Substantial Lack

Silence and emptiness are odd things. Both represent a lack, and yet they seem to be so substantial that you can acutely feel the presence of both.

Silence can fill your ears with its noise, making it deafening. Silence can drive you mad with the pitch of it, with the hum of it, with the absolute roar of it. You may shake your head to clear your ears of it or cough or make a noise so as to erase the presence of it. Sometimes it helps, and you’ll notice the creaks in the building and buzz of electricity and be calm, but sometimes the silence will press right back onto your mind, squeezing your head and almost hurting you with its tightness.

Emptiness can fill a room to the brim with the odd ache it causes. Sometimes it can fill a house full of furniture, making you feel utterly alone despite the things around you. Emptiness can weigh heavy on your heart and soul like a stone tied to them that is plunged into the ocean, pulling you into its depths and making you almost gasp from the need to be rid of it. You might go out into the street, run somewhere to meet friends, anything so as not to feel the aching emptiness, and it might work – but sometimes the emptiness will fill every space you reach and you won’t manage to disentangle yourself from its claws.

So strange, how lack can be so real, almost touchable.

Rosy Thoughts

“Plink-plink-plink”
The metal chimes of the pretty mobile touched each other lightly in the almost nonexistent breeze. Rosy stared sullenly at them with her ice-blue eyes. The sound always bothered her immensely. Why have wind chimes when there was never any wind? The air was always as still as a boulder in the summer, and Rosy hated it.
As if the tiny breath of wind had heard her thoughts, it ceased to make even the merest attempt at cooling the stifling room, and the plink-plink of the chimes stopped. Rosy shifted her position a little bit so her neck wouldn’t hurt as much, and settled down again, closing her eyes. She let out a long, slow breath.
If anyone were to look at her at that moment, they would see a beautiful, sleeping girl, her shortish hair spread around her face like a chocolate-colored halo, lips slightly open and face perfectly calm. Little would they know the turmoil of thoughts and internal conversations that went through the mind of this silent angel.
Rosy felt as if her mind was filled with a whole crowd of people.
The part of her that was a little bit wicked was saying “Keep pretending to be sick, what do you care? All that matters is that Mama and Papa keep paying attention to you.”
Then the sensible part of her would interrupt with “But you can’t go on like this forever, and once you do get up, you’ll have to deal with them.”
The self-pitying part would meekly put in “It makes me sad to think of that though… Can’t you just stay in bed and have them keep feeling sorry for their poor daughter? You are their poor daughter after all, and you are very sad and tired now.”
Wicked would interrupt with an eager “Yes, exactly, that’s exactly right!” but not long after that, Self-Loathing would rear its aggressive head and yell “You disgusting, wicked, ungrateful little fiend, how can you be doing such a thing? You make me sick, you know that? What you’re doing is just so wrong and pathetic that-”
Sensible would then try to sooth everyone with soft words, “Come now, that’s a bit harsh, but yes, you must stop this, Rosy, because it’s not going to help in the end and you know it, dear.”
Wicked-self-pitying-sensible-self-loathing Rosy snapped her eyes open once more. It was no use. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to sleep and look properly sickly, she couldn’t shut out the stupid voices in her head, nagging her about what she was doing or not doing all day long. All Rosy wanted was her parents to stop fighting. They had stopped, for the past couple of days, and she knew it was because they were worried about her complete and utter collapse that led to her staying in bed all the time since. Rosy also knew that the moment she seemed to be feeling better her parents would resume their bickering and their harsh conversations, filled with grim words like “lawyers” and “bank account” and “custody” – words Rosy was thoroughly sick of.
So now instead of hearing her parents fighting, Rosy had to endure the bickering inside her head and try to deal with it. She often dreamed, when she got tired of fighting with herself, of a day in the future when she would feel fine and dandy about everything, a day when things would feel normal, no matter where her parents were. She knew  a day like that, a day where all this was behind her, was somewhere in the future. Rosy waited impatiently for that day. She wanted the present to be all over and done with.
Whenever she lapsed into that dream for too long though, her voices would pick up their arguments and she would sigh, adjust her position, and live in the now in her mind. Occasionally the wind-chimes would clink against each other, puncturing her thoughts, and giving her something fresh to be angry with, but the air always stopped moving soon, and the dead air of the summer would grip Rosy’s heart in a vice-like grip, and her thoughts would continue in their turmoil.

