“I can’t.”
“But why? This doesn’t make any sense!”
“I guess not. But I just can’t do this anymore. That sounds so fluffy and cliche and… well, not me. I know. But it’s also true.”
“But what’s changed?”
“Nothing. With me, anyway, nothing has changed. That’s the whole point. With you, though? I don’t know. It seems like nothing, at times. But at others… everything’s changed.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know. I guess I’m sentimental. I also just obsess about things, so I assume everyone else does too.”
“I really don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.”
“Me neither.”
“So what now?
“I guess we don’t see each other for a few years. Or ever. You know. Whichever happens to happen.”
“…”
“So you’re not going to say anything? You’re not even going to make me feel like this is hard for you?”
“It IS hard for me.”
“Right.”
“It is! If you don’t want to believe me-”
“No, fine, I do, I do believe you. I just think you’ve never really appreciated how hard it is for me.”
“I do-”
“No, no, you don’t. Because you’ve forced me to make this step myself. True, in a way it’s been me hurting myself through you but you know how hard it is for me to stop hurting myself and if you really cared in any way close to what you claim, you would have made this step before me. But you didn’t. And now I have to. And you’ll hate me.”
“But I still don’t get it. I thought everything was fine.”
“It’s not.”
“You can’t?”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can’t.”
talk
Eavesdropping
The owl sat on its regular midnight perch, on the beam that hung between the garage door and the overhanging roof. It was quite roomy there, and she liked having its nest so close by, in the very corner, where there was space right inside the corner of the roof.
She was just about to hoot softly and then fly out to catch little rodents by the tail when she was interrupted mid-hoot by a pair of loud voices that erupted in the middle of the driveway in front of her.
“You did NOT just say that!”
“What? You think you’re the only one allowed to be mean? I know how to be mean too, you know.”
“I’m not mean, you jerk-wad! How can you even say that to me?”
“‘Cause it’s true! You’re stuck up and mean, and you know what? I can stand it when you do it to me, but not when you start ragging on my best friends, too. They don’t get to see you like I do, so they don’t get that it’s just how you are.”
“Oh, what, so because they don’t get to see me naked then they don’t know the real me? Are you suggesting they all come over and we have a big party together?”
“WHAT? When did I ever say that? Where the hell is your head, Angela?”
“And what’s all this about you being okay with me being mean to you, anyway? I’m not mean to you!”
The owl in the eaves of the house cocked her head. The voices changed tones. The whiny, female-smelling one sounded muffled, and the deep-voiced male-smelling one made cooing noises that reminded the owl of the noises she made over her eggs.
“I love you, but don’t you see that you’re going to isolate me from everyone else if you keep behaving like a stuck up bitch with them? I’m not saying you ARE one. I’m just saying you act like it, honey.”
“B-b-but your friends make me nervous, and ever since we moved to this stupid city it’s been all about your friends, and don’t you think I miss mine to bits? It’s not like you were super nice to them or anything…”
“I made an effort and you know it. It was hard when they kept sizing me up with their eyes, checking if I was hot enough for they angelic Angela.”
“Well, they were protective of me. What can I do? All your friends want to do is talk to you. It’s like I’m just a painting on the wall in the room. They stare at me sometimes and then go right back to talking to you about the Diamondbacks or the Razorbacks or whatever that team is called.”
“If you stopped acting like an ice princess, and if you stopped being so cold, maybe they’ll be nicer to you, hmm? They don’t always talk about sports, you know.”
The owl, getting bored with the human jabber and the ensuing wet noises as they did that strange thing humans do with their mouths, decided to get going. She spread her wings and leaped from the eaves, wings spreading out to her sides. She dove and then flew upwards, scanning the neighborhood for some delicious little critters to snap in her beak.
“Wow, did you see that?”
“An owl! I’ve never seen one before! Oh my gosh, that’s amazing!”
“What a beauty, hmm?”
“Yeah, so beautiful…”
Here.
It hasn’t sunk in. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a vacation, not like the beginning of a new life. It feels like a temporary jaunt, not like the prologue to the newest chapter of my life.
The city is enormous and Manhattan is only one small, accessible bit of it, but it’s the only bit I’ll get to know in my few days before moving into my new living space – THE DORM.
Manhattan is an endless stream of humanity, constantly coming and going. It makes me think like The Little Prince – I see the people going one way and then see the people coming back and I wonder: weren’t they happy where they were? Then the inevitable answer: no one is happy where they were. I hope it will be different for me, though.
I wish I were an ant, part of the endless anthill, knowing my place and my responsibility and the way I fit into the grand scheme of things. Instead, I’m simply another conscious human, acting half by instinct and half by intellect, trying to find my way and my place.
It’s a beginning. I’m here.
Across Five States: Into Maryland
We entered Maryland in the early afternoon. We drove on a main highway, and the biggest change I noticed was the lack of trucks and the return of cars. Regular cars, small, light, compact and sane – unlike the monsters we’d been driving with for the past day. Suddenly, we were the biggest on the road, including the SUVs, and there was a feeling of fear as we wove through the growing traffic that we would crush one of these tiny aluminum vehicles. It felt also like a return to civilization – we were suddenly around pleasure cruisers, commuters and road-trippers, instead of being around people who were doing a job as they drove.
