The last couple of weeks have been busy, which means I haven't had time to write. This doesn't mean I haven't had time to think about writing.
There was something about zippers and buttons being the sexiest parts of clothing.
Something about an old man and a young man, and the old man being a version of the young man who is a version of the old man (of course, this was entirely unoriginal and inspired by a conversation about Borges).
Another little story about originality and doubles, and forgery. Something about a perfect forgery not being a forgery at all? If it looks the same, and it makes you feel the same, does 'original' matter?
A short thought about a little girl sitting on her windowsill in the northern mountains of Romania, and a little boy doing the same thing somewhere in Australia, but I don't like to write about places I haven't visited.
There were also (they're there every day) thoughts about Ismeta and robbing banks and killing the people you robbed the bank with. Those are two stories that appeared in my head at the same time and are still very much works in progress. Less frequently I thought about making changes to that story about the girl who ran away from home for no other reason than home was boring.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. The sitting down and the writing are the hard part. And this week I really haven't put in the time. I find myself sitting down to write something on Thursday, the day before my self imposed deadline. And I think about deadlines and about writing. I wish I could say that inspiration suddenly strikes and something short but meaningful gets put down. But I know it's not the case.
So maybe I should start with the rain again. I love the imagery of rain. I don't quite know why. I don't find it melancholy. It reminds me of the day in Salamanca when it started raining and the rain cleared the streets and I walked around in the middle of the pedestrianised streets, getting soaked. Walking down the street where my aunt lives, I ran into my viola teacher at the time, who was also joyfully walking under the rain. She was surprised to see me, or maybe I'm projecting and I was the one who was surprised to see her. She was there to see her parents. I hadn't realised she was from Salamanca. I explained I had family in the city and we visited often. For some reason I remember this day clearly, and as a happy day. Maybe the joyful associations with rain start there? I also know that rain was an important part of the start of the story about the bank robbery. The main character (Emily? I think that was her original name, but I can't be sure. I've written the start to that story several times both in Spanish and in English, and the name changes. For today, we'll call her Anna) is sitting in her cell, thinking about how the rain wherever the jail is is more frequent than in California, where she robbed the bank. She doesn't dislike it, and she doesn't like it. She's pretty numb by the time the story starts. Doesn't really feel anything. Eats to keep herself alive, drinks to keep herself alive. At other times she just sits, staring straight ahead. I can't quite decide whether she thinks about much at all. She watches on and takes things in, but she doesn't react. It feels to her like time doesn't go by. Every day is exactly like the day before, and like the next day, and sometimes she wonders if she has died and she's in purgatory. Hell couldn't be this boring.
She looks at herself in a mirror and sees someone different from her. A girl, a pretty one. Red hair, cut short, bright green eyes. A narrow straight nose, a small mouth. The girl looks skinny, and different from the herself she remembers from just a few months before, but also different from the image she has of herself. Sometimes she sings to hear her voice, but she doesn't recognise that either. She doesn't talk to anyone else.
Sometimes, very occasionally, she thinks about Kevin. Sometimes she thinks about how she killed him. Sometimes she wonders if she regrets it, or if she's glad she did it. Sometimes she falls into the pitfall of 'it was him or me', and then almost smiles to herself knowing it was nothing of the sort. She wanted out so she killed him. From time to time she wonders when everything became so matter of fact. Before there had been feelings. So many feelings. Now there was just thoughts: what she wanted, how she could get it, and would she. The first therapist who went to see her asked her if she knew what she'd done was wrong. She couldn't answer. She wasn't sure she could understand right and wrong anymore. She had the concepts, stored somewhere in her head. She could judge, coldly, based on her definitions. But she didn't have an ingrained sense anymore. It was more like making an analysis, someone gives you the information and you classify given the definitions you are working with.
When she wasn't staring straight ahead in her cell, she was studying maths. It was the only thing that seemed to keep her occupied, that made time seem to go on. It was what she had started to study at University, the reason she'd ended up interning at the bank. But that wasn't why she studied it now. Now, it was one of the few things that felt familiar.
Her parents had come to see her. Her father had cried throughout the visit. Her mother had stared at her in wonder and disappointment. They did not understand their child, or the person who had been their child. They had asked her why, and she had told them why, even though she knew it would only horrify them. Her mother had asked whether she wanted to never leave. She had told her the truth: she didn't care if she stayed there forever. She thought about right and wrong then. Would it have been more right to lie to her parents? She didn't care enough to consider the question for too long.
They'd assigned her a new therapist. She was different. She made her just a little bit curious. The first day she had tried asking questions. Anna had sat on her chair and stared blankly at her. She saw no reason to answer her questions. Somewhere, just underneath the numb, there was a sense that she was gone, that she could never feel, and if she could never feel, she couldn't recover, and attempting recovery was pointless. Her new therapist had not insisted. The second time she'd come she had asked whether Anna had anything to tell her, and just waited for over an hour for Anna to say something, to say anything. At the end of the allotted time she had given her a notebook, saying 'If you ever want to talk'. She had kept coming every week, and sitting with Anna for an hour and a half, not saying anything. Anna had taken the notebook with her, and as time progressed she found herself looking at it more and more. One day she wondered where she might find a pen or a pencil.
