8:02 p.m. | 2004-12-27
To Think, All This From Pita Pit
I've spent the last 5 or so days in a complete mood. Not a bad mood, this is just how I refer to the fact that I get obsessive some days.
I lounged and thought. I smoked more cigarettes than I have in my entire career of smoking, I wore dark eye shadow and refused to listen to anything but underground indie music and read anything but modern art and literature books.
And then, tonight, I read me.
Our local paper, put out by mostly college literature and journalism drop-outs from the local college has a feature every year, "Sticks and Stones." It's a collaboration of small creative writing bits from around the area. And tonight, I opened the yearly copy, cutely designed, to read a certain entry.
I'd never have noticed her had I not crossed the street a block before to look at a certain item that caught my eye from a window. But as I approached her I found myself completely entranced.She had one leg crossed over the other, sitting in a chair of one of the numerous outdoor cafes downtown. Her leg bounced, with no apparent rhythm from time to time, as it revealed the obvious love she had for the certain set of flip-flops on her feet. She nervously played with the edges of her notebook as she re-read what she had just frantically jotted down. Her thumbs jutting out from a zip-up hoodie that she had worn small holes for her thumbs through. It was dingy in spots, not so much dirty, as well worn.
She picked the pen back up, balanced carefully in her right hand as she tilted her head and let a grin come to her. She was self satisfied at the moment as her gloves, the wool kind with no fingers, fought against the size of the pen and a cigarette dangled almost carelessly from her index and middle finger on her left hand.
I was leaning against a tree just staring at her.
She took a deep breath in and began to scribble again, an almost desperate look came to her face as she bounced her leg once more and furrowed her brow. She looked despondent for a moment as she paused and thought, almost scared of what she was writing as she continued to scribble. She looked up at the threatening storm clouds and bit her bottom lip, dragging a breath from the cigarette and going back to writing.
I'm not sure if she noticed it, but she played with the smoke in the most unique of ways. Her hand moving maniacally, she opened the tiniest slit in the front of her lips and let the smoke curl out, her hand's movement causing it to mix with the air.
She closed her eyes.
Fighting back tears, almost, as she wrote she put one final period, slowing towards the end of the sentence and returning to look over what she had wrote, her pen making small circles in the corner as she did. She adjusted her seating position and leaned down to thrust her cigarette into the pavement, unsure of what was to come next.
She closed her book, pen tucked in the binding and shoved it in her small grey bag that hung over her shoulder, covered in buttons, and stood up, clearing the table of her items as she glanced around, narrowly missing me, and started walking.
I stood by that same tree and watched her walk a block and then turn the corner, confident in her steps, but not in self. She was a character, one playing a role that even she didn't quite understand past being honest to oneself.
I never saw her again.
Chances are it's not me. But the way he described her, the persona, it's the exact same one I morph into once in a while. And I'm not sure I liked that. While I am attached to it, I don't like how I haven't been like that in months. I should always smoke like a chimney and read like an idiot. I should always be the same person.
In theory.
