nether words

balzac

2005-12-21T00:29:00.000-08:00

the girl, like most people these days, hates christmas shopping. she loves it when it happens incidentally throughout the year, just finding something she knows a particular person will love and buying it to set aside for months on end, but the first three weeks of december when suddenly the whole obligation of buying for the dozen or so poeople on her list sets in are always brutal. she's always broke. she often conceives of good ideas for this person or that person, and then has difficulty putting them into practice.

this day is one such. she is looking for a good luck troll, the sort that she used to play with when she was about eight years old. so far, she has tried two different stores downtown with no success. she has also just perused the shelves of the town's preeminent toy emporium, also to no avail. she is beginning to get frustrated--more frustrated than she already was by the simple insanity of being in an unfamiliar mall throbbing like a diseased heart with streams of busy people wafting fast food smells into her path. sometimes, she thinks, you used to be able to get them in "gift" stores. noting one such on the list of establishments within the mall, she gets her bearings and wanders towards it.

the name of the store is "spenser gifts." she realises quickly that this place will not have what she wants as she enters and finds that unlike most stores, which are bright and airy, this store is dark and seems oppressively low-ceilinged. the reason for this becomes clear as she steps inside--or, not clear, but bright. the store is filled with a vast variety of flashing, glowing, and sparkling items. the back wall is lit by black light, and glowing mushrooms and Adult Novelty Items hang from it like luminous mold in a fantastic tunnel. the girl likes glowing things, but this store does not appeal to her. everything in it seems offensive. no novelty gift store is complete without its selection of rude birthday cards, shirts featuring such gems as "you say BITCH like it's a bad word" and "you've been a naughty girl. go to my room!" and sundry other items of crude sexual and scatological humour. normally, the girl tries to be patient with these things. in the right context, she even enjoys them. but today, perhaps because of the long hot hours of shopping she's endured, perhaps because of the slickly styled, petite, cute employee with just enough piercings to seem like a really cool girl who asks her if she's "finding everything," or perhaps just because it is a monday, the girl can't stand it. she nearly vomits on bobble-head jesus, offended by a pair of twentysomething guys writing rude words on the zen chalkboard. she blinks back tears as she wrestles her way through the crowds of satisfied patrons to get to the outside world, which is of course filled with more of the same.

much later, the girl is walking home, still seething. the frost on the ground does nothing to cool her anger; not even the delicate tracery of ice beginning to form on the puddles she stamps past is enough to draw her attention away from her hatred for other people. she walks past a house gaudily decorated for christmas. there is a happy family of inflated snowmen in the front yard, and a lighted reindeer bobs its head on the roof. festive mice and raccoons also put in an appearance, obviously much older than the mechanical toys as evidenced by their hand-painted signs. "let it snow...please?!?" a venerable apple tree is floodlit to showcase the beautiful baubles dangling from its branches, and the girl is suddenly seized by the urge to release her anger into the world. she grabs one of the mice two-handed and swings it at the tree, breaking glass balls on branch after branch. the broken glass is mysterious and beautiful on the frosty grass at her feet, and she stares at it stupidly, lost in the whirlpool of this moment, until a light comes on in the house and she decides to run.

that night she dreams she is a bird, and her eggs keep getting stolen by snakes. she wakes feeling barren. there is no record of her crazed vandalism, not even a shard of glass caught in the sole of her shoe or the cuff of her pants. later, she tells the story as though it had happened to somebody else.

the boy who was plugged in

2005-11-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

the girl is passing by a local computer store. several police cars are parked in front of it, obstructing traffic. it is not until later that she hears the news: a masked young man had, some time earlier, stormed into the building waving a gun and demanding the very latest in sound systems and gaming technology. staff loaded the war3z into a shopping cart that the youth provided; he then hightailed it out of the store, presumably to some getaway vehicle. the police did not catch him, nor did anyone manage to follow him and get a description of the vehicle. of course, rumour would soon suggest that he had simply covered up the expensive electronics with a ratty blanket and pillow and a double-handful of other miscellany and posed as a peaceful, law-abiding bum, but this was never proved nor disproved.

several weeks later, the youth is caught when he attends a LAN party, the host of which just happens to be one of the employees who had been threatened at gunpoint. it's sort of a friend-of-a-friend connection, and this braggart arrives at the party with his tricked-out system and his belligerent boasting about how he p0//n3d The Man and now he's going to p0//n you with no idea that one of the guys is going to call the cops as soon as all the wires and popcans get put away until next time.

