On Windows, Writer’s Block, and Steinbeck           
                                     27.10.2024        Kate Middeleer




I stand at the counter and watch through the window as the world goes by in ten-second intervals. A man argues with a bus driver. A shout and a shove and they both stalk off in a stream of heated smoke. Kids weave through the lolly aisles and sticky fingers press coins down by the register in front of me. A father fills up a jerry can at the wrong angle and the petrol sprays back at him, his daughter and I wince together. 

The next moment a car pulls in and the picture through the glass resets; a trunk is full—they must be going camping; a lady sees someone she knows and runs ahead, whoever is there to greet her is out of frame; the old man with fifty dollars worth of diesel turns to us dramatically, belting his monologue, breaking the fourth wall as he walks out through the sliding glass doors.

It’s around five pm and we’ve reached another intermission, the station is quiet. Dan is instructed to train the new employee, but the soft drinks are stocked and he’s already shown me where to find the mop. Instead, I interrogate him on how could he possibly like Curb Your Enthusiasm, we jump on our love of Martin McDonagh, and find common ground in In Bruges

“But have you seen The Banshees of Inisherin?” I ask him. “It’s so—“

“Great.”

“Boring!”

“I love it.”

“Nothing happens.”

“Exactly! Nothing happens,” Dan says. “Stuff is constantly happening,” he gestures around the room and the street outside. “I like sitting down for a movie about two guys in a small town in Ireland and watching nothing happen”. 

I’ve recently been rereading Cannery Row, John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel set in Monterey, California, a compilation of character vignettes and empathetic observation. Speaking with Dan, I think of the character Doc, sitting in Western Biological, his marine lab, while all of Monterey files in and mucks about. Nothing happens. I think of Doc examining creatures underneath his magnifying glass.

“When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book—to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.” 

I don’t mean so much to compare the creatures of Bangalow to marine worms (though we all know a few), but as someone plagued by writer’s block, I like the idea of submitting and letting our stories enter of their own accord. A little less force, a little more give. 





Miica and I have been discussing the creative necessity of slowing down, the gift of drawing a blank. Sometimes my best thinking comes from staring at walls—as do my best spirals. And so I wonder whether one can clear their mind while still watching the world drive by, if maybe it’s in some distraction that we find our sweet spot.

Cannery Row’s opening lines, so often quoted, describe what Monterey’s inhabitants might look like, not to some omniscient narrator, but to whatever man bothers to look. He’ll see “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.” 

I don’t care so much about the metaphor right now, that feels better dissected in another essay. What strikes me is the power of Steinbeck’s short little chapters, filled with nothing, the way we follow along avidly with each mundane moment the town and its people offer. 

I’ve often spent a few dozen hours hunting for the story I wish to tell, the explication, the arc. But Dan makes a good point. To stand up after two hours and have the theater lights flicker on, or we doggie-ear the page, only to realize fuck-all happened, is quite the gift. No beginning, middle, end. We just experienced the world going by, for a breath, and it wasn’t our world, it was someone else’s. 

It’s seven pm and I wipe the pumps and roll the flowers inside, lock the doors and walk out. The street is as empty as would be anticipated for a weekday evening, I run into no one I know, and I’ve got nothing to report. How bloody blissful.