Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Okay, it's January 14th, 523 pm and I'm leaving the North Berkeley Library now. Turning on Sonoma and heading home. I just finished listening to Nasi'ir Shem'a's Andalus piece and it was you know helping with the creativity. I really want to get the technical kind of plot structure around how conception actually is able to almost in a hypnotic or you know kind of a magical way convince Florence's mother to put the gun down and kind of submit to the fact that she will have to change her ways. She will no longer have to, she will no longer objectify her Latino students. She will partner with them and help them learn English as she continues to learn their needs, their desires to learn about them as people, as peers and help them achieve their own goals in life. And that's essentially what a teacher should do. Now Florence is 13 and this event changes Florence's life forever. And conception has this moment, perhaps it's a singular moment in conception's life. And she then disappears from Florence's life. And one day gives birth to Rosa who then is a woman. You know, one can argue that the whole story of conception is of someone who was raped on her way to becoming on her way to gaining entry into the United States or perhaps raped on her way out of Mexico. And so comes to an illness shortly after giving birth. And Rosa is then raised by a local family. And then you know, becomes who she is today. And in some ways in search of maybe that, yeah, that would kind of stretch the conflict a little within the internal context. But either way, I think one a powerful scene would be one in which conception sheds her male identity in order to reveal to Florence's mother that she's a woman and she understands what she's going through. And perhaps you know, a very powerful statement would be that she even wants to place the gun on her belly, her protruding belly. And that's the case if she's pregnant. And as she places the gun on her belly, she starts to sing. But not she sings perhaps the beginning of Abraceros, you know, song of struggle and hope. But changes it slowly to one of one that Florence's mother recognizes and can identify with. And she sang along with Rosa. And I wonder if I'm spending too much time on Rosa and consists you and why am I trying to hide this. In fact, one could argue that this is precisely the point in which Rosa decides to abandon the story. And so, yeah, she can, her professor could even criticize to her that she's really stretching the abilities of her characters. And it's rendering it a cacophony of struggle as opposed to a harmony of struggle. And perhaps this is what leads Rosa to a search to discover another story. And maybe she was interning at the paper. Maybe she has a friend, you know, who's interning at the paper. And then says, I can do what you do. Or it could just be like her, you know, her odd job, you know, that she does as she's going through college. But, and that's when she meets Horace and discovers that he is a connection to another story. And he's a connection to the possibility of a new world. Because, you know, one thing that Rosa could be doing is taking a course in the history of Spain, which would most likely be offered. And a creative writing course. And she, you know, would be thick in the middle of, you know, the Andalusian period, a period that is rich with story, with literature, science. And progress and interconnections between cultures. There we go. And we didn't somewhere. And it is through this course on history, on the history of Andalusia, that she is inspired to learn more about the moreish rules. The the era of rulers of Spain. And, but she doesn't have a way of learning Arabic. She wants to learn the language, which it doesn't have a way. So, this is where the tricky part comes in. Does she take that leap of faith and just spend her financial aid straight up on a ticket to Egypt? Why not? It's crazy. It's a crazy idea. And... Now, what are the flaws in this structure? I mean, it's going beautifully in one direction. The whimsie, the impulse of an individual. But am I losing the other side that helped it together? The person who is escaping someone who is obsessed with her, he's a stalker. And that is the guy who's obviously college dropout. He works in a... Yeah, this is good. So, he works in an apartment complex in Midland. And this is someone that Rosa gave a false number to one night after a drunken kind of state, which if she recalls, and of course this is where the shady memory comes in, that she told him no. And so, let's establish a date rate. And he might have drugged her and terrified to think of this man again. And so, you know, when she follows Horace to his apartment complex, she doesn't realize that she's actually going to where this man works. And he sort of corners her after Horace leaves. She sees Horace go out of, well, we're going to have to create some kind of scene where Horace walks away and doesn't notice. And perhaps there's some kind of situation where Horace actually breaks the tension and gives her an opportunity to escape. Yeah, something like that. But what he has in his hands are Horace's intent to break the lease. It's the form that he had to fill out in order to break the lease. And so, it has his forwarding address on it and all of that. And basically Horace is moving back to Houston. And yeah, actually, let's make it even more interesting. Horace has been bought out by his investors. And this was the last thing he promised to do before he left. And so, why do we even have to say he's been bought out? Maybe he sold it. Maybe the investors bought it and that was the last thing he was going to do. So, it doesn't really matter. I mean, that's a getting Horace out of Midland. And back to Houston, it's relatively easy. What's hard is, well, necessarily, you just got to