Short Story
Posted: 04 Sep 2008, 06:51
I wrote this a few months ago and would like some feedback, if anyone reads it. I really do need your help cuz I can't judge what I've written myself. Please be honest, and give any tips if you can... I know it's a bit confusing but it's supposed to be something like flow of conscioussness... Anyways, hope you like it.
PS. I don't know how to format the text properly here in the blog so it's all a bit messy, ah well :/
Blank Verses
Books are not good for my mind, she thinks.
No. She is wrong. How else is she to escape, if not through reading? What else is she to do? Even though books can make life incredibly dull and meaningless (for they make one glimpse things one cannot physically see or touch or be), making her immensely regretful, she wishes for nothing more than to feel those feelings, see those places and be those people she has always known better than she knows herself. She thinks, why do I live in this world as it is now? Why instead of going for walks in a glittering garden full of blossoming buds and peach trees and bright blood red roses and blue skies and nearly ethereal clouds does she have to sit under a skateboard, excessfully, dangerously intoxicating her mind with her so many (though often unimportant) friends? She knows that’s what it is always going to be like. She knows there’s probably nothing she can do. Meet the right people, in Amsterdam? For where else will she find such gardens, such beauty? Anywhere, probably. She knows that. But she also knows she must allow herself to dream. So on she goes. Gardens in Amsterdam! Or Paris, perhaps. Yes, Paris, Paris is delicious. But then she thinks, or rather feels, again: Amsterdam. But maybe that is a matter to be decided at a more appropriate time.
She lets her mind wonder, and ends up resenting where she is, who she’s become and what she is going to do next. She looks around. She is in a room she thought she liked, she knows she likes it, but just because that’s the best she can get, living at the time she lives. Artificial lights are everywhere. Light coming from the cars outside, from windows across the street. She surely would much rather be seeing flowers, the moonlight reflected on a small lake beside the fresh bright house she would love to live in. That’s where she should be, she can’t help realising. All the women with their smooth porcelain skin, which invited delicate yet strong, decided hands to the touch. For the men would be that way. Yes, that’s what they would be like! Horse-riding in the mountains, reading by the window, swimming in the lake. Indeed it sounds rather better than skateboards, racy meaningless sex, toxic numbness. Better than getting up and rushing to get whatever she has to get to. All the time.
Right now she knows she can’t keep imagining these things. She can’t concentrate on anything at all. She has never felt so empty. She has no idea what made her feel this way. Could it possibly have been the dream she’d had last night? It was peculiar. Yes, very strange, quite vivid, strangely real, she was sure of it. They said she was going to die. She had little time, but it was inevitable and everyone knew it, denying it was of no use whatsoever. I am not a fool, she tells herself. She knows for a fact that it was just a dream, and therefore it was nonsense to let herself be blown into this storm of doubt and fear.
She feels her head turning. Now everything is spinning round and round again, now it’s all different again, everything has changed. When she woke up this morning she thought she was in control. Or at least she knew how deceiving just ‘feeling things’ can be. Suddenly she feels so so so angry. Why does she have to be a failure?! Why is she never good enough at anything that matters to her? She can’t stress enough how frustrating it is. She can’t shout it out on paper. But that’s what she is doing inside. Shouting in despair. I am so angry, she says to herself. I hate myself for not being capable
It is inside me.
As sharp and bright and intense as a full moon reflected on a silver dagger. But I can’t print it on paper in the way I wish I could, the way I need to so I can continue on living, she cries. She half believes in this power, half thinks she is utterly useless, ordinary, trivial. She feels such admiration for the ones who have some culture, a little desire to learn and improve. A little desire to grow. Inside. How she would like to know them! For all she currently knows is vanity. She feels herself drowning in the sea of nothingness the world around her seems to be. There are a few, rare, unexpected pieces of lost wood floating, flowing in the ocean. But she can never, could never get close enough, reach out, and save herself. She wasn’t good enough! She isn’t good enough! Or the circumstances simply never allow her to. She sort of hopes, believes, desperately wishes she one day will be able to venture through life with one of those saviours. Venture a day! She knows that would be happiness right there. One day. But her wish is irrelevant now, nothing is to happen. I don’t want to depend on anybody, only I can save myself.
