The Day of the Dead

The French don't celebrate Halloween. They celebrate the Day of the Dead, tomorrow, November 1st. It's a day for honoring the deceased, remembering their lives.

We're back in Paris. The train ride home yesterday was less than comfortable. There was an accident on the line south of Avignon that made most of the trains run late. Ours was running over two hours late, so we boarded a different train (along with everyone else). Altogether, I think two trainloads of passengers were left stranded and they all crowded onto this one train. We didn't get seats. Fortunately, we were able to find stools in the restaurant car, but they weren't exactly comfortable and the ride was close to three hours.

The scenery was beautiful though. We were facing the window and it was actually very nice for about the first hour. After that my butt began to complain. In any event, we made it. It's cold in Paris. Seems colder than when we left, but maybe that's just because it was so warm in Avignon. It's crisp up here—feels like winter coming on.

The weather is evoking new thoughts about my book. It opens in winter and I notice that as the cold settles around me, I find it kind of exciting. It causes me to think in a slightly different way about my story and somehow makes the whole thing seem closer, more tangible.

I was trying, yesterday, to explain where I'm at in my process. It seems to me that I've been dumping ingredients into my pot since arriving. One thing after another, pretty indiscriminately and without much thought or concern for the implications. I feel like I'm cooking a stew or a witch's brew. Now, I seem to have come to the moment where I'm beginning to taste this concoction and wonder what I think. What have I got? What does it need? What am I after?

I'm absolutely looking for the opening lines. I'm trying to determine if they are going to stay as they are or change, and if they're going to change (which I'm pretty sure they are) then how and how much? Like I said yesterday, I'm pretty fascinated with the idea of giving the narration over to the fortune teller, to let her make the comment about how the stones of Père Lachaise weep for the dead. The questions that arise when I make that choice have to do with logistics. I need to know where she is, who she's talking to, what she's doing and when in time she's doing it. Is she alive or dead? Is she a ghost? She died in 1843. She can't be alive for the whole of my story. So I'm thinking.

Thinking.

Thinking.

What I'm trying to say about the weather and the feeling I got in the backstreets of Avignon, is that something seems to be brewing (hence my brew pot) just under the surface. I can feel it, almost taste it and it seems to be in the weather in the same way it seemed in the streets.

When I first visited Père Lachaise, I said that I needed to go back in a storm. I don't know about the storm, but I do need to go back now that the weather has changed. The cold seems to be literally creating a new layer of emotional information. Memories? Familiarity? I'm note sure. Perhaps. It all depends on what one believes possible, doesn't it?

I think it's likely the book opens in Pére Lachaise, though it might open in the fortune teller's parlor. I suspect the piece I originally wrote about Père Lachaise—which I've changed dozens of times—is still not right, that as interesting as it is, it's off, not what it should be. Finding the beginning is always the most challenging piece for me, it seems. I had a great deal of difficulty finding the beginning of Requiem. It was the last major change I made to the book, changing the beginning yet again, settling finally on the hanging scene, which I had tried to put into more of a chronological telling, but couldn't. This is similar, though I'm at a much different juncture in my process. I'm at a point where I can't seem to go forward until I know where I'm starting from. It's all about framing, kind of like staging and then cropping a photograph. So. Here I am, like I said, thinking....