromising his safety. Months and months went by without any more news or words exchanged.  My heart was heavy and I felt like he might have forgotten me. My state trooper became my lost love. He resurfaced one night after I started dating my now husband. It was the first phone call I had from him in almost a year.  We spoke briefly as I was leaving on a date.  We had changed and though my heart swelled at knowing he was home again safe. I had moved on in his absence, though never forgot him. He is gone from my life now but is frequently in my thoughts with fond memories. If hadn’t been for the internet and my once crazed obsessions with it. We would never have met. Lame I know but I am a sucker for romance, tragedy, and new love.

The city is moving in on me. That fog – makes the streets smell a certain way and sticks the tires to the cement just right. The world seems different today. The book is out of me and there’s nothing more I can really do but just wait. Reactions are going to come either way – that’s just how it goes. How it all is.

But that fog – I’ve never seen it like that in Brooklyn before – must be because of the energy of the launch, though that’s kind of insane to think such things – like the universe has any time to notice that a new book is coming into the world. Well, it just might. Perhaps reading is one of the ways we can connect deep into the soil and allow for existence as it should be.

This, now, is the sublime time. The time before reviews and before sales start to matter at all. This is the moment when you can just sit with your cup of coffee and look out over the buildings and trees that aren’t all there anymore and just reflect. Just wonder. Just ingest. Just, be. Writer and book.

That fog though – I remember it so. It allowed me to talk with my grandparents who have been gone for so long – They came back in that thickness and we talked as I walked up Dekalb Avenue then turned left of Vanderbilt. Each one of them spoke to me and we went over family history. My grandfather on my father’s side seemed particularly proud because I was carrying on his last name – There were times when he thought he would be the last.

In the fog these things can happen. Thought about though high inclines of San Francisco and how hard it was to walk up after a long day of work, or how lonely they were to walk down after a heartbreak or two. That’s how that city goes.

If I could, and I kind of wish I could, I’d jump on plane and fly out for a cup of espresso at Cafe’ Trieste and just – watching the stillness of the world out there – trapped by fog and memories of how it used to be. New York, well, there is no stillness here – not usually – but last night there was that moment. Perhaps it was there just to slow me down a bit and make sure I didn’t run away with my mind. How could I though?

I’m supposed to keep my head during all of this. Right now is the perfect time and the perfect amount of light – the time when it should be to write it down and do those morning exercises I tell my students to do and still must keep up myself.

Today, there is no doubt I’ll be checking sales and peeking into reviews, but I must be careful not to jump in too much. Though, of course, there is no helping myself there. So I’ll exist now, here in this moment, for as long as it takes. Staying in the fog and relaxing myself in memory. That’s what those books allow for – the relaxation of memory. It’s time for such things – to believe in such things. I do.

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Sarah Striker has officially taken over the #sundaymorningstory! She did most of the heavy lifting on my new book Pharmacology, so there’s no reason she shouldn’t have a chance to shine.

Follow her on twitter:

I figured it was time for Sarah Striker to take over the #sundaymorningstory

Click here for details.

-CH

Your memories are not your own. You think they are because the stories that you’ve been told since you were young all place you in certain situations. They’ve been gone over many times at the family table or wherever it is that you may eat your meals with those taking care of you. I realize of course that not everyone sits around a large table and exchanges stories.

Back to your memories. Your mom always told you that you enjoyed singing from the time you were 2 years old. She tells the story of how you got up in front of everyone during the Holidays and sun your grandfather’s favorite song to him. Some tell it that he laughed uncontrollably until he cried. Some tell it that he cried and almost put himself into shock.

There was that story of when you wandered out the door without telling anyone when you were 4 and walked down the block by yourself. Everyone was so worried. You had the best time though inside your own head because you made up stories of what was happening inside the houses of those you passed on your adventure. That is what happened when you were walking though. The story that gets told, the memory, is what your parents told you about how worried everyone was. Come to think of it, you don’t remember thinking what was happening inside of the houses as you walked by. That was told to you by your parents years and years after the fact that it happened.

Now then, your early memories, the very shape of who you are, are not yours at all. What belongs to you are the moments afterwards. After your initial thoughts. After what you believe to be true has turned to fact. This was the case for me up in that tree I think. But it was all so real, I’m not sure how it couldn’t have been because my parents had left me up there to fend for myself for all of those weeks. Weeks can turn into such a long time when you’re that age. Oh, how old was I really back then I couldn’t tell. Really, there was no way of telling much of anything in those times. I can’t believe it to be so. It just couldn’t have been.

