Backdating

Cheryl is still giving me grief. She doesn’t care that it’s Father’s Day, and I have enough grief of my own to keep me hidden in the darkest corner of the room.

The problem with any event that I enjoy enough to write about is that I’m so busy at the event, that I don’t have time to write the travelogues until very, very late at night—when I’m usually far too tired. I always think that I’ll eventually get it done, but as the night creeps up on me (and it’s one damned slow creep in the UP), I run out of energy.

Cheryl says that my public demands me to produce. I may need Cheryl some day. That’s what she told me anyway. So that means that I better write or she’s gonna smack me up.

Those of you who know her, realize that she’s not even in the UP right now. She left almost a week ago. Her body left, that is. Her voice is well implanted in my head, and she has programmed it to switch on and narrate what will happen to me if I don’t write travelogues. I’d share what she says to me, but it’s too ouchy scary.

All this has led me to thinking about how I write these things in the first place. I have a black notebook that I carry from conference to conference. The masses are either frightened that I’ll divulge what I’ve written down about them or horribly entertained by my completely factual construction of our encounters in the past. Try as she might, for instance, Cheryl will never leave that bagel with cheese behind.

In the past, after the events are over each day, I sit up even later with my notebook, transcribing the day’s events. And that’s the problem. Days only have 24 hours, and in the UP, you are tricked into thinking that the night is younger than it really is.

So this trip, I’m trying something different. Not so much by plan, as by the fact that this is just how things have fallen out. CIWIC is over. Everyone has gone home. Really they left days ago—Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m alone with my notebook, reconstructing the past by backdating and posting all my notes as if I wrote when things really happened. Actually, I did write my notes when things happened. It’s the entries that I didn’t get to write immediately.

I imagine many ifs: if I had a lighter laptop and lots of wireless, I would write these things as they happened online, rather than saving them all in my little black notebook. But we can’t all be Sordid Boi at C&W.

In many ways, this world I’ve set up is very sad. Everyone else has moved off, moved on, and I’m sitting in a studio apartment up on the hill reliving the past. I thought that I would get called to help with ECAC, but not a word has filtered up to me. I’m not sure when or where I’m needed. Maybe I’m not needed anymore? I dunno. I’m sort of rethinking this whole thing. Maybe it was a mistake to stay on. It’s so much quieter when everyone is gone and you’re all alone.

I should take advantage of the quietness and get some writing done. I still have over 100 pages to write, and the number of available writing days is quickly dwindling. But it’s so quiet, the lonely kind of quiet. And it’s Father’s Day, and I feel terribly sad.

Tags: tengrrl’s travelblog