A new novel

I sent in a manuscript to a publisher today.  They'd expressed interest in the book (a short novel) based on the synopsis I'd emailed them.

Now to keep my fingers crossed and be prepared for rejection, or if the news is good, the possibility of revisions.  I've been writing a lot the past weeks —  emails, blog posts, private fiction — so further writing need not proceed from a cold start.

I can't say anything about the book right now other than to say it was written in the first half of 2022, before I was gripped by Il Vespaio fever. 

Also that in 2022 it felt like a book that I needed to get out of the way before I could indulge in the rest of my projects. 

The accompanying pastel drawing is of some limestone cliffs I photographed as we drove back from the Batu Caves to Kuala Lumpur in September 2022. I added the beach and the water. It is now a view of a tropical island, the world of my new novel.  

 © 2023 Lakambini Sitoy

My tough years in Denmark

I've gotten into an email conversation that means a lot to me, because it is with an actor in a movie from long ago, a movie which is one of my guilty pleasures to this day. 

***********************************************************************

He wrote: You write compellingly of the experience of the Ukrainian immigrants you teach.  Was that also your own experience when you moved from the Philippines to Denmark?

I replied: I don’t know where to begin. The move from the Philippines to Denmark was …complicated, and was carried out over several years, as I travelled back and forth between both countries, trying to figure out whether I wanted to be married to a Dane or not. In the beginning there was the usual euphoria of being in a new place – the romance of perfect Scandinavia. (Incidentally, the first European country I ever visited, in 2001, was Finland, and it was then that I fell in love with the whole Nordic shebang)

I was free and independent. Then came the realization that, with the move to Denmark, I had lost everything. Friends, network, career, a job, all my languages. Unless they are lucky enough to have found employment in a Danish company (in which case they can speak English to their heart's content) new immigrants must go through public Danish-language education, and it’s here that the breaking-in, or breaking-down, begins. My situation was complicated in that I was in Denmark on account of marriage (so the permanent resident requirements were harder to meet), and I am a youthful-looking Asian woman. So in 2008 I went from being journalist with a career and “one of the best Filipina writers of her generation” to being the Asian wife of an older man, categorized alongside “mail order bride,” “au pair” and “Bangkok prostitute.” I was the Asian woman no one would talk to at parties because maybe she didn’t even understand what was going on and it wasn’t worth the effort spelling things out to her.  

In time I learned to manipulate that “youthful-looking Asian woman” thing – but it was haaard.

*** 

I re-read what I'd written and wondered if I sounded angry. I hadn't meant to. Had I given away too much of myself? I don't think so. There is nothing here that I hadn't articulated to my friends (very often after a few sips of wine), and I do recall saying something very similar to this to the wife of a friend from way back (she a producer, he a filmmaker) when we met in Manila in 2022. With the few fellow writers and creatives that I've met in Europe, the sentiments are the same. Some have worse stories to tell.

The only difference is that I don't put this out on Facebook.  For many of us, Facebook is the place to curate the brighter side of life -- not that the life we put out on Facebook is a lie, but it's what we have after we've managed to cut away the unpleasantness (that all of us go through anyway). For some, Facebook is a place to bitch and trigger people. Not for me.

***

I continued: 

I’ve been writing “fan fiction” for myself (Note: Over the 2022 holidays). For the pure enjoyment of it. And certainly for the practice … when I haven’t written in a long time the words don’t flow as they should, and the writing becomes self-conscious. It helps me in my writing practice because I don’t have to worry about creating new characters nor scenarios (since these are alternate perspectives on earlier ones I created) and enables me to focus on the act, the art and the pleasure of putting my fantasies into words.  ...

I’ve been trying to write a book about the experience of migrating to Denmark for years and years. Most often a certain anger boils up and I have to put the task away. By practicing the craft of writing I hope to find the right balance between passion and distance. At some point in 2023, I’ll put aside the blog (A blog on the boys of Il Vespaio that I am slowly building) and find my way back to this book. I wrote a short novel for young people early in 2022, so I've gotten some recent practice already.

********************************************************

Now that these thoughts have been put into words, they are less frightening. 

And it's somehow easier to proceed with writing about the immigration experience to Denmark. I don't mean to be disloyal -- I am a dual citizen after all. But it speaks of how deeply we "newcomers in Denmark"  have been conditioned to believe that we are eternal guests in this country and must behave and smile and say thanks, that more than 19 years after I first set foot here, after 15 years of marriage and of being a dutiful and law-abiding citizen, I still worry about being labelled ungrateful and -- being a second-class citizen -- unworthy of speaking out.

