glossary

If I remember correctly, the term from screenwriting class was ethical mode of action. To get it, you take a character and push him, and then push him a little more until he is quite uncomfortable, and then you sit back and watch what he does. His behavior in this extreme moment of his life defines his future existence for you. And hopefully it will prove you've concocted a person with the strength of will to stand up to the empire, or whatever it is you want him to do.

Discovering elements of one's own ethical mode of action is a lot less fun. My discovery began this way: Enter a windswept,autumn night. A few sprinklings of drops, the hint of a rainstorm. Make it late for a work night- 9 or so o'clock. Add a good amount of crappy-job fatigue, accelerated by the knee-snapping speedwalk of a greenpointer with a half a mile still to go. Make sure it's just late enough that moving the car is going to take some time, and then throw in, just for fun, the discovery of a pile of glass in the driver's seat. Next to the pile of glass, a gaping hole for a window and some sad, mutilated wires where the stereo once was. Throw in a few apathetic hipsters refusing to make eye contact, {don't forget the rain) and me.

So I was standing there in the cold, looking around for something to clean up the glass, trying to get a hipster to look at me, when, through the darkness, a car slowed. The driver stuck his head out the window, stared at me, and said, "Hey baby. Where're you goin' tonight?"

And I- I looked up from the shards of my desecrated vehicle, stood there on that dark block shivering with cold and fury. I looked up at this man whose eyes saw only the shape of my body and not its need for help. I stared straight into his eyes and-- stuck out my tongue. Yes dear reader, it's what I did. And no, I did not blow a raspberry either. But I did stick it out with all the force that the little piece of flesh could muster.

Yes, there are some days when you learn things about yourself you'd rather not know.

In the hollywood rewrite I probably would have drop-kicked the guy.

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