be okay with it is that Rosa had his situation. Horace unknowingly got her out of it where she was able to escape at that point. She never looked back. She literally left Lemissa full on it and drove all the way to Houston. And it wasn't until she got to Houston that she realized what she was going to do. Now, what we want to say is that the middle of the fall semester, what we want to say is getting rid of the spring semester and middle of the spring semester. I don't know. But we need to do is get Florida, get Rosa out of Lemissa. We will have been in the middle of taking, perhaps even a correspondence course. I don't know about the correspondence course. Actually, she was in the middle of taking community college campuses. Maybe. Still not allowed. I wouldn't qualify her for so much financial aid. She was taking class in Texas town. She was driving a Toyota Corolla wagon with blue rusty sides. And that dude's name is Carlos Periant. That's mean, but yes. She had met someone. At the registration table. And I said it. That would be, I don't know, it would be a stretch. Maybe she didn't meet at the registration table. Maybe. He was in another one of her classes. He was in her political science class. Am I going to say she was a freshman? Am I going to say that she was taking intro to create a pride in it? She had already started, you know, her school. She got to think it was a good class. It was like this blues-revealing. Why not be in that crazy class? You want to be a creative writer? I don't know. Let's just say she meets him in another one of her classes. And he suggests they go study. And it was kind of like a... It was one of those, you know, bohemian-style cafes that served alcohol as well as coffee drinks. And, you know, I'm going to call it insomnia, cafe insomnia. And it was always playing this crazy house music. And it was dark. Students were hopped up on notos and a vibrant. And what else? You know, mountain dew and big red. Maybe even red bull. I think it was around back then. And he offered her... He came to her with a... You know, a chamomile tea. And before she knew it, it made her sleepy. And that was it. She woke up the next morning in his apartment. And... She knew something was wrong. Her body felt different. It was pain in her crutch. She was in the shower and she had gotten out of there. She hoped to God she would never see him again. Actually, either it's a hotel room, near campus or his apartment. Yeah, if he worked in Midland and lived in Lubbock, she was in Amisa. Yeah, that's kind of confusing. This all had to have happened in Lubbock and he had to work in Midland. And actually, turns out he was never even in her class. He would just do this randomly. And she wouldn't learn about this. Again, don't push this too far. This isn't the story. This is just the motivation. We have to get her out. And the way in which Dorel describes something and then just leaves it is really how you have to treat this. And so she will have to overcome this fear if she's to go on the flight. And you know, she'll have to take that long drive to escape. This is your escape if you need the escape. You need an escape route. Yeah, it's actually an escape. And she will not see for us again until the flight. Now, that's where we'll narrate it and it will be narrated in such. I will narrate the story so that time is twisted in that. As she is telling him, such a... I don't remember you. Yet he does, he remembers her. And as she is saying it, hoping that her words don't seem... hoping that her hands don't come out and tell the truth, hoping that her... she was grasping her hands tightly, hoping that they would not tell the truth. The truth is that she stalked him. When you want an escape, you will find it. He was her escape. He was not only someone who saved her from that man, unbeknownst to him. He immediately became... Not unlike the way a baby chick bonds with his mother. She immediately bonded with him and associated him with safety. So not only was his name... a lure for her. But his... his ability to save him from that situation. His ability to save her from that situation. Made him that more attractive. Posing for space.

So it's a 556pm and I've reached I believe the beginning of Nevada, yeah, or the middle of Nevada where the 37 is. And it's really interesting to me as how I'm trying to tell this story from someone else's kind of from another character, another life, another person. And yet it seems there's so many parallels. I think the truth that I know wants to come out and I have a problem actually using my own mother to say it. This is so fascinating because this is exactly what I'm trying to do. So Rosa, back to Rosa, you know, Horace comes to her, but it's very casual to him. He's spoke to her like someone worked from the big city and he just told her you have to really watch out for people like that. And it was that simple. I think it's a very interesting story. I think it's a very interesting story. I think it's a very interesting story. And it was that simple. She, you know, he simply walked her to her car and told him let me get in your car so that he thinks we are together. And you drop me off around the block. Is that plausible maybe? Either way. It's not important. Of course, he's her to her car. She takes off. Now, um, we don't see her again until the moment she's panicking on the flight. And again, it's a pre-911 flight. So, you know, the flight attendants are very willing to help. And I overdue it because I remember one time when I had to put medicine on a plane, and they said they put it in the fridge and they were very helpful and all that. So yeah, exaggeration. And she certainly doesn't want any medication because she's so afraid of getting, you know, a drugged up again. And she doesn't know where Horace is. In fact, he's in the bathroom. She got on the flight and she doesn't