An Il Vespaio (Hornet's Nest, 1970) blog

I have a new project: a fan blog titled "The Boys of Il Vespaio", with a subtitle that mirrors this (I ragazzi del Hornet's Nest -- is that proper Italian?) I first saw Hornet’s Nest in 1980, in a packed movie theatre in a small city in the Philippines.  It was the second time the film had played in Dumaguete; the first, according to an uncle, was in 1971 or so, and it was so popular back then people lined up just to get in.  We had no idea of the film’s many names, nor that Il Vespaio was the name originally given it in Italian and used during the filming (a working title, if you like).

I had just turned eleven when we saw the film; we had returned from a year in the States and were already very Americanized, not surprising since we had grown up on the campus of Silliman University, which had been founded by American missionaries in 1901. We spoke English, read only English books, and loved a good war flick -- there were lots of them from 10 and 20 years back, playing in the theaters.

My older sister and I fell in love with Hornet’s Nest, and we remembered all the scenes and all the lines. Everyone we knew had seen the movie, and the boys’ theme (composed by Ennio Morricone) was whistled in school corridors for months after that.

My sister and I had a shared fantasy world, and so we spent the next couple of years drawing and writing stories about the Hornet’s Nest boys, making them interact with other characters in that universe.

Because we never got all their names (much less the names of the actors who played them), we had to invent. And invent we did. We gave them new names and complete personalities, and in the process collapsed one boy into another and made two or three out of what had been one. Memory and imagination mixed.

Then as we got older, she and I fell out, and the old school notebooks and folders of drawings were put away and lay untouched for nearly 40 years.

I was at my childhood home in August this year, and finally called up the courage to open, first my box, and then my sister’s, with a view to photographing everything before it all crumbled to bits. So, filled with nostalgia, and sadness that many of the best notebooks were missing (my fault!) and that my sister was no longer around to help me remember our stories, I decided to re-immerse myself in that world once again.

The boys in this movie are virtually nameless. Ironic, because the end credits present us with a screenful of names: Franco and Tonio, Arturo and Mikko and Romeo, Silvio and Umberto... and so forth. But because few of them are ever called by name as the film progresses, the audiences never get to know who is who. By the 1970s, it was standard to designate a minor movie character with some descriptive phrase: "Bossman's accomplice" "Juggler" "Class child." But not so with Hornet's Nest. No "Lookout Boy", "Demolition Boy no. 2", "Boy who had to pee in front of the sentry." 

The list of first names was elegant and tantalizing -- it indicated that somewhere there had been a master plan where each boy, perhaps, had a back story, maybe even a character arc. 

At the very least, I wanted to match faces with names. My sister and I had had a whale of a time re-inventing the 15 teenagers of Captain Turner's Baby Brigade, but something was missing. I'd tried twice before, in 1989, when I found a VHS tape of the movie and made some awful color sketches of the boys, taking notes (no luck there) and again in 2012, when I purchased the Michael Avallone based-on-the-screenplay novel off E-bay (still no luck -- the familiar lines had been shuffled around so that attributed to two or three boys were lines spoken by just one in the film).

What was missing was the actors. I've never been the kind of person to watch a film without simultaneously imagining the production behind it. Today, I sit in front of the TV with a finger hovering over my device, and it's a rare movie that can compete with the IMDB. My older sister was the same, and we'd always been that way, so when the 15 Italian boys lost their luster (somewhat) we went on to invent the world of the film production, with results that are too ridiculous to go on the internet. Two smartass girls, 11 and 14... what do you expect?

So I decided to use a combination of social media and movie databases to match names to faces and try to find out who everyone had been and (hopefully) how they had come to be in Il Vespaio. I’d recently done a portrait project where I’d had to compare photos of some people taken today with images of them from decades ago, and I figured I knew how to study a face and how it changes with the years. I wanted to write about them, and how important they had been for me as a child (or a young girl), how vital to the creative side of me. I decided I would not make it one of those awful "Where are they now?" features that both feed, and feed on, ageism. It was enough to know who they all had been. Details of how they'd come to be in the movie, and a hint or two of the trajectory of their lives since would be an extra reward.

