The Walk is a Process

Route to writing. Passed Cheeseboard. Woman waiting at flowerstand and bank on a crate. 845a. Cold. I know I don't have anything but bills and I don't want to give bills. I look for her eyes. I smile and say good AM.

At first I think she says, "Free Spirit" I don't know why. The anomaly makes me laugh at myself. And then I correct myself, putting the words back into her mouth and remembering the name of the paper. Street Spirit.

She doesn't smile. She doesn't blink. I later imagine that she has developed peripheral vision to tell without direct glance if someone is reaching to give money. I brush off the snub in a few steps--the time it takes me to compare her blank stare to her pronouncement, "Street Spirit," and then to the work at hand.

The Golem, Spirit of the Street

Street Spirit. I repeated the name of the paper to myself. The connection for the boy of the Golem to his life in Chicago and the US.

He is familiar with the men who live beneath the El. They have been friendly and they have been frightening. When he sees the Golem for the first time he is put at ease by his past experiences. The instance of the Golem doesn't frighten him.

The boy is capable of navigating from real to mystical in the blink of an eye. --But is it from one to another? Or is he swimming in a soup of both?

The Walk

The walk is a process. Does it come too early to be of use? Not of use--rather to enable me to use it to tell the story rather than to exposition it? The gearing is totally different for the two, narration and exposition. Trying to turn exposition into narration is frustrating to both the writer and the reader. At the same time, naked exposition can be embarrassing.

What is the process the boy is going through?
Get the cell phone (beat the impending rains).
"Call" for help on the phone.
First view of the Golem (--injection, plant the boy's interest in MX).
Mental map of the city.
Establish El Patroncito, Adara.
Both parents dead. Mother long and slow. Father sudden, quick.
(-->but what is the implication that forces him to process constantly?)

These do not represent a process. This is only one layer of the process. There is a physical coordinate to each of the above steps.

Coordinate Points

• Casa
• Church
• Plaza, Zocolo, Colectivo Row
• Creek, canal, storm drain
• Market
• Hillside, longer views of area
• Internacional de las Americas "faster" road, no shoulder (to Chamula or to el Jardin satelite?)
• Fields, rain clouds
• Rain
• Cocodrillo