I know you've all been wanting new updates and excerpts.
Well go to hell, I've got a novel to write.
No no, just kidding.
31398 words. About 3000 short or so. Already 1000 written for the day, so I think I can make my 2000+ quota for the day. Funny how much that jumps....
Here's your stinking excerpt:
Memories. I think about the places I've been and the things I've done and they don't seem real. Everything is just a dim, blurry image in my head. Who's to say I'm not making it all up as I go along? Specific incidents from my past are so vague that it all might as well be a badly remember story someone once told me. Or an episode of a television show that I saw a long time ago and didn't pay very much attention to. I can't remember last Friday's lunch. I remember meeting Sheila as well as I remember my fifth birthday: fuzzy flashes of images and movement, so much room for re-interpretation. Any details I give have been made up, by me, or Sheila, or any number of othe people whose embellishments of the story have added up and been added on through the years. All these memories must belong to someone else. Even photographs don't help. I might have been retouched into them for all I know.
So who am I? How did I get to where I am? It must have been quite a journey. I don't remember a single step of it. I'm certain someone knocked me out and carried me here. To this moment. And then to this one. Am I awake now? Will the future be any different? Will I remember this moment of writing these words and think, even that memory is false, even that time someone else was controlling my hands and feet and head and pushing me along the path?
Every second of every minute must have been -- and must continue to be -- programming that is, at the same time, the determination of my future and the result of my past. I guess I can just shut my eyes, and let it go. Let it ride….
A banging noise. And yelling. "End of the line!" I wake up quickly. Disoriented, sluggish, embarrassed. Unsteady. The conductor is hitting a metal bar directly above her head with a wooden stick. "Get off the train."
"I'm trying, I'm trying," I say. To my feet and through the doors, I have no idea which end of the line I'm at.
It turns out I'm at the opposite end of the line from any end of the line I'd like to be at. In Chicago, this means being at the ass end of the Red Line train. 63rd street. The kind of place that people like me don't visit and live to tell about. I have no idea how I ended up here. Was I on a train a minute ago? Was I thinking…. It's all so blurry. I'm pretty sure I was headed North at some point. I'm pretty sure I wasn't on the Red Line. Am I awake and dreaming? Am I asleep and walking? I have no idea how I ended up here….
And I then face that terrible feeling, like in the Walgreen's parking lot, where any choice I make will not lead me to ruin, but just won't lead me anywhere. I can't leave the platform, I can't stay on the platform. I can't choose, and I can't not choose. There is no way to win this one. The thought of going home, again, what's the point? What's the point in staying here or not staying here? What's the….
No. Go home, there may be no point, but there's a reason that it's called home. You'll feel better in the morning, you'll feel better in the morning, you'll feel better in the morning.
Barely able to open my front door, close it again, take off my coat. Too late for sleep, too early for anything else. Such a disturbing in-between time, 4:30 until 6:30. There's no point to it. Up until now, I wasn't even certain it existed. Too much in my head to think. Too many feelings… this feeling like I'm not as alone as I think I am. This feeling like I'm being watched. This feeling like I'm watching myself. A blow to the back of my head in the form of Sheila's voice, "Will, I need to talk to you."
"Woah, woah. Ease up there. It's too early…or late for this. I've had the shittiest night on record. What's going on?"
"I'm worried about you. You've been acting strangely lately. You've been acting out."
"Oh all that crazy stuff I've been doing? I guess it seems pretty weird, but it's really just for show. And for fun. You really do become free once you let go of the social norms."
"You're worrying your family. You're about to lose your job. You --"
"Is this an intervention?"
"Why did you spend the night riding the trains?"
"I don't know. There was….no, I don't know. I ended up on the wrong end of town and had to make my way back here. There is nothing more depressing than the people on the train at 3 in the morning. And the sound of a nearly-empty train going through the tunnel at speed. It's agonizing. And returning to an empty house…."
"I'm here, Will," Sheila says. That soothing voice again.
"But why? Or better yet, how? In what way are you here?"
"As long as your head isn't empty, your house isn't empty."
