Wednesday, September 29, 2010

New York, New York

These little town blues, are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it- in old New York
If i can make it there, I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you - New York, New York

- Frank Sinatra, Exceprt taken from his song "New York, New York"

What is the meaning of "make it there?"

A. to win, to succeed
B. to get to a particular place

You decide.

Hint: The New York rat race is sweeter when you enjoy the ride.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A sweet smell, the old gas station

In 1940 the inheritance of their mother finally came to the Quintero girls. She had died tragically ten years earlier and left her five daughters to their grandmother’s care. The Andean regional capital of San Cristobal knew the Quintero women for two important reasons: their classic beauty and their business savoir-faire.

Rosa’s faithful chauffer had sent word of a family emergency that would keep him from driving La Doña to her appointment in the town’s center. Above all, Rosa was a woman of her word, even if it meant riding the bus to her meeting. But Doña Rosa never did make it to see her friends in the center. In a jolt of the vehicle through the hill sides, La Doña flew out of the hind door, wearing her long pearl necklace and lace gloves. Unaware of the shrieks from the passengers, the bus driver rode his loud machine for five miles before he realized a human body dragged from the rear. No person deserved such an end, much less a lady.

The girls sat around the old oak table, they had 25 pesos to their name and a casona to remind them of their family’s gone glory. Aida, the older sister, stood up to her full height (she had learned young that a six-foot-tall woman did not need much to command respect in a city where most men came up to her ribs).

“I think it best to split the money and sell the house”

Her implacable tone scared the cat, who at her statement’s end ran to Carmen’s lap at the end of the table.

“Aida, darling, have you considered all our options?”

Though the sweetest of them all, Carmen knew how to manipulate a situation like a master orchestrator. She gently placed the cat on the floor and approached her sister, reaching out to caress her lovely brown curls,

“The rooms facing the back street are useless to us. Let’s turn them into stores and rent them out. We’ll have ourselves a good income without moving a finger.”

It was little use arguing with a logical solution to their predicament and, besides, nobody could deny Carmen her wishes. Not even an Amazon like Aida.

That was the moment that sealed my family’s life, almost 45 years before my mom and dad rushed to the hospital for my birth. La Casona would be divided. The main patio and adjacent rooms would accommodate the sisters and grandmother while the other wings would be sold.

The front of the house became my grandfather’s gas station once he and my grandmother, Carmen, settled down to build their own home. A gift and business, my grandmother promised her husband, would allow them live well and peacefully.

That corner gas station, at the city’s highest hill, on the main street made my grandfather eternal. Even after his death in 2000, people refused to believe of his passing, insisting that the week before they had seen him, Don Simeon, leaning on his wooden chair, doodling on his notebook and pumping gas under the blazing sun without so much as a spot on his chaste white shirt.

Never underestimate the power smell has over the human memory. To this day, as I pump gas into my own car—thousand and thousands of miles away from that Andean mountains in Venezuela, where Simeon met an elegant green-eyed girl named Carmen—I can close my eyes and imagine running around that corner gas station, at the city’s highest hill, on the main street as grandpa leans on his favorite chair waiting for the next customer to pull in for some gas.

Setting Exercise (I)

Once, at a bar, I met a girl who had just finished her master's degree. I was feeling good, so I asked "in what?" The answer was Human Geography. At that point I tilted my head slightly in surprise, wondering what it actually meant. I could most likely reduce her 2 year master's to thirty seconds (not to mention save her $80,000) by telling her that everyone knows that human populations tend to be most dense around bodies of water. Instead I asked, "so, what? You research population demographics and help decide where to put the next McDonalds?" She kind of laughed it off and continued sipping her tequila sunrise.

I'm still not exactly sure what one does with a Master's in Human Geography, but this moment served as a catalyst for the chain of thoughts that followed:

I choose to live here, in this city, in this neighborhood, in this specific apartment. If I don't like my neighbors or my property manager, I can move somewhere else. I choose to work for a specific employer, in a specific area, with a specific schedule in mind. This too, I could change. I choose to speak with certain people as I encounter them when I am walking down the street, checking the mail, or swimming at the pool. I choose where I bank, where I buy groceries, where I fill prescriptions, and where I receive medical care. In these ways we fence ourselves in to a certain comfortable box. In these ways we try to control our environment. Which leads me to my next point...

There are very few universal settings, and by that I mean places where you encounter people from every walk of life. You probably aren't going to run into a crackhead at a private golf club, and you won't find an A-list celebrity walking alone in the ghetto. These are not believable scenarios. Where would you have the setting for a situation where anything goes?

A gas station. Think about it. Anyone with a car needs to fill up for gas. Even people without cars stop in for lottery tickets or to grab a 40. This also leads to beggars hanging around outside, knowing that a new customer will show up every minute with possible spare change. Additionally, gas stations are vulnerable to robberies since they generally have a small staff and minimal security. They occasionally attract drug users stopping in for paraphernalia such as blunt wraps and lighters. Very strange and funny things seem to happen at gas stations because they introduce characters who don't necessarily cross paths at any other junction.

The assignment is simply this:

Create a short story that occurs at a gas station.