his face is plastered all over the news for days. in retrospect, the girl is almost certain she saw him that day, pushing his shopping cart up the street towards her. but maybe she's making that up: she's a bit of a braggart too.

parable

2005-11-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

the girl is walking down a rutted dirt road that slopes steeply. partway down is a hill of dirt almost as tall as she is, and for some reason she goes over instead of around it. perhaps there is someone on the road in front of her who she is loathe to pass. perhaps she is experimenting with a sense of adventure. perhaps this is a dream, and she does it because it is mandated by randomly firing neurons, or perhaps this is a parable and she does it because it is mandated by later developments in the plot. whatever her reason, she does it. on the way down the other side, she leaves a shoe behind in the soft, loose dirt, and because whatever this is, it is not the real world, she makes no move to retrieve it. an old man missing feet and hands is gardening by the side of the road. he smiles gap-toothedly at her and warns her to treat his dirt with respect. that's his property, you see. the girl is embarrassed. she tries to excuse her trespass, but she gets the sense that the old man doesn't care. he formed his ideas about her the moment she set foot on the earth and nothing she can say will change them now.

thirty or fifty or a hundred years later, the girl is walking down the same road. the old man is long since dead, she thinks, although who knows for sure? now the girl inhabits a grim futuristic dystopia full of information age versions of the cynical-eyed howling cripples and human monsters of a Breughel streetscape. one of them limps towards the hill of dirt. somehow, he is wearing three shoes, although he appears to have only the usual number of legs. she spies her shoe, still waiting patiently after all these decades. or is it? she realises that it is a different piece of footwear just as the beggar humps up to it, cackling gleefully. he strips the three shoes from his feet and plucks the waiting shoe from its dirt nest as though it were a precious treasure, then carefully places his three shoes in the soft, loose earth at the bottom of the pile. as he puts the single shoe on, the girl can see his future brightening like that of one who has touched a saint or drunk from a magic fountain. he limps away, straightening more and more as he moves towards the good fortune he knows is on its way, secure in the knowledge that he has taken his luck and left a little for the next person. the girl watches his offering to the next needy soul intently.

and the snake curled lovingly around my arm

2005-10-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

the girl sleeps poorly, her rest broken by frantic and irritated awakenings to the sense that something is wrong, though she never quite wakes up enough to comprehend just what it is.

she dreams that she is in bed with her ex-lover. they are lying naked together in his bed, and he reaches over to her caressingly. she responds in like kind, but almost immediately he pulls back. he wouldn't want people to say he was a Bad Person, he explains, for having sexual relations with someone who was already in a relationship.

the girl is on the point of responding that it doesn't really matter, that all their mutual friends have always thought he was a bit of a cad--a pleasant one, and one who they respect for his many talents, but not by any stretch of the words a Good Person--when suddenly another mutual acquaintance enters the room. at first, the girl is mystified and wants to know how the hell he got into the house, but he sits down on the bed and begins preaching about the current lover she nearly betrayed. his hair is tawny gold and falls to his shoulders, but he's not who she might think he was if she heard him described.

okay, she says, hugging her ex-lover from behind, how about you two have sex and I'll just watch.

cotton candy is not enough

2005-07-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

two other girls walk down the sundrenched street, oblivious to the bustling world around them. they wear white sundresses and sandals. they are perfectly in step with one another. the slender brown legs move briskly but entirely without seeming to hurry. the sleek black hair sways a little with the movement of their bodies. over their heads arches a teal umbrella.

the girl sweats profusely, exposed to the killer sun.

live without the sunlight?

2005-07-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

the girl's stomach is rebelling.

even it is not sure against what, exactly.

however, the girl has isolated a few entities who affect it, in particular one who ties it in knots and another who soothes it. but it's not enough to spend time in the calm presence of the quiet one. she can never spend enough time to prevent future upheavals, and the upheaver lives in her mind, omnipresent. she is no longer sure how well the thing in her mind represents the entity that exists outside her, and that causes a bitter wave of nausea as well. this effect of the outside world on her inner systems also unnerves her, frightens her, makes her gut churn.

there are three things the girl is not sure she can differentiate between: pain, possession, and love.

really, she thinks, it's all about being alone.

pop this cherry in your mouth

2005-06-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

as has been mentioned before, the girl loves donuts.