Did I succeed? Yes. Did I contact them? Well, only one, as of this writing (but hit the jackpot!). Social media feelers for a couple more.

The new blog is in progress, and will be public soon.

*** 

This post began as an email, which was sent on November 30  via web contact form to Dan Keller, who played Tekko. How I sweated over what to write him.  The resulting email conversation can be read on his website at: https://www.dan-keller.com/photos/1969-Vespaio/    I’m pleased  to say that as a consequence  of our exchange, Dan found more and more photos from his files and posted them on his Il Vespaio page. I’ve gotten his permission to share those photos on-line. The behind-the-scenes photo above is courtesy of Dan, and was taken by production photographer Claudio Patriarca.

Wayang golek puppets

On the way to Skælskør the other summer, something wonderful happened. We were driving through a road with fields to one side and houses on the other, and one of them — a farmhouse, actually — had put out a couple of tables covered in knickknacks, with a sign that said “Loppemarked” (flea market in Danish). At first glance it seemed to be the usual unwanted stuff that people set out in the summer — mismatched china, little figurines, smallish African masks. But lashed to the branches of the tree above the table, some things that were colorful and shaped like dolls. I cried to Vagn, “Stop!” and he pulled over. I scrambled out excitedly. A truck thundered past and the car rocked. I dashed across the road and ran my fingers distractedly over the figurines. I was searching for dachshunds; there were none. Stop collecting kitsch, I told myself.

Then the owner came over and Vagn stuck his head out of the car window and called, “Ask him how much the puppet costs”. And I looked up and saw what hadn’t registered at first because sometimes my brain stalls when I’m staring at amazing things right in the face. There were four wayang golek puppets lashed with wire to the tree branches, and they all had price tags unglamorously stuck to their beautiful heads. Each cost 25 Danish crowns. I wondered how many zeros were missing. But the man assured me that that was what he was selling them for. I looked in my wallet and it contained exactly 100 Danish crowns. I asked the man for help to loosen the wires and take them down. He said “This is the best one,” pointing to the large white-faced puppet with the wings.

But I wanted all four. I handed him the bill and he piled the puppets in my arms. I was smiling like a child. They had come, he said, from a woman friend “who had travelled a lot long ago” and brought them back to this farmhouse in the middle of Sjælland, and that these were the actual figures that were used in wayang performances and not some cheap knockoffs for the tourists. But I already knew that. The batik fabric of their costumes was faded in places, as though they had been standing by a window for decades. I thanked him and returned to the car. I couldn’t stop grinning. I was still talking about them when we drove into Skælskør.

This winter, I bought some modelling clay, the kind that is sold in 2-kilo cylinders and that only emerges in shops at the end of the year, when people start to make their own Christmas table decorations. I used some thick serger thread to cut the clay into four thick disks, then eased the sharp end of the bamboo stakes that run through the puppets’ bodies as far into the soft clay as they would go. Each stake end was shaped differently. When the clay dried after a couple of days, each puppet had its own stand, and I didn’t have to set them in glass bottles to display them.

Who could they be? Which characters? The pink-faced one is a demon – but who? Who is the large male with wings and a bird on his head? Maybe someone can tell me.

 

Cold and dark but alive

One thing I’ve been painfully aware of as of late is the rise in electricity prices. In Denmark it’s possible to see how much electricity costs per hour (we have this kind of arrangement with our provider; an alternative is to pay a fixed rate). We’re going through a cold spell, with temperatures below zero for several days now. The air is still, there is zero wind. In a country that draws on wind energy to keep its homes and buildings powered, this is bad news. Photo (a screenshot) shows the hour-by-hour cost of electricity today. Just a few weeks ago, during a particularly windy period, electricity prices were next to zero. Free electricity, at least for a few hours in the day.

Not that I’ve had the chance to enjoy the cold spell, vinterbarn style (winter child: taking long walks through a frozen landscape, camera in hand). I’ve had a bad cold since Sunday; something I must have picked up at Friday's Christmas party at work. I’m popping paracetamol to check my fever, swallowing spoonfuls of cough syrup to make myself sleep, resisting the impulse to take sumatriptan knowing it won’t make a difference. I’m not good for any writing or drawing at the moment, nor any school-related work, nor outdoor exercise, nor any exercise for that matter.

