The Writer (2 page)

“If you always have a pen
and paper with you, if you’re always thinking about that next thing
you’re going to write, if you have a bunch of papers or files
filled with ideas, if you absorb experiences collecting them like
butterflies for your next poem or book, then…you’re a Writer. So,
are you?”

She looked at me
wide-eyed, expectant. A writer or not, I could not imagine wanting
to let her down. I sat there, coffee in hand, staring at her
blushing cheeks, her ruby red lips.

“I guess,” was my
deep-thought answer.

“Great!” she exclaimed,
raising her hands over her head. “That’s great! Can I read some of
your stuff?” She smiled.

I started sweating. My
stomach clenched, my hands started getting moist. I did not
actually write for anyone to read. Did that make sense? All I could
do was write in my journal... I do not believe I had ever written
any essay, outside of University classes anyway.

“I don’t have anything on
me…” I replied.

“Oh…” She looked at me
suspiciously for a few minutes, then dropped the subject, and
smiled again. “Whatever…”

She got up and charged
into her small studio. “Come,” she said.

I followed her in. We had
to close the door behind us, to fit into it properly. It was not
that small, just very encumbered by her many endeavours. Some
people paint with tubes, she painted by the bucket.

Apparently, she regularly
visited the “Reduce to Clear” sections of paint depots, where she
bought paint that people brought back, because they were the wrong
colour and so on, for ridiculously cheap prices. Of course, the
colours were sometime surprising, but by mixing them, she came up
with all sorts of unique and interesting colours.

At this point, she was
mostly painting on wrapping paper that she would find in packing
boxes. She would stretch them out whichever way she could, paint
them, and roll them up like parchment once dry. I had seriously
never met anyone like her.

Across the ceiling of her
studio was a washing line, on to which she pegged her wet art. I
imagined her climbing up and down the ladder that was resting
against the far wall, next to her window: paint dripping all over
the floor, all over her. I could not help but stare down at the
floor, noticing how perfectly clean it was.

“I don’t hang my paintings
up there when they’re dripping wet…,” she said, reading my
mind.

“I know,” I answered
half-embarrassed.

I made my way closer to an
incomplete painting that was sitting on her drawing table. It was
quite stunning. Of course, my opinion was entirely biased, as I
knew nothing about paintings, but even so, her art still managed to
evoke something in me.

I looked closer. Joy was
attempting to sketch the realistic portrait of a man, behind which
laid a cubism-styled forest of Magnolia trees. I had never quite
seen anything like it. I could not possibly describe the colours
she was using as they were each unique in their own right, but a
mixture of pinks, browns and greens were found
everywhere.

“What do you think?” she
asked.

“It’s
different…”

“Thanks,” she replied,
blowing on her coffee.

She slowly made her way to
the lounge, and I followed suit. She started up her laptop and put
some music on. I envisioned her listening to some Jazzy funk style
beat, but to my surprise, “Easy Listening” seemed to be more to her
liking.

I sat on the edge of one
of the two couches and slowly looked around, memorizing every
detail I could. Crystals, African statues, odd-looking statues
littered her shelves.

“Red?” she
asked.

“What about
red?”

“Wine,” she
laughed.

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
Definitely...”

“Not a wine drinker, I
presume,” she said pouring some in a big fish bowl of a
glass.

“All the time…”

“Is that
right?”

“No. Not really...” I
said, extending my hands to encircle it. With my luck, I would
spill it all over her white carpet; nothing like drinking half a
bottle in one serving to get a good taste of something.

I smiled,
“thanks.”

She sat next to me, her
dark eyes searching my face. I held my breath. “What?”

She tilted her head
slightly, and smiled. “You like me, don’t you?”

My mind went blank again.
I just stared in disbelief at her question. Who asked outright
things like that?

“I like that you like
Blade Runner,” was the best I could come up with under highly
stressed conditions.

She laughed harder, almost
coughing out the coffee she had just sipped. She nodded and leaned
slowly toward me. “Do you like me?”

I opened and shut my
mouth, twice. Words caught in my throat. “Do you want me to like
you?” I asked her. There was nothing like turning a question around
to buy some time.

“Are you sure you’re not a
Psychology Major?” she grinned.

She finally left it at
that, though I am sure all the sweating and blushing somewhat gave
me away. I smiled back, and we ended up watching some bad
television until we fell asleep.

Chapter 5

The next morning, when I
woke up, it took me a while to orient myself and remember where I
was. A sudden pang of panic overwhelmed me, after looking around
and not recognizing a single thing. I dove straight into anguish
next when I could not even remember which day of the week it was,
let alone if I had a class to attend.

Whether or not I liked to
admit it, I was a responsible student and it just felt “wrong” not
to attend class. That said I had a feeling Joy was going to be a
bad influence on my studious habits and a Great inspiration for the
Writer I wanted to become.

The smell of toast, burned
toast mind you, brought me to the kitchen. “Sorry,” she said. “I
really suck at this cooking thing…” She laughed, dumping the bread
carcass into a compost heap she had in a bucket under the
sink.

She got more bread out,
shoving it into the experimental laboratory that was her toaster. I
felt sorry for each slice. From the looks of it, their predecessors
had not only been heat tortured, chopsticks had also prodded them,
as Joy had tried to pull them out.

