the woman in the green hat

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

1. The woman in the green hat was not a gifted writer. Make that, IS not a gifted writer. She is never quite sure which tense to use, her grammar is always slightly off. Always. Grammar-offness as stylistic element. They dont teach that at the Gotham Writers Workshop, now do they? She puts on her glasses, she never took a writers class, gotham or otherwise. She just writes down whatever those voices tell her to put down. It is way too hot here, Yaletown has its usual boredom meets non-boredomness about it, she jumps on the Canada Line to make her way home. Writing, huh. She ponders, is this what she has sunk down to, scribbling useless prose about useless lives? Hers is inconsequential mumbojumbo, with tints of negativity, but without the sweeping brush of a Frans Kafka, without the sweeping brush of any middle-of-the-road semi-genius. She just types away in a dark room, hunched over, while she watches her life pass her slowly by. Writing, huh. not her forte, not anyones forte. She notices that her interface has an icon that makes you chose whether you want to use APA Sixth Edition or Chicago Fifteenth Edition, she ponders, last time she did this typinish writingish biz, there was no Style button. Anyhoo, keep on stringing yer yarn, she ponders, somehow jumping from being on the Canada Line to sitting in front of your laptop, seems slightly inconceivable, more like utterly inconceivable. She feels like barfing, it is way too hot to peddle your words against this machine. 2. Where lies the line tween fiction and non-fiction? Who knows? Maybe, paid categorizers in ivy towers have the answer, to her here, writing is writing. grocery lists are fiction, poems are nonfiction. Yep, as good a definition as any. What are T-shirt inscriptions then, text-messages,
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the woman in the green hat

nasrin khosrowshahi

2013

tweets? Are street-names literature? Yup, maybe, writing really is not her forte. It is so very hot, these days she watches a lot of SUPERSIZE vs. SUPERSKINNY, on You Tube, SECRET EATERS, she has now advanced to German diet documentaries, next she will tackle Danish ones. If you watch enough diet shows, you will become a Size Zero. By default. And it is still way too hot, August should be even hotter.