 It’s a bleak and dark December: we turn off all the lights in the house except where we are sitting/working. So do the neighbors. On our street, the Christmas fairy lights are conspicuously absent. And although we do what we can to save on electricity, we still have to pay the exorbitant cost of heating, which has just about doubled this year over last.

Yet this, from a December 12 article in Time magazine: “… at any given moment at least two and as many as ten million Ukrainians have no power, heating, or water because Russia is systematically targeting Ukraine’s utilities—its nervous system—with rocket and drone strikes.”

A bad winter this.

Got in touch with Daniel Keller (Hornet's Nest boy actor)

Daniel Keller (left) as Tekko-Paolo and Mauro Gravina as Carlo, Hornet's Nest (Il Vespaio), 1970

Things Bing did in 2022, #20.

Got into an email conversation with my CRUUUSH! My crush when I was 11 and then 12, that is. He was my favorite among the Hornet’s Nest boys – Daniel Keller, playing a character called Tekko in the credits but who is referred to as Paolo in the dialogue. In an attempt to find out more information about the film and its young actors, I sent him a long and heartfelt email – and to my elation, after a few days was rewarded with a reply. You can read about him here: https://www.dan-keller.com/ -- he is a registered nurse, app developer, computer programmer, jazz bassist, fabulous and articulate writer, and so many other things besides. 

I got his permission to use his Hornet’s Nest images, and in turn gave him permission to post our email exchange online. Read our emails on his Il Vespaio webpage (scroll to the bottom) https://www.dan-keller.com/photos/1969-Vespaio/ and check out some fantastic behind the scenes photos and more info about the production from Dan, whose memories were likewise awakened by my questions. (Hornet's Nest on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065850/ )

Fans of Hornet's Nest will remember him as the "Hey, capitano, give us a cigarette" kid.  Back in the day I wasn’t in the habit of over-thinking, so I just referred to Paolo/Tekko as “cute”. Now I would say it was his mischievous look, his vitality, that got me. The straight, fine, messy brown hair. And the smile. Throughout the film, the boys look mournful, or hard-eyed and dead serious, or laugh and jeer at the enemy. Paolo/Tekko is the only boy who really smiles.

Oh my god, seriously, how many tweens get to meet their movie actor crush, albeit on-line, but fortunately 42 years later (53 years later in his case) at an age when young people are finally able to handle it? 💓

100 Faces in 300 Days project, part 1

The aim of this project was for me to draw 100 faces in 300 days in my spare time. The cardinal rules: no grids, no tracing, no projectors, no lightboxes. I went out and bought a nice A4 sketchbook bound in black, and have used different materials so far: graphite seems perfect for the paper (Hahnemuhle D&S), but pastel (Rembrandt), charcoal, dry sanguine and sepia seem to work as well. Wax crayon, not so much. The subjects, for the most part, are people I happened to photograph on my travels, off in the margins of the photos. Blurry faces, to which I've added or strengthened detail. The objective was to study bone structure and how the features of a face reflect light. Regarding the ethics of the project, these pictures were taken years ago, when it was more common to take broad shots of a scene and include the people therein. The likenesses are not all that exact, and I doubt the incidental subjects would recognize themselves. I'm at Face 44 to date.

Bing did these in 2022

In a few weeks, we’ll start getting the Christmas letters, in the mail, typewritten single-spaced on three sheets of paper, and will be sending out our own. My husband writes them in Danish then translates them, and I proofread his English. There is space in each year’s letter for a few paragraphs recounting my year, but the project is on the whole his. He belongs to a different generation, one that still sets a store by newsletters like these, unlike mine, which has come to rely heavily on social media posts with their subservience to algorithms. A meme I found on Facebook, cobbled together by a Gen Xer like myself, probably, called such lengthy Christmas letters the annual humble brag. 

Okay then. Here is my very own “humble brag”, a run-down of the things I did that mattered a lot to me in 2022. Be warned: I’m inspired and might just elaborate on a few of them in future posts.

1. Began a “100 faces in 300 days” challenge: drawings on A4 and A3 paper of people I found in the margins of my travel photos dating back 10 or 20 years.  

2. Taught English to Ukrainian refugees.

3. Thought a lot about war and visited what had once been a war zone (Sarajevo). Rewatched two movies about boys bearing arms – Taps (1981) and Hornets’ Nest (1970)– both of them improbable, both resident in the realm of fantasy, yet with interesting similarities.