lately, the girl often stops at the local tim horton's on her way from her boyfriend's house to her place of employment. she has enough time before her day officially starts to savour a cup of coffee and a donut while reading a novel. the girl likes this state of affairs.

this morning, the girl is standing in line, contemplating the selection. the donuts stare up at her from their little baskets, looking like baby puppies only more deep-fried and less hairy. she looks at the soulful ranks of cherry logs, and thinks about their bright pink insides. I wonder if anyone ever eats those, the girl thinks. she, herself, only ever eats them in the form of timbits. when she orders timbits, the girl asks for a mix of everything they've got--who doesn't? but she likes the cherry timbits. thinking back, she suspects that she ate every one. she revelled in their pink flesh and savoured the faux-cherry taste. on a whim, she decides to eat an entire log with her morning double-double.

when the girl takes her donut from the hands of the cheerful, plump woman who calls everyone "dearie," it is warm. the cherry logs are roughly rectangular, though they are rounded by their leavenedness. the girl finds that the warm, soft donut fits in her hand perfectly, like a flaccid penis.

although the pinkness inside is moderately disturbing, the girl enjoys her breakfast with gusto and fondness.

threshold of steel

2005-05-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

the girl is standing on a streetcorner, waiting for the light to change. she sticks to social conventions like that, mostly. of course, it's convenient to do so when the cars are pouring down the hill and across the white lines of safety, making the black bridge from one light to another a treacherous corridor of doom.

for a moment, she is confused and insecure. she has just noticed an old man with crazy yellowish-white hair flowing down past his shoulders and a beard to match striding out into the street, but she is not quite conscious that this is what she's seeing. for the moment, she just wonders if she shouldn't be crossing the street now. has the light changed? she looks at it attentively and realises that the forbidding red hand still reigns. then she really sees the man.

all of this takes a very short time. it is as quick as thought. it happens so fast that the man has barely crossed one out of four lanes of oncoming traffic when she realises what is happening. worry claws at her heart, worry for the man's safety, but also worry for the social fabric. it will be an uncomfortable moment when the cars have to stop in mid-dash or hit him, she thinks. but mysteriously, the man has timed it exactly right. he moves through the spaces between the cars with preternatural agility. the girl is amazed. she smiles at him as he arrives on her corner unscathed. he doesn't seem to notice, just as he didn't seem to notice the cars.

the girl thinks this over. she wonders if he is like the hero of Ong-Bak, unconsciously attuned to his environment, completely unaware of the feat he has just accomplished. maybe he will go on to accomplish further mystical feats, playing a vital part in the symphony of the universe. or maybe there's a more prosaic explanation: perhaps he is just from somewhere where anyone who walks anywhere becomes adept at judging cars, and he looks at her with as much wonder at her dependance on lights as she has at his nonchalance.

in a dark hour

2004-04-01T12:33:00.003-08:00

chapter 36

the girl wakes up with an eyeful of moon. her consciousness is shifting states slowly, like a sponge taking in water. she doesn't quite understand the world around her: it seems strange and novel, bathed in an unfamiliar light. eventually, her eyes focus, and the bright blur piercing her sleep-fogged vision resolves itself as a familiar face, grey on white. she calls it the moon. but it has grown to gigantic proportions, and as long as it is gazing down at her she knows she will not sleep. she wants to race out into the yard and throw shoes at it until it gives up and leaves to pursue some other target, but she knows what kind of monsters that can bring.
and with that thought, she is awake, and things fall back into their proper places. shielding herself with a blanket, she squeezes awakeness out of herself and sinks back into sleep.

2004-04-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

there are some dreams we are reluctant to relinquish.

the girl watches a longboat pull away from the pier. it's headed for the viking ship out there, and she wants to get on it, but it won't come back for her. she sets her backpack down by an old, crazy-haired wise man and starts shucking off clothes to swim out to the boat (though she is no swimmer). she curses the fact that she forgot her anti-seasickness wristbands. the crazy-haired man laughs. he respects her strength of character. the boat will come for him, and if she makes it there he will bring her bag for her. she wakes.

it wasn't until the girl was quite old that she even realised she still cherished a secret dream of being sucked into another dimension, of finding a door in the back of her wardrobe, of discovering a gate from nowhere to somewhere. from here to there. from science to magic. once she became aware of this, it was followed by the certain knowledge that it would never happen. it's a childish fantasy, anyway. take me away to somewhere where I will turn out to be amazing and special, just because I am me. no need to work towards transferable skills, towards social integration, towards individuation. the plot will haul me along to my goals, she thinks.

but still, sometimes in the still of the night, or in the heat of the late morning, it creeps back into her mind. "what can you do, girl?" asks the man steering the boat. "I can sing," she answers...