know where he is when she's panicking. She followed him. He had stowed his stuff away and closed the overhead bin. And he proceeded to go to the bathroom. And she was at the very last row. And he just happened to be in that last bathroom because they were all occupied. And so yeah. And he wouldn't talk to him again until he saw her and he calmed her down this time. And he told the flight attendant was uncertain that he was in the right seat, but he told her, oh, by the way, I'm in the first class, but I don't, or business, I'm in business, but why don't I sit here for a while just to calm her down? And of course, Rosa immediately used calm. And the flight attendant looks at the two of them and doesn't think any more of it and walks away. So, Rosa doesn't roll her eyes, but it suggests to her and him that just double checks. Now, that's when Horace decides to ask her. Are you? What the, you know, and she's like, and she doesn't, she's staring out the window. She's basically saying, I don't know what I've done. Everything is, I don't, I can't tell if I'm in a dream or if I'm in some crazy story or what. And Horace just says, you know this flight's going to Cairo, right? Or better yet, if they really are in Houston, yeah, because they're in New York right now. And she doesn't meet up with Horace until New York. And we're not supposed to know how she discovers. All right, there's the Tauric Morse connection. We've got to put that. This will be interesting. I have to think about the shady Middle Eastern travel agent. And how he gives her Horace's flight information. I don't know if I actually wrote it down. And I'm trying to think about it now. But yeah, I have to figure that right out. But yeah, that's when she follows Horace to the travel agent. He's back then. He used to travel agent. And of course, it's some shady friend of the family. But that's how she gets... It's through him that he gives her the information. And of course, he's super religious. The place smells like a mosque. It's got incense burning. There's a clock with that rings for the call to prayer. And old Formica steel case desks. It looked like they were picked up at a used office supply store somewhere in a warehouse. Somewhere among the warehouses of South East Houston, Southwest Houston. It looked like they were picked up in a fire sale or in a demolition of one of the old... of the many office buildings being torn down to build a megaplex. Or it looks like they just simply came with the old office building. Or it could be in a mini mall. And obviously, he made his money off of selling packages for Hajj and Omra. And occasionally, overpriced packages to Hajj and Omra. So yeah. That's how she's able to... go with him to Cairo. Now... And let me take it back to her original story assignment in her Intro to Creative Writing class. It was simply to write a backstory on someone she knew. Or someone she knew on someone that on a total stranger. You spend maybe 30 seconds at the most in the presence of this person. And then you have to write a backstory. So that's when she stumbles across the copy of an old newspaper at her work and decides to write a piece on Florence. And she writes a piece on Florence and Concepcion. And maybe even Carlos is in that class to keep it simple. Or maybe she's reading the words of her creative writing teacher who's already criticizing her story in the next class. Or who claims to be in that class. You know, claims to help her by knowing a famous author. And maybe something like that can put her in touch with that person. And that's how he lures her in. But where does Florence stay? I'm going to say, and not Florence, Roza stay that whole week. Yeah, it'll be about a week in Houston. It seems like pretty rushed attempt to go to Egypt. But yeah, we'll have to see. And again, all she has available to her is the cash or is her financial aid and a credit card. She was, you know, a credit card company, of course. Send out all, you know, send, you know, the predate on, I really don't like that word. Yeah. They hunted her down and simply made her feel important. She made her feel like she can be an adult too. Now's the time to get your own card. Be a successful statured your credit today. And so, yeah. There's so much everything that happened to me. And it's fascinating. What is the mind doing here, like up against an emotional wall? An emotional set of blinders and you have to still talk about it. Emotional censorship. You know, the gods, not the gods, but the people we hold dear in our hearts are like gods and we can't say ill of them. But we still have to express how we feel. And that's why I guess writing was harder for me because I couldn't get it out. I have to talk it and talk it and work it and work it out. Korean could be a better writer sometimes. He has no problem getting his words out. Maybe even Heidi, they do not have problems getting their words out. The prison of sentimentality sometimes. But yeah. So she gets to Egypt then what? Or she gets on the flight to Egypt and tells him she has no money. I mean, he tells her she can stay. But he doesn't know. You know, he helps her with a hotel. But he doesn't know what the hell to do. Otherwise, well, let's put it this way. Remember, he has a plan. She is the spitting image of his fiance. But she really never was his fiance because she left him. And so she passes as an Egyptian. Now, what is her name instead of Rosa? What will her name be? Good say, Dina. We could say that's an interesting, you know, we haven't even, I haven't yet really focused on. His girlfriend, his ex girlfriend slash fiance ex. Magda. That's an old name. Rosa. Rosa. That's another one. What else? It could be something that sounds ancient Egyptian. That might help. Or related to birds. Now that I'm turning on Eli, I'm just going to have to pause it and think of other ways to do this. Done.