Coffee And A Paper

Often I have written about how much I long to spend more time in nature, and what that offers me in times of stress and trepidation.  Those who know me at all know that I am a very sociable person, but from time to time I shrink away from people.  I was once that small child who hid behind his mother’s legs, too shy to say even ‘hello’ to someone who may as well have been the friendliest person in the world, and I couldn’t tell you why.  Today, I have no trouble introducing myself to strangers, often flitting about in a crowded room, the proverbial social butterfly that I am.  I remember people, both faces and names in most cases, and I have been known to know somebody at every function I attend, be it a professional development course, wedding reception, birthday party, school reunion, or whatever event I happen to be attending.  Sure, I might not know these people as intimately as I would my family or close friends, but I have always tried to make it a point to remember people, and to smile and greet them if I meet them by chance someplace unawares.  We like it when people remember us.  I always feel better about myself if someone I recognize sees me and smiles.  At least I made a decent enough impression the last time we spoke.  You have to take things like this as small victories.

Still, I like being alone.  Solitude is something I crave, like coffee or Old Dutch chips.  I long for moments when I can just think by myself, without worrying about the complicated nuances of conversation handicapping my thought process.  It’s easiest to get your own points across when no one is there to rebut.  Maybe that’s why I took up blogging.  All the same, I enjoy listening to others, and look forward to engaging conversations.  But once in a while, it’s great to just be silent, think about what surrounds you, and reflect.

What better place to find solitude than in a big city?  It’s true, there are more people there than in a small town or in nature, but when you walk around in a city of any significant size, particularly one with a downtown core, people are more likely to ignore you, simply because you are just one of potentially tens of thousands who at first glance look all the same.  In a city, I have observed that people aren’t necessarily rude per se, but are so focused on where they need to be, there is simply not enough sensory time to take in their surroundings, and that includes other people.  What is often mistaken for apathy—for instance, if someone gets mugged while passers-by simply walk on, may well be a lack of sensory application.  Of course, some people are self-centered, but entire populations of people can’t be that ego-centric, can they?  What becomes the norm is most likely to be overlooked.

Nothing can better afford the aspiring writer a glimpse into human behavior like walking casually in an urban center.  If you have no place to go, you all of a sudden have lots of time to look at what’s going on around you.  Ever walk down a busy street only to discover a shop, restaurant, park, or attraction you had no idea existed?  I have lived in Fredericton—a small city to be sure—for almost twenty years, and I still discover little nooks and crannies I had no idea were ever there.  It makes me wonder how many great diners, coffee shops, or second-hand stores I have missed all this time, not to mention how much money I might have spent in places like these.  On a recent trip to Bangor, a friend and I discovered the second-hand music shop of our dreams, which the clerk informed us had been there for over fifteen years.  That great epiphany, that ‘where have you been all my life’ moment rang too true the day I first walked in the door of what may as well have been my own El Dorado.

Writers need a deep understanding of a great many things if they want to be successful.  I always felt that to be a good writer, I had to be good at research.  So I made it a point to read up on topics of which I knew relatively little, particularly if I had planned to use that knowledge in a story.  No one wants to read a story that doesn’t feel authentic.  It occurred to me recently that authenticity in my writing and internet research don’t necessarily go hand in hand.  At the end of the day, as an author, I have the right to manipulate my story as I please.  I’m not currently writing any historical fiction, so the sky’s the limit.  Where I have found my writing in need of research is in the resource of humanity itself.  If you pay attention to people, you can better create characters worth knowing.  That’s why it pays to pay attention to human behaviours and interactions.  What better place to witness that?  Like any sportsman would say, if you want to catch fish, you need to go where the fish are.

I would love nothing more than to have unlimited funds to just wander.  I would be thrilled to wake up, walk down a street, buy a coffee and a newspaper and just sit on a park bench.  I’d even buy a bag of seeds to feed pigeons if the local bylaws allow it.  Or, if it’s raining, I would be content to sit in a local greasy spoon, with the same coffee and paper, just watching life happen around me.  Urban centers are a part of nature too.  It just happens to be human nature, not birds, trees, and a starry sky at dusk.  People stop for lunch, run errands, and even interact with each other sometimes during a busy morning in the downtown core. Cabbies flow in and out in their personal carriages, some adorned with photos and trinkets, others not.  Delivery vans pulled over at the curb with flour-way flashers frustrate drivers looking for a place to park, while unseen people in offices and stores are waiting patiently (or not) for what the Purolator guy has to bring.  Beat cops totter between parking meters, raising the ire of everyone who swears they were only a minute late as they clasp the parking fine between their rigid fingers.  Homeless people slump beside alleyways, curbs, and mailboxes, each with their own method of soliciting sympathy to their cause, be it a few coins, a sandwich, or a bottle of Listerine.  Some of them pick up cans.  Some play the guitar or harmonica.  Some just hold their cap for a donation, resigned to defeat.  Sometimes people don’t ignore them; a few will even grant them their wish.  Some will make it a point to deliberately berate them.  A few callous folks might even steal from them.  For better or worse, it’s all human behavior, and every single person exerts their own character.  If you take little snippets from all of them, you can cobble together some very complex, entertaining characters, more or less fictitious, but like any legend worth retelling, always based around some matter of fact.

I was never interested in studying psychology.  I was not prepared to stand in line at 2am to register for a course, which in the early nineties was how it was done.  I took a sociology course, and hated it.  I have nothing against philosophy, and in fact I enjoy reading it for leisure once in a while, but learning about Karl Marx and Max Weber bored me to tears.  While these disciplines offer much in terms of understanding human behaviours, I have found that I needn’t have paid to take a course to learn about people.  In retrospect, I went to university for the first four years primarily to learn about myself.  How I interacted with other students, whether it was in residence, class, or socially after hours, shaped who I am today.  When surrounded by so many fascinating people, I was able to store away those little snippets of character traits to fill a lifetime of novels.  It’s just a matter of applying the right characters to the right characters, if you get my meaning.

If I had those unlimited funds, I would so much like to visit far away cities, like Ernest Hemmingway did in the twenties.  I am admittedly not a fan of Hemmingway’s novels (I find them flat and directionless, generally speaking), but what he did better than most was to define his characters as though they could climb right out of the pages and have a conversation with you.  I prefer his short fiction, because the whole point is to develop the character as a mini-portrait, and the whole point of the story is up for debate.  Good writers let the readers decide.  What I have surmised is that physical description and wordy prose don’t necessarily do the trick.  The real art is in letting the reader learn about the character through their personality, and you can’t fake that.  If you can’t feel for them, you just won’t care about them.  They become anonymous passers-by on the street.  When you put the book down, you want to smile when you meet them again (or hate them if they’re villains, of course).  You’ll want to converse with them, ask them what they were thinking in Chapter 10, or maybe even punch them in the face.  They become active participants in your imagination.  Just think, all this time, they were all around you.  As an author, I want most to be a good host, introducing my guests to new people, and hopefully forging a friendship or two that will last a lifetime.  A hot cup of coffee and a paper could do as well.