2004-04-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

the girl is shallow like a creek full of refuse and rusting shopping carts.

she comes to this realisation while standing at a bus stop with a good friend one friday evening. an unattractive young man with a large scab on his shaven head is loudly proclaiming that he is on ecstasy and petitioning passers by and people waiting for the bus for hugs. it isn't long before he asks the girl's friend, who, being the sort of guy who would give his gloves to a bum outside a crappy bar, grudgingly agrees. the guy gives him a long hug. he asks the girl for a hug. wanting to demonstrate her kindheartedness and support for drug users, the girl agrees too. the guy reeks of alcohol. he also grabs the girls ass as he hugs her...not just a brief squeeze, but an insistent, rhythmic massage. the girl breaks away. she's not used to getting this kind of attention from strangers at the bus stop. the guy asks her several times for another hug, but she declines. her friend allows him one more hug, but steps away after a moment, saying "uh, don't grab my ass." after this, the guy is sure to mention, when asking for a hug, that he won't grab the girl's ass. she almost believes him.

and this is where she realises what's really going on. she realises that if she knew this person, she wouldn't tell him no as though he were a spoiled toddler asking to jump on the bed. she realises that if he were attractive and scabless she would be flattered by his attention, even if it was chemical-induced. not that attention is ever not chemical-induced. at this point, the girl's friend suggests that they go get a coffee while they wait, and when they come back the guy is gone.

the girl hopes she didn't ruin his evening.

if not for the bus...

2004-04-01T12:31:00.002-08:00

Chapter 34

is spring a time of images because of the sunlight?

the girl gazes down on another girl from the top of a double-decker bus. the other girl looks like a magazine ad attempting to evoke images of France. her cheerfully bright red cap is tilted rakishly to cover one eye. her hair is straight, shiny, and swinging freely as though it really believed it was a dancer. her hip, embraced by sleek black pants, is cocked on the same side as the hat. she is poised at the streetcorner, frozen movement. the girl looks around for the photographer, but he is well hidden.

2004-04-01T12:31:00.001-08:00

it's one of those days.
the girl finds herself propositioning some random person over the internet. actually, the person is not random, but she doesn't know who it is, merely that it is someone who knows who she is. and after all, there can't be so many of those, can there? the girl wallows in self-pity a little. so much for her grand, world-spanning network of cronies: a handful of cynical, bitter fools whose greatest enjoyment comes from obscuring their identities so they can fool each other into thinking there are more of them. fool themselves, even. fools.

2004-04-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

the girl dreams that naked russian lesbians are dancing in her kitchen. she doesn't understand, in the dream, what's going on. she prowls curiously around them as they gyrate and grind. she examines asscracks and nipples as though she has never seen such things before. they exhort her to join them, but suddenly she realises that she's left the oven on. she goes into the back yard to turn it off, and suddenly the russian lesbians are there with her. they fall down on the soft grass of the back yard, and she is mysteriously naked. they make sweet sweet love, but before her orgasm the girl wakes up soaked with sweat.
she thinks she sees the shadow of a person moving across her bedroom window, the shadow of a nude girl. or maybe it's just a tree in the wind.

tripping down nostalgia lane

2004-04-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

chapter 29

the loss of bygone might-have-been friendships pain the girl. she mourns for the passing of the Good Old Days. she weeps for the disappearance of her focus, for the atrophy of that great wit that drew her to the damn place.

the girl is beginning to exhibit significant tolerance symptoms. she's on the verge of seeking help to end her addiction (she needs more and more to get her fix these days), but the lure of that first high, the bright flash of that fascinating intellect, pulls her up short again and again.

and speaking of crushes, she thinks, how can it be that even over the internet I can be idiotically infatuated enough--even after all this time--to think that You're so shit. is clever and/or interesting and/or amusing? don't I have any self respect?

2004-04-01T12:29:00.001-08:00

sometimes the girl lies awake late into the night, listening to sounds from the rooms around her. like the room above hers, where her roommate has brought her boyfriend home. the soft moan of a mangasm is accompanied perfectly by the harsh buzz of the clothes dryer finishing its cycle--as though they were participating in a competition, and their timing clock had just been stopped.

