{William Cerf's Creativity Journal 

Leave it to copyeditors and publishers to ask plaintively while the earth is shaking, rattling and rolling in the homeland, “could please you write us 1500 words about the events and your reaction?” Oh, BTW: “we need it ASAP.” Merci! Sorry, I can’t work that quickly. Danticat speaks of creating dangerously in the context of the extremes of brutal dictatorship and an abject poverty that boggles my mind. Morel talks about photojournalism as a way to reclaim life in a deadly environment. I could get a friend who lives and works in one of the public housing projects in Harlem to take me on a tour of a place where there is often gang warfare and drug dealing or I might get a tour of the worst part of Brownsville, Brooklyn where people with my skin color are told NOT to go. Would I have the gumption to try and strike up a conversation with a stranger who lives in such a place? I’m really too scared to do this! But creating dangerously may mean finding a safe and sane way to venture out to places where people who struggle with food scarcity and housing where vermin and cockroaches are their roommates. They suffer the indignities of attempting to get help from the many non-profit corporations whose main mission is NOT to help people but to root out welfare and EBT fraud while enforcing the rules and regulations of the agency. There is plenty of danger for me to contemplate right here in Brooklyn, NY. The silence around poverty is deafening, writing about it in a culture where those in power prefer silence might well be my experience of creating dangerously.



I think I may have found my role model; John Wray lives in Brooklyn, along with me and 2 million other folks. He rides the F, C and B trains. I live near the Q train on Cortelyou Road and I often take the B, D, 1 or the 6. So I could take my IPad and take the Q to Church, transfer to the B, take it to Broadway/Lafayette and then take the 6 to visit my friends at Community Voices Heard, who complain that I never visit them while I’m moaning about the time such a trip might take. Maybe, just maybe I can turn of my hearing aid and write on the train instead of sleeping, which is my normal pattern. If that works I could take one of my books and read on the train as well. This could become a habit that would be much more productive than becoming frustrated and believing that I’ve just got to check my e-mail – there is none. I have a fantasy of getting on the Q train someday and riding it to one end of the line in Astoria, Queens reading and writing all the way, then stop in Astoria, get something to eat or just take a walk, then get back on the train and go to the other end at Coney Island. That would be especially fun during the spring and summer months when Coney Island is open.  Riding the rails could I suppose expose one to whatever dangers might occur. I mean lots of crazy and even terrible things happen on subways or inside subway stations. Sometimes the smell of passengers who have no place to sleep or take a shower is overwhelming! Often they spend their days riding the subway, begging for money or food or just rambling incoherently. For me the danger may not be physical. I probably won’t see devastation like Morel or Danticat. The danger for me is the smell of sick people with no one to care about them or for them. Next week I’ll try it. I’ve never ridden a subway train from one end to the other.

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Hey Paul, what is your favorite subway train? I could ride that one and we could meet somewhere for a meal. I suppose that I could one day take the Q to the B, transfer to the F at Broadway/Lafayette get off at 2nd Avenue and walk to Bluestockings - Reading and writing all the way. OK, I’ll do something and let y’all know next week how it goes.