inside her head
excerpt from 2005 NaNoWriMo entry, unedited (as usual)
Erica's Journal:
This place is too fricking distracting. But I am a mean, mean person, apparently, and also antisocial. This is because I sort of freak out at how more and more people wander in here, rearranging all the tables and easy chairs, stringing their electrical cords all over so that other people have to actually navigate around them in order to get through the place. I find that so tasteless. It's like each of these "cordies" is the sun around whom all this revolves. Meanwhile, I thought it was a place of business that does me the kindness of allowing me to talk online while I have my coffee and roll, in order to oh my god. The new plugged-in dude in front of me is wearing zip-up ankle boots. With a Cuban heel.
Okay, anyway, it's harder to write here than it used to be. It's like a weird gang of rebels with PCs, bad hair, badder shoes, and an utter disregard for the privacy of public space. Stop that, I know you know what I mean by this. So for today, now, I will just write for the pleasure of seeing my words spread across the page in living form, appreciative of the fact that I look totally hot in my brown V-neck stretch t-shirt and new jeans, with my cute little reading glasses perched on my not so cute and little but interesting nose, and really make a better attempt to ignore the havoc being wrought all around me.
I wonder how many of them will be killed by the New Flu virus? It's completely awful of me to think of it that way, but these thoughts just slip in unbidden, I swear. I look around the room and pick out this one or that one, wondering if they'll still be around in summer, what this place will look like then. Will I still be here? I want to believe so, but no one can really be certain. The immunity boosters I've been taking seem to be working in that I've had not one hint of a cold yet this year, and I feel pretty energetic. Knowing what to do about the diet is difficult. I really can't afford to lose weight, because they say that the rapid weight loss of the Flu is partly what dictates a person's inability to recover from it. The 5 pounds of middle age cushion I carry around with me are not exactly much of a barrier to that situation.
No one here seems scared at all. They're just blithely carrying on, unconcerned about the sword hanging over all our heads by a literally bare thread. I have music blasting a little too loudly into my ears to really hear what they're saying, but when I look up, I see smiles and laughter. And now one of them has set himself down right next to me so that he could see what I type if he just looks over here for any length of time. It feels chilling, somehow. I can't quite pin down the feeling that I have, but lately I find myself suspicious of people and their happy facades. I cannot believe they are this carefree for real. Either that or they're just sort of stupid, too stupid to think much about it. Maybe that's a good way to be. They're still rude, though.
I'm down to 69% battery power; didn't bring an extra. That gives me roughly 2 hours more to sit here and pretend that what I do is important, matters, and is fruitful. I'm pretty sure none of that is true anymore.
If I do live through this, I want to be one of the surviving people who look at the aftermath of horror, wandering through, picking from the ravaged earth in order to make my way in the new civilization that springs forth from post-chaotic ground. And I want it all to look sort of like the train station at Secaucus.
I don't hate people. I just hate what they become, and the fact that they don't even notice most of what's going on around them, and seem unable to interpret it when they do. It frustrates me. I always have said and believed that we are all much more than the sum of our parts. Now and then I'd like to see real proof of that in my own environment. No firmly held theory is worth much if we never see it in action.
What I would love knowing is that someone in this room is sitting quietly typing hideous things about me just like I'm writing about them. That would feel real to me, and I'd know that someone in here had thoughts inside their head. I don't want to look at others as though they are not as real as me. I want to see their hearts and read their pain and joy and all the rest. I don't want to be disgusted by them. I'm not, really, not when in a face-to-face encounter. My distaste is mainly abstract. But it's always there.
So, Secaucus. It just looks like the end of the earth, and the train station looks like a Last Stop before the world ends kind of place. You could easily imagine seeing it in a film about apocalyptic goings-on, and I sometimes wonder if the person or people who designed it were aware of that going in. I mean, probably not, but I wish they were. It would be pretty cool to read that the architect had gone in with a vision of "Dying Civilization" as his working theme. He would certainly be able to call it a success. One of these days I'm just going to get off the train there and hang out for awhile, see what walks past. It even looks eerily quiet.
