Fiction Fragments from the Week: "Latitude"
by phil on Saturday Dec 20, 2008 7:56 PM
prose
These may or may not end up in a story, but I want to keep track of these brief flashes of inspiration, just in case.
Two Faberge egg-looking lamps hanging from the ceiling, sort of like chandeliers, but more like the sword of Damacles since they hang above where I sleep. It's the kind of thing that you could easily get paranoid about. I take pride knowing I don't. This reminds me of my willful confidence around bees. It's like a notable psychological defiance to bolster my self-esteem given how fragile my mind generally is. Could I sleep comfortably under an actual sword? Am I that detached? Only one way to find out.
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The first to go is always my clothes.
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Here's how it went down. A long time ago, I made it a matter of principle to always jump right into the pool. That always pays off better than the icy laddering down, body part by piqued body part. But I couldn't get myself to do it. Usually the conditions encourage the jump. The water is so freezing that you just tell yourself, "fuck it." Or maybe you have an audience that's weakly slinking into the pool; a bit of bravado incetivizes the plunge. But tonight, none of those conditions were met. I was just an inch away from the tipping point of jumping right in. I wanted to just "fuck it," but I didn't want it bad enough. Wanting something, but not enough to act, was my punishment. How can you want to want? And so I slinked in slowly, measuring the water level rising over the usual rungs: my ankles, my knees, and then meeting the bottom of my crotch. A flash of suicide flitted across my mind, at which point I made an executive decision, and plunged.
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Always fight the bad guys in your nightmares.
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Prophylactics. Anxiolytics. Tricyclics. Reading medical names slows you down as you struggle to sub-vocalize the words in your head. What are the hardest things to sub-vocalize? Personally, I'm mildly averse to reading about Eastern Europe and Russia to avoid pronouncing Medevev, Saakashvili, Csikszentmihalyi. Some of those names are so fucking hard to spell when you want to look them up on Google. Thank you automatic spell check.
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The effects of placebo can't be underestimated. "This practice of yours might just be the most popular placebo on the market."
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My boredom-killing routine wanted to resume. But structure quickly collapsed. What entertained me yesterday failed to stimulate me today. My first line of defense against boredom is obsessive news surfing. Drudge, Huffington Post, Google News, etc. I refresh the pages, even knowing that the last three times had the same god damned headlines. So I hovered my mouse over the bookmarks, ready to get the fix. I even applied some finger pressure to my mouse. Yet I didn't click. In suspension, a grand "eh" washed over me. Okay, I decided. On to the next line of defense. Video games. I entered a 32-player brawl, rushed into the field, guns blazing, bang bang, but all the bullets flew past ears and over heads. There was no life to my actions. My eyes lost focus. I was looking at an indeterminate space a few inches behind my screen. So I turned away from my laptop and just stared out the window, far into the horizon, meditating on the god damned quantity of tall buildings in this city. And then I stood up, walked into my mother's bedroom, and lay chin-down on her bed, staring at the sequins on the cover.
There were no mantras in my mind, no repetitive thoughts, just an organic lifelessness.
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Promiscuity is like sexual theater.
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I'm the kind of person that has to reach his high water mark before receding back to his true self.
Not having realized my temptations will just haunt me. If I'm going to be square, it'll have to be an apostasy from a life of deviance. I'd have to own a tacit look at the wild kids that says, "okay, you guys are alright. Just not for me."
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He faded in the rear-view mirror and left behind open sky.
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Just like me, she takes big naps before big parties.
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I hate that tree.
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It took me three days to remember the name of the book I read. Each day, a new stab at the title sprung forth then receded. "No, that's not it."
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Who are my role models? I'm only surrounded by things I know I don't want. As a result, all I know is how to say "no." What if I was born in a different time period. What model would I cling to?
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I ruined his jacket in the wash. I heard that it was his favorite one.
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Heisenberg anxiety.
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Incandescant personality.
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I feel like we're each other's back-ups.
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If I don't see the reasoning, then I can't follow the advice.
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"It was the time of my life and I knew it at the time."
"Shit, I didn't."
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I somehow see what's beautiful in things that are ephemeral.
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This is not a test.
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If it's all the same to you.