Then she goes on to thinking about what she wants. She does not know at this precise moment. She usually thinks she does. But now she just can’t tell. What does she want. I do not know, she ponders. That’s unusual. Maybe the books and dreams have swiped all of herself from her. This might not be inconvenient. It is hard to tell, you see. A sense of insubstantiality regarding her own being is introduced in her mind, her soul, or whatever part of human beings is supposed to have control over their actions. I want to pour out all the light that is inside me, bleed it all out. Out it must go. She says passionately to herself, her voicing echoing in the room, suffocating her.
In fact, she doesn’t even want the flowers and lakes right now. Except she realises she does want them. She does know what she wants now. Flowers, lakes, moonlight, little boats, flowers, candles, fresh strawberries- how wonderful it would be to walk through a strawberry field!- fountains, flowers, waterfalls, dusk and flowers. That’s what she wants! But she wants something else too. She knows she cannot have it. She cannot have what she wants. No. She can’t. She won’t say it or write it down. She is ashamed of it. She is not worried about what people (oh people… what do they matter?) think, but unfortunately this is very relevant to the matter. How she wants to voice it! She can’t voice it (conflict, it’s ‘contrast’, someone said, that’s what makes life what it is). Voicing it. It’s something she just won’t allow herself to do. But she feels it! It is a strong, violet red searing flame that fills her entirely, burning her insides, her heart and lungs, fusing with the light. How did she get there? To the state of wanting it so bad. It is not wrong. Obviously not. But it’s not possible, because she is not good enough, she can’t, she can’t pour the light out.
Suddenly she realises that there are times when puzzling, unknown notions of love, sorrow and hopelessness fuse together and bear on desperation, taking unimaginable dimensions capable of invading the core of one’s being in such a way one does not know where one’s conscious being ends and the desire for the entire self to cease altogether begins; one is unable to move or react to anything for the sense of impossibility pulses ready to explode into a flame of one’s failures. Rationality and awareness of failure fight the illusions one moulds to trick the mind, the deceit… that it is, it is worth living, after all. The battle only ends when the explosion takes place.
There’s nothing more left to think or say. She wants the flowers, the lakes, the moonlight, the little boat. The flowers, the candles, the fresh strawberries, the fountains, the waterfalls in the dusk. But none of that matters if she isn’t to have what she wishes for, what she needs. And for that reason, now, she is gone. She is no more. Dust, of nothingness. Dust of everything she ever longed for. Gone. She is.
Now, she was.
PS. I don't know how to format the text properly here in the blog so it's all a bit messy, ah well :/
Blank Verses
Books are not good for my mind, she thinks.
No. She is wrong. How else is she to escape, if not through reading? What else is she to do? Even though books can make life incredibly dull and meaningless (for they make one glimpse things one cannot physically see or touch or be), making her immensely regretful, she wishes for nothing more than to feel those feelings, see those places and be those people she has always known better than she knows herself. She thinks, why do I live in this world as it is now? Why instead of going for walks in a glittering garden full of blossoming buds and peach trees and bright blood red roses and blue skies and nearly ethereal clouds does she have to sit under a skateboard, excessfully, dangerously intoxicating her mind with her so many (though often unimportant) friends? She knows that’s what it is always going to be like. She knows there’s probably nothing she can do. Meet the right people, in Amsterdam? For where else will she find such gardens, such beauty? Anywhere, probably. She knows that. But she also knows she must allow herself to dream. So on she goes. Gardens in Amsterdam! Or Paris, perhaps. Yes, Paris, Paris is delicious. But then she thinks, or rather feels, again: Amsterdam. But maybe that is a matter to be decided at a more appropriate time.
She lets her mind wonder, and ends up resenting where she is, who she’s become and what she is going to do next. She looks around. She is in a room she thought she liked, she knows she likes it, but just because that’s the best she can get, living at the time she lives. Artificial lights are everywhere. Light coming from the cars outside, from windows across the street. She surely would much rather be seeing flowers, the moonlight reflected on a small lake beside the fresh bright house she would love to live in. That’s where she should be, she can’t help realising. All the women with their smooth porcelain skin, which invited delicate yet strong, decided hands to the touch. For the men would be that way. Yes, that’s what they would be like! Horse-riding in the mountains, reading by the window, swimming in the lake. Indeed it sounds rather better than skateboards, racy meaningless sex, toxic numbness. Better than getting up and rushing to get whatever she has to get to. All the time.