I have no clue where this came from. I started writing it months ago, completed it tonight. I don’t even know if I should call it a short story or not. It’s just… something.

Stupidity – A Common Affliction

There are stupid people on this earth. There are, in fact, many many many stupid people on this planet. We all have to deal with them every day. We have to talk to them, have to forgive their stupidity and have to make allowances for it. This might sound condescending. Maybe it is. I don’t claim to be a great brain or gifted or super-smart. All I claim to have are ears through which I actually try to understand what is being said around me or to me.

Some people do not use their ears very well. They can hear alright, but they use their hearing selectively and half the time decide to ignore what is being said and not let it travel to their brains properly. In my line of work, customer service, I get to talk to people like this on a daily basis. Like a certain mistress who almost made me  cry out of frustration today.

She kept asking the same question about her card, and the second I tried to explain, she dismissed everything I said and told me that the company are thieves and then proceeded to once again tell me all she wanted was an answer to her question. My stomach is still hurting from my pointless half hour conversation with her.

Horoscope

Your guardian angel may appear to you as another human today, maybe even a close friend. There’s no need for complex analysis when someone brings you good news, unexpected cash or an invitation to a very special night. Just make certain that you have the intelligence to say “yes” before the opportunity fades.

Hm. Interesting. Let’s go over this piece by piece. There was no guardian angel whatsoever that came to me today. Not another human, not a close friend. The closest thing to a guardian angel was the piece of dark chocolate I had after dinner. That was heavenly indeed.

Next part. The good news thing is interesting, mostly because I didn’t get any news today from anyone, not good, nor bad. Cash was not recieved either, and an invitation to anything more exciting than my evenings sitting at home and writing essays would have been incredible. But I didn’t get one. Meaning I also didn’t have an oppertunity, or the intelligence for that matter, to say “yes” to anything from anyone.

I suppose the stars don’t have all that much effect on me… me and at least half the other people who got this same horoscope today as I did.

Work With What You Know

Following is the beginning of a conversation I had with my brother this evening.

-Hello?
-Hey.
-Oh, hey, what’s up?
-Not much. You?
-Not much either, you know, just applying to jobs.
-Oh yeah, how’s that going?
-Well, the job I applied for last week – you know, with the hotel interview and everything – I didn’t get that one. But I’ve got an interview later this year I’m really excited about.
-Cool! Where is it?
-Just this place in Washington, a research center.
-Wow, that sounds pretty awesome. I hope you get it!
-Thanks. How’re your applications going?
-Ok, I mean, I’m almost done with the essays – I still have to go over them obviously, but I’m mostly done. Now there’s just the bureaucratic stuff to finish. Oh, by the way, have you heard about the book “The End of Mr. Y”?
-No, don’t think so, what is it?
-It’s right next to me now, that’s why I mentioned it… it’s this cool book I’m reading, it’s got a lot of really awesome references to all these psychological and philosophical theories in it.
-Cool, I should check it out. You know a new Terry Pratchett book came out?
-No! Seriously?
-Yeah, a non-Disc-World novel.
-He writes about something that’s not Disc World? Wow, I didn’t know he ever did that.
-Oh yeah, he’s got a bunch of books that aren’t to do with it.

….My brother and I have fun phone conversations. The conversation continued on to talk about many fantasy writers, the reasons why so many of them are Mormon and some music. I now have homework from him. I need to check out this British show called “Ultra-Violet” and another show by Aarin Sorkin. I need to read this short story called “A Logic Called Joe” and look up “The Hipster Olympics” on Youtube. There will be a test.

Metal

Every time is like the first time. Palms shaking and sweaty, heart pounding away in my chest so loudly that I’m sure everyone can hear, my face getting red with fear.  The gloved hands approaching my face, that long needle covered in plastic drawing nearer and nearer. Just like every other time, I screw my eyes shut tight, and hold my breath.

Pain, exquisitly sharp and focused, as the needle goes through the skin, breaking it completely. Another burst of pain as the needle is taken out and the metal bar is put in. Until this moment, it is all the same every single time.

