Breakthrough

Seriously No Sprinkles

As per usual, the breakthrough with the new story happened 12 days into my holiday. I’ve written two false starts, thirty pages of backstory and a bunch of notes (unheard of for me) and finally, finally, yesterday I got traction. I still don’t know how it will go or where it will end, but it’s going and at last I am in a space where I’m able to go with it.

Same thing happened last May, with Jake. This one in no way will be finished before I return to work, but now it has teeth.

Phew.

My third chai latte comes from Serious Coffee, two blocks down from the Cook Street Starbucks. The shop’s on a par with Moka House in that it is also locally owned and the chai is equally as good as yesterday’s … sans sprinkles. That’s the one (trivial) complaint about Serious Coffee, a chronic condition that has led to us code-naming the place “No Sprinkles”. If I was truly serious about coffee, doubtless sprinkles would be frowned upon anyway. Their chai is foamier than Moka House’s and it cost .50 cents less than yesterday’s, which cost less than Bucky’s, so Serious Coffee is the better deal for a comparable chai ... if you don't care about sprinkles.

I also noticed while awaiting my drink that they have poetry/prose readings and open mic on the third Monday of each month. I know what Nicole would say: “Ru, check it out!” I just may do – coincidentally, the next session is this Monday at 7:15. Come early, get a drink and hang out in the back corner to see what evolves. I’ve got the email address at least; I’ll get on their mailing list for sure.

In other news, a nearly-100 year old message in a bottle was found on the beach in Tofino this week. It took almost a century to bob its way up from the San Francisco/Seattle shipping route (it probably came by way of Australia). The year is 1906 as seen through the glass, and the ship’s name and location was named, so research is in progress by the fellow who found it. I mention it mostly because Ter glanced at me and wryly quoted her own message to be discovered in 2113:

“September 2013 – Roberto Luongo is still a Vancouver Canuck!”

Bwahahahahahaha! A little hockey humour to warm us up for the 2013/14 NHL season, the exhibition series of which begins on Monday.

It’s been a long summer.

Chai du Jour

3.5 of 5

Moka House this morning, strategically located across from the Starbucks in the village. They don’t do a chocolate chai, so I sprinkled chocolate powder on top of a regular chai and proceeded to sip and scribble. They brew it from Mighty Leaf tea but they foam it up thick and creamy, so compared to Bucky’s and Teavana, I give it a 3.5. Tomorrow I’ll see how Serious Coffeeʼs stacks up against the competition. 

While I was sipping, I made notes galore about the angelsʼ realm. I had a blazing revelation yesterday and, as usual, nothing is as I suspect. I had to handwrite it, though, before I forget anything important. This story has got me in a bit of a tizzy given that a) itʼs coming out of sequence, which wrecks my neatly ordered method of starting at the start and writing through to the end, and b) the realm with which I am dealing is wilder than I imagined it would be. Not that I had much to go on before I began; angels donʼt get a lot of air time in Sunday school. Aside from delivering the occasional heavenly message or dropping off a set of golden plates for translation, they were pretty much left unaddressed … which frees me to write what my characters describe. All my children are interesting, but I am developing a special fondness for Shade. He is literally caught between two worlds and has been a party to this one long enough to become fearful of an inevitable outcome, yet his heart drives him toward Cristal in spite of it. I donʼt yet know what the point of the story will be, but I found this scrawled in my notes and it seems to capture the essence of the piece: 

They cannot be together

but they must be together

because they are lovers

from the dawn

of time