All this, of course, was only because we were again on a smaller freeway, but commingled with the knowledge that we were so very near our destination, it caused a bit of a shock. It felt like we were almost done with this magical trip, so short but yet so full of experiences. When we stopped in Maryland at a Waffle House for coffee and sustenance, we came very close to deciding to stop at a motel again for the night and drive into Virginia the next day. None of us admitted it, but I felt that none of us really wanted this road magic to end – the feeling of being severed from any one time and any one place, belonging instead to constant movement.
In the end, though, we decided to push on despite everything. We still had unpacking to “look forward to” and we wanted to get it over with as soon as we could. We payed for our coffees, climbed back into the truck, and after some frustration over the rats’ water bottle leaking we set off again, knowing we’d be seeing another state in just a few more minutes.
Three Ladies at Peet’s
Three ladies sat outside Peet’s Coffee in Santa Monica. There were many little tables outside the coffee-shop: one was inhabited by a trendy man in his early twenties, wearing a brown hat and reading a design book; one other table was occupied by a balding man with glasses perched precariously on his nose who was proofreading a paper as he sipped his coffee and occasionally looked up at the people going by; the third table was surrounded by three ladies.
The three ladies were of varying ages. Two were in their early fifties and looked like sisters – both had similar features and they had that sort of friendly and easy manner with each other that comes from a good sisterly relationship. The third was obviously a family member as well – the daughter of the one and the niece of the other. These ladies were surrounded by lots of baggage – a purse, a backpack, four pounds of Peet’s coffee blends, another shoulder bag, and, of course, three large cups of coffee, a cinnamon roll and a small box of chocolates.
The conversation between the ladies was fast and carefree: gossip about family members and family events, chit-chat about the merits of good coffee, small talk about travel plans. Somehow, in all the chatter, the subject of ostrich meat, an option that had been on a menu of a restaurant where the ladies had been the night before, came up. There was some discussion over the general aversion to the very idea of ostrich meat, and then with a casual remark from one of the ladies about how it tasted like roast beef, the table exploded. The ladies all burst out laughing as one of them spit out her coffee, overcome with laughter, and the other two followed suit while trying to control themselves and the flow of coffee spilling over their baggage.
Eventually, the three got themselves under control, though still giggling, and got up to leave. As they were walking down the sidewalk, the young hip man called out with a smile that he enjoyed their laughter and liked to see that they were having fun. He wasn’t mocking – he was sincere. He had enjoyed the sight of three ladies laughing at a table in the Los Angeles sunlight. Only the young lady had noticed that the other man, the quiet one with the glasses, had smiled to himself as well as the three had been laughing hysterically.
The youngest lady walked away from the whole encounter feeling that the world was a good place if people could enjoy the enjoyment of others.
Unruly Thoughts
There is a problem I seem to have – while I often know exactly what I want to write about, there are also times when I sit and stare at my computer screen for full minutes at a time, and I ponder. The thoughts run through my head, half finished sentences chasing each other around and around. I abandon one idea and move onto the next, I ditch that one and jump to yet another one. It can be a wonderful feeling, and can sometimes lead to something that I catch hold of and mull over, and that something can eventually blossom into a whole piece.
Then again, there are those evenings where the thoughts never cease to chase each other around, like wild children in a game – each is intent upon making itself heard. But then, as children will do, the ideas abandon their convincing and pleading because something more interesting is going on, or because they’re bored, or perhaps even curious of what the next idea is going to be.
How do writers, real writers that is, deal with this? Once you have a beginning of a story, how do you decide what to do with it? How can a writer, even one with a clear picture of how everything will play out, not be tempted by the dozen odd ideas that can pop into their heads at any moment? I suppose there is some way to focus yourself, but then, perhaps writing at one o’clock in the morning isn’t the time to discover it.
Paranoid Much?
I haven’t written about my clients before – both because they’re not always very interesting and because I’m not technically supposed to. I work for a credit card company, so I get to talk to just about every sort of person you could imagine: Smart, dumb, confused, annoyed, happy, thankful, nice, sweet, appreciative, secretive, and a hundred other moods and traits. It’s interesting to hear the different people and the different voices, and it’s interesting to see how differently people act with their money.
Today, however, I actually have an interesting story about a client, a specific one. The call started out nice and polite – he wanted to know his credit limit and what money will be coming out of his bank account. He was very sweet, talking to me a bit about where our company is in the country and making sure we were away from any danger [Israel is in a “situation” right now.] Then, somehow, slowly but surely, he started telling me about problems he had with banks in the past.
I thought, at first, that he was just a rambler – there are some people like that, who are lonely or bored and take the opportunity to get some conversation into their day when they call us. Soon, though, he started telling me, in a calm voice, about how his phones are tapped, how he’s followed everywhere, how his mail is examined and stopped, how he’s been cheated in place after place.
Eventually, he made me understand that the sole reason for his telling me all this was because he knows our calls are monitered and recorded for future reference if needed, and he told me he planned to use the calls he makes to us in court – to prove… something or other. I really have no idea. It was rather creepy though – the man sounded so sane and on top of things, and then I felt, as the call progressed, that there was something seriously wrong here.
But who knows, right? Maybe in six months there will be a big story in the paper about this man. You never know I suppose.
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.
Slightly Ignorant 