Well go to hell, I've got a novel to write.
No no, just kidding.
31398 words. About 3000 short or so. Already 1000 written for the day, so I think I can make my 2000+ quota for the day. Funny how much that jumps....
Here's your stinking excerpt:
Memories. I think about the places I've been and the things I've done and they don't seem real. Everything is just a dim, blurry image in my head. Who's to say I'm not making it all up as I go along? Specific incidents from my past are so vague that it all might as well be a badly remember story someone once told me. Or an episode of a television show that I saw a long time ago and didn't pay very much attention to. I can't remember last Friday's lunch. I remember meeting Sheila as well as I remember my fifth birthday: fuzzy flashes of images and movement, so much room for re-interpretation. Any details I give have been made up, by me, or Sheila, or any number of othe people whose embellishments of the story have added up and been added on through the years. All these memories must belong to someone else. Even photographs don't help. I might have been retouched into them for all I know.
So who am I? How did I get to where I am? It must have been quite a journey. I don't remember a single step of it. I'm certain someone knocked me out and carried me here. To this moment. And then to this one. Am I awake now? Will the future be any different? Will I remember this moment of writing these words and think, even that memory is false, even that time someone else was controlling my hands and feet and head and pushing me along the path?
Every second of every minute must have been -- and must continue to be -- programming that is, at the same time, the determination of my future and the result of my past. I guess I can just shut my eyes, and let it go. Let it ride….
A banging noise. And yelling. "End of the line!" I wake up quickly. Disoriented, sluggish, embarrassed. Unsteady. The conductor is hitting a metal bar directly above her head with a wooden stick. "Get off the train."
"I'm trying, I'm trying," I say. To my feet and through the doors, I have no idea which end of the line I'm at.
It turns out I'm at the opposite end of the line from any end of the line I'd like to be at. In Chicago, this means being at the ass end of the Red Line train. 63rd street. The kind of place that people like me don't visit and live to tell about. I have no idea how I ended up here. Was I on a train a minute ago? Was I thinking…. It's all so blurry. I'm pretty sure I was headed North at some point. I'm pretty sure I wasn't on the Red Line. Am I awake and dreaming? Am I asleep and walking? I have no idea how I ended up here….
And I then face that terrible feeling, like in the Walgreen's parking lot, where any choice I make will not lead me to ruin, but just won't lead me anywhere. I can't leave the platform, I can't stay on the platform. I can't choose, and I can't not choose. There is no way to win this one. The thought of going home, again, what's the point? What's the point in staying here or not staying here? What's the….
No. Go home, there may be no point, but there's a reason that it's called home. You'll feel better in the morning, you'll feel better in the morning, you'll feel better in the morning.
Barely able to open my front door, close it again, take off my coat. Too late for sleep, too early for anything else. Such a disturbing in-between time, 4:30 until 6:30. There's no point to it. Up until now, I wasn't even certain it existed. Too much in my head to think. Too many feelings… this feeling like I'm not as alone as I think I am. This feeling like I'm being watched. This feeling like I'm watching myself. A blow to the back of my head in the form of Sheila's voice, "Will, I need to talk to you."
"Woah, woah. Ease up there. It's too early…or late for this. I've had the shittiest night on record. What's going on?"
"I'm worried about you. You've been acting strangely lately. You've been acting out."
"Oh all that crazy stuff I've been doing? I guess it seems pretty weird, but it's really just for show. And for fun. You really do become free once you let go of the social norms."
"You're worrying your family. You're about to lose your job. You --"
"Is this an intervention?"
"Why did you spend the night riding the trains?"
"I don't know. There was….no, I don't know. I ended up on the wrong end of town and had to make my way back here. There is nothing more depressing than the people on the train at 3 in the morning. And the sound of a nearly-empty train going through the tunnel at speed. It's agonizing. And returning to an empty house…."
"I'm here, Will," Sheila says. That soothing voice again.
"But why? Or better yet, how? In what way are you here?"
"As long as your head isn't empty, your house isn't empty."
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