Plagiarism (A Found Poem)

2004-04-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

Chapter 27

I went to school

and realized I had forgot to put clothes on.

The teachers were like >:-O

And I was like >;)

And then we all had sex.

2004-04-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

the girl has been suffering through a rainy period. she has even used her broken green umbrella (it's not so broken...).

the girl is walking with a friend after going for coffee. it is raining gently--almost more of a mist than rain. they are stopped at a crosswalk when a random stranger says "so, how hard would it have to be raining before you'd put up your umbrella?" the girl responds awkwardly "I guess harder than this..."

it is not until much later that she meditates on the event and realises that her behaviour was based on the awkward social situation--two people who are friends, but not intimate enough to walk so close as to fit under the one umbrella available. the girl is, of course, too kind to put up the umbrella and make her friend suffer the drizzle alone.

she wonders how long it will take the stranger to forget the event.

2004-04-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

the girl has been listening to a lot of Agata Kristi lately. one song on their album Chudesa features an ending drum solo highly reminiscent (in advance) of the one which finishes Tatu's Nas Ne Dogonyat. the girl remembers her initial confusion at the idiocy of that horrendously boring drum solo, somewhat (but not completely) alleviated by the discovery that the girls do a cute little dance when they perform the song live.

the girl imagines gleb and vadim samoilov wearing schoolgirl uniforms and bouncing up and down, then kissing as the audience goes wild (they're brothers).

on a related note, the girl highly recommends Akula's music video for Malo.

2004-04-01T12:24:00.001-08:00

sometimes the girl feels like she ought to write a teen novel based on her life.
see, there's this guy she met on the internet, and it's not really a romantic feeling she has for him, but nonetheless, the most apt simile she can come up with for how she feels is this:

it's junior high and there's this cute guy in some class that you have a crush on, and you're always trying to get his attention, but to no avail. then one day, you end up working together on some project. you chat. it's interesting. you're terribly excited. a couple days later, he sits at your table in the cafeteria and you talk some more. you feel like you're really getting somewhere with this. you think maybe he likes you too. and then out of nowhere, he disappears for a couple of weeks, and when he comes back, he doesn't even look at you. he ignores you even more completely than he did at the beginning of the term, before you even had a crush on him.

the girl is annoyed. she thought she had left unrequited crushing behind years and years ago. she thought that being in love would insulate her from such violent storms of emotion. but infatuation, for her, extends to all corners of her life, not just the romantic. she resents herself and everybody else.

2004-04-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

the girl rides the bus to and from school. today, she watches the young man sitting across the aisle take out a little plastic bottle from which he drips some clear fluid on his hands. he proceeds to rub it into his skin. she can tell by the smell which wafts insistently towards her that it is disinfectant--the no-water hand cleaner that her family brings with them camping. she thinks what a boon it must be to the obsessive-compulsives of the world. she imagines an advertising campaign targeting them.

announcer: how often has this happened to you?
shot of obviously distressed person in some public place, staring at hands. person rushes to public washroom, but there is a lineup. growing more and more upset by the minute, person finally arrives at a sink and proceeds to wash hands with excessive thoroughness.
announcer: new Germ-B-Gone liquid disinfectant is now available in handy pocket-sized containers, so you don't have to go through this!
original shot of distressed person in public place, but this time person removes bottle of germ-b-gone from coat pocket and proceeds to disinfect hands. person beams with happiness and meets attractive member of the opposite sex.
announcer: Germ-B-Gone--the convenient clean!

depressed introspexion

2004-04-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

Chapter 21?

the girl feels she has become part of an elite mob of pseudointelligent, pretentious fools. she can't decide whether this is a good thing, since it stops her from having to be a pseudointelligent, pretentious, foolish elitist all on her own, or a bad thing, because some of the people who used to like her seem to have changed their minds about her.
she considers whether or not the change was inescapable, and concludes that there was probably not much she could do about it. humans are like phospholipids: if left to their own devices, they will naturally create selectively permeable enclosures made up of similar pieces. but she can't help wishing that the disgruntled ex-admirers would consent to become proteins in the cell wall of her circle of friends--fewer in number, yet vitally important to the function of the whole.

the girl has a donut problem.

