Here I am on a Monday morning in the Staatsbibliothek.
With my folders and flashcards.
And the Microsoft Word document open before me.
Surrounded by faces scowling in concentration, I am blank as a slate.
Here, where minds bathe in luxury, anything is possible.
All it takes is the scratch of a pen, the tap of a key, the turn of a page.
“Read over document as a netural, distant reader might,” it says on my to-do-list.
I breathe in. And out. And in again as I begin:
It was the day everything began to change and bit by bit, the threads of Dora Danckelmann’s past became unraveled…..
I scroll through the document.
Then 40 minutes later, the verdict.
The neutral, distant reader shakes their head apologetically.
They are neither kind nor unkind. Neither my champion nor my challenger.
Their task is indepenent arbitration.
The words (all 54,375 of them) the reader says carefully, refuse to dance together.
Some shoot out in vulgar bursts. And others crawl too carefully along.
Too uncertain and at once too brash to form a bond.
Less than the sum of their parts.
I thank the reader and survey the truth:
The story has no flow. In 54,375 ways, it has steered off course.
A sorry tribute to its source.
It doesn’t work. Not because I am in the mood for self-destruction; but because it’s the plain and simple truth.
My story isn’t any good.
Not yet.
The shelves around me bulge with books. Thousands of them, forced into neat rows.
Like soldiers in waiting.
Their spines contain their highlight reel. The anguish that made them, rubbed away like sadness on your Facebook timeline.
Their polished boots ready for inspection, ready to deny the battles they’ve seen.
Like them, I’ve got no choice but to soldier on.
54,375 ways I’ve gone wrong. 54,375 ways to make it right.
One word; one battle at a time.
Kate Ferguson 