Writing Club

I wrote the previous blog post two nights ago, while I was staying up late trying to get something down for Writing Club. It didn't turn out very well but I'm glad I made the effort. I already feel a lot less rusty.

Writing club was good although there was only 1 person out of my favourite 5 in attendance. The winter crowd is a bit different through and I was happy to finally meet some people I'd heard about for awhile.

There was one new guy (new for me, I mean) who I had mixed feelings about. He dominated the conversation a little bit, and there was something about it that I kept wanting to discuss the various things with him... until I felt bad that the two of us were speaking too much. Also some of his mannerisms I found a little bit annoying, but I think he means well and his advice was good. His writing was good too, but it's always a bit funny for me when I'm in club and one of the older members (and lets be honest, they're all older) starts throwing in references to sex etc. In the segment he read from his memoir, he mentioned that he always used a Polaroid to take sexually explicit photos because he didn't want to have to have them developed by a third party. A pretty normal thing to do, but I have to admit I have a hard time not giggling when such words come out of the mouth of a man with grey hair.

Jerry #2, (my favourite of those who came), read a great piece about living in Karachi some years back - making friends with the hard men of the desert, shooting rabid dogs, and, my favorite part - bringing a Rhesus monkey home from Bangladesh in a burlap bag, and on an airplane. He wrote that back then the Pakistani airplanes were pretty lax, that people would unfurl prayer mats in the aisle, and start fires on their tray-tables to make tea - no one thought anything of the thin stream of liquid that at one point trickled out of the burlap bag and across the aisle. He didn't want to write it, but he also mentioned that women often rode those flights in their burkas, and got sick inside of them. I can't imagine! Jerry #2 is amazing. He's lived everywhere and had the craziest sort of adventures. He has at least two books - one about living in the Middle East, and one about fixing up an old place in Portugal when he was still young (60s - 70s). I have no idea where he got the funds to do all of this.

I really look forward to the group's Wednesday meetings when I'm in town.