Erica's Journal:
This place is too fricking distracting. But I am a mean, mean person, apparently, and also antisocial. This is because I sort of freak out at how more and more people wander in here, rearranging all the tables and easy chairs, stringing their electrical cords all over so that other people have to actually navigate around them in order to get through the place. I find that so tasteless. It's like each of these "cordies" is the sun around whom all this revolves. Meanwhile, I thought it was a place of business that does me the kindness of allowing me to talk online while I have my coffee and roll, in order to oh my god. The new plugged-in dude in front of me is wearing zip-up ankle boots. With a Cuban heel.
Okay, anyway, it's harder to write here than it used to be. It's like a weird gang of rebels with PCs, bad hair, badder shoes, and an utter disregard for the privacy of public space. Stop that, I know you know what I mean by this. So for today, now, I will just write for the pleasure of seeing my words spread across the page in living form, appreciative of the fact that I look totally hot in my brown V-neck stretch t-shirt and new jeans, with my cute little reading glasses perched on my not so cute and little but interesting nose, and really make a better attempt to ignore the havoc being wrought all around me.
I wonder how many of them will be killed by the New Flu virus? It's completely awful of me to think of it that way, but these thoughts just slip in unbidden, I swear. I look around the room and pick out this one or that one, wondering if they'll still be around in summer, what this place will look like then. Will I still be here? I want to believe so, but no one can really be certain. The immunity boosters I've been taking seem to be working in that I've had not one hint of a cold yet this year, and I feel pretty energetic. Knowing what to do about the diet is difficult. I really can't afford to lose weight, because they say that the rapid weight loss of the Flu is partly what dictates a person's inability to recover from it. The 5 pounds of middle age cushion I carry around with me are not exactly much of a barrier to that situation.
No one here seems scared at all. They're just blithely carrying on, unconcerned about the sword hanging over all our heads by a literally bare thread. I have music blasting a little too loudly into my ears to really hear what they're saying, but when I look up, I see smiles and laughter. And now one of them has set himself down right next to me so that he could see what I type if he just looks over here for any length of time. It feels chilling, somehow. I can't quite pin down the feeling that I have, but lately I find myself suspicious of people and their happy facades. I cannot believe they are this carefree for real. Either that or they're just sort of stupid, too stupid to think much about it. Maybe that's a good way to be. They're still rude, though.
I'm down to 69% battery power; didn't bring an extra. That gives me roughly 2 hours more to sit here and pretend that what I do is important, matters, and is fruitful. I'm pretty sure none of that is true anymore.
If I do live through this, I want to be one of the surviving people who look at the aftermath of horror, wandering through, picking from the ravaged earth in order to make my way in the new civilization that springs forth from post-chaotic ground. And I want it all to look sort of like the train station at Secaucus.
I don't hate people. I just hate what they become, and the fact that they don't even notice most of what's going on around them, and seem unable to interpret it when they do. It frustrates me. I always have said and believed that we are all much more than the sum of our parts. Now and then I'd like to see real proof of that in my own environment. No firmly held theory is worth much if we never see it in action.
What I would love knowing is that someone in this room is sitting quietly typing hideous things about me just like I'm writing about them. That would feel real to me, and I'd know that someone in here had thoughts inside their head. I don't want to look at others as though they are not as real as me. I want to see their hearts and read their pain and joy and all the rest. I don't want to be disgusted by them. I'm not, really, not when in a face-to-face encounter. My distaste is mainly abstract. But it's always there.
So, Secaucus. It just looks like the end of the earth, and the train station looks like a Last Stop before the world ends kind of place. You could easily imagine seeing it in a film about apocalyptic goings-on, and I sometimes wonder if the person or people who designed it were aware of that going in. I mean, probably not, but I wish they were. It would be pretty cool to read that the architect had gone in with a vision of "Dying Civilization" as his working theme. He would certainly be able to call it a success. One of these days I'm just going to get off the train there and hang out for awhile, see what walks past. It even looks eerily quiet.