I grabbed the cup of
coffee she handed me. “Thanks for that, I’m not really hungry
anyway…”

It’s Friday, I thought to
myself; 10am, Art History elective. Ah well.

I sat at the table slowly,
Fate had decided for me today. Then, I decided to get up again,
just to make sure she really did think I was strange. “Do you have
somewhere to go?” I asked suddenly embarrassed for still being here
this late in the morning. “I’m sorry. You should have just woken me
when you got up. I don’t want you to be late for anything because
of me.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry
about it, if I intended to get to class, I would have just kicked
you out.”

I suddenly felt awkward.
Then again, this meant she wanted me to stay. “Oh okay…” was all I
could come up with as a response.

“I should probably get
going anyway,” I added.

“Where are we going?” she
asked.

I starred for a few
seconds, until my mind caught up with the fact that she was
planning to spend some more time with me. I could barely put two
words in a row, let alone a full-length sentence, so did she not
have anything better to do with her time?

“Are you going to let me
in on the conversation you’re having with yourself?” She
asked.

“Sorry” I said. “I was
just thinking that I need to get home, shower and
change.”

“Sounds good,” she
replied, putting her cup in the sink.

It dawned on me then, that
she had showered herself and changed. How had I not heard any of
it?

“You sleep like a big
snoring rock,” she said.

Great, I snore.

We walked slowly, in minus
30˚ weather again to the metro. I could not believe she was
actually going to follow me home. I ran the state of the house,
through my mind. Was there anything embarrassing lying around
somewhere in full view? Probably, I would need to ask her to wait
outside while I did a quick tour of the place.

“What are you thinking
about?” she asked.

“Nothing...” I
said.

She shook her head. “If
you wrote down half of what you think about, you’d have a book by
now.”

I smiled. “I doubt
it…”

We were now sitting warmly
in the Metro. “People like to read about things they can identify
to, real emotion is what captivates an audience.”

“What do you mean?” I
asked.

“I mean… raw emotion is
the common thread among us. Regardless of our background, culture,
and life experience, we all feel. Most people crave Love. We all
want to know ourselves, have direction. We all want to get a
glimpse of the big picture, what the point of all this
is…”

“True.” What else could I
say? She had just planted a seed in my thoughts.

I looked at this beautiful
mysterious creature sitting next to me. I felt just by being with
her, I was on the verge of something big. It is hard to explain.
Have you ever felt that someone you were with, held the keys to
something breathtaking, mysterious, life changing? I felt like
Mulder about to open a door with little green men behind it – the
portal to one’s life quest.

We made our way to my
place, my very small unfashionable apartment. I politely asked her
to wait at the door, while I ran around inside like a maniac
picking up rubbish from the floor.

Moments later, she made
her way to my desk, which was in perfect order. I stood proudly
next to it.

“How do you do it?” she
asked, apparently shocked at the neatness of it.

“I never let it get out of
hand in the first place” I began.

“No, I mean, how can you
create in such a constricted atmosphere,” she asked, positively
perplexed. “Passion is Chaos! When you’re burning with ideas and
are jotting them all down, where do you put all those papers? Or do
you just write like a speedy robot on your laptop?”

“Oh. I write on papers
sometimes. I just organize them here in my folders.” I opened a
desk drawer to show her.

Nice and neat little
pieces of papers were stacked sideways in their own little story
folder compartments.

“If I don’t organize my
papers, I won’t ever find them again. I write my thoughts whenever
they come to me, hence the paper napkins you see in
there…”

“
I see…” she
said.

We both stared at each
other for a moment. I went to shower, while she read bits and
pieces of my notes.

“I can’t believe how
perfect your sentences are…,” she shouted across the
house.

“Thanks” I replied from
the bathroom, where I was finishing getting dressed.

“Seriously,” she said, “it
feels like you looked up every single word in a Thesaurus,” she
laughed.

There is nothing wrong
with being concise.

“You have lots of good
ideas… Have you started on any of the stories themselves
yet?”

I walked into the room,
where she was just sitting cross-legged on the floor now,
surrounded by my stories.

“No, not really…” I
replied.

“When did you start this
specific project?” she asked, pointing to one of the
folders.

“A while ago,” I said. The
heat of the spotlight beaming down on me was getting me
uncomfortable.

Silence crept between
us.

“You take everything so
seriously. Art is meant to be fun… Writing, painting,
Romance…”

I laughed. “Romance is Art
now?”

“It can be…”

We looked at each other
for a while, saying nothing.

Chapter 6

When reality bites, it
takes a whole chunk out of you. As I sat there, watching the
lecturer’s monkey walking up and down the aisle, I knew I was in
trouble. Looking over the exam I was about to hand back, I knew
reality would come crashing down on me soon enough.

I had not been in school
for weeks. Professors were probably thinking I had joined the
circus by now, considering the quality of the disappearance act I
was presenting them with. I did feel quite sorry for the people
that kept being paired up with me. The last person I had to fill
out an assignment with actually told me she would write it all
herself. She preferred the extra work to the stress of wondering if
I would submit my share of the work on time. I could not really
blame her.

That being said, I managed
to survive my semester, even pass my courses. By summertime, I was
on a high. Of course, you would probably not notice it, but inside
I was floating on a cloud.

Joy decided that we needed
to travel and explore the world, get some real inspirational
creative juices that only came through experience: in other words,
backpacking.