There are (at least) four strands to the story. Some twenty characters of varying “importance” as far as front-line presence is concerned. Several of them have appeared in previous stories. Ergo, they carry luggage. As my young friend from Guinea wrote yesterday: the eye doesn’t lift the baggage, but it knows its weight.

No, I’m not zipping through the writing of this first draft.

Perhaps because of my young friend’s mention that his ethnic group – the Djallonke – have a reputation as magi, seers and practitioners of various kinds of beneficial or harmful spell-casting, I picked up two books at Café Plùm’s bookstore last night: 1)Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) De la Magie (Bruno had the dubious honor of roasting on a public square for refusing to repent, adding that he saw nothing over which he should  repent). 2) Alain Mabanckou’s Le sanglot de l’homme noir – an essay in which Mabanckou refuses to define black identity as consisting of tears and resentment. (Mabanckou, a poet and novelist, teaches French literature at University of California’s Los Angeles campus.) Café Plùm’s bookstore is small, select and irresistible.

Story-building, a bit like the weaving of a web. Which of the strands resonates, which stays mute, at any given time.I have neither agent nor publisher pressing me on. I’m in no hurry, except the one a character may impose at any given moment.

For now, on this Sunday morning,  it’s market time.