Right now she knows she can’t keep imagining these things. She can’t concentrate on anything at all. She has never felt so empty. She has no idea what made her feel this way. Could it possibly have been the dream she’d had last night? It was peculiar. Yes, very strange, quite vivid, strangely real, she was sure of it. They said she was going to die. She had little time, but it was inevitable and everyone knew it, denying it was of no use whatsoever. I am not a fool, she tells herself. She knows for a fact that it was just a dream, and therefore it was nonsense to let herself be blown into this storm of doubt and fear.
She feels her head turning. Now everything is spinning round and round again, now it’s all different again, everything has changed. When she woke up this morning she thought she was in control. Or at least she knew how deceiving just ‘feeling things’ can be. Suddenly she feels so so so angry. Why does she have to be a failure?! Why is she never good enough at anything that matters to her? She can’t stress enough how frustrating it is. She can’t shout it out on paper. But that’s what she is doing inside. Shouting in despair. I am so angry, she says to herself. I hate myself for not being capable
It is inside me.
As sharp and bright and intense as a full moon reflected on a silver dagger. But I can’t print it on paper in the way I wish I could, the way I need to so I can continue on living, she cries. She half believes in this power, half thinks she is utterly useless, ordinary, trivial. She feels such admiration for the ones who have some culture, a little desire to learn and improve. A little desire to grow. Inside. How she would like to know them! For all she currently knows is vanity. She feels herself drowning in the sea of nothingness the world around her seems to be. There are a few, rare, unexpected pieces of lost wood floating, flowing in the ocean. But she can never, could never get close enough, reach out, and save herself. She wasn’t good enough! She isn’t good enough! Or the circumstances simply never allow her to. She sort of hopes, believes, desperately wishes she one day will be able to venture through life with one of those saviours. Venture a day! She knows that would be happiness right there. One day. But her wish is irrelevant now, nothing is to happen. I don’t want to depend on anybody, only I can save myself.
Then she goes on to thinking about what she wants. She does not know at this precise moment. She usually thinks she does. But now she just can’t tell. What does she want. I do not know, she ponders. That’s unusual. Maybe the books and dreams have swiped all of herself from her. This might not be inconvenient. It is hard to tell, you see. A sense of insubstantiality regarding her own being is introduced in her mind, her soul, or whatever part of human beings is supposed to have control over their actions. I want to pour out all the light that is inside me, bleed it all out. Out it must go. She says passionately to herself, her voicing echoing in the room, suffocating her.
In fact, she doesn’t even want the flowers and lakes right now. Except she realises she does want them. She does know what she wants now. Flowers, lakes, moonlight, little boats, flowers, candles, fresh strawberries- how wonderful it would be to walk through a strawberry field!- fountains, flowers, waterfalls, dusk and flowers. That’s what she wants! But she wants something else too. She knows she cannot have it. She cannot have what she wants. No. She can’t. She won’t say it or write it down. She is ashamed of it. She is not worried about what people (oh people… what do they matter?) think, but unfortunately this is very relevant to the matter. How she wants to voice it! She can’t voice it (conflict, it’s ‘contrast’, someone said, that’s what makes life what it is). Voicing it. It’s something she just won’t allow herself to do. But she feels it! It is a strong, violet red searing flame that fills her entirely, burning her insides, her heart and lungs, fusing with the light. How did she get there? To the state of wanting it so bad. It is not wrong. Obviously not. But it’s not possible, because she is not good enough, she can’t, she can’t pour the light out.
Suddenly she realises that there are times when puzzling, unknown notions of love, sorrow and hopelessness fuse together and bear on desperation, taking unimaginable dimensions capable of invading the core of one’s being in such a way one does not know where one’s conscious being ends and the desire for the entire self to cease altogether begins; one is unable to move or react to anything for the sense of impossibility pulses ready to explode into a flame of one’s failures. Rationality and awareness of failure fight the illusions one moulds to trick the mind, the deceit… that it is, it is worth living, after all. The battle only ends when the explosion takes place.
There’s nothing more left to think or say. She wants the flowers, the lakes, the moonlight, the little boat. The flowers, the candles, the fresh strawberries, the fountains, the waterfalls in the dusk. But none of that matters if she isn’t to have what she wishes for, what she needs. And for that reason, now, she is gone. She is no more. Dust, of nothingness. Dust of everything she ever longed for. Gone. She is.
Now, she was.
