Friday, June 25, 2004
Even children get older
Today is a very slow day. It's almost 1:30 already and honestly all I've been doing for the past hour and a half is I've written two or three work-related e-mails and wrote the into to a story I'm working on. It's coming okay, and I know how I want to write the ending, it's the middle of stories that I have problems with. My idea for the premise of this story is pretty vague, too, and I can't really tell yet what I want to happen. I just know how it starts and how it will, one day, end. I'll include it in the end here if anyone has any suggestions. Or this is just warning if you don't give a shit and know it's something you can skip over.
Since the middle of the day yesterday I have been working on building this database for christian booksellers. There's a big christian conference this weekend that we're (by 'we' I don't mean me, of course) presenting in in Atlanta, and they have some stupid catagory/sub-catagory standard system that I had to enter into the program and make lots of sales with to make it look like my pretend christian store exists. It's just funny 'cause my boss, as well as I, is Jewish, and so I kept getting distracted reading some of the inane catagories these christians have created. They had SUCH A BIG LIST for kitchenware in the 'gifts' department. I mean.. what the hell is a Christian teapot? Does that mean there is such a thing as a heathen teapot? Would that be a teapot that, instead of whistling when the water is hot, says "g-d damn it. g-d damn it. g-d damn it." If so, I want one.
Speaking of Christianity, half my family is Catholic and the one and a half year old baby on that side of the family is in town this weekend to get baptized in Evanston. So there's one more ceremony and reception I have to go to tomorrow. He's a cute baby who I've only met twice, I just hope the ceremony doesn't last long 'cause that's a lot of time in a church.
Anyway. Story: (mind you, this is just the beginning)
As yet Untitled (possibly 'Childhood')
Summer doesn’t stop anything. Temperatures may rise, but all that really does in the end is add a certain disdained mugginess to the air. Still things don’t get discussed, get done, although time doesn’t take her stress level and memory into account as it just keeps moving. She’ll blink and wistfully wish for it to slow down, wait for her, but such is useless at times like this. Time has plugged its ears and knows that if it gets tired of moving moving moving, the stars will fall away and this inescapable sky and earth will tear and contort into one and the same, bringing everything along with it. Longing and rage, along with wide eyes and soft skin, will fold together until none of it is distinguishable, not like there will be anything to distinguish it besides Time standing still and watching.
She knows this, and contends that all she has left to do is catch herself up with whatever she can. If she starts going along with these motions, she will be hiding away everything locked inside herself, pushing against her skin from the inside and doing its best to escape. She understands the consequence of its success then would be infinitely worse than now, so she swallows hard and prepares to get it over with.
She sees him stare blankly, not blinking, chin tilted slighting up so she cannot quite tell what he’s focusing on, even though it is obvious that he is incapable of seeing anything at the moment. Her legs, instinctively, move one in front of the other, carrying her to him, despite her brain doing its best to shout Stop! It’s not too late to turn around!, although in vain. All those electrical impulses traveling from nerve end to nerve end will never come to realize their trip and efforts were fruitless and won’t be listened to. They use their entire existence to deliver their message but she keeps moving forward, slowly, until she stops and is close enough to extend her wary arm and have her trembling fingertips brush against his graceful ones resting on those chains; metal intertwined with itself time and time again to reach infinity, to support him while he doesn’t even notice her standing right behind him. Her breath will make his hair dance, taunting her invisibility. It is still not too late to turn around, her brain shouts, but she is immobile, paralyzed. His skin is so translucent that she is sure that if she stepped any closer and tried to embrace him, she would be engulfed and live out her days lodged between the valves of his heart and taking her vacations far away in his smile, the places she used to believe she belongs.
Watching him be so lost, four thousand miles but eighteen inches away from her, is too overwhelming for her to handle and she expends every ounce of strength she has to open her mouth and breathe his name, then feels her lungs tighten again as the breath wafts through still air and finds its new home in his ear. His thoughts rush themselves back through miles and years of travel and his eyes lose their gloss, gain a layer of cloudiness proving that he is once again here.
1:27 PM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