4. Edited a book written by my father.  

5. Visited my Philippine home two times. I went through my old drawings and stories, opening a box that hadn’t been touched in more than 20 years and looking at stuff I hadn’t seen in 40 years.  

6. Found the Hornet’s Nest boys as they are today (most of them, anyway) and was finally able to match faces to character and actor names, but for two or three. If you were a kid in the Philippines in the early 70s and early 80s, you will know exactly who the Hornet’s Nest boys were. Made a promise to myself not to post their current photos online unless with permission (that goes without saying, but I thought I would stress the point early on). Have not established contact with any of them.

7. Wrote my second novel in about six weeks, off and on. The best parts were tapped out while in a cabin with a view of the sea, on the island of Bornholm. No sightseeing was done on that week-long vacation, though Bornholm had originally been my idea.

8. Filmed myself speaking in Tagalog and Cebuano for a campaign video, a joint effort of Philippine writers in support of Leni Robredo’s candidacy for president of the Republic of the Philippines. But it was Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who ended up in Malacanang Palace.  

9. Began to wear pink. Again. For too long I had stayed away from this color, preferring black, maroon and navy, in an attempt to age myself and look “professional.” But in 2021-2022 pink took on a courageous new meaning in the Philippines – that of resistance against the vilification and belittling of women, including those with an excellent track record in public service.   

10. Served on a team that proctored the Medborgerskabsprøve and the Indfødsretsprøve, two high-stakes exams taken by those wishing to obtain permanent residency or citizenship in Denmark respectively.  

11. Visited Italy again. My husband and I went to Bologna and to Rome; last year we were in Sicily. Travelled to the Wadden Sea (the western part of Denmark) and from there to Germany. Visited the former Yugoslavia and  Malaysia as well.

12. Made new friends and kept old ones. A surprising number of these interactions occurred on Facebook.

13. Finally resumed my study of Spanish and took the first faltering steps into Italian. All this courtesy of Duolingo and Google Translate.  

14. Taught English to learners (mixed nationalities) at the A1 level.  A1 in the Common European Frame of Reference designates people who are “Beginners”. For some it is the first time they are shaping words in the Latin alphabet. It was an insights-rich experience. Prior to that, most of my students had been in the B1 to C2 range, C2 being the highest level in the CEFR.

15. Completed and delivered portraits of the 14 deans of the Silliman University Divinity School in time for the D.S.’s centennial celebration, and which were unveiled at the Silliman Founders’ Day celebration in August.

16. Got CoVID. On a bus heading to DTU (the Technical University of Denmark) of all places. I’d assumed that with three vaccinations and a recent trip to Italy behind me to test their efficacy, I would now be Covid-proof and that what I had was no more than an annoying cold. I slept on a mattress in the living room so as not to bother my husband with my coughing, and continued to work from home, even on days when I felt like shit. I only discovered what it was when, after over a week, I still had symptoms (albeit diminished) and so took a test to clear myself for a 12-hour workday helping to administer a Cambridge exam. 

17. Had my blood tested as part of a University of Aarhus study on the presence of Covid antibodies in the vaccinated. I’ve been a part of this study since March 2021. I feel proud to hold out my arm and brace myself for the prick of the needle in the interest of medical research.

18.  Lost 8 lbs without trying. I didn’t diet, but in the period right before I started writing my novel and during the writing itself, I couldn’t sleep and had no appetite. Ran on empty. Regained 3 or so lbs eventually, especially after the second visit to the Philippines and then on to Malaysia, but now I know what to do when I want to do it. Corollary: began to eat far less (and less meat!) than before. Let’s see what surprises the scale will have to offer, though, especially after the December chocolate orgy.

19.   Several times took a deep breath and disengaged myself from people and situations that required unfair self-sacrifice. Learned that it isn’t worth it to smile and endure. Took rejection in stride. Learned to say “no.”

100 people in 1 week challenge - Copenhagen in late fall

November has perhaps been the most difficult month for me since the move to Denmark -- it's when one comes to terms with the full impact of the loss of the light, with darkness coming even faster due to the end of summer time (aka. Daylight Saving Time). November – in all its gray, cold and wet meanness – is also the month our family observes my sister’s death anniversary. 