What could have been. That’s what people are always after when they talk about stories. The memories aren’t theirs even I wish they weren’t mine. Now, I keep talking about being up in that tree in the late 1930s. It wasn’t like it is now with so many ways to communicate. My hope is that now, with the technology as it is, we might not be in such a rush to take over lands and destroy what’s left of the world. This is not in memory I don’t think, this is very much real. What’s left in the world from memory. For memory.

Perhaps my parents put those memories in my head before they left me up in that tree. Oh, it was a cold day to be doing that. The seasons changed so quickly then. It was the last day of winter, but still, they shouldn’t have left me up there like that. With all of that happening inside of the tree. Those ants marching night and day. The squirrels all fighting for the few nuts that were left at the very top of the tree. All of them had such tired legs from the long winter. My legs were fresh to be sure, but I wasn’t skilled enough to pick those nuts from the top of the tree. You’re still writing all of this down though, yes? You said you’ve be documenting this experience? What kind of project is this again, I can’t remember everything right now, so you’ll have to come back. My throat gets soar when I talk too much. Did you bring me that juice we were talking about? Yes. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate it.

We’ve talked about how I got down from the tree already, no? I can’t remember much except for the fall, but that’s not the interesting part. What’s really amazing is the time spent inside the tree. In the tree rather. These were the memories that were mine, not planted inside of me. They had to be mine because none of my family was up there with me. All of my memories are my own and not created for me. I wish I could remember what was created for me instead of what happened to me when I got down from the tree. I’ll tell you that tomorrow. Are you coming back?

Transcript end here.

My talks with the woman in the nightgown gave me some grounding in the city. Memory. She kept talking about that. Kept talking about what was hers and what didn’t belong. Got me to thinking about what was mine and what didn’t belong inside of my own head. Who knows how these things go. I couldn’t be sure. There were many papers to write before that weekend ended, but it was still Thursday and I knew that no matter what I did, I’d just mess around until the last possible moment and do the work.

How many degrees had I earned doing other people’s work for them? Couldn’t afford to go to school myself and my grades weren’t good enough to go for free, but I still managed to learn more than the rest of them by doing their work for them. For a price. Everything had that big price tag on it and I think that once I realized that – that everything could be bought and sold super quick, I’d be able to figure it out. And I did. The guy who hired me loved me and paid me well enough so that I’d stop temping.

It was a big stretch for me because temping is how I made the majority of my cash. Being settled in one gig was tough, but I didn’t have to to go into an office. I’d spend my days wherever I wanted in Hollywood while the rest of the world around me worked. I’d constantly have a back back on with books packed inside. Not my books of course, but the ones that others paid for and then paid me to read and bust out a paper for them. Of course, they’d put their names on the top, take the grades, then slide into the jobs that waited for them afterwards.

How much wealth had I created out there? It might have been me creating the who infrastructure of capitalism this entire time. Could have been the very center of commerce. Trickle me down and let that ride. Funny that there might be some folks who thought it better to protest me. The protesters would come later. The more more money I made off of other people’s wants at security, the more I realized that security itself was a sham. It was all fear based – that the world would drop away from them once they no longer had a steady source of income. Drop away. Can you imagine such a thing? For me, I’d dined at the 99cent store and put together enough change to get a 49 cent cheeseburger, so loosing jobs never concerned me. Now, now I had that very thing that most people dream of:

A Niche. Experience doing something and doing it well enough that people would never stop needing you. It’s in human nature to cheat if they know a system is in place. For me, the college system was a great place to be a middle man. I knew that the most important part was the education, not the name on the bottom of a resume. I soaked it all up and got paid well. By the time I was in my 3rd year of doing it, I must have stored enough information in my brain to have multiple Master’s Degrees. I should have stopped there, but that’s not what humans do.

The more I learned, the more I needed to know. Now, here’s the key I think: When you start to wish for something, the universe has this odd way of giving you exactly what you need. It’s what happens when you seek something. My brain was full and I couldn’t remember so much. Well, I could remember some – but not all. What good was it going to do to remember some and not all. I didn’t want to go back and start reading all of those papers that I had written for those college kids. I didn’t have time for that. All of that information I wanted access to. Like those politicians up there on the television who I saw everyday. They had access to it all anytime they needed it. I wanted that.

So, I did what those who needed help from me did. I sought someone out.