But after… Well, after is a different story. After the piercing process is done, I can breath a sigh of relief and smile, looking at the newest metal piece in my body. I carry the dull ache of the new hole all day and the days that follow, but it doesn’t bother me so much anymore, because I’ve done it before and I know how to deal with it. It’s the fear of the pain that makes those few minutes on the piercer’s table so awful every time.

My total count is now eleven, three in the face, eight in the ears. Eleven is a good number.

Sweet Relief – and Some Zombies

I just finished my application for the University of California schools. Meaning three campuses, three schools really. UCLA, Berkeley and Santa-Cruz. The application process was long and grueling, confusing and upsetting, disturbing and tiring and most of all FINISHED. It’s finished.

My brain feels so incredibly fried up and used and dried and broken and exhausted and strange and zombified. But at least I got this done. It’s a wonderful feeling, to have the weight of the first deadline off my mind. True, four down and still fifteen to go, but that’s something nonetheless.

In celebration, and laziness, a haiku to explain the way my head feels:

Zombies ate my brain,
Because zombies don’t eat trees,
Carnivorous swine.

My Goal – To Have Voices In My Head

Writing descriptions is all very well, but no work of fiction is complete without dialogue. It doesn’t have to be incredible, it doesn’t have to be witty, it doesn’t have to be much – except that you have to be able to hear it. You have to able to have two characters, two characters that feel real, and you have to know that when you’re reading, or in my case writing, their conversation, you can actually hear two distinct voices in your head that make sense.

You wouldn’t think that would be such a hard thing to practice. It is though. I’ve realized lately that I love writing descriptions and indeed, I know I write them fairly well, at least well enough. But I don’t know, or rather haven’t attempted to know, how to write dialogue, and that’s bad. I need to learn how. The problem is that I can’t just practice dialogue for the sake of itself. I need to have a situation, characters, voices that I can clearly imagine.

I’m not managing to find a way to practice this. I might be obsessing over something silly, but I truly feel I need to learn to write believable conversations. And for that I’ll need people, stories. So that’s what I’m going to try to work on in the next few days.

Insert-Thriller-Novel-Name-Here: Preface

Most stories begin with a person. Some stories begin with an object – an enchanted ring, a lone chair in a meadow, strange stuff like that.

This here story begins with nothing. Not an object, and not a person. It begins with absolutely nothing, that is to say, just a vast, empty space, all contained inside a small test tube. The test tube is full of nothing. Vacuum. The absence of matter – all matter, liquid or solid or gas.

I sat there watching that emptiness and I tried to understand it. Tried to comprehend the meaning of total, utter emptiness. I couldn’t really understand it, no matter how hard I stared at it. This was when I was a young boy, seeing  vacuum in the science lab for the first time.

Now, I feel as if I am facing an uncomprehensible loss, and now, as it was then, I’m staring at what is in front of my eyes and I cannot understand this emptiness, this lack that I’m facing.

How could I have gotten myself into this situation? How have I screwed myself over like this? Not for the first time, I wish I could turn back the clock…

I spend all my time between calls at work scribbling in my notebook. I was going to try to write some dialogue because I must practice that, and instead I wrote a weird preface to a cheap thriller novel about someone who’s lost everything due to something or other. Ah well, the creative mind takes us odd places, I suppose.

Original Barbie

Did you know that once upon a time, Barbie was a red-head? She was, indeed. She had red hair, shortish, only down to her neck. She had dark eyes, not blue. She was super-duper thin of course, but that’s just how it is, I suppose.

Skipper, Barbie’s sister or friend or something, was the blond one. She was shorter, and she had the long blond hair and blue eyes. Sometime over the years, Barbie became her sister apparently, and only her chest seemed to keep growing – ah yes, Skipper was completely flat-chested.

Also, all the original Barbie clothes were properly adorable. They weren’t flashy, they weren’t made of plastic material and they didn’t have velcro. No, the original clothing was all real cloth, with miniature zippers and buttons and real pleats in the skirts, and a real shine to the cocktail dresses. All the shoes fit properly and were actually sturdy. Those clothes were so beautiful.

The reason I know all this is because I’m sentimental, overly so, and I actually have the same Barbie-box that my mom had when she was a girl. It’s tucked away deep under my desk, but once in a while I delve into it out of curiosity and actually envy Miss Redhead for her clothing.