So I’m grateful that this month has been so productive for me, painting-wise. I’ve been painting in watercolors, in a little black book of 300gsm paper the size of a postcard. The book is so light I can have it with me on the train, using the travel time to sketch scenes in pen or pencil, which I then go over with watercolor when I get home. I’d started with landscapes, then cityscapes, often working from photos I took on my phone. But the last few days it’s been the people who populate those cityscapes, the blurry folk in the margins, the shadows in front of a church or a bar that, thanks to the magic of high-definition imagery, emerge crystal-clear on my phone screen when I zoom in on them. The move to people was probably prompted by a visit to the Hirschprung Collection, a museum in central Copenhagen that houses the work of prominent Danish artists from the 19th century, P.S. Kroyer among them. 

Trying to find out what the hashtag “urban sketching” signified, I stumbled upon the 100-people-in-1-week urban sketching challenge, which takes place in March each year (and is hosted by artists Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes). I decided to challenge myself to sketch 100 people in 7 days, from life (on the train) or from my own photos. In the process I rediscovered the pleasures of sketching directly with a pen, of line-and-wash (pen-and-ink, then watercolor over it, or vice versa), of using a brush pen then painting over the lines with watercolors and of painting directly with watercolors (without a preliminary pencil or ink drawing). I'm particularly pleased with the results of the latter.

I’m sharing some of those sketches with you. The challenge is ongoing – I have reached 81 people in 5 days, whiling away the otherwise tortuous hours spent on my train commute, and using the painting to keep productive on a day marred by migraine, medication-induced wooziness and joint pain. I am calling this series "Copenhageners."  💝

On the train: the last day people could ride public transport without masks.

On Købmagergade, Copenhagen

From 3 watercolor sketchbooks - 2021

 

Some of my watercolors from three 2021 sketchbook are in this post.  I used sets from Schmincke Horadam and Akademie and St. Petersburg White Nights, on Potentate and Hahnemuhle paper, painting out in nature and from my own photographs. While much of the world is in lockdown, we've been traipsing around Sweden and Denmark, masked for the most part, worried of course, but trying to make the best of it.

Oath-taking day - Day 14 of the Covid-19 lockdown

The Danish flag flies above the flags of the four other Nordic countries.
At Tønder, the border to Germany. Photo mine.

DAY 14 of the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark.

Today's the day I would've gone down to the municipal hall of Ballerup to take my oath as a Danish citizen, sealed with a handshake.

I don't know whether the state will choose to waive the handshake requirement or whether at some happy time in the near future the grundlovsceremoni will take place at last, setting in motion the process by which I may become a dual citizen of Denmark and the Philippines.

Eleven and a half years have elapsed from when I moved here, my mind made up at last, ending years of flying back and forth on short-stay visas. These past days I've been thinking a lot of what it means to be a naturalized citizen of this country, as well as the things that I had to give up when I left mine. Of the moments of disappointment, the loss of status, the self-doubt, the irrevocable choices, the stymied expectations (oh, I didn’t become American after all!), the burning of bridges. But also the rediscovery of talents, the opening up of language, the recovery of routine, the delight of travel, and -- once I had rejoined the workforce -- the feeling of making a difference in people's lives. And the growing realization that the welfare state with its exemplary health care system had my back.

***

When I began writing these daily updates, I was reeling from the shock of the unexpected nationwide lockdown to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The updates were a way to deal with what was, at the time, an inconvenience, a disruption. In the first days much was made about the mad rush for toilet paper, and it was necessary to spend hours on the Internet in an attempt to find out how people were responding to the COVID-19 threat, which in turn was an attempt to divine the future, my future. The notion of a collective fate was a far-off concept. And I actually thought that by the time the two weeks were over, we would be getting ready to step out of lockdown, relieved to have weathered the storm, eager to get back to work and to share lockdown survival tales with colleagues. But as the news turned from the merely worrisome to dire I felt the need to keep going.

The last few years I haven't had the confidence nor the energy to produce written -- much less literary -- work of my own. I've devoted most of my writerly energy to helping other people develop theirs. But as happens when you begin to articulate your thoughts, more come pouring in. New thoughts, new ways of expressing them -- a running commentary in the back of your mind.

So it may be time now to turn back to my unfinished stories, before the window of opportunity provided by this lockdown closes for good.

Plants bloom in the spring, or with the first rains, when conditions are most favorable for the perpetuation of their kind. But they put out flowers, too, when they are stressed, as their systems throw their resources into a desperate gamble to reproduce their genes or risk extinction.