» seven » a b e a u t i f u l g i r l - pg
Title: A Beautiful Girl
Genre: The Office
Pairing/Character: Jim/Pam, Pam!Centric
Rating: PG
Betas Used: All mistakes are my own :)
Summary: “Words distort what a person really feels in his heart.” -- Chaim Potok, The Chosen ; three vignettes from Pam's POV.
Spoilers: I guess there's slight Survivor Man spoilers. So, up till then =)
“Words distort what a person really feels in his heart.” -- Chaim Potok, The Chosen
To define a thing by a word is to limit it. When we define any object, thing, person by a word, we are restricted in their description by the sense and constraints of the word itself. Thus, the moment we take an experience and describes it in words, we automatically move back away from the actual thing and towards a pale, narrow description of the incident. A beautiful girl. The vision we inspire by saying the word beautiful is restricted by our understanding of the word “beautiful.” It does not capture the same rush or thrill of encountering such beauty. Just as the color blind’s perception of red is different than the average person’s perception of the same color, any one individual’s understanding of a word is different from another’s understanding of that same word. Even in our attempts to describe the same phenomenon, as we communicate, we lose clarity and move away from what we actually meant to say.
Conversely, although we are limited by them, we are constrained to use words to describe our experience. Instead of throwing up our hands and saying that it is futile to describe anything, we should take comfort in the mathematical concept of a limit. Juts as .99 repeating is defined by our mathematician friends as exactly equal to one, as we search for the best words, always refining our choices, the closer we draw to the essence, the true essence, of what we actually perceive.
Pam had never been a beautiful girl. She was average. Prettier than half of her peers, but uglier than half of them as well. Karen was a great example of the kind of girl Pam was uglier than. Jim deserved a pretty girl, Pam admitted. Jim deserved someone who didn’t hurt him, and Pam knew that she would never be that person again. They used to be friends; good friends, maybe even best friends.
She never thought it would hurt so much to be average.
***
She’s sitting in the hallway with her hands balled up against her eyes, trying to push the tears back into her tear ducts and just control herself. It isn’t long before she hears footsteps; she can feel her pulse in her throat and wants to throw up or pass out. When she sees that it’s Dwight, her utter depravity turns into a dismal flicker of complacency. He doesn’t need to see her like this.
“Who did this to you? Where is he?”
All Pam can come out with is a pathetic, half gasped, “What?” Then she realizes who she’s talking to: Dwight, with the knife collection and the table saw and the various sundry pepper spray cans around the office. She realizes if she doesn’t respond, he’s likely to do something rash, and Pam couldn’t bare to hurt him, not Dwight but that other him, whose name seems to be resting on the tip of her tongue like the weight of her death toll against her puffy lips. “It’s not anything.”
She watches him take off his jacket, and everything becomes blurry. When he touches her (just an arm across her back like drapery or otherwise), it is too much.
It should be Jim.
***
The words that float through her are what?! and fnkkurgk and Jim and God, oh God, she feels the need to both chase after him and pass out. The camera crew looks at her expectedly, and she turns to them with perhaps the dumbest smile plastered across her smitten visage.
“I’m sorry, what was the question?”
Genre: The Office
Pairing/Character: Jim/Pam, Pam!Centric
Rating: PG
Betas Used: All mistakes are my own :)
Summary: “Words distort what a person really feels in his heart.” -- Chaim Potok, The Chosen ; three vignettes from Pam's POV.
Spoilers: I guess there's slight Survivor Man spoilers. So, up till then =)
“Words distort what a person really feels in his heart.” -- Chaim Potok, The Chosen
To define a thing by a word is to limit it. When we define any object, thing, person by a word, we are restricted in their description by the sense and constraints of the word itself. Thus, the moment we take an experience and describes it in words, we automatically move back away from the actual thing and towards a pale, narrow description of the incident. A beautiful girl. The vision we inspire by saying the word beautiful is restricted by our understanding of the word “beautiful.” It does not capture the same rush or thrill of encountering such beauty. Just as the color blind’s perception of red is different than the average person’s perception of the same color, any one individual’s understanding of a word is different from another’s understanding of that same word. Even in our attempts to describe the same phenomenon, as we communicate, we lose clarity and move away from what we actually meant to say.
Conversely, although we are limited by them, we are constrained to use words to describe our experience. Instead of throwing up our hands and saying that it is futile to describe anything, we should take comfort in the mathematical concept of a limit. Juts as .99 repeating is defined by our mathematician friends as exactly equal to one, as we search for the best words, always refining our choices, the closer we draw to the essence, the true essence, of what we actually perceive.
Pam had never been a beautiful girl. She was average. Prettier than half of her peers, but uglier than half of them as well. Karen was a great example of the kind of girl Pam was uglier than. Jim deserved a pretty girl, Pam admitted. Jim deserved someone who didn’t hurt him, and Pam knew that she would never be that person again. They used to be friends; good friends, maybe even best friends.
She never thought it would hurt so much to be average.
***
She’s sitting in the hallway with her hands balled up against her eyes, trying to push the tears back into her tear ducts and just control herself. It isn’t long before she hears footsteps; she can feel her pulse in her throat and wants to throw up or pass out. When she sees that it’s Dwight, her utter depravity turns into a dismal flicker of complacency. He doesn’t need to see her like this.
“Who did this to you? Where is he?”
All Pam can come out with is a pathetic, half gasped, “What?” Then she realizes who she’s talking to: Dwight, with the knife collection and the table saw and the various sundry pepper spray cans around the office. She realizes if she doesn’t respond, he’s likely to do something rash, and Pam couldn’t bare to hurt him, not Dwight but that other him, whose name seems to be resting on the tip of her tongue like the weight of her death toll against her puffy lips. “It’s not anything.”
She watches him take off his jacket, and everything becomes blurry. When he touches her (just an arm across her back like drapery or otherwise), it is too much.
It should be Jim.
***
The words that float through her are what?! and fnkkurgk and Jim and God, oh God, she feels the need to both chase after him and pass out. The camera crew looks at her expectedly, and she turns to them with perhaps the dumbest smile plastered across her smitten visage.
“I’m sorry, what was the question?”