Antonio flipped through the sheets he had pulled from the desktop printer without passion. The printer was old and on its last legs. The heads were clogged constantly, which interrupted his workflow. At times, he would strike the printer cover with a horsehide whip, which seemed to work sometimes, but usually did not.
He was searching for inspiration. This was lacking during the pandemic. The routine was a mask, a walkabout through the nearly closed city, with significant gaps between socially distanced lines in front of chain supermarkets and languid empty blocks. He read that thousands had already fled New York. But, seeing the lack of lights in the apartments around him and the daily piles of recently purchased furniture on sidewalks and street corners provided punctuation in the stories.
Antonio did not want to write about it. This was tiring enough, this exhaustion from near isolation. He hadn’t had a person-to-person conversation with someone he knew in the three months since being ordered to work from home. So instead, it’s polite greetings and goodbyes with clerks at checkout lines, with the closing amens of stay safe and be well.
Stay safe and be well. Not really an inspiring storyline to tell. Everyone everywhere already knew. So much for that.
He snapped the whip absently on the desk edge and pushed it into the space between the printer and laptop.
Antonio recalled the story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the inspiration to write One Hundred Years of Solitude.
He took his family on vacation to Acapulco, driving from their home in Mexico City. Marquez had struggled with the idea of the novel for years. So one can imagine the frustration as he worked to make this book real.
He touched the brake as a cow crossed the road.
His eyes widened as he gripped the steering wheel. Marquez pushed hard on the brake, stopping abruptly as the cow wandered into the field. The novel’s first sentence burned as inspired fire writ by an unknown hand. A memory of a soldier facing death, about a man taking his child to discover ice. Marquez turned the car around and raced the family back to Mexico City to write the rest. Thus, the novel was created, and One Hundred Years of Solitude became a literary classic--
--all because of a cow crossing the road, causing a sudden end to an intended family vacation.
Antonio met Marquez in Mexico City. He took a trip on the old 20th Century Limited to visit a college friend, drinking tequila-spiked pineapple Jarritos most of the way down. Tito was part of the elite, and Marquez was a neighbor. The walled villa sported a gorgeous tiled covered patio.
One afternoon while relaxing with Tito and his friends, Marquez burst in, holding up a piece of paper. “I have written the most perfect page!” he shouted gleefully.
That’s all Antonio could recall from the afternoon. There was too much Mezcal involved. He only remembered when Tito reminded him during a visit several years later.
He stared at the blank page on his screen. No cow, no vacation. No road to an oceanside resort. Just a pandemic outside and an apartment that needed cleaning.
There was, however, a cat. Calvin climbed on top of the printer and lay on the wire basket filled with loose papers and journals.
Antonio sighed and reached for the whip to smack the printer again.
Then stopped, awestruck. The most perfect page.
The cat’s tail curled and yawned before watching with mild interest as Antonio typed furiously.
Word Count: 595
Antonio flipped through the sheets he had pulled from the desktop printer without passion. The printer was old and on its last legs. The heads were clogged constantly, which interrupted his workflow. At times, he would strike the printer cover with a horsehide whip, which seemed to work sometimes, but usually did not.
He was searching for inspiration. This was lacking during the pandemic. The routine was a mask, a walkabout through the nearly closed city, with significant gaps between socially distanced lines in front of chain supermarkets and languid empty blocks. He read that thousands had already fled New York. But, seeing the lack of lights in the apartments around him and the daily piles of recently purchased furniture on sidewalks and street corners provided punctuation in the stories.
Antonio did not want to write about it. This was tiring enough, this exhaustion from near isolation. He hadn’t had a person-to-person conversation with someone he knew in the three months since being ordered to work from home. So instead, it’s polite greetings and goodbyes with clerks at checkout lines, with the closing amens of stay safe and be well.
Stay safe and be well. Not really an inspiring storyline to tell. Everyone everywhere already knew. So much for that.
He snapped the whip absently on the desk edge and pushed it into the space between the printer and laptop.
Antonio recalled the story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the inspiration to write One Hundred Years of Solitude.
He took his family on vacation to Acapulco, driving from their home in Mexico City. Marquez had struggled with the idea of the novel for years. So one can imagine the frustration as he worked to make this book real.
He touched the brake as a cow crossed the road.
His eyes widened as he gripped the steering wheel. Marquez pushed hard on the brake, stopping abruptly as the cow wandered into the field. The novel’s first sentence burned as inspired fire writ by an unknown hand. A memory of a soldier facing death, about a man taking his child to discover ice. Marquez turned the car around and raced the family back to Mexico City to write the rest. Thus, the novel was created, and One Hundred Years of Solitude became a literary classic--
--all because of a cow crossing the road, causing a sudden end to an intended family vacation.
Antonio met Marquez in Mexico City. He took a trip on the old 20th Century Limited to visit a college friend, drinking tequila-spiked pineapple Jarritos most of the way down. Tito was part of the elite, and Marquez was a neighbor. The walled villa sported a gorgeous tiled covered patio.
One afternoon while relaxing with Tito and his friends, Marquez burst in, holding up a piece of paper. “I have written the most perfect page!” he shouted gleefully.
That’s all Antonio could recall from the afternoon. There was too much Mezcal involved. He only remembered when Tito reminded him during a visit several years later.
He stared at the blank page on his screen. No cow, no vacation. No road to an oceanside resort. Just a pandemic outside and an apartment that needed cleaning.
There was, however, a cat. Calvin climbed on top of the printer and lay on the wire basket filled with loose papers and journals.
Antonio sighed and reached for the whip to smack the printer again.
Then stopped, awestruck. The most perfect page.
The cat’s tail curled and yawned before watching with mild interest as Antonio typed furiously.
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