2004-04-01T12:22:00.001-08:00

this doesn't bother her. well, not much, in any case, since she has managed to maintain an essentially constant weight for the last five or six years, despite the depth of her addiction. it's more the mental side of it, usually--she feels bad about eating donuts (especially since she buys them from a coffee shop on campus where they cost a dollar or more, instead of making the fifteen-minute trek to the donut store, where they cost half that). she feels bad about giving in to her urge to consume sweets, instead of sticking it out for the healthy snacks. but she feels worse about being too lazy in the morning to prepare herself any kind of lunch (sugary or not).
only occasionally does she bemoan the size of her thighs and her abdomen's decided lack of flatness. lately, she complains about these things less and less, because she never gets any sympathy--it is merely pointed out to her that it's her choice not to do sit-ups every morning or go to the fitness facilities which she pays for as part of her tuition.

2004-04-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

the girl dreams that a well-known and highly influential forum member posts this, amused that someone said it to her:

i started to read it, but i couldn't get very far. for
one, you switch tenses, which is something i can't
stand when it makes no sense. also, i have this
thing about present tense. it drives me up the wall.
this is my own personal peeve, though, as most
people like present tense.

2004-04-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

the girl is vaguely disturbed, visiting someone else's house, to watch a four-year-old pull the head off her sound-activated dancing flower toy, then cause the headless stem to vibrate and spin by shrieking i can put it back on, i can put it back on!!! it seems like a scene that ought to come from a sinister art film, not someone's sunny living room.

the girl remembers a toy cheerfully hanged in her childhood bedroom, and meditates on the cruelty inherent in human nature.

chapter something: she missed the point

2004-04-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

he said you is funny
she said you are funny
he said thank you
and she said nevermind.
he rolled his eyes, his beautiful eyes.

2004-04-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

suddenly
I've found a way of loving you
a way of knowing everything
a certainty that can only bring...

she thinks about writing another verse to the song; it's too short. but she misses the point of it, she knows she doesn't understand. it's too simple for her.

she goes out and complicates things gleefully. she writes "I HAVE NO CHOICE" in brilliant blue wasserfest marker along the signs saying thank you for choosing pepsi, then frames a girl with a rainbow scarf and short hair for the crime, reporting it to campus security. "I don't know what she looked like, really. I just noticed her scarf..."
"thanks," they say.

2004-04-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

that night, the girl dreams that she is being proselytised at by people with a mic system provided by McDonald's. she takes up a pitchfork and begins spanking the proselytiser with fewer gizmos and glowing lights, crying jesus was a liar!

in the morning, she narrowly misses her old favourite, and, arriving late to school, discovers that her pen does not work.

2004-04-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

in the evening, the girl finds herself again lost in a sea of the stupids. who do these people think they are? all of a sudden, it is too much for her. she downloads some porn. she pretends it is a stupid person being assraped, and not an amateur porn star. her boyfriend comes over and laughs at her day with the stupids. later, she re-enters the room to find him crouched guiltily in front of the monitor, dick in hand.

...

then, they have raging wild monkey jungle sex. the girl's best female friend walks in on them and, as though in a dream, strips and joins in. later, the girl writes about this experience, feeling a kinship with the stupid cybersex kiddies.

2004-04-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

flashback to an earlier time
nah, nevermind. flashbacks are trite.

imagery
the umbrella lies by the side of the road, a few dark flecks of mud speckling its greenness. it looks like a dead alien.

she picks it up and proceeds to wait for the next bus. she won't realise for several days that it is broken; she is too preoccupied with her lateness.

...

but what makes the butter bitter is not the simple fact of full buses and forgotten notebooks. it is her growing feeling of isolation as she finds more and more of her mornings she is alone with the stupid people. she begins to contemplate arson and vandalisim of vending machines.

2004-04-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

once uponce a time

there was a very happy little girl who was always late for school. she was not late because she slept in; on the contrary, she was late because she got up early--early enough to spend time farting around on the computer until just after her bus left. she was happy, though, because her favourite internet personality was usually kicking around at about that time, and if her favourite one wasn't, then probably one of her other favoured ones was.

but times have changed, along with memories of yesterday. looking back, misunderstanding yesterday...

now the girl listens to sad old music by her uncle's highschool band, and writes bitter poetry. she's late for midterms, but not happily late. frustrated as she runs for, but does not quite catch, the bus, she throws her umbrella on the ground in a temper tantrum. it breaks. she liked that umbrella.

simple ways...ooooh eee ooooh ooooh...